 Sustainable revenue growth requires a sound, “end to end” business development strategy that seamlessly integrates marketing and sales. Marketing and sales is a continuum and must work together to do two things: generate qualified leads and optimize close rates.
Building and executing a business development strategy is the opposite of “making it up on the fly”, which is how many organizations approach business development. Often times it is left up to salespeople to “figure it out”, and when they don’t produce the expected results they either get fired or leave, which kills momentum.
In order to achieve maximum potential, a business development strategy must be systemized. Systemization ensures the right activities are being executed consistently and relentlessly, and that the business development strategy is continually improved based on results and insight.
All business owners and executives want predictable and sustainable revenue growth. However, without a systemized approach to business development, it’s difficult to grow consistently over time. Without a well executed business development system, results will typically be up and down.
There are four core elements to a marketing and sales system:
- Lead Generation
There are many ways to generate leads. The key is to identify the appropriate lead generation tactics for the particular situation, based on the available budget, to drive the leads necessary to achieve growth objectives.
- Moving Prospects Through Decision Making Cycle (Education)
Prospects require some level of education about how to make an informed decision. During this phase of the decision making process, prospects are most concerned with gathering the information they require to make the best possible decision – they don’t want to suffer from buyer’s remorse.
Organizations that do the best job of educating develop value based relationships with prospects and build credibility, and as a result have a higher probability of winning the sale.
Tools and delivery mechanisms must be put in place to provide educational content through the decision making process.
- Sales Process/Closing the Sale
When prospects are close to making a decision – when they’re down to the “short strokes” – nothing should be left to chance. Organizations must have everything prospects will require before they make their final decision at their fingertips.
At this stage of decision making, prospects are primarily interested in social proof (testimonials). They may also request items such as test results or examples of past work performed.
By knowing what it will take to close the sale, organizations can have the necessary tools readily available. This will optimize close rates because it will eliminate any lingering doubt the prospect may have. It also shortens sales cycles because prospects will be more inclined to proceed based on the reassurances provided.
- Post Sales
Most businesses do not fully leverage one of their most important assets – their customer base. The post sales process defines everything that should be done, in a systemized way, to optimize the relationship with existing customers.
If an organization does a good job for its customers, then customers will be more inclined to do additional business with them or to help them out.
Existing customers can be leveraged in a number of ways; provide referrals, on-going purchases, purchases of other service or product lines (cross selling), feedback, etc.
Once the end to end business development strategy has been established, the necessary tools and technologies to support the strategy must be identified, developed and implemented.
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