Every
organization has a business culture. Like the tale of the
tortoise and the hare, some businesses choose to take a
commanding lead in the marketplace, while others prefer to
hang back and survey their options more carefully.
A
firm’s Business Development culture is less clear and
less well defined, because most people understand very
little about BD. Business development is a term used for
everything from sophisticated selling to business growth
through mergers and acquisitions.
A Business Development
culture is anchored either upon goals or purpose. A
goal-driven culture is focused on revenue growth, bookings,
stock appreciation and internally focused metrics, primarily
intended to drive behavior and desired results. A
purpose-driven culture is focused upon understanding the
problems and issues experienced by your market, your
customer, and most importantly the individuals who purchase
your products and services. A purpose-driven culture
focuses on how to provide solutions to client or prospect
problems, whether or not there is an immediate
purchase or an immediate revenue result to the firm.
Given
the benefits and risks, can a balance exist between a
purpose-driven and a goal-driven BD culture in a firm? Yes
and ideally there should be. The resulting culture also
requires buy-in/ownership of all within the organization
engaged with customer contact. If personnel exhibit
conflicting Business Development cultures, the inconsistency
causes confusion in the marketplace. This will tend to
seriously erode the overall client/prospect confidence in a
company, weaken competitive advantage and dissolve any
hard-earned trust. No firm can afford to let that happen.
Revenue
generation derives from the trust built
relationships produced by a strong, consistent and
well-balanced Business Development culture.
