The Business Development Strategy is used to underpin your main Business Plan and essentially it sets out a standard approach for developing new opportunities, either from within existing accounts or by proactively targeting brand new potential accounts and then working to close them. It is important that as a business owner you control and own the data that is developed by the team member by making them use the corporate customer relationship management system and uploading any data and reports on potential business partners to the corporate document server.
When you make the sales canvassing process yours, that is when your company can become sustainable in the long run as you won’t need to depend on other companies to provide you with a consistent stream of leads, you’ll be able to generate them on your own.
A business development director is one of the first points of contact someone has with the company, so it’s vitally important to be able to explain what the company does and how it can help in simple and digestible terms, he says, be it in person or via email.
After that, adopting a portfolio strategy like this balances out the short-term potential of the High Probability Potential Clients with the long-term higher gain of the Ideal Potential Clients – while still keeping the possibilities open for serendipitous new business through the use of a “bluebird” channel.
If you’ve gotten clear market validation for your solution and are consistently closing a high proportion of the prospects you speak with, but just need a higher volume of leads to continue flowing through your pipeline, then hiring a business development rep and training them on how to prospect for the right leads should be your number one priority.