Monthly Archives: January 2016

How is Your Business Development Going?

What a ridiculous question, I think, as I am squeezed slightly in my Easy Jet seat on my way to the land far away where I was born… You probably think I write these Blogs to brag about my frequent travel or to complain about the service in the various cheap establishments I use on a regular basis.  You are wrong, the reason I write these Blogs is that they are part of my marketing strategy and my business development plan.

I find it works well for me to have a plan in place which I change and consider on a regular basis because there is a finite number of strategies you can adopt to promote your business and find new clients. Business development is certainly not rocket science and it mainly works through identifying opportunities and going after them. There is a twist though as you need to carry out activities consistently, over a period of time and regularly review your outcome so you can keep introducing small changes to get better outcome. So to make sure that I don’t end up writing strategies off on a regular basis I use my plan to evaluate my activities and improve them.

Rocket Sciense

Thomas Edison said: ‘Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.’

I think that this quote embodies the essence of the problem that many business owners face when they are trying to come to grips with business development: It is not a quick fix and it is hard to work out in advance how long it will take to get the outcome you are looking for. For example, you might embark on a well-planned branding campaign involving launching a new website, writing a useful report and carrying out a number of well targeted e-mail campaigns. So far so good, you got some interest and a number of contacts who clicked on the link to check out your article. This may have taken you three months to get to this point but although the campaign generated interest it has by no mean generated any actual sales yet and this is the point where many business owners might give up. Yet if you carry out some follow up phone calls you might identify some actual interest in your product which will, in time, turn into a sale.  The higher the value of your product the longer it will take to complete a new sale and this is important to remember.

My point is that, from what I can see, only a small number of small businesses use business development to promote their services and products mainly due to lack of time, knowledge and resources. I think a lot more should as, set up correctly, it should bring in a good return. So, if you can identify with this why not give business development another consideration this year?

I have put together a short test to help you make a start and consider how well you are set up for business development in your business. If you click on the link below you can take the test and I will come back to you with my evaluation and a few ideas to get you going.

Click here to take the test and see how well you are set up for business development.

New Year’s Resolution # 33: ‘Become more helpful to my clients…’ 3 minutes read and no preaching what so ever…

Closeup of businessman and woman with jigsaw puzzle pieces in office

A few month ago, Marc Woodland, e-mail marketing guru, and I, who deal with all things business development, had a conversation about how we can become more useful to our clients by combining our marketing and business development skills. After some deliberations we came up with the following concept;

  1. Lots of businesses send monthly e-mails to their clients and contacts
  2. Lots of businesses utilise their precious resources to making cold calls to their databases
  3. Better results can be achieved by combining both strategies

So, we thought to ourselves, why not combine our skills to create a focused e-mail campaign which is then followed up by telephone? Ground breaking is it not?

Our brain child, apply named the Collision, consists of the following steps:

  • Identify your target markets and decide on which you would like to focus on
  • Identify a specific area in which you can be very useful to this segment
  • Create a suitable strategy, content and design for a targeted e-mail campaign
  • Send your campaign to your identified segment
  • Analyse the campaign data and identify the recipients who were most engaged with your message
  • Pick up the telephone to them to see what they thought of your helpful advice and whether they would like to engage with you further

Multiracial Group of Friends with Hands in Stack, Teamwork

So if we have ignited your interest so far why not consider the following questions:

  1. Do you currently add real value to your clients and contacts through your e-mail communications?
  2. When is the last time you followed up on your e-mail marketing campaigns?
  3. Are your e-mail marketing/ cold calling strategies working for you at the moment?
  4. Do you know who your target markets are and what are they interested in?

As we practice what we preach, our monthly Blogs will aim to cover these questions and offer some helpful solutions so watch this space.

In the meanwhile we would love your feedback on The Collision so please get in touch and let us know your thoughts (by the way that counts as being helpful so you can tick off your goal for this month).