Category Archives: Marketing

All the blogs under this category discuss general marketing. Whether it be cold calls, messaging or targeted campaigns.

Why a staged approach to business development benefits your business

One of the big truisms of business is the need to have a strong marketing and sales strategy. But for many SMEs, the resources and expertise required to develop and execute such a strategy can be out of reach, at least at early stages of their growth.

This is where a staged approach to business development can be helpful. This involves breaking down your marketing and sales efforts into smaller, more manageable steps, and sourcing appropriate support at each stage of your business journey. This allows you to start with the basics and gradually add more complexity as you grow your ability and resources. Here are the key advantage of this approach:

Flexibility and Scalability:

A staged approach to business development allows you to choose support that aligns with your current needs and budget. In the early days of a business knowledge about the basic how, where, and what of sales and marketing may be lacking. So, help with creating sales collateral (case studies, brochures, or email templates), and support with building a clear sales and marketing strategy will give you the jumping off point you need. As the business evolves, your support can adapt to address new challenges and opportunities. This ensures you’re always getting the most relevant assistance. Content Marketing campaigns, LinkedIn, and telemarketing are natural second steps. With growth comes the need to outsource lead generation and nurturing, freeing up your expert team to close deals and support existing clients.

Cost-Effectiveness:

By applying the limited resources that you will inevitably have in the early days of a business, to the specific services you need at that time you avoid the upfront, and ongoing, costs of hiring specialist staff who may not be fully utilised. By focusing on your specific needs and goals, staged support can deliver a better return on your investment. By having a well-developed strategy from the start, one which anticipates the stages of growth you will go through, you can allocate resources to activities that are most likely to generate leads and conversions.

Expertise and Guidance:

At each stage of your business development, you can benefit from the expertise of experienced sales and marketing professionals who will fit into the niches that work for you at that time. Most importantly you can benefit from guidance on developing effective sales and marketing strategies aligned with your business goals from people who have done it before and know where the pitfalls are.

Efficiency and Focus:

You started your business because you have a passion for it. Using the right support for each step of the journey means you can focus on the aspects of your business that fill your passion, while the sales and marketing is cared for by others whose passion is business development. With a well-defined plan, the right people in place working on targeted campaigns, you can achieve better results with less effort.

At YBDT we work with SMEs of all sizes across a wide range of industries. All of them benefit from our business development support. One of our key aims is to be able to support businesses in the ways they need and want. Which is we developed our staged approach to business development support. This method has supported sustainable development for countless companies over the last decade and a half. Get in touch to book a discovery call today and book the call that starts your journey to growth.

Sales enablement – what does it actually mean?

Sales enablement is about equipping your sales team with the right resources and skills to successfully engage with buyers and close deals. It is a strategic and ongoing process that aims to remove obstacles hindering your sales team’s success. It’s about providing them with the right tools, knowledge, and support to confidently and effectively engage with customers and generate profitable sales.

We can break down sales enablement into three areas. The first of these is providing the resources that will empower your team. Content, such as product brochures, case studies, presentations, and videos, as well as supporting materials such as marketing emails, is the base on which all sales plans are built. Tools such CRM systems, and other technology solutions streamline workflows, automate tasks, and provide data-driven insights to improve sales performance. The goal is to provide technology that streamlines the sales process and helps reps stay organised and productive. Ongoing training programs equip the team with the knowledge, skills, and best practices needed to effectively navigate the sales process and handle customer interactions.

Which leads us to the second aspect of sales enablement. The processes that will take initial interest to an order. Implementing a structured sales process ensures a consistent and effective approach to engaging with prospects and closing deals. Providing a steady flow of qualified leads helps sales teams focus their efforts on the most promising opportunities. Establishing a coaching and mentoring culture within your sales team allows for continuous learning and development, leading to improved performance.

The third point, and perhaps the most important, is that effective selling is a process of building and developing relationships. To yield results the nurturing process need to be made specific and based on a clear understanding of the prospects. Many companies fail to grasp this and let go of the process too soon, allowing sales to slip from their grasp. Aligning your sales and marketing efforts is crucial for developing strong business relationships. When these two areas work together seamlessly, they create a unified customer experience that promotes trust and loyalty for existing clients and gives prospects the insight into your business that they need to buy from you. This is a big area and deserves a blog to itself.

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) will tell you how effective your sales enablement work is, or if processes need to be adjusted. Using the data collected from client interactions to identify areas for improvement and adjust your sales enablement strategy allows for continuous optimisation and growth.

YBDT’s sales enablement programme is built on our own experience of lead generation and improving sales conversion for our clients. By helping you build an understanding of your markets and then creating the processes that support your sales growth we can support you in creating content, generating, and nurturing prospects and guiding your team towards improved sales conversion.

YBDT’s business development process has supported sustainable development for countless companies over the last decade and a half. Get in touch to book a discovery call today and book the call that starts your journey to growth.

What makes a business development plan strategic?

We have applied the teachings of military theorists to business since the time of Sun Tzu. When thinking about our business development plans one of the most useful quotes comes from Heinrich von Bülow, ‘Strategy is the science of military movements outside the enemy’s range of view, tactics within it’.

So, in business,

  • Tactics are how we carry out our business development.  for example, Emails, telemarketing, content, or social media.
  • Strategy is what supports these activities internally, away from the client’s view.  For example, preparing to communicate effectively with target audiences and making sure the business is ready to take on new customers.

There are some key elements that makes a business development plan strategic:

Clear Vision and Goals

A strategic business development plan begins with a clear understanding of the company’s overall vision. What does the organisation aspire to achieve? These overarching goals serve as the compass, guiding the company’s strategic direction and decision-making.

Comprehensive Market Analysis

A strategic plan must be grounded in a thorough understanding of the industry, market trends, and the competition. This involves conducting market research, analysing competitor strategies, evaluating consumer behaviour, and identifying emerging opportunities. By understanding the external environment, businesses can proactively position themselves for success.

Data-Driven Decision-Making

Strategic business development is not about guesswork. A strategic business development plan should incorporate data analytics to inform decision-making. This includes tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), analysing market trends, and understanding customer behaviour. By understanding the data, businesses can optimise strategies, identify areas for improvement, and allocate resources effectively.

Resource Allocation

Sustainable growth requires effective resource allocation. The plan should clearly define the resources required, financial, human, and technology, and outline how these resources will be allocated efficiently. This assessment will help you identify areas where you may need to invest or partner with others to support your growth initiatives.

Implementation Plan

A well-crafted implementation plan outlines the steps involved in executing your strategies, assigning responsibilities, and allocating resources. It should include timelines, milestones, and success metrics to track progress. It is essential to identify and mitigate potential risks that could upset your plans. Contingency planning, expecting the unexpected, is vital to ensure the successful execution of your business development strategy.

Continuous Monitoring and Evaluation

Business development is a continuous process. You will need to consider how you will monitor progress, evaluate the effectiveness of strategies, and make the necessary adjustments. This ensures that the organisation remains on track towards achieving its goals.

One important point that we only briefly touched on its collaboration and partnership. You may well not have all the resources and skills with the business to carry out your strategy. By working with YBDT’s proven sales enablement process you firstly have our support to create a finely tuned business development strategy. We will guide you towards the overarching plan that touches each part of your customers’ journey.

You then also have the option of using our team of experienced professionals to support the implementation of that plan will ensure that you have the best opportunity to convert prospects to loyal long-term clients.

YBDT’s business development process has supported sustainable development for countless companies over the last decade and a half. Get in touch to book a discovery call today and book the call that starts your journey to growth.

Why the buying journey is not linear

The customer’s buying journey was historically seen as a straight line, with perhaps a few twists in it. The client arrived at the start and left at the end of the process. Contrary to this belief, several factors mean that you can’t assume that your clients’ progress through your sales process will be linear:

  1. Customers are complex and unpredictable.
  2. They are influenced by a variety of factors, including their needs, wants, emotions, and experiences.
  3. Many of the customer experiences in the B2C world are now influencing behavior in B2B settings.

Customers have more information and choice than ever before. Thanks in part to the easy availability of information and comparisons online, customers can easily research products and services from multiple sources before making a purchase. This gives them more control over the buying process and allows them to move back and forth between different stages of the buying process at their own pace, often with multiple potential suppliers. A customer who is new to a particular product category may need to spend more time researching and learning about their options, before committing to later parts of a sales process.

External factors can also affect your clients’ willingness to make the buying decision. Unexpected events, such as a change in market circumstances or other reasons why budgets would reduce will alter their ability to buy. Many purchases can be quite complex. Personally, a car or a house, or in business, a capital spend may mean that customers go through a longer and more involved buying process. They may want to gather more information, compare different options, and negotiate with sellers. This can lead to a more non-linear buying journey, as they may find themselves involved in different stages of the sales processes of several vendors.    

All this means that your sales process has to be sophisticated enough to provide content and support at every stage of the journey. Make sure that customers have access to the information they need at each stage, whether they are researching a product, comparing different options, or making a purchase decision. Collect data on customer behaviour and use this data to refine your marketing and sales strategies. Above all, be responsive to customer feedback. Listen to what your customers are saying and use their feedback to improve your products, services, and customer experience, and those of your competitors.

We all need to be aware of the non-linear nature of the customer buying journey and adapt our marketing and sales strategies accordingly. This means being present on the channels that your customers use and providing them with the information they need at every stage of the journey. It also means being flexible and responsive to customer needs, even if it means changes to your own internal sales processes.

Work with YBDT to create a clear structured sales process. We will give you the overarching plan that touches each part of the customer journey. Using our team of experienced professionals to support your implementation of that plan will ensure that you have the best opportunity to convert prospects to loyal long-term clients. YBDT’s business development process has supported sustainable development for countless companies over the last decade and a half. Get in touch to book a discovery call today and book the call that starts your journey to growth.

Take your business development temperature

We’ve asked the question, “what sort of lead generation do you need” around different market sectors and targets, but how do you get started on your business development journey at an early stage of your business?  The temperature you apply to your lead generation is related to the budget and resources you have available, as well as where you are in your business’s life story. You can turn the heat up or down depending on seasonal factors, your growth plans or market conditions.

Gas mark 1 – Getting the basics right.

Smaller businesses or ones that are at an early stage of their development need to build the strategy, collateral (case studies, brochures, email sequences), and data that will help you progress. The most important part of any business development campaign is creating a viable strategy. Defining your target markets, looking for opportunities for growth within them, and agreeing campaign goals will help you build a firm platform for success. Once you start seeing tangible results from your lead generation effort you will be able to progress to the next stage of your growth. If you put the basic building blocks for sales success in place early on, they will last you for the lifetime of the business.

Gas Mark 3 – The first step into external support.

You may find that your growth expectations quickly outstrip your ability to create new customers internally. At this point outsourcing lead generation activity will enable you to allocate your own resources to where they will be most valuable, nurturing and closing new clients. Identifying and connect with potential prospects through LinkedIn, and creating content that raises brand awareness and strengthens relationships can be outsourced, often more cheaply than they can be carried out internally. Taking the first steps into proactive marketing, such as direct email campaigns are often better taken with support from an expert.

Gas Mark 6 – Outsourced Business Development

Once your lead generation activities are bearing fruit you will need to consider how you will maintain a pipeline of new prospects to maintain existing revenue levels and continue to grow in line with your objectives for the business. At this point your own sales team will be best employed solidifying relationships with existing clients, and nurturing prospects who are close to a buying decision. Pouring new leads into your lead generation process, and then cultivating until they are ready to be passed on to your specialist sales team to close.

YBDT’s staged support mirrors these steps, enabling you to warm your business development up as the business grows. Our 15 years’ experience of supporting business in many sectors means that we have seen and solved most of the issues that business will face. The first tier of our staged support package includes extensive mentoring and support along with skills development workshops that will put your team on track. The second tier of support introduces the content and data driven components of the YBDT service, paving the way for you be ready to turn the heat up to the full YBDT business development process that has supported sustainable growth for countless companies over the last decade and a half. Get in touch to book a discovery call today and take the temperature on your lead generation campaign.

Managing lead generation for your renewal clients

Renewal clients are existing customers who have already bought products or services from you that have a renewal date or contract end point. As well as ensuring that the renewal is secured, managing your contact with these clients involves identifying opportunities to add additional services to your current customers. As Lewis Howes points out, “It’s almost always easier to sell to an existing customer base than to find a new one.”                       

Managing lead generation for your renewal clients involves a combination of tactics and strategies that are focused on retaining and expanding your existing client base.

Analysis: The first step is to identify which clients are most likely to renew their contracts, which ones have the potential to expand their business with you, and which ones are at risk of leaving. From there you can determine the best tactics for approaching each segment of your client portfolio.

Connection: To avoid clients falling into the “at risk of leaving” segment they need to feel valued and appreciated by your company. Staying in touch with your clients regularly through check-in calls, personalised emails, newsletters, and other channels will keep you in their mind and open to hearing extra sales messages from you.

Planning: Develop a plan that outlines the actions you will take to achieve your renewal goals. This plan should include communication strategies, and product offerings that suit each of your identified segments.

Refinement: Renewals are a continuous cycle, not just for a single year. Using data acquired from one sales cycle to guide decision-making for future campaigns.

By effectively managing lead generation for renewal clients, you can increase customer loyalty, retention, and revenue. Our new favourite business quote comes from sales expert (and sister of Robert for the music fans) Patricia Fripp. “It is not your customer’s job to remember you, it is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you.” Growing your business with YBDT’s effective approach to outreach will give you a clear blueprint for success and ensure that your renewal clients don’t get the chance to forget you.

We are more than a lead generation company and focus on supporting the creation of an effective strategy for finding and then developing leads with your existing clients and new prospects. Using our highly experienced team to nurture your clients through regular contact will leave you in the ideal position to capitalise on the opportunity to renew and extend your relationship with them when the time is right.

After years of building sustainable effective marketing for our clients we have a toolbox of techniques and insights into market sectors and prospect behaviour that make YBDT the ideal choice to support your lead generation. Get in touch to book a discovery call that is the first step to your business growth.

Why applying empathy is key to your sales conversion?

‘You cant understand someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes.’


The person who first uttered this American saying is lost to history. The fact that it’s so well known is a good indication of the importance of empathy in living a meaningful life. It is also an important lesson to remember when approaching the planning of lead generation campaigns.

When I launched Your Business Development Team all those years ago, one of the first things I did was to ask business owners within my target markets what were their key issues with lead  generation. Many said that they found it frustrating because the campaigns rarely provided them with sales; they got leads but very few of them converted. This fact was fundamental to the development of our key USP, which is the provision of a long term lead generation and nurturing service designed to support our clients along their sales journey and beyond initial lead generation activity.

Making sure you understand firstly, who your target markets are, and secondly what their key issues are within your area of expertise, is key to your sales success. Earlier in the month, we wrote about understanding the right lead generation for you. Our key point was that you needed to understand how people bought your product to get a better understanding of how you should approach your lead generation campaign. Today, I want to explore how you can go further down this road to improve your product and sales conversion.

Consider what you currently do to understand your prospects’ problems. Do you,

  • Make assumptions based on your market knowledge?
  • Run surveys or focused groups?
  • Read books, research and articles?
  • Ask questions to improve your understanding?

Based on my conversations with many business owners, I would guess that most of us stick to making assumptions and these are often correct. After all, if you have been operating in an industry for many years, you tend to get a good understanding of it. But relying solely on assumptions can be dangerous for a number of reasons including:

  1. Market conditions change and industries adapt
  2. Assumptions can be over simplified or too general
  3. We can often become biased by our own offering

Another problem, is that people involved in selling often overestimate their preservation abilities and rely heavily on relationship building instead of getting a better understanding of their prospects true motivation to buy. People who talk about sales enablement often talk about understanding pain and asking pain questions. As you might know, this relates to the status quo bias which claims that most people are unlikely to make a change unless they are forced there. Simply put, this means that true motivation, the holy grail of sales conversion, depends heavily on our prospects’ issues. This means that by understanding their problems better we can achieve two important outcomes:

  1. Improving our solution and increasing our chances of a sale
  2. Improving our ability to understand the odds for sales success

Yet asking pain questions is not easy, particularly if you are a people pleaser, a common trait amongst relationship builders. It also requires us to listen carefully and apply empathy, being prepared to alter our understanding and start again. Putting this together with how overworked and busy many of us are and you get to a point where all of this becomes a step too far. Which is why so many sales end up with companies choosing to keep with the status quo and keep with what they have already got.

This is not so bad if you operate in a high demand environment where you attract many leads and can afford to convert only 20-30% of them. It becomes more important if you are struggling to find many leads because your offering is high end, very specific or a new product. So if you are placed with the latter, when you are considering your next lead generation campaign take some time to go beyond your initial assumptions of the problems troubling your prospects:

  • Talk to your current clients and contacts
  • Read related articles and analyse data
  • Put together some key pain questions
  • Make sure you ask them and listen carefully to the answers

This will not only improve your conversation rate, it will also help you ensure that your product is current and relevant to your future clients. If you need help understanding how to include this in your current sales practice, get in touch.

How can you tell what sort of lead generation will work for your business?

The first question is, what actually is lead generation?  It is simply the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business’s products or services. The end goal of lead generation is to convert these potential customers, or leads, into paying customers.

Lead generation can involve a variety of strategies including many aspects of the work YBDT offer. Content marketing, email marketing, telemarketing and using platforms such as LinkedIn. These strategies are designed to attract potential customers towards a business where they can learn more about the products or services on offer and your business can build a relationship with them.

How can you tell what sort of lead generation will work for your business? There are some basic questions you need to answer to establish what is going to work for your business. The best lead generation strategy depends on your business’s unique context, industry, resources, and goals. That means it is crucial to keep learning, adapting, and innovating to stay ahead of the competition and meet the evolving needs of your audience.

  1. Do you know who your ideal client base is?  It is important to know who your ideal customer is and what their pain points and challenges are. Knowing who you are targeting will help you understand the most effective lead generation strategy to reach them. If your ideal clients are tradespeople who are on site all day then phoning them would be unlikely to work, but an email that they can read at their leisure may well do.

  2. Do you understand your industry and how it operates? Researching your market sector will also help you understand what strategies will connect with your potential clients. Knowing how your industry behaves will let you see what is, or is not, working for your competitors, and allow you to develop the marketing collateral that will speak to your prospects.

  3. Is there a pattern to how potential customers buy? This is probably the most critical question. If your potential clients are buying regularly, on subscription, or as an annual renewal then your lead generation process revolves around the data that lets you be in position to talk to them at the right time.

  4. What are the key drivers to a buying decision? Another vital question for companies whose purchases are less predictable. Almost as important is where they buy. Is it direct from the manufacturer or through a distribution channel. That answer can affect who your lead generation efforts are aimed at and how you develop relationships.

  5. How often do they buy? If your product is a repeat purchase or consumable item then the lead generation process also includes keeping in touch with existing customers and distributors to ensure you are in their minds when it comes time to buy.

Remember that lead generation is an ongoing process, so it’s important to continually test and optimize your approach to ensure that you are generating high-quality leads for your business. It is important to be open to testing different approaches and measuring their effectiveness. As we mentioned in a blog recently, there is no fairy dust to be waved over the lead generation process. It is a careful process of building knowledge and understanding about the most effective strategies for each business we work with. After 15 years of building sustainable effective marketing for our clients we have a toolbox of techniques and insights into market sectors and prospect behaviour that make YBDT the ideal choice to support your lead generation. Get in touch to book a discovery call that is the first step to your business growth.

Playing The Long Game

Successful lead generation and nurturing takes time. We looked in a recent blog at the planning which is needed to build a sustainable strategy for growth. That growth is not something that can be achieved overnight, so it’s important to set realistic expectations and be patient. There are many different tactics you can use to generate leads, the most important part of any strategy is discovering the most suitable ones for your business, and the markets you operate in.

A lead generation strategy will identify potential customers who are interested in your products or services and reaching out to them to start a process of understanding and engagement. By building relationships with them, providing information, answering their questions, and addressing their concerns you will be in an ideal position to act when they are ready to buy. Nurturing leads takes time because you need to establish trust and credibility with potential clients before they are willing to make a purchase. It’s important to provide them with relevant information and solutions that address their specific needs and pain points. This process can take weeks, months, or even longer depending on the complexity of your product or service.

My favourite lead nurturing statistic is Wanda Allan’s ‘80% of sales are made between the 5th and 12th contact yet, 90% of sales people make 3 contacts or less’. This stat says more about the reality of time poor salespeople than about their willingness or ability to follow up leads.

This is where YBDT’s sales enablement service comes into its own. Using our extensive experience of lead generation and sales we have put together a three-step process aimed at improving your sales success.

  1. Gap analysis – Our unique gap analysis system identifies bottle necks and other blocks in your sales process.
  2. Tailored sales process – We help you create a winning sales process that is based on your operation and becomes the blueprint to your sales success
  3. Bespoke sales training – With these steps in place we can deliver training and mentoring individually designed to support your team as they adopt the new process.

With time always at a premium for your sales team, lead nurturing service may be the solution to making sure the follow ups are maintained consistently for as long as required, rather than risking the effort of acquiring the lead being lost as priorities within the business shift. The beauty of what we offer is that we can help you with both, providing a full sales support service, from lead generation through nurturing to improving your internal sales mechanism.

Successful lead generation and nurturing requires a long-term commitment to building relationships with potential customers. It takes time to establish trust and credibility, but the rewards are worth it in the form of loyal customers who are more likely to make repeat purchases and refer others to your business. YBDT has built a successful business over the last 8 years by applying the principles of sustainable relationship building to ourselves. And we can help you achieve the same long-term success. Get in touch to book a discovery call that is the first step to your business growth in 2023.

Plan for a successful 2023

When I was thinking about what to write for my last blog of 2022, I found this quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Planning is everything, the plan is nothing.” The difference between “planning” and “plans” can be summed up in one word: Change.

The two phrases that best sum up our business lives are “expect the unexpected” and “the only constant is change.” Planning is an active process, setting goals, objectives, and strategies, and reviewing constantly to keep us up to date with market conditions. Plans are how we document the results of our planning and can end up as fixed points that the business tries to fit around. The process of planning helps us know what we need to do to accomplish our goals and fulfil our vision for the business. It allows to us control the effects of the unforeseen and helps our team become aligned with our vision and understand the part they can play in the company’s success.

Throughout this year our blogs have looked at building for the future, and specifically how you can build a bridge between your vision for the business and setting and achieving the goals to get there. In a time of uncertainty, the only thing you can be sure of is that your plans will need to change.

YBDT’s Sales Success consultancy programme starts with identifying your specific sales needs using our unique gap analysis system. Once we have that in place, we can create a tailored sales process, supported by training and mentoring designed for your team as they adopt the new processes.

The key to the success of your planning is an overarching business development strategy. This gives you an understanding of the market and your place within it, creates detailed and time-based goals, and the activities to support them, along with realistic KPIs to measure your success. Having the basic strategic framework in place means you can adapt aspects of the process and support that with additional training. This means that as market conditions change, you can avoid tearing your whole sales and marketing system out and starting from scratch repeatedly.

YBDT’s strategic approach and long experience in supporting the creation and nurturing of prospects has proven effective for many clients. For example, Graeme Brown, MD of Sentinel group Security, said that for his company it is the combination of experience with innovation offered by our team which has resulted in the creation of a much improved and better targeted pipeline.

The best quote about sales and marketing in a time of economic uncertainty came from Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart. When asked, “What do you think about a recession?” he responded, “I thought about it and decided not to participate.”  YBDT has the tools you need to step ahead of your competitors when they fail to look beyond the next dire headline. Get in touch to talk about how we can help you look forward to a positive, profitable future.