March 1, 2009
Welcome to my Business Development Blog. Glad you could stop by. I think about this stuff all the time and tend to wear out my friends and family on the subject, so I decided I should put my obsession to good use and start writing for you instead. If you’re a bottom-line business person that wants to increase sales, I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. We may even become great friends. I have added blogging to my own
marketing mix in order to productively connect with more small business owners and solo-professionals that have a desire to increase sales. You see, you’re here right now and that’s exactly why I want to be here. My passion is helping people do their best work. My technical expertise is sales and marketing. My specialty is creating business development systems that get my clients more business without adding unnecessary work and expense. Because I grew up in business as a sales person, the systems I develop for clients are anchored in a working knowledge of what can be successfully implemented at the field level.
The Business Development Continuum
I thought I’d share one of my favorite tools with you today. It’s my Business Development Continuum and you can get a free copy here on my website. Print it out and follow along with me. I know you’ll want to make some notes to clarify your own process.
| Lead Generation |
Sales Process |
Fulfillment/Relationship Management |
While I realize that business development is not exactly a linear process, it's still one the best ways I’ve found to show my clients how business development activities flow along a continuum (or at least they should). I believe gaining this simple perspective can help business owners improve results from sales and marketing activities exponentially. There simply must be a systematic approach to moving your ideal targets along the path to becoming ideal clients.
Here’s a quick look at the 3 phases of Business DevelopmentPhase One: Lead GenerationPhase Two: The Formal Sales ProcessPhase Three: Fulfillment/Relationship Management As you build that systematic approach to move clients through all phases of YOUR business development continuum—create one that fully respects and integrates both your perspective and the client perspective. Sounds like a simple concept I know—but I often see missing perspectives.
1. Lead Generation: What are you doing to connect with the people most likely to have an interest in your products and services (ideal targets)? What makes them an ideal target? Where do they gather? What could you do to literally attract them to you? How many leads do you need to fill your pipeline goals?
2. Sales Process: Once someone raises their hand as in need of your product or service and recognizes you as a potential supplier, they move along the continuum into the second phase of the continuum--transitioning from lead to prospect. Your new prospect moves through your sales process—which can be one of those long, drawn out, big ticket, high engagement, sales cycles or simply reach into their pocket--on the spot, for some cold hard cash! Respect the natural progression and build a systematic approach to support it. I see a lot of balls dropped in this phase, because business owners simply do not plan ahead for each incremental step in the formal sales process. ( I promise to write more about this topic soon)
How many prospects convert into clients? Where is the weakest link in the process? What could you improve in the sales process that will improve the downstream issues in serving clients?
3. Fulfillment/Relationship Management: Prospects become “the client” once the initial transaction occurs, but they’re still very much on your continuum. Clients will continue to engage in meaningful ways with add-on sales, cross-sales, testimonials, referrals, long term relationships.
With my new clients—in the beginning, I often spend extra time here in phase three. We concentrate on what an ideal client looks like for them, how they interact with the product or service, what kind of benefit or enjoyment they receive. --And that is how we begin our work back from perfect, developing a systematic approach to getting more of the business they need to reach their goals by delivering more of the good stuff!
Are you leveraging all phases of your Business Development Continuum?
Now that we’ve picked it all apart, I want you to put it back together again. Understanding how each unique phase really works in your business is the beauty of seeing the whole as a truly systematic approach to acquiring all the business you need to make it through these difficult times. Many of my clients are really strong in one phase and extremely weak in at least one other. There always seems to be room for major improvement. Let me know what you discover as you look at your own systems. I would love to hear from you.
Marketing Mix Matters
Next time maybe we’ll talk about how the range of elements in the Marketing Mix can help you attract the ideal targets and move them along YOUR own Business Development Continuum. Or maybe will talk about something else I think is more fun at the time. Till next time, I await your comments. Let’s Talk!
