Insights

#BusinessDevelopment pros have 2 challenges; #behavior and #thinking of traditional #sales people From our experience working with Business Development Professionals, two challenges consistently [...]

Early American pioneers quickly learned that if you didn’t hunt and fish, you wouldn’t eat. The same is true for Business Development Professionals. Individuals may see themselves as pioneers in [...]

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 [...]

One of the components of successful Goal Setting and Planning is to help identify your personal strengths and weaknesses. We use this exercise to identify weaknesses and put together action plans [...]

Much has been written about motivation, and experts agree that effective motivation is ultimately self-motivation. We are motivated to either avoid a pain or pursue a pleasure. Motivation can [...]

Future revenue growth requires planning, process and hard work. In order to be successful, you need to take control of your destiny. Many companies that rely heavily on outside influence for [...]

To thrive in the “new normal” of Business Development, every component of your individual Business Development process must be both efficient and effective. What may have enabled you to win [...]

Do your homework the first time and on every call. Focus your research around the 4 Cornerstones of Business Development: Technical, Business, Money and People Knowledge. Pay special attention to [...]

Do you find yourself taking your role as a Business Development Professional too seriously? Over the many years we’ve been helping students differentiate between and prioritize [...]

Do you constantly struggle to reach growth targets or achieve revenue quotas? Does it seem like you’re sinking deeper into a ditch, while working hard to climb your way out? Turning around an [...]

For more than three decades, we’ve been challenged to describe what Business Development is all about. More often than not, it’s been defined by explaining what it isn’t. It’s not the [...]

Every organization has a 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 [...]

As a BD professional, you invest a great deal of time and energy building the requisite, first-person trust relationships with potential or current customers. You also allot time to understand [...]

This insight owes credit to Samuel Morse, 1791-1872, the inventor of Morse code and Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, U.S. Army (Ret.), who coined many colorful Cajun phrases. Whether or not you [...]

We’re often asked, “What do professional Business Development people look like”? There are many studies about personalities along with tests and articles on the subject. In [...]

Regardless of our backgrounds and upbringings, we are all taught to treat others with respect, and in some cases deference. Professionally, we often find ourselves in a structural hierarchy with [...]

The role of Business Development is not for the faint of heart. When starting out in a BD role most of us were never provided with a “how-to” manual for success. This is probably due [...]

There’s an old saying, “Be careful what you wish for… you may get it.” Similarly, be careful what you go after in your pursuit of business. In Business Development, every [...]

When we evaluate Business Development Professionals using the 12 Core Competencies of Business Development, we discover many individuals serving in a BD role lack a fundamental understanding of [...]

When I’m With Myself … I’m In Bad Company “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” – Epictetus [...]