Assess Phase

The Connection Between Resilience and Successful Business Development

By Tom on May 12, 2023

I was recently asked what I thought was the most important attribute for business development. Of course I immediately answered resilience. Resilience is critical for many roles, particularly those related to leadership and client relationships. Both of these role types are centered around the chaos of people interactions.

I believe business development is in essence a leadership role and of course it centers on customer relationships and interactions. Also, by it’s very nature work winning is chaotic. The business developer needs to thrive in this chaos. Therefore, to my mind, resilience is crucial.

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What is resilience?

The Oxford dictionary defines resilience as: the ability of people or things to recover quickly after something unpleasant, such as shock, injury, etc.

It’s all about the recovery, both mental and physical. Of course in the case of business development we are mostly focused on the mental side of things. But physical can also play a role. After a grueling, tiring day how quickly are you ready to get back out in front of your customer base?

Resilience and business development

As a business developer your goal is to increase the revenue entering your business. To do so needs regular contact with customers both existing and prospective. Remember the sales funnel. Consistent effort is required in developing your market to maintain revenue growth.

Perseverance is key. You cant give up. Continual effort and activity is essential. This is where the resilience of the business developer comes into play.

Have a think about how you react to the following:

Customers don’t respond to emails
Rude or aggressive responses
Customers telling you that they like your competitor better
Revenues aren’t increasing as fast as you would like

Do you tend to take these sorts of situations personally? I know I did. When a customer refused to engage with me I’d take it as a personal slight. I’d spend lots of time trying to work out what I had done wrong and worrying about it all.

Over time I’ve come to realise that it isn’t personal. Our customers have busy lives and they don’t care whether you’ve sent them an email or not. If you can help them solve a problem or add value at that particular moment in time they will respond. If you cant they wont. Simple.

If you are resilient you take a note of those that don’t respond and loop back at a later time. Or look for a different contact at that company. Alternatively think of other ways to add value to that customer.

A lack of resilience results in customers being approached only once. When they don’t respond the business developer gives up. Resulting in a race to the bottom as the prospective customer base shrinks after every interaction.

Building your resilience around lack of customer engagement is really a core part of any practitioner of business development.

Strengthen your shield – improve your resilience

How to improve your resilience in business development

Now that we know the importance of resilience to business development it’s time to think about how to improve it. This article from the Harvard Business Review gives some excellent advice on building resilience at work. It suggests practicing mindfulness, compartmentalize your cognitive load, take detachment breaks and develop mental agility.

I’d like to add to that list from the business development perspective.

Develop systems and processes around your business development. Having a system for developing your market takes the emotion out of your decision making. For example your system tells you to contact customer X. Having done so you also know to set a follow up time into your calendar and plan. If they don’t respond it’s no problem. Follow the process and keep on moving.

Maintaining a business development routine also helps foster your resilience. Knowing that you’ve got work winning activities booked at the same time every day really helps. Regardless of whether you won the last opportunity or not, having the daily habit of working on revenue growth stops you dwelling on the negative.

Taking control and being proactive also builds resilience. Yes you will take some knocks, lose opportunities and customers. But continually seeking out new opportunities and new ways into customer organizations keeps you busy and focused on the future positives rather than the pothole you’ve just hit. Having systems and a routine will also help with this.

Final thoughts

Resilience is definitely a core attribute of any business developer. If you think you need to work on your resilience make sure to develop systems and routines around your work winning activity. Also try reading more around the subject see if there are other techniques you can include in your day to day.

Having seen Ben Pronk present his thoughts on resilience I’ve begun reading his book The Resilience Shield and it gives some excellent insight. I’ll post a review on how it relates to this topic once I have finished it. Highly recommend checking it out.

Are you looking to begin your Business Development journey but are not quite sure where to start? Download my quick start guide to business development. This gives a series of simple activities to quickly set you on the right path in only 10 days.

For a definition of business development you can check out my take in this post here.

If you are getting value out of my weekly free content I’d ask that you consider buying my new book. It’s a simple yet comprehensive framework to base your business development activity around and full of practical application to get you started now. It is available to order on Amazon now.

If you want a more proactive and personal approach to your business development I am available to help. Through face to face conversations I’ll set you on the right path and keep you accountable to future activity. I currently have space on my 1on1 personalized coaching program, or you can sign up to my flagship course. To learn more click the button below.

Business Development Coaching

The Art of Customer Classification: Where to Spend Your Energy

By Tom on April 14, 2023

Customer classification is the act of identifying common traits within a group of customers. It answers the question: what is similar about these companies and their purchasing habits?

For any organisation to succeed, needs daily business development activity. Unfortunately we all suffer from a lack of time. Therefore, your precious time must be spent on activities that will yield the highest chance of success. Prioritizing your customers is key.

Over the Christmas holiday I read the excellent Undaunted by Ed Zier. This harrowing story tells the true experiences of a company embroiled in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. While a tragic tale the book also highlights the resilience of the survivors and the subsequent rebuilding of their company. I cant recommend it enough.

In amongst the bravery of the employees the book details the growth of Baseline an early financial analytics company. By doing so it includes gold nuggets of business development advice. In this instance the prioritization of your customer base.

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Why do we need to classify our customers?

As well as being an accomplished author Ed was the Head of Sales at Baseline during the attacks on the World Trade Center. He knows a thing or two about developing a business and running a sales team.

Without classification or clarification your team will spend their time across a range of customers. Ideally focus on those likely to produce the most recurring revenue. However, Ed found that in fact customers were being treated equally. Regardless of their real value to the company.

Consequently, there were instances of his team unwittingly prioritising lower value customers.

It’s easy to see that classifying your customers is important, letting you focus precious time on the highest yielding customers.

Without customer classification your platinum customers get lost in the crowd

How to classify your customers

Ed and his team measure their customers by the revenue volume as Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. This included recurring revenue and an interesting pattern emerged.

Bronze accounts cancelled 30% of time after year 1
Gold Accounts cancelled 10% of the time after year 1

As well as being higher revenue earners, their Gold and Platinum clients tended to cancel less.

Clearly focussing on Gold and Platinum customers yielded the best results. Ed had a large sales force under his control. He changed the sales commissions to favour gold and platinum accounts, getting him a marked improvement in revenue results. Overall the new structure provided long term revenue stability.

Now it’s your turn

Ed’s story is a great example of how classifying your customers can have a huge impact on your sustainable revenue growth. Think about your own business. Where does most of your revenue come from? Which customers provide long term revenue stability?

Firstly consider classifying your customers by revenue. Perhaps there are other classifications that align with your company purpose. Ultimately classify your customers to make sure effort is spent on the highest potential of revenue return. I write a bit more about segmenting your customer base in an older post.

What are you waiting for? Grab a pen and start classifying your customers. Who are you Platinum customers and how can you make sure your team focusses on them?

Customer Classification

Are looking to begin your Business Development journey but are not quite sure where to start? Download my quick start guide to business development. This gives a series of simple activities to quickly set you on the right path.

For a definition of business development you can check out my take in this post here.

If you want a more proactive and personal approach to your business development I am available to help. Through face to face video calls I’ll set you on the right path and keep you accountable to future activity. I currently have space on my 1on1 personalized coaching program, or you can sign up to my flagship course: Business Development Academy. To learn more click the button below.

Business Development Coaching

Get the Edge With a Competitor Matrix

By Tom on June 17, 2022

Unfortunately, playing in a blue ocean market where your offering is the only option for your customers is extremely rare. There are always going to be other companies vying for your customers’ money.

It is important to understand where, how and why these competitors do business. Identify their strengths and weaknesses and how they compare to your own. Using a simple Competitor Matrix allows you to quickly assess your opposition and recognize where your advantages and disadvantages might lie.

Ask the Right Questions

A quick scan of your competitors should answer the following questions:

What is their main offering and how does it differ from yours?
Why are they in business? Are they focused on shareholder return or social legacy?
What is their business and pricing model?
Is the competitor winning more business, hiring and growing? What growth trajectory are they on? Are they a multinational with enormous reserves or a tiny start-up scratching for resources?
What does their team look like? Many staff across multiple disciplines, or a small number of highly specialized personnel? Do they have business development staff active in the market?
Who are their key customers, and how loyal are they?
How do they attract and retain customers? Do they have a proactive sales team hunting new customers? Are they marketing aggressively through social media or other channels?
Do they hold significant market share?
What is unique about their offering and how is this different to your unique selling points?
Which points of difference between the two companies can you successfully compete on?

Compile Your Competitor Matrix

The answers will provide enough information to start assessing your competition. A quick way to do this is through the creation of a simple Competitor Matrix. Generate a series of attributes based on the most important questions above. Next, populate the categories for your organization and each of your competitors.

Using a traffic light system to denote strength and weakness when compared to your company, allows you to quickly visualize differences. For instance, RED signifies areas where they exceed your offering, while GREEN indicates areas where their offering is weaker. An example Competitor Matrix for a water consultancy is provided below.

	Your Company	Competitor 1	Competitor 2
Product/Service	Water Consultant	Enviro Consultant	Water Consultant
Business Model	Specialized – mine dewatering, high fee	Quick, cheap, minimal reporting	Specialized Modelling, high fee
Financial Resources	Medium	High	Low, one-man band
Market Share	20%	30%	5%
Growth	Strong	Strong	No Growth
Marketing Strategies	Word of Mouth	Aggressive social media, event sponsors, networking	Word of mouth
Strengths	Mining skillset Quality of outcomes	Fast reporting Low Prices	Water modelling leader
Weaknesses	…	Quality of reporting	…
Business Model	…	…	…

Example Competitor Matrix

Use Your Findings

Once completed, the Competitor Matrix will provide a broad indication of the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to your company. This allows competitive messaging to be formed for marketing, and it will also inform any conversations in which customers bring up competitors offerings.

The example Competitor Matrix above, while incomplete, gives insight into who the competitors are and how they operate. Perhaps the water consultancy in question needs to revisit the way they do marketing. In addition, competitor 2 has a very specific specialization and may be a good partner for a future alliance.

Importantly, the matrix can help guide decision making around changes to your company offering. It may highlight a weakness that needs to be minimized or strength to be reinforced. The competitive landscape is a crucial part of the Sales Ecosystem, and any changes in competitor information should be fed back into the company immediately.

Your Competitor Matrix

Take some time to think about your own competitors. Develop a list of key attributes and generate a competitor matrix. What insights does it provide?

As always I’m keen to hear your thoughts. Feel free to reach out via the normal channels.

Scaling Your Revenue through Alliances and Stakeholders

By Tom on June 10, 2022

My thoughts on using alliances to enhance your business development follows on from my previous post on the external environment.

When I started work as a State Manager for a national asbestos removal company, I had very few contacts within that industry. Much to my surprise, we had no recurring customers in our geographical territory either. While assessing the Sales Ecosystem it became clear that the consultants, who set up and oversaw the projects, needed a removals contractor whose work reflected well on them. In turn, we as the contractors needed good consultants —the relationship went both ways.

I quickly identified a series of consultants whose work ethic mirrored our own. Thereafter, began forging mutually beneficial relationships with them. This introduced us to projects and clients that we had no prior relationship with. In turn, we provided an additional source of jobs and the certainty of our professional service to the consultants. Both our revenues increased as a result.

This taught me that alliances with key players in the market can have a strong influence on your success.

A lady discussing business with three stakeholders. Perhaps there is an alliance in the making. — Alliances must be Mutually Beneficial

Assess Your Stakeholders

Take some time to really understand the market ecosystem. Firstly, who does what and why? Secondly, who are the key players within your Sales Ecosystem and how much influence do they have? Thirdly, do any of these influencers align with your organizational mission and values? Finally, is there a gap that can be filled in a way that benefits both parties?

Similar to the exercise for internal stakeholders in my previous post, a matrix can be developed for those stakeholders external to the company.

Who Are Your Stakeholders?

A simple external stakeholder matrix should cover the following groups:

Industry Experts. Technical experts with a strong positive reputation within the industry. Their opinion carries a lot of weight with industry groups and customers. Often a great source of market intelligence, technical advice, and referrals, if they like your company offering.

Key Influencers. Not always the industry experts. These individuals have a large industry-wide network and always know what is going on. An invaluable source of industry intelligence, and vital to have regular contact with at least one of these.

Consultants. Providing specialist advice is a critical part of any industry, and consultants can be found for almost any topic or service. These can be customers themselves and are often the gateway to more prominent end-user customers. Forming an alliance with a consultant who shares your principles and values your company offering, is an excellent way to get access to specialist skills and a different stream of opportunities.

Government Departments. While not relevant to all industries, government departments provide valuable insights into industry trends and legislative requirements. They can make excellent recurring customers. Proving to these stakeholders that your offering is best-in-class can make your company the benchmark from their point of view. If this becomes the case, government departments can often become a good source of unofficial recommendations.

Industry Groups. Most industries have groups, clubs and peak bodies that form a hub for professionals to network and share ideas. Joining and attending these groups can provide up-to-date news on the industry and face-to-face access to customer contacts. Attending networking events and talks by these groups can place you in a relaxed setting allowing you to form connections with people that would be difficult to contact during their busy working hours.

Choose Your Alliances Carefully

Looking at your stakeholder matrix it will become apparent which ones should be considered the Key Players. Have a look at my previous post for strategies to nurture these stakeholders. Ultimately, your alliance proposition must be beneficial to both parties. It has to encompass a true win-win relationship.

Think about the external stakeholders in your industry. Are there any opportunities for alliances or closer working partnerships?

I’m always keen to hear your thoughts on this. Drop me a comment below or get in touch via the usual channels.

How the Lewis Model can help me Understand Culture

By Tom on June 3, 2022

In my previous post about the External Environment I talked a bit about things to consider when developing business in different geographies. In addition, culture forms a massive part of business in different countries that often gets forgotten about. It is an all too common mistake to expect others to think and act the same way you do. Taking time to understand any differences in culture and behavior and considering approaches to bridge them is very worthwhile. For example, a business development campaign in Australia would take a very different form to one conducted in Indonesia.

The Lewis Model

Social and hierarchical behaviour varies significantly from place to place. Therefore, if company operations span multiple geographies and cultures, read around the Lewis model. It will really help you gain an understanding of how to navigate any potential communication pitfalls. In short, Lewis broadly divides the world’s cultures into three communication styles: Linear-active, Multi-active and Reactive and describes how each style behaves. A summary of each style is provided in the table below.

Linear-Active	Multi-Active	Reactive
Talks half the time Does one thing at a time Plans ahead step by step Polite but direct Partly conceals feelings Confronts with logic Dislikes losing face Rarely interrupts Job-oriented Sticks to facts Truth before diplomacy Sometimes impatient Limited body language Respects officialdom Separates the social and professional	Talks most of the time Does several things at once Plans grand outline only Emotional Displays feelings Confronts emotionally Has good excuses Often interrupts People-oriented Feelings before facts Flexible truth Impatient Unlimited body language Seeks out key person Mixes the social and professional	Listens most of the time Reacts to partner’s reaction Looks at general principles Polite, indirect Conceals feelings Never confronts Must not lose face Doesn’t interrupt Very people-oriented Statements are promises Diplomacy over truth Patient Subtle body language Uses connections Connects the social and the professional

Summary of Lewis Model Communication Styles (from crossculture.com)

Working across geographies – always consider the cultural differences

What Does This Mean

Each of the three groups can be applied to different parts of the world. The Linear-active group comprises the English-speaking world—North America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and Northern Europe.

The Reactive group is located in all major countries in Asia, except the Indian subcontinent, which is a hybrid.

The Multi-active group are more scattered and comprises Southern Europe, Mediterranean countries, South America, sub-Saharan Africa, Arab and other cultures in the Middle East, India and Pakistan and most of the Slavs.

Please remember that these are generalizations. However, understanding them can really help bridge communication across cultures.

Understanding culture can help you work well within a multicultural team

Why This Is Useful

The importance of understanding cultural differences became apparent to me in the first two weeks of starting a new role. I was reporting through to Singapore and we had a huge variety of nationalities working in the same team. Experiencing some urgent technical issues with one of our customers I tried to push things through quickly outside of our regular operating process. To me this seemed the obvious thing to do. Not so to the rest of the team. I met resistance. Moreover, they would tell me that they would help, but didn’t. It was infuriating.

Luckily for me a great mentor of mine, Shirley-Anne introduced me to the Lewis model. I was operating as a Linear-Active whilst most of my colleagues were Reactive. They weren’t happy that I was circumventing the work process and as Reactives wouldn’t confront me about it. As a Linear-Active I was becoming impatient and the logic of bending the work process seemed obvious to me.

Importantly, Shirley-Anne helped me see that what was infuriating for me was also exasperating for the Singapore team. I gained insight into how the team members operated and adjusted my style and expectations to suit. Ultimately, a good outcome was reached for our customer.

What Next

If you find yourself working across geographic boundaries take some time to investigate the working cultures in each. This is important for both your customers and team. Gaining this understanding early will give you a better chance of avoiding any future communication pitfalls.

Check Out Your External Environment

By Tom on May 27, 2022

Having gained a good understanding of the inner workings of your organization, it is time to define the external environment of the Sales Ecosystem. Where are the customers and competitors, and how does your company fit?

A simple market analysis gives an idea of market size and customers. However, the External Environment includes much more. At the basic level we want to understand the setting that our team, organization, and customers operate within. This includes looking at the industry, geography, external stakeholders, and of course, those competing with you for your customer base. In this post we’ll have a quick look at the industry and geography. The external stakeholders and competitors will form their own posts in the coming weeks.

Operating Industry

In the context of the Sales Ecosystem your industry comprises the habitat that your target customers operate within. Additionally, this includes their sources of influence. Starting with the broad industry consider the following questions:

Who are the visible influencers of this industry internationally, nationally and locally?
Which industry bodies are the most popular and the most active?
Where do members of this industry go for information and advice?
Which segments of the industry are most applicable to your company offering?

Lets take the construction industry as an example. There will be well regarded individuals who regularly talk and interact at the industry level. They will be active on blogs, social media, webinars and industry discussion panels.

Here in Australia some of the construction industry bodies to investigate and interact with include the Australian Construction Industry Forum, Engineering Australia, and Institute of Architects, to name a few. If your company focuses on the engineering side of the industry, Engineers Australia would be an ideal place to start.

Answering these questions around your operating industry will begin to give a picture of the key influencers and most influential organizations. This information is essential in developing your External Stakeholder Matrix. That discussion will be saved for a future post.

Geography

Where in the world are you doing business? How does this impact your approach? This is usually straight forward to answer when you are operating within your home country. But, a thick layer of complexity is added if the business is developing overseas.

For each geography in your portfolio develop an overview of the broader environment that your Sales Ecosystem sits within. Determine how business is done there, what the culture is like and how to navigate it. The PESTEL analysis is a simple tool that helps shape our thinking in this regard.

P	Political
E	Economic
S	Social
T	Technology
E	Economical
L	Legal

PESTEL Analysis (Kaplan et al 2008)

The PESTEL analysis covers the following:

Political

What is the political environment like? Is the government stable, are there trade restrictions and is corruption rife?

Economic

Is the economy of the area growing? Are companies thriving and do customers have disposable income? Are the exchange rates favorable (particularly useful if you are importing/exporting products)?

Social

Is the population growing, and what are their attitudes to safety, health and career? Are they socially aware?

Technology

Is new technology and innovation widely accepted and actively encouraged? Are there incentives in the advancement and introduction of new technologies?

Environmental

What is the environment like? Does it suffer from harsh conditions, and is it protected properly?

Legal

How robust is the legal system and how strong is the focus on discrimination, consumer laws and health and safety?

If you are operating within multiple geographies the PESTEL can give a good feel for the differences. While coarse in its approach it does get you thinking along the right lines.

For more depth on the PESTEL analysis check out this website.

More external environment content coming up…

More on the External Environment

This post focuses on the operating industry and geography and has introduced the PESTEL model as a practical tool. Of course, there is much more to this topic and my next few posts will continue on this theme. We will be exploring, differences in geographical culture, external stakeholders and competitors in more detail over the coming weeks.

In the meantime I’m keen to hear your experiences with understanding the external environment that your company operates within. As usual please get in touch through the normal channels.

A Checklist of Business Development Resources

By Tom on May 13, 2022

Prior to accepting a business development role it is important to get clarity on what supporting resources are available. You don’t want to find yourself striving to meet aggressive revenue winning targets with no backup. Make sure to get certainty on the following core resources.

Resources Checklist

Budget. How much money can the business development function access, and what are the allowances for marketing. This is critical if the business development component comprises only one part of your role. How is your time split between business development and your other role elements?

Personnel. Does the business development function contain staff? Define their roles. Identify any additional personnel with hours assigned to assist with administration, proposal writing, customer visits, customer relationships, quoting etc.

Access to marketing. Does the marketing function give you any access to their resources? Determine any guidelines and requirements around the marketing direction desired. What are the policies on social media?

Access to market research/intelligence. Is there systematic market research and intelligence that you can access. If not, think about where the intelligence for your industry comes from and consider ways to acquire it. Engaging an external provider, subscriptions to trade journals or attendance to industry conferences and networking events are all viable. But, are resources available to access these.

Departmental business development meetings. Determine whether the wider team hold business development meetings. If they don’t, are they be willing to start.

Interdepartmental business development meetings. Does the organisation systematically discuss business development? How do business units work together in pursuit of opportunities? Consequently, is there an opportunity to take the lead in implementing regular interdepartmental conversations.

A Seat in the Leadership group. Establish whether the business development function input into the leadership of the business. This is critical if the company is to adjust quickly to changes in the market and customer base. If it doesn’t, you will need to prioritise the leadership team as part of your stakeholder engagement and keep them informed on relevant opportunities and progress.

Resource Gaps

Having looked at the core resources you need to draw a conclusion. Are there enough to support the business development and expectations. Subsequently, noticeable gaps must be filled. Where you can beg, borrow or buy the additional assets to plug them. For example, there may be resources from other teams that you can borrow. Younger team members can assist. In exchange, they gain experience and skill in business development which can be hard to come by early in their career.

Likewise, outsource some of the market research by using the gig economy through websites like www.fiver.com or www.upwork.com. There are lots of options available that don’t need full time staff.

Gaining access to adequate resources may require a robust conversation with the leadership team. Remember, the leadership only allocates resources when an adequate return on effort and spend is clear. Make a case around why the resources you need add value to the business development process. Define how each one is going to increase revenue income. For instance, it can be as simple as using a junior member of staff to assist in writing first draft proposals, to free up your time to develop client relationships.

Further Thoughts

Understanding the resources allocated to your business development effort is important. Above all, you must be confident there’s enough to get the job done. If there is ambiguity look for alternative ways to get the resources you need.

I wish I’d had this checklist before going into some of my previous roles. Getting this clarity will set you up for success.

Have you had any issues getting resources allocated? How did you navigate it? As always I’m keen to hear from you drop me a line here. Or catch me on LinkedIn.

Internal Stakeholder Alliances and Strategies

By Tom on May 6, 2022

In last weeks post we explored some tips around building relationships with the other teams inside your organization. It is vital to understand your organizational network. Who is responsible for what? Where can you go for additional market intelligence, support or assistance? Who are the key internal influencers and who gets things done?

Taking the time to develop a stakeholder matrix for your organization, will really aid you in the development of your business. Having clear connections with this internal landscape allows you to take advantage of opportunities that might be out of reach for you on your own. The matrix is the first step in securing these connections.

Team member engaging with other stakeholders from his organization. — Ally with the other teams in your organization

Potential Allies

Some of the groups to consider when looking for future alliances include the following.

Subject Matter Experts

The technical specialists who know their subject inside out, are often a great source of market intelligence.

Team Leaders

It is essential to communicate with the team leaders during the sales process. Touch base with them once opportunities have been won and delivery is required.

Key Influencers

Well-respected long-term employees or energetic newcomers, these are the staff members who others listen to and take seriously. Having key influencers as strong allies can help you to gain support for future business development initiatives.

Proposal and Quote writing resources

Personnel who are recognized as being particularly strong at writing quotes and proposals. A close working relationship is vital to give proposals and quotes the best chance of success.

Market sector experts

Great sources of business intelligence, leads and contacts. Consult with these people to gain an understanding of the customer organizational chart, and to secure personal introductions to key customer contacts.

Marketing team

This group will be a primary source of leads. Develop a strong working relationship with this segment to keep messages and customer targeting aligned. If communicated with clearly, this team can add significant weight to the top of your Sales Funnel.

Personnel with revenue targets

These are generally the leadership roles within the business. Understand their revenue targets and find out if they are willing to share resources in an effort to reach them. The business developer can really be a savior to these individuals through the development of revenue opportunities, which can directly impact their end-of-year bonuses and the growth of their team.

Multiple teams winning a project together. — Collaboration feels good!

Populating your Stakeholder Matrix

Populating the matrix is relatively straightforward and should comprise the following columns shown on the following table

Name	Role	Department	Interest	Influence	Action

Internal Stakeholder Matrix Table Template

Simply allocate Hi or Lo to the Interest and Influence columns and plot on the matrix below. This will allow you to define their category and subsequent actions.

Stakeholder Strategies and Action

A summary of the stakeholder actions is given below:

Key Player

With a high level of interest and influence, these stakeholders can have a strong impact on your business development efforts. The majority of your stakeholder engagement must focus on this group and it is beneficial to involve members in decision making at times. Action: Engage and consult regularly.

Meet Their Needs

The high level of influence has the potential to make this group a valuable resource. Engage and consult this group on areas that are of interest to them. Perhaps on particular market segments or project types. Action: Try to increase their level of interest and move them to become key players.

Show Consideration

This group has high levels of interest but limited influence. Consider them as potential supporters. There is an opportunity to make use of their interest and involve them in low-risk areas around specific customers, products or market segments. Action: keep informed and consult on interest areas.

Least Important

The low interest and influence levels gives this group the lowest priority with regards to engagement. Action: Keep informed through general communication and aim to increase interest levels over time.

Assign Actions

Once the matrix is complete, assign time and resources to each of the key players. Learn their preferred communication styles and how best to connect with them. Consider the other stakeholder groups and think about how and when to engage them. Perhaps a business development agenda item at team meetings or individual discussions on specific topics. Remember that each internal alliance is different. They all have a role to play in getting the company offering into the market and ultimately solving the customers problems.

Add the most critical stakeholders to the Tactical Action Plan as part of the Aim stage. Ultimately, the Tactical Action Plan will systematize the contact and action with each stakeholder, keeping engagement on a regular cadence.

Other Alliances

Take a step away from the business development capability for a moment. There will be people within the organization who have complementary skills and goals but who sit outside your normal sphere of operations.

This can take the form of teams with different offerings, willing to take a multidisciplinary approach to work-winning. The ability to bid on projects with other teams really strengthens both your proposal. Or perhaps a customer account manager who knows that your offering aligns with their sector of responsibility and feels they can help get your foot in the door. Using their account influence to increase your sales and ultimately reach their targets quicker.

Many of these may have already been identified as key player stakeholders. Think about who these people and teams may be in your workplace. Consider how an alliance might work, it must be advantageous to both parties.

Think about how best to approach them. A simple coffee catch up, and a sharing of capability knowledge and opportunities may be enough to begin with. But if you are both working on proposals together reflect on how to share the effort.

Importantly, make sure to capture these catch ups systematically in your Tactical Action Plan or CRM. Otherwise, your business development agenda will get lost in the thousands of other priorities that each of these people have every day.

Further Action

As an immediate action develop an internal stakeholder matrix for your organisation. Determine the Key Players and make a plan on how you intend to engage with them.

How do you prioritize your internal stakeholders? Let me know in the comments below or drop me a line here. You can also find me on LinkedIn.

Tips on Successful In-house Business Relationships

By Tom on April 29, 2022

In-house business relationships are a critical part of business development.

Developing a business takes more than having a stellar product or service and a willing customer base. This is especially true when working in an organization with more than one employee. When the delivery of the product or service relies on other people, the moving parts within your organization need to be understood and key relationships developed.

Imagine having discussions with a potential customer with urgent technical questions that you are unable to answer. Having a strong working relationship with the technical team, means they will work with you to solve the customer’s issues.

A great working relationship with other teams means they are more likely to help you with your customers requests. This allows you to respond quickly with the required detail, resulting in the customer receiving a much higher level of service. In turn, this gives you a stronger likelihood of winning or retaining their business.

Communication is Crucial

Developing a relationship with the other teams in your company is not difficult. Keep them informed of what is going on. Let them know if large orders or projects are expected. Communication helps teams plan and prioritize their workload. It removes the unknown.

Ask their opinion on the subjects within their domain. Usually, this is beneficial to all parties involved. These teams value the interest shown in their work, and you learn from them at the same time.

I have worked for a couple of organizations with strong technical teams who rarely got to meet the customers. I found that chatting to them about customer feedback was invaluable to them. This helped form a two-way relationship where we both got value from our conversations.

Communication with your technical, production and delivery teams is critical. Photo by Ryan Ancill for Unsplash.

Which In-House Business Relationships to Focus on?

Gaining an understanding of the internal landscape of your organization is incredibly important. How do the different departments interact when responding to customers or delivering the product? Who are the key players? What is the status of your relationships with the different teams? Can you call on them for help and most importantly can they call on you? Remember that relationships go both ways.

It is critical to know who the main influencers and departmental contacts within your organization are, as well as gaining a good understanding of the way they function within their positions. Internal relationships and alliances are essential when developing a durable foundation on which to base your business development action. Often a joint effort with another team greatly enhances the company’s offering to the customer. Market intelligence and contacts gathered by team members can make the difference between winning and losing opportunities.

Team laughing together. Building strong in-house relationships is key. — Building strong in-house relationships is key. Photo by Brooke Cagle for Unsplash

Team Mates Uncover Opportunities

Engaging with teammates who have long industry experience, are likely to uncover customer contacts that you would not otherwise have known about. However, never underestimate the work-winning potential of your younger staff, you never know who they may know or who they may bump into. This happened to me as a new graduate member of an environmental team in London.

I was having a beer at the local pub with some friends who also worked in the environmental industry. I was chatting to a friend-of-a-friend, and inevitably work came up in the conversation. It turned out that he worked for a large oil company and was looking for environmental consultants to undertake what he considered to be a small piece of work. We swapped details. The next morning, I went straight to my boss and discussed the opportunity. A few emails and calls later, we were tendering on a multi-million-dollar contract.

What’s Next

How well do understand the other teams in your organization? Who are the main points of contact in the other departments? Who are the influencers? If you can’t answer these questions it’s time to act. Draw a simple org chart of the teams that you interact with or would like to work with more. Identify the key people to talk to and invite them for a quick coffee. Start building these relationships now.

As always I’m keen to hear from you. How have you approached developing relationships within the company you operate in? Let me know in the comments below or reach out via LinkedIn.

Discover The Simple Trick Of Customer Segmentation

By Tom on April 15, 2022

Following creation of your customer matrix it’s a good idea to look at customer segmentation. It is obvious that not all customers are created equal. Business Developers only have a limited amount of time and resources. These must be spent on customers that give the best return.

Therefore, priority of effort must be defined. An easy method is to segment the list into three tiers. A quick way to determine priority level is to focus on both of the following:

Potential service spend
Target customer’s need for your company offering.

A series of legs hanging over a wall. Each have a different pair of shoes on. This represents the diversity in your customer base. — Your customer base is not homogenous. Photo by James Baldwin for Unsplash

Example Customer Segmentation

Lets take an environmental consultancy servicing the mining industry. They specialize in managing and mitigating environmentally sensitive sites, particularly involving threatened ecosystems.

A company like this might define customer segmentation using potential spend first. Next, they might use the customer’s number of environmentally sensitive projects to highlight the need they have for the company offering. This results in the three priority tiers:

Tier 1: $100,000/yr. spend and/or many environmentally sensitive projects.
Tier 2: $60,000/yr. spend and/or some environmentally sensitive projects.
Tier 3: $30,000/yr. spend and/or fewer environmentally sensitive projects.

Looking through their customer list and placing them into the three tiers becomes a straight forward exercise.

Tiles spelling the word focus. This post should help you focus your business development efforts. — Focus your effort. Pic by Brett Jordan for Unsplash

Focus Your Effort

This division can help you focus your effort on those companies that give you the highest return. Of course, Tier 1 should be the given the highest priority. However, the lesser tiers also have the potential for significant revenue and must not be forgotten. Think about how much effort you will assign to each tier. How often will you contact your target companies? Will it be different for each Tier?

I recognize that this approach can be considered too simple by some. But, think of the customer segmentation as a guide to focus your business development effort. However, there will be times where customer opportunities fall outside of this framework.

In these instances sit down with the team, discuss the likely returns and the effort needed to attain them. Use your customer segmentation to help shape the conversation. Work together to determine how to proceed. Perhaps there are unique strategic reasons to elevate a customer to Tier 1?

How Do You Do It?

As always I’m interested in how you prioritize your customer base. Do you segment into tiers? What attributes do you base them on? Drop a comment below or let me know via the usual channels.

The Most Powerful Question: Who Are Your Customers?

By Tom on April 8, 2022

Who are your customers? is a critical question for every business. I remember starting my first day with an environmental services company as their State Manager. A leadership and business development role that was outside my previous water focused expertise. This was an exciting posting, and I was looking forward to building on the existing customer base. Enthusiastically, I sat down with the small team and asked the question: “Who are our customers?”

I was met with blank stares. I was falteringly told that they had once met with two or three companies, at which point they stuttered back into silence. Not the greatest of starts.

I recognized that there were two ways to respond. First, I could hang my head in despair, throw my hands in the air and admit defeat. Or I could see this as an excellent opportunity to define what our ideal customers looked like. I could identify the low hanging fruit and take action. Of course, I chose action.

You may have the best product in the world and not be able to sell it. You need a willing buyer. The start-up scene is littered with the husks of companies that developed great products that nobody wanted. Effectively it boils down to one simple fact.

If there is no Customer there is no Product or Service.

A company is nothing without customers who use its services or products. Each company has an ideal customer. The characteristics of this customer has to be defined. Each characteristic must be rated in terms of importance to your business and the direction of your future business development growth.

Empty office. — No customer, means no business. Photo by Aldolfo Felix for Unsplash.

Who is Your Ideal Customer?

First, picture what an ideal customer looks like. Who would you love to do business with? Give this some serious thought. Next, dive deep into the characteristics that make up the companies that you aspire to do business with. Ask yourself and the team the following questions to help define your perfect customer:

Which industry does the company operate within?
What size staff and annual turnover do they have?
What work do they focus on?
Are there specific products or services they need to be successful?
What sort of people work there?
Where are they located?
How much will they spend on your product or service?
Who are the decision makers around implementing your products or services?
Who controls their budgets?

This is just the start. There will be many more questions that are unique to your industry and offering. For example if you develop software solutions, you may need to know what operating system the customers use. In the environmental space, you may need to be aware of specific environmental legislation that relates to particular companies.

Who is your ideal customer? Photo by Amy Hirschi for Unsplash

Forming a Customer Matrix

From your final list of questions, determine the top five to ten that are most important to your business offering. These will form the core attributes of your target customers, allowing potential customers to be easily identified and benchmarked. For easy comparison embed these into the customer matrix shown in the table below.

Attribute	Ideal Customer	Customer 1	Customer 2	Customer 3
Annual Turnover	$3M +
Company type – miner, contractor, support	All three
Potential Service Spend	$100K +
Projects with Environmental Sensitivity	Many
Limited in-house capability	No more than 1-2 in house specialists
Bureaucracy of Accounts payable	Low
Strong social Licence to operate	Yes
Current Customer	Yes

Example Customer Matrix for Environmental Consulting for the Mining sector

Filling in the matrix with existing customers gives you a good picture of who should be retained, and who shouldn’t. It allows you to make a quick assessment of target companies to see whether they are a good fit for your business and whether time and resources should be allocated to their pursuit.

Use this matrix for new target customers, and for existing customers who both need to be serviced properly to be retained.

Next Stage

Have a go at creating your own customer matrix. Think about what customer attributes are important to your business.

As always I’m keen to hear your thoughts on which customer characteristics are important to you. Drop a comment below or get in touch through the usual channels.

The Mysteries of Market Mapping Made Simple

By Tom on March 25, 2022

Market mapping is the process of interpreting and characterizing the part of the Sales Ecosystem that your company lives within—the market. In my experience, this analysis tends to become hyper detailed, filling pages of spreadsheets and a multitude of charts. The amount of hours and cost can become prohibitive, especially for the start-up or small business.

I once undertook an exercise like this for a local start-up looking at the global mining industry. I spent two solid weeks collecting data and compiling a spreadsheet of planet wide mine sites and their statistics. Of course, this resulted in a highly complex dataset. It was so detailed that the CEO had to code an algorithm to interrogate it.

Man looking at complicated market map — The complications of hyper-detailed Market Mapping. Photo by Per Loov for Unsplash.

Luckily for them I conducted this exercise free of charge. If they had been paying for someone’s time I don’t think the application would have been half as appealing.

A better use of my time would have been spent getting a high level understanding of the global industry and then talking to the people within it. You can’t beat real time feedback.

Unless you are a multinational conglomerate with very deep pockets I believe you must keep your market mapping simple. All you require is a broad analysis of the main constituents, enough to allow decision making around industry and segment priorities.

Simple Market Mapping

A simple market analysis involves the following steps:

Geography. Which region does your business development responsibility cover? Whether it is a particular region within a single country, or a group of countries, the boundaries must be defined.

Site Type. In what sort of sites is your product or service going to be used? Hospitals, contaminated land, mines, factories, water treatment plants, lawyer offices, you need to be specific here.

Site Numbers. Establish how many of the sites identified above are present in your geographical area of responsibility.

Market Size. Consider how much money a site is likely to spend on your offering over the next three years. Average this number out across all the sites for a single year. The total of these figures is the market size that your company is operating within. If you are operating within multiple site types, do this for each and combine the total.

Market Share. Think about how much market share you can realistically attain over the next year. Linking it back to the Planning Hierarchy, what types and sizes of projects you are looking to win? How many competitors are out there? Will you be playing in a blue ocean with no sharks, or a red ocean full of sharks competing for your customers? If your company is well established, your market share could be at 30% or more. If you are just starting out in a market with many competitors, 1-2% may be more achievable.

Available Market. Using the formula: Market Share x Market Size = Available Market, provides a good indicator of where the opportunity for your offering is greatest.

Simple Market Mapping is like a compass it will help you find your way. — Simple Market Mapping is like a compass. Itwill help you find your way. Photo by Aaron Burden for Unsplash.

Affordable Research

The research required is often considered an overwhelming task, especially if you are expecting to collect millions of data points. However utilizing market researchers on gig economy sites like www.fiverr.com can get you the specific site data for your region quickly and cheaply. Surprisingly, a hundred dollars can get you a decent data set, listing the relevant sites within your region, in the fraction of the time it would take you to source that information yourself.

Example of a Simple Market Analysis

The table below shows a simple analysis that you would conduct for each of your segments. It allows you to prioritize which segments to pursue. I’ll use the following example to show how it works.

Jen is an experienced water engineering consultant with strong industry connections who has recently decided that she is going to start her own consultancy. She knows her services are in demand in both the water utilities and mining sectors. While she has contacts in both industries she wants to know where she should be prioritizing her valuable business development time.

Lady looking at Map. Going to start her Market Mapping — Jen starting her Market Mapping! Photo by Nick Seagrave for Unsplash.

Using a freelance website, Jen requests all the water treatment plants and mine sites in her region. She estimates that the water treatment plants would be likely to require $50,000 of her services a year, while the mine sites would only need $10,000 per year. There are five water treatment plants and forty nine sites, so Jen created the following table:

Segment	Site	No. of Sites	$ per Year	Market Size	Market Share	Available Market
Water Utilities	Water Treatment Plant	5	$50,000	$250,000	25%	$62,500
Mining	Mine	40	$10,000	$400,000	5%	$20,000

Example of a Simple Market Map

While the mining segment has a larger market size, Jen determines that the number of competitors and her own network in the mining industry provides a share of only 5%. Whereas, her work is well known and valued in the water utilities sector. Though the market size is smaller, she should be able to capture 25% share for water utilities.

This allows the available market to be calculated providing a very clear picture of where Jen’s business development priorities should be focused. That is not to say that she would not seek opportunities in mining, this could be a longer-term strategic play. However, the immediate low hanging fruit is definitely within the water utilities segment.

Call to Action

I hope you can see that market mapping doesn’t have to be complicated. Why not run through the same exercise I highlighted in the example. It may support you’re current strategy or it may get you thinking differently about where to focus your business development efforts.

As always I’d love to hear your thoughts. Get in touch through the normal channels or leave a comment below.

The Secrets of Product Prioritization

By Tom on March 18, 2022

This post explores two ways to help with your product prioritization. A couple of weeks ago I posted about the usefulness of a generic strategy. This works well when thinking about the broader positioning of your organisation. However, a business developer can be responsible for a number of products, service lines or industries, and it can be difficult to determine which to prioritize.

Product Prioritization With The GE/McKinsey Matrix

A quick assessment is made using the GE/McKinsey Matrix . This method plots the company offerings or industries on two simple axes:

Industry or market attractiveness – commercial potential of the market or industry, i.e. potential to make money.
Business unit strength – ability and skill level of current staff to develop that industry or market with the offering being assessed.

Product Prioritization Strategies

The original form of this analysis is conducted with a high level of detail. However, for ease of use I simply divide each axis into high, medium, or low. Each offering will plot within a general strategy. These strategies are described as:

Grow – strong business development effort and investment. Aggressively Hunt for opportunities.
Hold – medium business development effort and investment. Farming opportunities from existing customers
Harvest – limited business development effort. Act on opportunities as they arise. Do not pursue.

Combining the GE/McKinsey Matrix with the Porters Generic Strategy provides a fast assessment of where the product offering sits and its broad commercial strategy. Therefore, doing this for each of your products or service lines gives a clear direction for your business development effort.

Using the Product Life Cycle

Another tool that aids with prioritizing products within a portfolio is the Product Life Cycle. Plot the product and service offerings on the graph below. Annual sale volume and time product has been in circulation form the two axes. Each stage of the Cycle has its own broad strategy.

Introduction – New product. Hunt for new customers and establish brand trust.

Growth – Established product. Pursue new customers and ensure quality service to retain existing customers.

Maturity – Well established product. Farm existing customers. Accordingly, customer retention is a priority.

Decline – Product replaced with different offering. Business development effort is low. In addition, customer retention effort is low.

Understanding where the offering fits on this curve will assist in defining priorities for the business development effort across a portfolio of products or services.

Call to Action

If you look after a portfolio of products or industries print out a copy of the two tools. Plot your portfolio. Does it help you determine where to focus your effort? I’m keen to hear how you go. Put your findings in the comments below or get in touch through the usual channels.

Is a Generic Strategy Useful?

By Tom on March 4, 2022

If you are representing an organisation in the marketplace you must have a good handle on where your products or services sit commercially. As discussed previously commercial savvy is a critical attribute of a successful business developer.

Porter’s Generic Strategy

Though coarse in its approach, Porter’s Generic Strategy can be a good indicator of where your offering is being presented financially. At its core, the model utilises two characteristics to define your company offering:

Scope – Does your offering target a narrow or broad customer base?
Competitive Advantage – Is your offering advantage based on being the cheapest, or on its unique differences?

The overall company Scope and Competitive advantage are plotted along the horizontal and vertical axes allowing you to plot your company offering on the matrix determining the generic strategy that it fits into. See the figure below.

These strategies are:

Cost Leadership (no frills, winning on cost alone)
Differentiation (creating uniquely desirable products and services to a broad market)
Focus (offering a specialised service in a niche market)
Cost Focus (offering a no-frills, cheap service to a niche market).

For example, a dams and tailings consultancy servicing the mining industry would plot on the Differentiation Focus. They are offering a specialist service to a niche market. Meanwhile McDonalds sits firmly within Cost Leadership, offering low cost meal options to the mass consumer market.

Are Generic Strategies Useful?

I can hear you saying, these strategies are too general. But, while these strategies have do have coarse definitions, it allows the business developer to think broadly about how to approach the target customers. This allows framing of a message suited to their market.

Approaching customers with a Cost Leadership mindset is very different to a Differentiation mindset and would require widely contrasting conversations. I have seen environmental consultancies employ both models to great success. Though the customers and opportunities pursued by each were relatively separate.

For example, a Cost Leadership environmental consultancy might focus on government contracts where low price is the governing win factor. Alternatively, the Differentiation focused consultancy would focus on a specific industry where strong defensible scientific work is required for community engagement and licensing requirements. The latter can justify charging a higher price.

Further Thinking

Consider the business that you own or represent. Where do you plot on the matrix? Does this align with the message that you are sending to customers?

What do you do if you have multiple products that plot in different quadrants? We’ll be exploring this in a future post.

As always let me know your thoughts in the comments or via LinkedIn.

For more detailed information on Porter’s Generic Strategy visit this website.

What is the Uniqueness of Your Offering?

By Tom on February 18, 2022

Every successful business is different. Each have their own diverse ingredients, which make up the “secret sauce” of how they do business, and how they are able to keep their offering competitive. This goes beyond the individual characteristics of their service or product. It involves unique processes, systems, and personnel within the organisation.

These factors should be determined for the company as a whole, and for the individual teams. These elements will shape the way you present your offering to the customer. Importantly these inform your conversations, marketing material, and quote and proposal wordings.

The book Start with Why by Simon Sinek will get you thinking about the unique purpose and differentiators of your business. It also gives advice on how to articulate them to staff and customers.

Some points to consider:

What problem does your offering solve?
How does your offering compare to your competitors?
What is unique about your offering?
What is unique about your team?

Unique. Not Complicated

I ran an asbestos removal company for a few years. Asbestos is a very emotive subject that can create a lot of unease. Our offering provided a professional service that completed the work with all the correct safety procedures and paperwork in place. The team wore clean uniforms and behaved professionally. Our strongest selling point was that we offered a professional service doing everything safely, greatly minimising the risk to the current and future occupants of the property.

Believe it or not the lack of professionalism and care by the majority of our competitors meant that this was a huge differentiator within the local market. In short, your unique offering does not need to be complicated to be competitive.

Confused and frustrated worker — A lack of comms between sales and technical can cause frustration.
Pic by Jeshoots.com for Unsplash

Uniqueness Lost in Translation

A common complaint I hear from leaders across industries is that the sales or business development team often promise customers things that the service/technical/product teams just cannot deliver. This shows a disconnect in the depth of understanding of the company offering by the business development team, and a lack of communication between the two departments.

Communication is the key to keeping your offering competitive. The business development team do not need to be technical experts. But, they must have a strong relationship with the technical/delivery department to enable the teams to work through solutions together. Take the time to understand your offering; gain enough knowledge to hold meaningful conversations with the client.

This is easier when moving into a business development role that aligns with your previous technical background. However, entering a new industry or dealing with an unknown product offering requires time and a willingness to learn. Do not be afraid to ask for help. Talk to the technical team and learn from them.

This can help avoid the Technobabble Trap discussed in a previous post.

Further Thinking

Do you have a good handle on the uniqueness of your offering? Take some time to jot it down. Are you talking about it to customers? If not make a plan to start incorporating the uniqueness of your offering in custoemr conversations.

How is your relationship with the technical experts in your company? Does it need work?

What are your thoughts on finding your unique selling points? As always let me know in the comments below or reach out via LinkedIn.

Must Know Your Team’s Intent

By Tom on February 11, 2022

Continuing with the Assess Phase of the Triple A Framework today we will be looking at the intent of the individual business unit or team. Once the strategic intent is understood at an organizational level, it is time to determine how this relates to the specific business division, product line or team. This may be obvious, but if this is not sit down with the team and work it out together. A few questions to consider include:

How does the Business unit work towards the Organization’s vision?
What are the key aspirations of the team?
What are the niche differentiators in-house and, in the marketplace?
What are the short-and-long-term objectives?
What resources are available?

Business Unit Planning Hierarchy

Once you have the team objective in place it use the Planning Hierarchy above to start shaping your plan. Starting with the business objective in mind, the hierarchy establishes the projects and jobs that your company wants to undertake. This in turn determines the customers that must be pursued to get them. This allows a rudimentary road map to be drawn of the direction and growth of the business unit over time. Having this hierarchy mapped and understood by the team, forms an excellent compass for where the business development effort should be pointed.

Getting the answers to the five questions above and developing a resource planning hierarchy, will provide clarity around the strategic intent at the organizational, business unit and team levels. This will keep the business development effort aligned with the outcomes of the organization as a whole.

Call to Action

Grab a piece of paper and answer the questions above. What is the objective of your team? Next write the three headings of the Planning Hierarchy and see what appears. This is a great first step in determining who you should be pursuing. It will form the basis of the more detailed planning in the Aim phase later.

Once you’ve tried the exercise please let me know how you found it. Was it useful? Is there something else you would add. Leave a comment or touch base via LinkedIn or the contact page.

You Need to Know Your Intent

By Tom on February 4, 2022

Assess Phase

To begin your journey in business development you first need to understand the specifics of the Sales Ecosystem that you will be operating within. To gain that understanding you first need to define what the strategic intent of your organization is. This can then be followed with how your product offering differentiates itself, and defining your customers. This is the Assess phase of the Triple A Framework.

I must make clear that the Assess phase does not comprise a detailed quantitative data analysis. Rather a broad assessment that allows the shaping of a robust business development plan. Many technical entrepreneurs fall into the trap of getting hyper detailed with their market analysis. They spend an inordinate amount of time and resources collecting and scrutinizing market and customer data for no significant gain. It is better to have a broad assessment that can be shaped following feedback from customer and market interactions. Having a hyper detailed assessment with no customer interactions informing it is next to worthless. I believe that the Assess phase described below, achieves the right balance between being data-driven, quick to achieve and practical in shaping the plans in the following Aim phase of the Framework.

Why Define the Intent

The strategic intent of a company can be defined as its future intentions and direction. What does it want to become and what does it intend to offer to the market? The long-and-short term goals of the company will act as a broad guide for the business development activity. Taking on business development responsibility, it is easy to become overawed by the scale of opportunity, and to start attacking the problem by reaching out to the market with high energy but no focus on where to direct that energy. This can lead to you reaching for potential customers only as they come to mind, with no clear tactic on how to get them to meet with you or understand your offering. A lot of effort will be wasted approaching customers that are not suitable while high value targets may be missed.

The Wrong Strategy?

You may develop a robust plan and start pursuing it relentlessly, but unknowingly, into the wrong segment where there is no support from head office. This happened to me when I was leading the Australian sales effort for a European instrumentation company. I could see that the Mining Industry in Australia was one of the biggest in the world and that we were not taking advantage of this massive opportunity. To my mind, there was a huge gap that could be filled by our product offering, and running the numbers, the proposition was extremely compelling.

I armed myself with a plan, which detailed the target companies and the role titles of the people we would need to talk to. With high energy, I began the assault. But as I opened up meetings, I slowly began to realise that our initial offering was not compelling enough for the mine companies. They needed a slightly more niche offering. This aligned with some projects I knew were being run by our R&D team in Europe. I took my findings back to the bosses, explained where we were at, and looked for support for a trial, only to find that the senior management weren’t interested. Their efforts were being placed into industries with more strategic value to the company, which resulted in no support for my plan, and a lot of wasted effort. If I had interrogated the company’s intentions and gained an understanding of their longer-term goals, I would have realized that mining did not play a prominent role in their global strategy. Perhaps the hours and money I invested could have been put to better use elsewhere.

Strategic Intent

The solution is to understand the strategic intent of your company and align your plan with it. That is not to say that outlier opportunities should be ignored, but you need to understand where most of the resources of the company will be funneled.

Before you start any business development activity you need to determine the strategic intent of the organisation, including its vision, purpose, and direction. Defining the intent points you towards the desired end goal and provides guidelines and boundaries to keep your business development activity aligned with the desired outcomes of the organisation. The company-wide intent needs to be combined with the objectives of the business unit, division, or product line that you are representing. This will then inform the structure of your business development activities.

Define your organisational vision. Photo by Campaign Creators for Unsplash.

Company Vision and Objective

In an ideal world the company vision and objectives should be readily available and easily understood by all employees; however, this is often not the case. There may be pithy taglines and mission statements framed on the office walls but the clarity around their actual meaning is often clouded. A crucial part of business development planning, requires that the vision and intent of the organization must be clearly understood.

Develop clarity. Sit down with the leadership team, and gain an understanding of what you need. At a minimum, the following questions should be answered:

What is the purpose of our organisation?
What are the key aspirations of our organisation?
What makes us different from the competition?
What market do we play in now?
What markets do we want to play in for the future?
What do we want to look like in three years’ time?
Where does our business development effort fit into the above?

Small Business

If you are a small business owner and you don’t have a company vision or objective defined a great place to begin is Start with Why by Simon Sinek. Then answer the questions above and shape your own.

Call to Action

Have you defined the intent of your company? If so do your business development efforts align?

Are there any questions that I’ve missed to help define the company vision and objective? As always I’m keen to hear your thoughts. Please get in touch or leave a comment below.

Assess Phase

What is resilience?

Resilience and business development

How to improve your resilience in business development

Final thoughts

Why do we need to classify our customers?

How to classify your customers

Now it’s your turn

Ask the Right Questions

Compile Your Competitor Matrix

Use Your Findings

Your Competitor Matrix

Assess Your Stakeholders

Who Are Your Stakeholders?

Choose Your Alliances Carefully

The Lewis Model

What Does This Mean

Why This Is Useful

What Next

Operating Industry

Geography

More on the External Environment

Resources Checklist

Resource Gaps

Further Thoughts

Potential Allies

Populating your Stakeholder Matrix

Stakeholder Strategies and Action

Assign Actions

Other Alliances

Further Action

Communication is Crucial

Which In-House Business Relationships to Focus on?

Team Mates Uncover Opportunities

What’s Next

Example Customer Segmentation

Focus Your Effort

How Do You Do It?

Who is Your Ideal Customer?

Forming a Customer Matrix

Next Stage

Simple Market Mapping

Affordable Research

Example of a Simple Market Analysis

Call to Action

Product Prioritization With The GE/McKinsey Matrix

Product Prioritization Strategies

Using the Product Life Cycle

Call to Action

Porter’s Generic Strategy

Are Generic Strategies Useful?

Further Thinking

Unique. Not Complicated

Uniqueness Lost in Translation

Further Thinking

Business Unit Planning Hierarchy

Call to Action

Assess Phase

Why Define the Intent

The Wrong Strategy?

Strategic Intent

Company Vision and Objective

Small Business

Call to Action

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