If you’re looking for ideas to take your business development to new levels in 2022, here’s a checklist of tips that will get you well on your way.
1. Start with a strong strategic plan
It’s critical to have a clear sense of what you and your team are trying to accomplish and how you will focus your efforts to maximize your business development pipeline. Once you know your focus and have agreed upon objectives, you must determine who will do what and when for each actionable item.
2. Mind your KPIs
To stay on track with your strategic plan, you must know how well you’re progressing toward your goals. The more you can track, the better
Use KPI dashboards for an up-to-date, at-a-glance visualization of the status of business development opportunities, marketing activities, seller-doer business development performance, and more. Then, use insights from the data to create informed solutions to help reach your goals.
3. Know when to insource and when to outsource
You can only achieve your business development goals if seller-doers are well equipped with the skills and resources to create and manage opportunity pipelines. Often, this requires individual and group sales and business development coaching and training.
Perhaps this is something you can take on internally, but outsourcing may be wiser. To determine the best approach, you must consider your team’s bandwidth, skill sets, budget, internal credibility, and the results you need to achieve.
4. Analyze the relationship funnel to forecast the future
Most firms fail to realize that by relying on the traditional analysis of past revenue and realization, you’ll never know where you’re going. It only allows you to assess where you’ve been. You need to analyze the relationship funnel to get a picture of the future.
The top of the funnel leads Marketing is responsible for generating may someday result in revenue. The middle of the funnel leads that seller-doers are responsible for ensure mid-term revenue. This is the least mined area of opportunity, especially when seller-doers lack the necessary support and skills to be effective business developers.
5. Create collaborative, cross-selling teams
It’s common knowledge that the more areas of practice a client does business with, the longer they will stay with the firm. Still, most firms fail to optimize their cross-selling potential.
Seller-doers have myriad reasons for not wanting to collaborate, but you and your team must create the environment and provide the resources to overcome their objections. According to psychologist Dr. Larry Richard, productive, collaborative teams share four team fundamentals:
- Leadership
- Acceptance/psychological safety for members
- Competency trust among team members
- Clear firm expectations
To learn more about each of the tips above and other business development and sales pipeline management topics, check out the Resources section of our website.
