The Six Steps of Business Development: A Guide to Growing Your Book of Business
Business development does not need to be a mystery. This practical six-step framework provides a structured approach to identifying opportunities, winning work and delivering results.
Business Development is the lifeline of your practice. Get it right and your practice will prosper, grow and thrive. Get it wrong - or worse, don't do it at all, and your practice will eventually die and very painful death.
To many though business development is an enigma. The 'Dark Art'. To those people, business development is a guessing game - akin to throwing darts in a dartboard and hoping one will stick!
But this doesn't have to be the case. If you follow these six simple steps you'll be streets ahead of your competition when it comes to the success of your business development endeavors.
First of all you need to identify potential leads. These need to be 'genuine' leads, not pie-in-the-sky wish-lists.
So you need to (either yourself or by outsourcing this to someone like GSJ):
Do some market research.
Understand and evaluate market trends - get a lay of the land.
Anticipate customer/client needs.
Determine which customers and industries are likely going to need your help.
You also need to understand what your competitive environment looks like - what we at GSJ call a Competitor Intelligence Analysis (CIA) report.
HINT: Get out your SWOT matrix template.
Step 2: Qualify
Identifying a lead is the easy part, Step 2 on your list is to qualify that lead.
Here you need to consider things such as a 'Who Knows Who' matrix. You also need to be developing your road-map for capturing the lead.
This is probably the most critical part of the lead capture process that most professionals shortcut or simply bypass.
It's here where you need to be saying 'no go' a lot more than you say 'pursue'. By way of example, at GSJ we tell clients to throw 8 out of every 10 genuine lead opportunities - an application of the Pareto principal to business development opportunities!
HINT: Dust off your Strategic Plan template.
Step 3: Engage
As the name suggests, Step 3 is where you need to engage with prospects/customers to establish a relationship with them (if you don't already have a relationship) and to show them that you are the subject matter expert that will help solve all of their problems - both those they know about and those they don't yet know about!
HINT: Network, speak at conference, present client CLEs, write articles, publish to LinkedIn, do client feedback sessions, develop alliances with other businesses who don't compete with you.
Step 4: Pitch
Step 4 and the time has come for you to pitch your services to your target.
Make sure your proposal is tailored to the specific issues of your target and not generic to the problem.
HINT: Make it count: Look to the problem you are solving, not the service you are providing.
Step 5: Close
Step 5 is where you close the deal and get the cigar out!
Only this step is often problematic and can result in all the hard work you have done in the pursuit campaign coming to nothing - especially when procurement teams get involved; As, often, this is where you will be asked to sharpen your pencil on pricing and negotiate contract terms that are not too favorable to you.
HINT: Even after all the hard work, always be willing to walk away from a bad deal.
The last Step is to deliver on what you have promised!
A really important part of this process - and one that is often overlooked by professionals - is to actually ask the customer themselves if they got what they thought they were paying for.
HINT: Do an After Action Review - continuous improvement and refining your strategy will help you with your next pursuit!
Following these six steps doesn't automatically guarantee you a million dollar book of business, but what it will do is create the structure and attitude towards business development that you need to help you identify and growth opportunities in your business and - importantly - how to then capitalize on those opportunities.
Further Reading
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