Many individuals who claim the Strategic Business Leader title bring working, personal relationships with the senior management of prospect organizations to their firms. There are a lot of individuals with this basic profile who declare they are strategic Business Development Professionals. However, in reality, they are not.
To be a true Strategic Business Leader who is innovative, creative, and successful, you must be able to innately apply the following seven critical concepts.
First, you must exhibit the hunter profile, always pursuing the best strategic opportunities for your company and crafting those opportunities before competitors recognize them.
Second, it’s critical that you understand the goal and purpose of Business Development. You should understand that the purpose of your role is to help organizations understand their real issues, challenges or concerns, and identify their pain.
Third, you must have a developed knowledge of psychology, understanding how and why people behave the way they do. The application of people knowledge is what motivates a prospect to trust an individual and share information.
The fourth concept is the capacity to develop the behavioral characteristics of an intelligence gatherer. This is the critical ability to know what information is important to gather early on, and then who to gather it from, and how.
The fifth important trait of the Strategic Business Leader is the ability and courage to disqualify opportunities early and efficiently. That means letting go of bad opportunities, walking away and moving on to a better opportunity.
The sixth must-have is the skill to quickly build both a short and long-term pipeline. To do this you must have the appropriate character, develop and hone the right thinking and be educated or re-educated in the role of professional Business Development.
The last quality is the ego drive to continually pursue new opportunities as an alpha wolf. With their heightened sixth sense, alpha wolves have the ability to see leverage points and make connections that others fail to make.
Are Strategic Business Leaders born with the Business Development gene, or can they be developed in this role? From our years in this business, the simple answer is that it’s a little of both. Few bring it all. That’s where professional development and mastery education come into the strategic Business Development equation.
Are you a Strategic Business Leader? Learn more at our Mastering Business Development workshop.