How do you set your business development priorities? Business is messy and, unfortunately, business development is no different. Opportunities flying in from all directions. Proposals and quotes requiring compilation and review. Communications and relationships requiring consistent nurturing. Keeping all these balls in the air is impossible without some structure in place. In todays post I discuss a few ways to prioritize your business development activity.
Simple Segmentation
Running your day to day takes to-do lists or similar. But aligning your effort with company purpose and direction is essential for longer-term success. This is where the tactical action plan assists. Boiling down your assessment and planning into a series of systematic actions keeps you on point with both the low-hanging fruit and the strategic long-term goals.
However, prioritizing customers is essential in maximizing your impact. An easy method is to segment your customers based on:
- Potential service spending
- Need for your company offering
For example, a mid-tier environmental consultancy might segment their customers into three priority tiers:
- Tier 1: $100,000/year spend and/or many environmentally sensitive projects
- Tier 2: $60,000/year spend and/or some environmentally sensitive projects.
- Tier 3: $30,000/year spend and/or fewer environmentally sensitive projects.
As you can see, looking through your customer list and placing them into each tier makes prioritization of effort relatively simple.
Achievable action
Following the segmentation of customers a framework will guide the next stage action. But, how regularly do the contacts for each priority tier need to be actioned? Of course, this depends upon the circumstances found within your industry.
Personally, I define first priority customers as those who are in a strong position to buy. Actions should be occurring on a monthly basis to keep your offering front of mind. Giving second priority and third priority customers a longer-term action timeframe to start is good. Once they show signs of considering your offering, the priority level and action cadence can be increased. This is summarized in the priority matrix below.
This matrix allows the business developer to quickly consider each contact in the tactical action plan easily allocating a due date based on priority level. There is a fine line between keeping your offering and brand in the mind of the customer and being perceived as annoying. Take this into account when developing your own priority matrix and adjust the timings as required.
Final thoughts
Making the most of your time is a key part of every business developers role. Segmenting customers and assigning priority action cadences reduces the number of daily micro decisions while keeping focus on the most important customers.
I invite you to review your customer segmentation and priority cadence. Is it clear? Are the right customers being prioritised? Most importantly, is there a defined system? If not get to work creating one. You’ll find your time will be spent more productively because of it.
Business Development such a challenges
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Business Development priorities
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For a definition of business development you can check out my take in this post here.
For a simple yet comprehensive framework to base your business development activity around I recommend checking out my new book Business Development Begins Here. It is available to order on Amazon. Visit the link to grab your copy now.
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