Follow the money: the BD work that follows storage and data centres

Forget the batteries. Or rather, forget the batteries as the story. The interesting work for professional services firms is in the second, third and fourth order effects of storage, and the firms that position BD talent against them now will own that revenue for a decade.

The chain runs like this. Storage leads to cheaper, more reliable power. Reliable power enables data centres. Data centres drive infrastructure: land, grid connection, water, cooling, fibre. Infrastructure pulls capital from superannuation funds, private capital and offshore investors. Capital creates transactions. Transactions create regulation, planning, tax structuring, construction contracts and, eventually, disputes.

Every link in that chain is billable, and every link is a different client with a different buyer. The developer needs planning and construction lawyers. The investor needs fund formation and tax. The operator needs energy regulation and procurement. The lender needs finance. A BD function that treats this as one sector will miss most of it.

The firms doing this well have mapped the revenue pool by link, not by practice group. They know which clients sit where in the chain, which relationships they already hold and which they need to build. They have a view on which law firms, accounting firms and advisers are already there, and where the gaps are. That map becomes the BD plan.

For candidates, this is where the interesting roles are appearing: sector BD positions that sit across practice groups, report to a sector leader and carry a revenue target. They pay well, and they are hard to fill, because the person needs to understand the market as well as the firm.