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Article:
Is Your
Business Two Faced?
As competition
increases and barriers fall, many companies
look to new markets and customers to
strengthen and grow their business. While
there are many opportunities with promising
potential and with the increasing use of
e-commerce, deciding where to start and
navigating the risks of doing new business
can be quite daunting. An initial starting
point is asking whether you are maximizing
business from your current customers.
While tempting
to leave this at the administrative level,
it must be stressed that new business
development is about learning and applying a
set of clearly defined practices and
activities that, over the years, have proven
to be the most effective at generating
sales. It’s a skill that is only acquired
over years of patient practice. It’s about
relating to customers, focus, intensity,
sincerity, trust building and other learned
sales and natural skills. As such in this
new globally connected world it’s important
that a role be created and filled with an
experienced individual rich in a range of
diverse yet complimentary sales skills, not
a member of the ruling administrative
hierarchy.
Your Business
Development Manager plays an important role
in creating and managing new strategic
relationships with key business accounts.
They need strong selling and closing skills;
a proven ability to influence and manage
customer relationships; a history of
establishing account sales; strong
negotiation skills; effective presentation
and interpersonal skills; excellent written
and verbal communication skills; industry
and business development experience. Does
this describe you or your Business
Development Manager?
These
invaluable skills should not be underrated.
With the advent of the Internet, and
especially the corporate Intra-net, your
Business Development Manager now has a new
and inexpensive opportunity to codify and
communicate what every sales person should
know that your company’s very best sales
people already know about selling new
business. They realize that new business
development is a series of interconnected
activities that are performed in a
particular sequence over a period of time.
Then the activities begin all over again.
For example,
new business development begins by meeting
with new or existing customers and probing
to identify needs that might be met by your
company. You want to understand your
customer’s strategic objectives and plans so
you can match up your company’s services.
Proposals are defined and presented. The
customer is encouraged to accept the
proposal or negotiate the deal. The deal is
closed and the new order is generated. The
product or service is delivered. Feedback is
sought and the cycle begins anew. All of
this is a series of connected activities.
Each of these activities involves a sequence
of steps that explain what should be done
and in what order to maximize the
effectiveness of the activity.
The best
salespeople perform these business
development activities automatically,
subconsciously really, without thinking of
them as activities or steps in an overall
process. Your Business Development Manager
with the support of your Sales and Marketing
personnel can analyze these steps as they
apply to your company and ensure that the
company communicates its best sales
practices to the entire sales force anytime
and anywhere in the world.
Remember, your
sales force and website is the visible face
of your company. Is it a professional,
knowledgeable, customer orientated face or a
bureaucratic mask?
-
John Shenton - February, 2003
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