Have you ever had the sinking feeling when closing a deal that something isn’t right?  That the hard fought battle to win the business has left you with no energy to actually deliver?  Maybe the timeline is too short, the budget too small, the client not engaged or the company not a fit for your services.  Despite this, you wanted to/ needed to land the sale so you pushed on.   Many of us are hardwired to go against resistance.  We are also under constant pressure to bring in revenue.  In combination, these inner and outer forces can see us going after business we are better served to walk away from.  My younger clients have the most trouble with this; they haven’t yet had enough projects gone wrong to know that overriding their gut check is a mistake in business development. Tony Schwartz’s post on the art of letting go paints a clear picture of when to walk away.  Tony asks himself four questions:

1.       Do I have a feeling in my gut that this dog just won’t hunt?
2.       How important will this seem to me in six months?
3.       How important will this seem to me in two years?
4.       Is there a more enjoyable and productive way I could be investing my time and energy right now?

I have said no to a number of opportunities lately that didn’t fit with my current focus.  It felt great to be able to keep my energy for the clients I have now. I am fortunate to have enough work right now and enough in the pipeline that saying no was relatively easy.  The question is how easy would it be to say no if I didn’t have enough?  The answer:  not easy and more important than ever.  When the client roster is lean, we all need to stay fresh and focussed on finding the clients to whom we can deliver our best.

Here’s a fifth question for Tony’s list:

5.       How will saying no now, help me say yes to something better?

Let’s say you have a list of 30 prospects (made up of current clients and other potentials with whom you haven’t worked yet but would like to).  You have a choice to make.

1)      You can create stories and options and benefits that naturally spread from this group to people they know, and your core group can multiply with 30 growing to 60 and then 600 (Some partners succeed in building a name for themselves by becoming a subject matter expert and becoming known through speaking engagements, writing etc.  It takes some great stories, options and benefits to make this work).

OR

2)      You can put the original group through a sales funnel, weed out the ones that don’t fit your “ideal client” type and monetize the rest.  A 30% conversion rate means you just turned 30 prospects into 9 new engagements.

Multiplying scales.  Dividing helps you make this quarter’s numbers (and keep your equity partner status!).  We know you are great at math but let us know if you need some coaching help on this  equation.

In business development coaching, a few of the partners I coach initially prefer to hide out and magically think enough business will keep coming.  It might.  Or it might not. A few fall into the random poking category.  They can at least say they have activity.  They will likely generate some modest results.  Finally there are a few partners who strategize, focus and approach business development with discipline and an attitude of generosity and authenticity.  They are the ones that make the dent.  And because they approach their entire life this way, you can bet their dent is much bigger than the business bottom-line.

How about you?  Is it time to flip some of your long held beliefs?

For more Daniel Pink, read his Pink Blog.

In professional services (law, accounting etc.) there are typically 5-6 basic stages in the sales process: prospecting, qualifying, proposing, getting retained, delivering and repeating. To help you focus, see which question gets the loudest yes:

• If you called every lead/ contact/ prospect you have, would you be done by coffee break? → Prospecting
• Do you have a drawer full of business cards/ a phone full of contacts that you have never called? → Qualifying
• Do you follow up often with prospects but have trouble getting invited to meet/ pitch for the work? →Proposing
• Do you present/ propose often but have trouble getting hired? → Getting Retained
• Do you know there are more opportunities with your current clients but you are so busy delivering work that you don’t go after it? →  Repeat Business

Let’s say your “yes” was loudest for prospecting.  Turn your attention there and figure out what you need to do to move the needle.  There are a few essentials: know who your ideal client is (in detail) and who your duds are. From there, get super clear on your target market and practice your story (a concise little story of how you help your clients either move away from some pain or how you help them move toward some compelling desire).

“I help telecommunications management teams to become “Best Employer of the Year” and to avoid union grievances. I am a Labour and Employment lawyer. My name is Peter Melnyk.”

With a solid foundation, you can then focus on a simple networking strategy, for example: attend events where your prospective clients frequent, have purposeful conversations with them and follow up to book a meeting to better understand their issues.   A strategy that has you in direct contact with prospects coupled with a follow up will be far more effective in the short-term than a writing or public speaking strategy. These are good too but might take longer and will also require a personal follow up.

Business development is as simple as picking a couple of strategies and applying them consistently for a solid period of time.

What stage in the sales process deserves your focus? What will you commit to for the next six weeks to advance your business development goals?  Overwhelm is passé. I think you are tired of it too.

These are a couple of good books if you want more info: Get Clients Now and Book Yourself Solid.

Leaders Must Communicate

The key is communication. Many leaders don’t realize how much they have to communicate so I have 3 key skills which I teach. The art of asking powerful questions, the skill of curiosity and the skill of listening. You can talk to any co-active coach and learn about those more deeply but it’s learning how to listen a lot more than speaking and asking questions that really get to the heart of the matter so you can understand what is being said and what isn’t – often more important.

Leader Share Their Vision

Of course a leader needs to be able to share the vision and direction for the team. It floors me how often I coach a leader who makes the assumption their team knows what the direction is without ever having involved them or communicated the vision to them. Do this at your peril – you have to have the whole team going in the same direction and everyone needs to know what that direction is.

Leaders Pick the Right Team

Once you have a shared vision and your team knows what it is it is important to make sure you have the right people on the bus. That phrasing comes from Jim Collin’s book Good to Great. There’s an old adage that says hire slowly and fire fast and it’s really applicable in this leadership situation. Make sure you have the right people on the bus and take swift action to make that happen.

Leaders are Human

The best leaders I’ve seen have been incredibly human. They’ve built trust by being trustworthy, they’ve built respect by being respectful of their team, they have motivated by living their values and convictions, they’ve been heard because they listen so well. They think what’s in it for their team members rather than what’s in it for me. These points are key to being an amazing leader in the workplace.

Promote Yourself to Manager

When you are promoted into a management position there are some important considerations to set yourself up for success. The first is to promote yourself to manager. It may seem simple but it’s important to figure out what you were good at before and let that go.

The winning strategies that had you succeed before are not going to be the same to help you succeed as a manager. For example perhaps you were a great programmer and now you’re going to manage a team of programmers. You need a new skill set and you need to step into that role, so it require promoting yourself and mentally shifting gears.

Next get up to speed as fast as possible. Get your hands on reports, interview some key stakeholders and colleagues, go on some training for management, learn everything you can as fast as you can and at the same time asses the business situation.Are you walking into a start-up, a turn-around situation or is it business as usual – get in there and keep things flowing well. The sooner you know what you’re walking into the sooner you can match your approach to the business situation and start having an impact.

Discuss Expectations as Manager

Now paint a picture. What I mean here is sit down with your boss and get really clear about what success looks like. Come up with the expectations and how you are going to measure yourself against those expectations and how your boss will measure you. It would be a shame to find out 6 months later that your boss is not happy that you are not hitting the mark when you could have sat down at the very beginning and got really clear about what you are needing to create in a management role.

Once you’ve painted a picture of success it’s really important to get some early wins. Maybe you’re stepping into a role where you will deliver a project two years down the road. It’s really important to get your team to have a few wins in the first month or two with you as the manager. It will build trust, the trust the team has for you and it will build your confidence as a manager.

Managers Need Support

Finally the people I’ve coached that have most successfully transitioned into a management role have set themselves up with a community of support. They’ve hired a business coach, got a mentor, sometimes both. They have reached out to their colleagues to build a circle of support. They’ve asked family an friends to be kind during the transition and they’ve leaned on some routines like good sleeping habits, exercise, eating well and having a good time when they are not working to keep life integrated and balanced.

There are lots of resources out there. I find this book to be particularly helpful with my clients. The First 90 days by Michael Watkins. Thanks for watching.

1. It’s a marathon, not a sprint: It may take multiple meetings and interactions via phone/email before you’re ready to propose your services or ask for work.  Simply focus on advancing your relationship a little each time you interact.  This takes the pressure off feeling like you have to land a big contract over lunch.
2. Meaningful conversations: Sharing meals with prospective clients can help bring in good work. But the most effective business developers always make lunch more than a chit chat over chicken Caesar. Know what you want to achieve and plan some questions that will help you bring the conversation in that direction when the time is right. For example:
   1. What are you working on?
   2. What does success look like for you/your business?
   3. What gets in the way of achieving this success?
   4. What kind of help do you need?
3. Talk less, listen more: In 2012, it’s no longer about the aggressive pitch.  Instead, build a relationship and find common interests so you both win.  Have your prepared questions and also let curiosity be your guide.  When in front of the prospect, ask yourself what you’re most curious about and pose your questions from there.  Your lunch date will find it refreshing.
4. Let your prospect guide you when to ask for the work: It’s great to have lunches, drinks and conversations. It is also great to actually win work!  Each time you interact with a prospect, check in with them.  “What is the logical next step? Have I earned the right to propose on this work?  Can we start on this small project so we can solve this problem with you?”

For more on effective BD, check out Get Clients Now by C.J. Hayden.  Hayden provides an excellent 28 day plan that will get you into action and bring results. And remember:  It doesn’t have to be hard.  It could even be fun!

A few years ago, I wrote a post on how I was defining my target market and my niche.  To help me, I used
a concept from Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid.  Port recommends having a “red velvet rope policy” to help keep out unwanted clients and bring in only ideal clients.  Defining your ideal client and your red velvet rope policy is a necessary step in laying a solid marketing foundation for your BD success. And it’s really quite easy (and arguably fun!):

Describe your ideal client (be as detailed as possible)

• Who have you loved serving in the past? What kind of company? What kind of file?  What kind of people were you dealing with? What did you like about the work?
• If you were bringing in only ideal clients (for your practice area or the firm in general), what characteristics would they need to possess in order for you to do your best work for them? Be selfish! Assume you will only work with the best of the best.

Describe your dud clients (again be as detailed as possible):

• What kind of past clients have turned you off/ shut you down/ had behaviours or issues you couldn’t tolerate? What kind of clients/ files should not be getting past your “red velvet rope”?

Once you have a clear picture of your duds and your ideals, look at your current roster of clients and categorize them as ideals, duds or neutrals.  Port challenges you to fire the duds to open you up to working with only ideal clients.  In theory, I really like the notion.  In practice, I believe most of my coaching clients would rather phase out the duds and target their BD efforts on bringing in ideal
clients.

Well…your ideal clients are waiting.  How about getting clear about who they are so you can find them?!