Questions or Statements?
Stop and take a moment to think about the kinds of questions you ask your Prospects. Is your tendency to ask long, overly focused questions or short, open-ended questions? As a Business [...]
Master a Never Ending Dialogue with your Customer to Guarantee a Winning Re-compete
How to overcome the pitfalls of being the incumbent in government contracting. Regardless of current belief, becoming the contractor of choice doesn't happen overnight. Winning the business takes [...]
Why People Don’t Buy: No Pain, No Match, No Crisis, No Trust.
If we do not understand how and why people buy or have a process to disqualify opportunities early, we tend to rationalize a reason why the person did not buy from us. On a fundamental basis, [...]
Good Matters Get Better. Bad Matters Get Worse.
In Business Development, it’s easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble. What you do to establish the rules of the relationship up front is critical for setting the tone for the [...]
Bad Business Is Worse Than No Business.
One lesson a Business Development Professional learns over time is the cost of bad business. Early in our careers, we are so anxious for business that we fail to establish relationship [...]
If Your Head Doesn’t Get There First, Your Tail Never Will.
For any professional development or transformation of behavior to be effective, you have to change thinking. It’s thinking that drives behavior, which drives results. In order to be [...]
Where Is Your Thinking Taking You?
It is becoming more evident that to be successful in the current business environment, you have to change the way you engage with your prospects. The Business Development processes and thinking [...]
Stay Outside Your Conceptual Comfort Zone.
Use your homework prior to every call to stretch yourself conceptually and mechanically. Find out what you don’t know about your client’s business. How do they really make money? Who are [...]
Thinking Comes Right Before Trouble.
We have all heard that any strength to an extreme is a weakness, although many of us fail to really understand this principle. Knowing our strengths and seeing them as potential limitations, will [...]
Be Careful of Running into Your Own Thinking.
Too many people in the role of Business Development get caught up in the mechanics, the questions, the presentation and the processes. It’s certainly important to know what to do and how to do [...]
How Good Are You at Successfully Failing?
The philosophy of risking, failing and learning is one of the most powerful concepts to embrace in furthering yourself personally and professionally. How many times have you decided to change [...]
Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven … Nobody Wants to Die.
If you really want to be successful in any role in life, especially the role of Business Development, you have to be prepared to pay full price one time. This is true about any role in your life. [...]
Sales Is No Place to Evaluate Your Self-Worth.
Fear of rejection is one of the biggest inhibitors for people in sales and Business Development roles. This is because these individuals equate their Business Development role performance with [...]
How You Do in Your Roles in Life Is Not a Reflection of You As an Individual.
Business Development is a role; it is not a value judgment of you as an individual. One of the challenging psychological principles that individuals in Business Development have to accept is the [...]
Who You Call On Is a Reflection of How You See Yourself.
In #BusinessDevelopment you must understand how your thinking impacts your role behavior. In your life roles you receive treatment that is consistent with your level of thinking. One of the keys [...]
Is Your Company in a Graveyard Spiral?
OK. You just spotted an RFP on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website that is a perfect match for your government contracting business. It’s exactly the kind of work you do and [...]
