Find the tender point. Press it! Offer relief.

You need to find the source of pain. Your (prospective) client will have a tender bit (or bits), I can assure you, and likely they will really hurt if pressed! Your mission, if you want their business, is to find it, quantify it, and reveal just how painful or tender it is. Then you offer relief (or a solution), which takes the pain away, or at least alleviates it. Don't undersestimate the importance of pain relief, the 'analagesia' of business development.

But HOW do you find those tender areas? There are a number of ways to think about it.

A lot involve asking the right questions. Answers to good questions reveal sources of pain. Don't ever be reticent about asking. Remember, it's in their interest to answer - after all they need a solution.

If they are looking for a service solution, there will be a reason - maybe multiple reasons, why they need help. For example, if it's management training they're looking for, they will have concerns about lack of management competence.

What are those concerns? What's been happening (or not happening that should have been)? Can they give you examples of when managers handled situations badly? What were the negative (painful) consequences? When things have gone wrong, what were the costs to the organisation? What typically happens when an employee / team member is struggling? Has the (negative) way people have been managed resulted in tribunals or legal cases? How have those gone? What were the costs involved? Do they have policies linked to the desired manager behaviours? Can you see relevant policies?

BTW policies, or lack of them, can be very revealing. No policy on something like managing stress or mental health in the workplace may indicate poor / inadequate management of risks in the organisation (health, business and legal risks). If they do have a policy, it may be inadequate and/or very out of date. HR people in particular may be very concered about this, with good reason - a perfect example of a tender spot! It might be that there is mention of responding/support when people are struggling, but nothing about prevention, which probably means the organisation is failing in its legal duties to manage stress risks at work. It may be lacking too in clarity about expected manager behaviours and now managers will be upskilled to fulfil their duty of care and prevent / reduce stress.

Apart from anything else, you may be able to help them as a consultant, not just with management training, but policy development and implementation. Remember, policies, especially in this area, are almost always going to require managers to be trained because, it's managers that implement the policies.

What training do they currently offer? Can you see examples of the courses they offer? How do they support their managers at the moment? What support structures do they offer that managers can signpost to? To what extent are managers actually signposting support? Are managers being proactive about managing the risks? Do they understand the legal risks and the practical implications for them as managers?

You get the gist, I am sure. It's why the business development toolkit I developed is essentially comprised of sets of pain-revealing questions.

However, you can't always rely on clients to answer questions, or answer truthfully. They may not know the answers, but equally they could be embarrassed about them and/or not want to show themselves or the organisation in a bad light. That's understandable.

So you shouldn't just rely on what they tell you. You need to check out other data sources! Remember, a lot of data on organisations are publicly available - in some cases, it has to be because of rules around accountability and transparency, especially for public sector organisations.

So check:

• Media stories about the organisation (e.g. BBC news, The Guardian, local media and newpapers where the organisation is based). This includes investigative journalism and reports of legal cases.
• Social media like Linkedin and Facebook.
• Relevant trade publications
• Relevant membership organisations
• Tribunal decisions. All tribunal decisions are recorded here.
• What employees think about working there. Two great sources are Indeed and Glassdoor.
• Organisations' own websites. You may need to go a bit of digging, usually at the bottom of web pages. From there, you can potentially find all sorts or useful stuff, like strategy, board reports (very revealing about leadership decisional making and rationale for decisions) and annual reports.
• Companies House

These other data sources can help enormously. They tell you about what's hurting and why. They tell you about an organisation's reputation, internally and externally. Both are important. Reputation matters hugely. If you can make a link between your solution(s) and improving reputation (as well as easing the pain), that is your ideal scenario.

They also help you in dealing with decision makers, the people who decide whether you get the business or not. The reluctant sharer may well open up once they know that you already know what's hurting. There's no longer much point in hiding the painful truth.

You need to be, how shall I put it, FORENSICALLY CURIOUS.

One final point. What if it becomes clear you can't solve their problem / ease the pain and provide a solution?

That isn't a problem, it's an opportunity...

• You could refer or recommend someone or another business who can solve it. That will generate enormous reciprocity. You'll have helped your prospective client of course, but imagine how the business you're recommending will feel towards you. You could do a deal with them or develop a joint venture if appropriate.
• It will also highlight areas where you're current service offering is lacking. Not getting the business isn't a disaster. It's an opportunity to do some service development. An opportunity to make sure you up your game. You will be much better prepared the next time a similar opportunity arises.
• An alternative business development strategy is to offer to work with your client to develop something new and bespoke, which could be piloted and evaluated at low risk to ensure it meets the organisation's needs, before rolling out a more extensive programme.

FIND THE PAIN - happy business development!

Alan x