1. 5 Common Mistakes inNew Business Development
For SMEs in the IT Industry
2. New Business Development is literally like Breaking New
Ground. You take the landscape of wilderness, break the soil and
make it ready for first ever sowing and first ever
reaping.
3. 1. Help! I dont know what I am sowing! Issues in getting the
Value Proposition right.
4. Not being able to articulate your value proposition in two
to three sentences.
Not ALL members of your Business Development team know it by
heart.
5. Every business exists to add value to someone or some other
process. What is your Value Proposition? Unless you can articulate
it in two sentences, unless your ENTIRE team knows it by heart, you
will be ineffective in communicating it to your clients.
This introspection, reflection, and articulation does not have to
be long drawn out exercise. Many times the entrepreneur, CEO or the
leader of the business knows this instinctively.
What is important is the acknowledgement, communication and belief
of this statement by the team.
6. I dont know where my New Ground is! Issues in defining your
Target Market
7. Even though you may have defined your
Geography
Domain
Industry
Corporations
People
Your Target Market really is THAT ONE PERSON
8. Your final target market is a name, email, phone number.
This is the person that you need to communicate with. This is
usually the Executive Decision Maker or often called the C Level.
You usually interact with the The Decision Supporters and also the
Gate Keepers.
Have you got named employees for this responsibility (often called
inside sales)? Inside sales does the job of treating this data with
its deserved respect, creating it, combing through it for
correctness, updating it regularly, literally like ants in an
anthill. How tightly do you run this ship?
The Inside Sales Team usually relies on a CRM system (like
Salesforce, Zoho, Sage etc) for the management and upkeep of the
data. Have you analysed what system is best for you? Are you using
it to its full capacity?
9. Not knowing if you are watering your crops right.
Issues in communicating your message.
10. Not having collaterals that are valuable for your target
market.
Its not about what you can do but how clients benefit from what you
do.
Its not about saying why and what you are doing but what market
trends you can display that make sense to the client.
Essentially your belief of How can I help my client improve his
business? needs to shine thru the communication for it to be
effective.
11. You are using Customer Touch Points like
Email marketing
Telemarketing
Events, Seminars, Conferences
Internet SEO, Social Media, Webinars
And you disperse White Papers, Trends in the industry, Case
Studies
But are all these coordinated?
For example do you use social media, webinars to talk about your
upcoming event/seminar/conference and then send out an email and
track if it was read and then make a call to see if you could send
out a white paper and then get and appointment for a meeting /
presentation?
12. Not knowing if your crop is growing at all
Issues in Monitoring
14. How religious and rigorous are your WEEKLY huddles?
Are they time bound, precise, stats oriented?
Do you discuss wins and losses and their reasons?
Do you have a dashboard that you look at every week?
15. Depending too much on the right person to reap.
Issues in sales closures.
16. Depending too much on Natural Born Talented sellers and
very little on disciplined self taught sellers.
Depending too much on Aggressive Hunters instead of excellent
listeners.
Focusing too much on high target, high incentive, quick turnaround,
than methodical sowing in season and reaping in season
17. Have you got the 70% of steps right from Breaking New
Ground to Reaping?
If not, you will tend to depend on high cost, talented
sellers.
New Business Development is part Art, part Science and partly
Talent. Its not rocket science, however. But it sure is an EXACTING
discipline.
It is possible to INSTITUTIONALIZE this discipline.
18. Institutionalized and Disciplined process helps you
to
Scale up
It builds your knowledge base
Improves your sales conversion rates
Reduces your dependence on high cost, difficult to replace talented
sellers
At the same time it builds clarity of goals
And a culture of accountability and professionalism