Business Development: The New Frontier for Customer Acquisition & Client Engagement

Headlines abound informing us that artificial intelligence, blockchain and virtual reality will play larger roles in our lives. What’s not being widely reported is the precarious status that much of big business finds itself in due to such disruption and the lack of innovation funding. It’s no secret that businesses are under pressure to be more agile. Many have lost ground because they lack the capabilities to meet growing customer expectations. Wired’s Steven Levy, referencing Gulliver’s Travels, contends: “When you reach such a Brobdingnagian pinnacle, size itself becomes your greatest problem. You don’t disrupt—you get disrupted”. According to recent studies by Accenture & McKinsey & Co., many have tough hills to climb. 

Accenture found that 71% of the 10,000 companies they analyzed, with a combined $41 trillion in enterprise value, are facing disruption, while McKinsey reports that nearly 60% of the world's banks may not be economically viable in years to come. Each confirms that the lack of innovation funding is a major problem for big firms and enterprises. Many, due to their sheer size, have been unable to innovate enough internally to elevate client value and offerings. They need to take dramatic action or risk being left behind.

Deloitte US CEO Joe Ucuzoglu, in Chief Executive, offers solid advice to “disrupted” CEOs determined to be on the right side of change. Interestingly, Accenture prescribes the “Innovation Pivot” while Ucuzoglu hones-in on ecosystems to confront disruption and unlock innovation.

Innovation Pivot

Accenture specifically warns CEOs to step up, be unconventional and avoid playing it safe or face stark consequences. Doubling down on efficiency and survival mode amid disruption is risky and does not work. Instead, Accenture recommends focusing on innovation to unleash value.

Ecosystem Investing. Nothing Like It.

Ucuzoglu makes three recommendations with one, ecosystems, warranting special attention. He contends that a new age is upon us and that “ecosystems will reorient the marketplace”. Urging leaders to focus on how their ecosystems can help drive value and innovation, Ucuzoglu recommends.

• Investing in ecosystems
• Embracing new business models
• Getting comfortable – fast - with external partnerships

All good stuff for sure. But what if there was a simple way of ramping up Ucuzoglu’s concept to a whole new level? A way for big players to be forces for good, rainmakers and innovators. A way to be at the epicenter of business ecosystems by accelerating transactions, fast-tracking growth and navigating change.

DealRockit’s proprietary digital marketplace and business development technology, ecosystem investing (EI), does just that. EI is based on the premise that the best way to counter disruption and grow is to begin with the constituency directly in front of you: your ecosystem. That means starting with your offices, teams, professionals, referral partners, prospects, customers, and clients and move forward from there.

EI revolutionizes how large firms and enterprises invest in their ecosystem to ROCKiT growth. It’s fast and does all the hard work for you, making firms and the businesses/clients they invite more transactional, aligned and engaged. EI is a comprehensive customer engagement, business development solution that combines the best of innovative technology with human experience, allowing firms to offer free products with far reaching capabilities and benefits to invited clients, prospects and business/referral partners. These are the must haves to monetize scale, unlock innovation and put a unique stamp on stakeholder value.

New Collaborations

Ucuzoglu’s ecosystem focus is welcome and laudable for bringing to light the importance of embracing new business models and external partnerships going forward. It’s the latter, external partnerships and the “opportunities to co-own, co-create and co-evolve”, where large players should immediately focus to make up big ground in a hurry.

Caribou Honig, cofounder InsurTech Connect, agrees and sees non-traditional companies coming to insurance, law, banking, accounting, SaaS, financial services and other professions with fresh business models that give incumbent firms the ability to offer new products with far reaching capabilities and benefits to customers for free. Such firms also help align and grow business ecosystems in a hurry. Honig says these are the ones to pounce on “because that’s where the action is really going to happen.”

 Value of External Partnerships

The key to external partnership success is to find a willing, probably much smaller, entrepreneurial tech firm to collaborate with. External partners need to scale nearly as much as big players need to elevate customer offerings and innovation fast. A win-win.

At the same time, it’s important to understand that people, companies, and decision-makers don’t know what they want until they can see it and test it. As Henry Ford said: "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'". Decades later Steve Jobs famously stated: “Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do” and then show them the finished product.

We’ve done that at DealRockit. Much like the minivan and iPod, people did not go to bed at night thinking I wish I had a minivan or iPod, but rather, when they saw DealRockit, they recognized the need and wanted in immediately. DealRockit is more than a capital matching, transaction site.

A DealRockit Private Label membership (DPLM) sends a strong message. It lets your invited stakeholders know their value and your willingness to invest in them -- leading one senior banker to remark: “Why wouldn’t every startup or growth company want to be on your platform". DPLM subscribers recognize that happy, engaged clients, prospects, partners and employees boost revenues and retention, benefiting all stakeholders and solving pain-points fast.

That’s what an external partner brings to the table. The ability to heed the words of Ford and Jobs and deliver a ready-made product that meets the Accenture/Deloitte criteria while seamlessly passing the baton.

Problem Solved

The pressure on big businesses to better serve clients and move up the value chain is intensifying. Their inability to innovate enough internally and elevate customer value is a major problem with no solution in sight until ecosystem investing.

No doubt firms must focus on costs and how these critical factors tie to better customer experience and lost margin. However, not coming up with new growth and innovation strategies or developing external partnerships that focus on stakeholder value is a recipe for near certain failure. As Accenture and Deloitte note, this is not the time to play it safe. Firms must reinvent themselves before it’s too late.

Like what Match.com famously did for dating and connecting, big players, too, can do by being at the forefront of a global movement that transforms their business and turns the status quo on its head. Suddenly those pain points disappear, turning firms into the business destination magnet and innovator that others aspire to be.

Ironically, it was Wells Fargo – yes that Wells Fargo – that fully understood the problem with size and need for external partnerships. In our infancy, several years ago, Wells Fargo advised me that DealRockit was one of the most exciting concepts they’ve come across in decades. High praise for sure. It’s what they said next that stuck with me. Wells felt that it was critical that our platform be able to take on their 3 million small business customers and that we build a substantial marketplace demo-site to prove the product worked. I can proudly say that DealRockit is up to this task and, in fact, we built buyerize.com, our demo-site, as our working laboratory. Though Wells leadership is long gone, these words of wisdom stuck.

Accenture, McKinsey, Deloitte and DealRockit, all agree that it’s time to reach for the stars — not unlike the Manhattan Project or the Space Race — and do something big for your ecosystem ... and your organization.

David Carmell (@david_carmell)

David Carmell is the CEO and Founder of DealRockit, the breakthrough new digital marketplace and business development technology that revolutionizes how large firms and enterprises invest in their ecosystem to ROCKiT growth and innovation. Carmell is a recognized global top 50 thought leader on customer experience.?