Business development is the foundation of sales; without it, there are no contacts to convince to buy your products. The importance of business development to those in sales roles is why there is an insatiable demand for business development tips. Following are four simple business development tips designed to help you reach your targets.
Business development is not a sales goal in and of itself. Successful business development has its core in strategy: Strategy to reach the most leads possible, strategy to cultivate trust, and strategy to move new contacts through business development into the sales funnel. Changing your mindset on what business development is can help you improve your business development skills. Recognizing that it is a strategy and not a direct sales task can help you avoid hard selling new contacts before they are ready to hear your sales message, and gives you the right strategic direction for utilizing further business development tips.
Personal connections are business currency, and the advice to network through social media to make these connections is one of the best business development tips for 2013. The cascade effect of new business connections leading to further potential business connections can add hundreds of leads to your prospect database. There are many social media sites that can be used for this purpose, but those focused on business and professional connections are best. A few to try:
As a sales person you will rarely encounter the deal that is closed with only one decision-maker. In most cases, there are multiple decision makers and decision influencers directing the choice to try or buy your company’s offering. So why do so many sales people work with only one contact when trying to move a deal forward? Even if the first or primary contact is a decision maker, talking to all of those with pull on the buying decision increases your opportunities to develop new business and follow through with newly learned business development tips.
Cultivating client loyalty is one of the standby business development tips that sales people are likely to hear time and again because it works. Although a sales person will never reach top seller status solely by relying on repeat business, repeat business is one of the keys to selling success. Strong client retention can help you earn referrals to new business leads from satisfied customers, increase orders based on a past history of deliverables, and access cross selling opportunities as new products and services become available.
Sales people do not need to commit to week-long seminars and other time consuming improvement projects to get the most out of business development tips; many of the best tips to improve are based on logic. At its heart, successful deployment of business development tips is based on commitment to sales improvement, something those who are searching for business development tips are sure to have.
Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.