10 Top Tips for Business Development Success in 2023

Whether you call it ‘Business Development’ or ‘BD’, ‘Revenue Operations’, or ‘Sales and Marketing’, it doesn't really matter. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. The act building a consistent pipeline of new clients is the engine that feeds all organisations, big and small.

For those businesses that ‘sell’ intangible products or services with a value proposition that is sometimes hard to define, the buying process is necessarily collaborative. Anyone in a sales role is best advised to eschew selfish self-interest and instead to adopt a humble, genuine, Trusted Advisor outlook.

Here are 10 top tips for Business Development success in a consultative, collaborative, partnership sales approach.

?Tip number one: clearly define your ICP.

?What's your ICP?

?It is your ideal client profile.

Let's say you deal with businesses. Ask yourself … what sector are they in? What sort of size of business are they? What sort of ownership structure have they got? Who is your typical point of contact within that type of organisation? What's their job title? What kind of sign-off procedures and decision-making processes do they typically go through in organisations of that type?

Tip number two: take a buyer-centric approach.

?Why should they care about what you do?

Sadly, most of your prospective clients do not wake up first thing in the morning and think “today is the day when I get to instruct a legal representative”, or “take out an insurance policy”, or “invest in a new CRM”.

Most people don't really wake up in the morning wanting to do any of those things.

Why should you, and what you do, pass their 'so what?' test?

Chances are, if what you do transforms businesses, you operate in a space where people need what you do, but they don't necessarily want what you do.

Ask yourself, why do they care about this?

Where do you fit within their world?

What are the symptoms of the other things that might be coming up in their world - little signs and triggers that say that they might need you?

Be aware of those questions and what that looks like in your ideal client profile organisation, so that you can anticipate the timing of these things from their perspective, and you can speak in a way that is authoritative. When you talk to them, make it about them - not only about their market, but also the things that matter to them in their own business.

Tip number three, do as they would be done by.

?There's an old Biblical phrase: “do as you would be done by”.

Superficially it’s a good ethical maxim, however, as we build our emotional intelligence (a fundamental building block of rapport and establishing the connection with somebody to be able to build a trusted adviser relationship) we see it's about how they communicate, not necessarily about how we communicate.

It's all about them, not about us.

How do they like to communicate?

For example, if they’re a high-powered entrepreneurial type who is very much results focused and doesn't necessarily want all the detail. They want the big picture, although they want to know that you know the detail.

They don't need to hear it all, but they do need to know that you know it because the reason they're engaging you is because they just want you to make them feel safe by mitigating any commercial risks for them.

With somebody like that, the rule is, “be brief, be bright, be gone”.

Don't spend all your time giving them the detail - they will not thank you for it. In fact, they'll glaze over.

Alternatively, at the other end of the spectrum, let's imagine they're a highly detail-focused, risk averse, individual who potentially does need you to spend some time going through all the detail with them.

You're going to communicate with those two different people very differently to one another.

Think about how they communicate, not necessarily how you like to communicate.

Tip number four: don't just be honest, be disarmingly honest.

Psychologists tell us that you have the first seven seconds of a first interaction with a new person to be able to establish the baseline for trust.

Remember, people do business with people ... specifically, people that they trust.

You need to show right from the first second that you have their best interests at heart.

To start with, it might be something as simple as a phrase like “We only just met so I don't really know whether I'm a good fit for you at this stage. I might be a resource for you. I might not. Let’s have a simple candid conversation and if I’m not a fit, I’m sure we can work that out between us”.

You’re being non-salesy, and just telling the simple truth which, with any new interaction, is that you don't know whether you're a good fit until you know more about them.

Even if you suspect that you might be a good fit, you don't know for sure, so you might as well own it.

It's the elephant in the room, you might as well name it. When you do, and you show you have the confidence to say something apparently more in their interest than in your own, it builds a certain level of credibility from minute one.

Tip number five: have a system.

I cannot emphasise this one enough.

It's so important.

As James Clear says in ‘Atomic Habits’, “people do not rise to the level of their goals, they fall to the level of their systems”.

You must have a set of business development steps that you always go through, that you follow religiously, that you follow consistently, that you have absolute clarity on.

Those steps that you follow, because you're doing them the same way in the same at the same time with the same cadence every single time, will start to build predictable outcomes, which means that you're able to meaningfully forecast your pipeline of business now.

That also gives you a good sense of how to improve. When you have a clearly replicable consistent system, when things go wrong, you know exactly where they've gone wrong.

?Why did they go wrong? Because you missed a step out? Or was there something that maybe just didn't quite work within that step? Was there something that you could have done better, within that step or something you should have done differently that just didn't go very well?

When things go right you can capture best practice - where did it all go so right?

?Can you bottle it? Can you do it again? Can you repeat it?

?If you've got a system to work to, not only do you have consistency and predictability, but also you have the foundation stones for a continuous improvement programme.

?Tip number six: establish the rules of engagement.

?When you sit down for any kind of a meeting, even if it's just an initial informal ‘coffee chat’ with somebody, where you've no idea whether it's going to turn into a business relationship, it’s good to establish the rules of engagement.

?This is structured but it’s something you do conversationally, not overly formal. It may feel like overkill but it’s essential if you want the meeting to run within your system. ?

?Establish how long you’ve got for this meeting. Maybe it's 20 minutes or half an hour for a quick coffee? Have they got a ‘hard stop’? You just ask the question!

?What are you going to be talking about? Is there anything that they want to learn from you today?

?What do you need to know to be able to do your best work on their behalf?

?If this is a discovery meeting with a prospective new client, what sorts of questions do you think you might need to ask them during the meeting? It's a good idea to get some permission to ask those questions up front, so they have a good understanding of what's coming. That means you lower their anxiety by removing uncertainty; they know what's going to happen.

?Finally, what kind of outcomes can you both expect from the meeting?

Tip number seven: understand the real reasons for doing business.

?I mentioned earlier on that you fit somewhere into their business ecosystem. You are only a ‘bit part’ player in the movie of their lives.

• If you’re a lawyer, it helps to think that they typically don't have a legal problem - what they have is a business problem to which the law may well provide the whole or part of the solution.
• ?If you’re an insurance broker, it helps to think that they typically don't have an insurance problem - what they have is a business problem to which the right insurance product may well provide the whole or part of the solution.
• If you’re an IT specialist, it helps to think that they typically don't have an IT problem - what they have is a business problem to which the right IT support may well provide the whole or part of the solution.

?…and so on!

What is their problem? What is your solution? What's the wider impact of not implementing that solution?

That is where you get close to the real reasons for doing business. These are the sorts of things that keep them awake at night. These are the sorts of things that frustrate them. The sorts of things that worry them.

Notice the phrases I just used: ‘awake at night’, ‘frustrate’, ‘worry’ … these imply emotions.

?You're looking for the emotional drivers that underpin reasons for doing business. It's the Latin verb ‘emovere’ – ‘to move’.

Decisions always stem from something emotional. We might make some intellectual justification for those decisions later, but emotions are at the root of all of our decision-making processes.

?Tip number eight: the least you will accept is the most that you will get.

?The thorny issue of money. It's a difficult one for so many people. The vast majority of people, on some level, feel uncomfortable talking about money.

It’s so important to build your conviction levels – believe in the value that you bring for your clients.

?You may find this gets easier over time as you look more and more from the buyer’s perspective and think about their real reasons for doing business.

Understand the financial and personal impact of them not doing business with you.

What are you protecting them from? Typically, you are protecting them from some kind of a risk; an outcome that is disadvantageous to them.

?What does that look like in financial terms?

?If you get a feel for that, you can see their return on investment for bringing you into their world. ?That should give you real confidence in your numbers.

?You should be able to speak with absolute conviction about the number that you're putting in front of them. Don't be afraid of it.

?Remember, Money is the Language of Business. It's a good idea to be fluent.

?Tip number nine: ask for referrals.

?The best source of your prospective new clients … is your existing clients.

?Of course it is!

?We all know this, don't we? But do we ever ask?

?Maybe not as consistently as we should do.

?It’s always a good idea, especially at the end of a satisfactory client engagement. When you're doing the review meeting or that review phone call at the end of a project, make sure that you build it into your process that you will always ask them for an introduction or referral to somebody from within their network.

?Again, this should be conversational. You can be quite relaxed about it – after all, it’s just an introduction to someone, not necessarily somebody who's going to instantly become a client. It’s just somebody whom they think there may be value in you having a coffee with. Just so you know each other so that you're in their little black book of contacts for the future.

Tip number 10: manage your leading indicators of success, not your lagging indicators of success.

?What does that mean?

What are your lagging indicators of success? Well, strangely enough, the thing that businesses focus on, most of all, are lagging indicators - the results.

Whether it's the end of year results, end of quarter results, end of month results … all those things are lagging indicators of success because you don't know what the results are until they've already happened.

The thing to manage day-to-day is not the results.

?Instead manage the things that lead you to the results, and those are typically behaviours; they’re actions, the things that you will do within your system consistently, every single day, every single week, every single month that will lead you to predictably generate the results that you're looking for.

?What sorts of behaviours are we talking about?

?The number of LinkedIn conversations you start, the number of calls you’ve had with strangers, the number of referrals you ask for, the number of coffees that you have in a week, the number of networking meetings that you attend within a typical month, the number of drinks events you go to, and the number of people you talk to at those drinks events and what sorts of conversations you have with them…

?…the list goes on.

Those are the sorts of consistent daily behaviours that you can build into your calendar to ensure that you are able to achieve the results that you're looking to achieve.

?And that concludes a whistle stop 10 top tips for business development success in 2023!

?************

If you found this article valuable and you would like a 1:1 session with me, DM me and we'll arrange to have a virtual coffee. This doesn't necessarily mean that you'll become a client of mine, but there's always mutual value in these conversations and, besides, every business relationship in the world started with two strangers talking to one another. I'm happy to talk.