Author: tazewelldave

I grew up around cars and airplanes and still love them today.  Beautiful, powerful machines to take us where we want to go. All we have to do is point them in the right direction and pour on the gas.  It may not be that easy in growing your company, but applying the same concepts may help simplify building a solid business plan.

1. Choose the right vector

You have 360 vector choices in your business plan and selecting the right one takes strategic thinking.

Stay the course? 

Back in Texas, we’re fond of reminding ourselves to “Dance with who brung ya,” which means don’t go chasing after what you think is better when something very good is standing nearby.  Companies can disappear by trying to be something they’re not.  If you’ve got an attractive product and your market isn’t saturated, consider moving on to the velocity section.  If not, continue with vectors.

Aim toward an adjacent market?

Offers of current products to new customers or new products to current customers can be appealing because at least half of the equation is familiar.  Some simple analysis to uncover adjacent markets might be helpful. Perhaps you’ve overlooked the appeal of your products to different customer sets, even foreign customers. On the other hand, if you look through current customer satisfaction surveys (you’re doing those, right?) you might discover unmet needs with your present clientele.

Head for the bright, blue yonder?

This vector, the new offering to the new customer, has potentially the highest payoff, but also comes with the highest risk.  Your design team came up with what seems to be a fantastic new gizmo.  Can you produce it?  Monetize it?  Sell it? I once witnessed an engineering division create a very cool device for classified computers.  Their government customers all said they wanted one.  But it couldn’t be profitably built.  On the other hand, we witnessed the tablet computer, a device many experts didn’t think we needed, take off and make millions. Big profits are linked to big risks.

2. Choose the right velocity

Now that your business development plan is heading in the right direction, selecting the right speed requires tactical thinking.

Steady as she goes? 

This may seem like a safe option, but unless you’re in an ever-expanding market, it could require investment of more and more resources just to keep up with your competitors.  It’s the “Red Queen Effect,” borrowed from Alice in Wonderlandand the field of evolutionary biology to the marketplace: businesses must constantly adapt, evolve and proliferate simply to stay alive.

Pick up the pace?

You want your business to survive, so you need to think of some new things to do even if you’re in a “Stay the Course” vector.  You might consider investing in your people by giving them training and the resources they need to be more productive.  Good leadership can have outsized impact here.  A positive business culture can reap positive dividends.  And it doesn’t cost that much.

Press the pedal to the metal?

This is the trickiest.  If you’re all vector and no velocity you can stall out and die.  But if you’re all velocity and no vector you can veer off course – and also die.  It’s all about matching the two for your particular business situation.  For example, in a “Stay the Course Vector,” you could pour on the velocity if you think you can capture the market.  But in a “Bright Blue Yonder” vector you might want to throttle back a little because you can’t expect high win rates at first.

Vector and velocity are both important in achieving your business plan objectives.  They’re like two gauges on an instrument panel – connected, yet independent of each other.  If you’ve thought through strategically where you need to go and tactically how fast you need to get there, put your trip plan in action, trust your instruments and sit back and enjoy the ride.

Not long ago I received a letter from a client with some important information.  I wanted to take it with me to a meeting, so I printed it out. It was two pages.  The only writing on the second page was the signature block and a well-intentioned message below it urging everyone to conserve resources.  The irony was, that if a few strategic edits had been made on the first page, there wouldn’t have been a second page and it would have spared a sheet of paper and helped save the planet.

You would be right, of course, in observing that I could have chosen not to print it out at all. Gone completely paperless.  That’s what we all thought would happen with the rise of the personal computer.  But the rise of the personal computer also saw the rise of the desktop printer. Why?  Because every now and then we need a piece of paper – a tangible artifact we can share with someone or keep as a convenient record.

I once worked with a guy who was so scattered that he printed out everything because he was afraid of losing something.  Problem was, he had so many papers on his desk he never could find what he was looking for.  And I know people who try to keep everything electronic and continually delay meetings scrolling through their smartphones in vain.  Sometimes one piece of paper is a perfect solution.

By printing less, you also can save money on toner costs.  Consumer Reports estimates that a gallon of printer ink costs nearly $10 thousand.  With that money you could buy 2,200 gallons of premium gas or 6 bottles of 2012 Chateau Petrus (whichever propels you best).  In many cases, the annual cost of printer ink is equal to the cost of the printer itself.  So in addition to environmental considerations, there’s real financial incentive to reducing printing needs to one paper at a time.  Now if we could get websites to cooperate…

Perhaps the best reason to keep things to one page is that it greatly improves communication.  John Asher, with whom I’ve worked for a number of years, asks during his presentations to CEOs: “Who here likes to read a two-page email?  Should that tell you something?”  He’s right.  Very few have time to read two pages of anything, be it an email, a letter, a bio, a statement of work or a contract.  I’ve always felt that what spills over to the second page goes down the drain.

When I was at the Pentagon we used one-page “Staff Summary Sheets” to get general officer decisions. Every important and relevant piece of information was right there on top, including the recommendation, and all the details were in attachments.  It was a very efficient and effective way to handle a lot of data.  Today I still like to give clients a one-page proposal for work, with attachments if necessary.

It’s hard, but try and keep your communications to one page.  Save the planet, save your money and, above all, save your reader.

1. If you’re new to business development, a sales course will give you the tools you need to succeed.

After my career in the Air Force I hired on with a great aerospace and defense company.  I was really excited about this and proudly told my father that I was now in business development.  Dad was a retired paint salesman and he smiled kindly and said, “Welcome to sales.”  Surprised, I responded, “No, I’m in business development.”  He asked me what I would be doing.  I outlined it for him.  Dad smiled again and added, “Like I said, welcome to sales.”  Duh.  That began a ten-year conversation with a man I always respected, but not always listened to. He became my mentor as I (slowly) learned the finer points of the art and craft of sales.

So you’re new to business development and you’ve on-boarded and gotten acquainted with your company’s processes and procedures.  Likely they’ve shown you highly-detailed program coordination and business capture processes. These are good for sorting out who does what to whom in complex deals, but they don’t give you specific sales tools to connect with and close customers.  It’s like you’re expected to already know these skills or they don’t matter. I remember receiving a lot of compliance courses in my defense industry career – the “what not to do” stuff.  All very important, but there wasn’t a specific course on “what to do.”  New hires were assigned to experienced business developers, who received their sales training in the School of Hard Knocks.  Many were indifferent mentors.  I needed a sales course.

2. If you’re experienced in business development, a sales course will help reinforce the things you’re doing right and improve the things you could be doing better.

Okay, you survived your OJT apprenticeship in business development and began to make a career of it. You’ve had ups and downs, wins and losses.  Sometimes you won a big sale in which, despite your efforts to the contrary, you could do no wrong.  And sometimes you lost a sale in which you had everything going for you, but nothing went right.  Why? Was it inside politics, an utterly ruthless competitor, not your turn – or was it because after all these years no one’s taught you the fundamentals of sales?

I know business development golfers who spend inordinate amounts of time on the practice range with instructors – not to mention insane amounts of money on their equipment – to get small ROI in vectors and velocities.  Yet these same business development professionals tend to show up in their meetings with customers for multi-million dollar deals without warming up. Huh?  Assuming we all agree that selling requires skills, why not take a sales course and get a tune up?  And if you’re mentoring new hires, take them with you.  That might be the most valuable thing you could do for their careers – and yours.

1. You won’t have a crisp, distinct message.

Your offering is so good you can think of at least twenty cool features that might attract customers. Why not list all of them in your message?  More is better, right?  I once was helping a Gold Team review during an intense competition for an international defense contract.  It was only a short time until the proposal had to be submitted.  We were examining key win themes.  The group’s PowerPoint chart listed so many “key” discriminators that it was in 8-point font, barely visible from the front row.  While admirable as a collaborative effort, it was confusing: no point was left behind.  They were all technically correct, totally comprehensive and about as useful as throwing a handful of darts and hoping one hit the target.  It’s best to clear away the clutter in your messages.  I really like how Corporate Visions handles this in their messaging courses: select three attributes of your offering that are (1) of value to the customer, (2) easy to defend, and (3) unique to you.  By following this advice, we scrubbed that theme list and created three main points – and a winning proposal.

2. The customer won’t remember your points.

You heard a great presentation yesterday.  The speaker was memorable, the venue was memorable and you had the feeling that what was said should be memorable.  But the speaker’s “Eight Ways to Squeeze More Profit” are not memorable.  Why?  After 24 hours most people only remember about a third of new information (and after a week only about a tenth).  That’s the Forgetting Curve hypothesized by Dr. Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885.  Not surprisingly, no one can remember with certainty who the first person was to declare we can only remember three things at a time.  We often can remember the first and last, but not all that stuff in between.  There was a CEO of a large corporation who wanted to instill greater leadership attributes in his rank and file.  He tasked the HR department to explore it. They arranged corporate-wide focus groups and contracted with a known and expensive consulting firm to flesh out the model, polish the product and roll it out.  But everyone had trouble remembering those five main points.  And they were good ones.  The initiative died.

3. You won’t remember your points.

Because you’re human like your customers, you also have trouble remembering more than three things at a time.  When your customer asks “How does your new organic scintillation counter operate?” what happens inside your head?  Does it explode with indecision on where to start and end or does it snap into action recalling your three main points?  Three main points, particularly if associated with customer-refined ROI, can be the foundation of your elevator pitch, your marketing campaign, your sales presentation, your proposal’s executive summary and your customer delivery plan.  Three main points give you and your team (1) focus, (2) clarity and (3) cohesion. They are (1) brief, (2) compelling and (3) memorable – to you as well as your customer.

Your business is growing and you hired some new business developers.  You need their help right away, so you rushed them through in-processing and sent them directly out to the field.  But then you didn’t hit your numbers and half of your new hires left by the end of the year. They were good candidates and were paid well, but they ran for the exit like whippets off the leash.  What happened?  You could analyze your management style and corporate culture, but the likely reason your new BD hires left is they didn’t feel like part of the family.  Before you panic and feel like you should have invited them over to the house for a backyard barbecue with the kids and Aunt Edna, try these four approaches:

1. Recognize that new hires don’t even know the simple stuff.

Years ago I was hired into an organization that was consolidating the BD staff from two sites into one.  The residents of the receiving site thought I was from the other site and the other guys thought I was local.  I didn’t even know where the restrooms were.  I followed the age-old tactic of “fake it ‘till you make it,” but it was a rough first year.  Every time I miss-stepped, someone would say with surprise, “Didn’t we tell you that?” Holding my frustration back, I’d quietly respond, “I must have missed it.”  Eventually, things took hold and I started enjoying the job, but if the beginning had been smoother I can’t help but think I might have sold more.

2. Make the required stuff fun and easy to absorb.

No matter what business you’ve signed up with, the onboarding process can be bewildering.  There are so many things you need to be aware of, from your savings plan information to legal compliance.  These presentations are often the first real contact with new hires. Bigger companies sometimes contract out parts of the onboarding process.  Smaller companies sometimes ignore most of it altogether. In-processing and follow-on compliance training often can make you want to go to your happy place and stay there until the screaming in your head stops.  Sometime back a major aerospace company gained a license to convert its in-house compliance training into Dilbert cartoons.  The employees loved it and still remember the main points of the instruction.

3. Give them training and tools to do their jobs.

New BD hires come to you with a variety of experiences.  Some are fresh out of school.  Some had production or program management jobs and have good product knowledge. Some may have come from jobs related to your customer base and know their way around the industry.  Think about what each individual needs to successfully do the job you want them to do.  Technical training?  Sales training?  OJT? What about tools?  I was on the road a lot in one of my international BD jobs. During a performance review, it was noted that I was hard to get in touch with.  I responded, “Why not give me a cell phone?”  Duh.  Today, every BD professional should at the very least have a smartphone and tablet with productivity and communication software to give customers real-time data and quotes.

4. Foster their relationships with good mentors and coaches.

This is the most important of all and not a “check the box” item.  Don’t leave your new hires without someone to turn to for advice and counsel.  This can be hard because your best BD people may not be the most patient teachers and your BD people with time on their hands may not be the most positive role models.  Of course, some of the responsibility is on the new hires to make these relationships productive, but then again, not all new hires believe they need mentors.  That was my opinion until I got to know Bob, Don, Ed, Karen, Royce and even Wally. Make sure no new BD hire is left behind. Then invite them to the backyard barbecue.