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 their options more carefully.
A firm’s Business Development culture is less clear and less well defined, because most people understand very little about Business Development. Business Development is a term used for everything from sophisticated selling to business growth through mergers and acquisitions.
A Business Development culture is anchored upon either 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 customers and, most importantly, the individuals who purchase your products and services. A purpose-driven culture focuses on how to provide solutions to 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 Business Development culture? Yes, and ideally that balance should be present. The resulting culture also requires the buy-in/ownership of all within the organization engaged in 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-based relationships produced by a strong, consistent and well-balanced Business Development culture.
So what is your Business Development culture and what should it be? Learn how a Sales and BD assessment can identify the real issues and process gaps causing low win rates.
