As the president, CEO, business development executive or sales manager of a technology company, have you ever asked yourself...

"What Is Our Current Business Development Strategy Costing Us In Lost Business?"

Audio Intro

While technology companies have been busy developing better solutions for their markets, another huge thing also has happened behind their backs. The world of marketing and selling technology solutions has changed quite drastically.

As an editorial in the 2006 August issue of The Harvard Business Review put it...

"Customers' buying processes have evolved in our world of ubiquitous, instant, global communication…but companies' selling processes have for the most part stayed the same."

What many high-tech companies fail to realise is that the world of selling has changed rather drastically over the last decade or two. Nevertheless the most commonly practised marketing and sales tactics have remained the same, often taught by sales gurus who had their heydays in the 50's 60s and 70s, and haven't sold anything ever since. Besides many of those gurus were selling commodities not complex high-ticket technology solutions.

So, they teach salespeople to...

• put more feet on the streets to chase more prospects


• suck it up, hunker down and keep on keeping on


• make more prospecting calls


• knock on more doors


• wrestle harder with gatekeepers


• memorise more closing techniques

But This Approach Is Playing Business Development Russian Roulette

One round in the cylinder may be a great potential client, but the rest of the cylinder is loaded with bargain hunters, tyre-kickers, haggle hounds, cheapo chasers, discount diggers and RFP warriors; the kind of people who can give you only headache and stomach ulcers. Yes, you may hit the great prospect, but you have more chance to get your time, money and energy wasted on prospects who have no hope in hell to be a great client for your company.

And where does this approach lead in the long run?

It leads to burnt out salespeople and an annual attrition of 43% in the business development department. 38% of marketing managers or executives quit or get fired within 18 months after being hired. And more often than not it's not because they are incompetent. No! They want to do something to improve the current situation but the corporate dogma doesn't allow them. And the corporate dogma says that whatever the company does, it continues doing but doing it longer and harder.

If people are making 100 cold calls a day, let's double that and that will double the results.

Realistically it only doubles people's frustration, and this is why the best people leave the company.

The Age Of Cold-Calling Or Unexpectedly Dropping In On Decision Makers Is Over

Decisions-makers are being pressed to produce results more than ever before, so they have to optimise their working time. That also means that they do their best to avoid undesirable interruptions, most of all, meeting salespeople.

As a former buyer myself for more than 10 years, I've identified five reasons why decision-makers avoid meeting salespeople...

1. Buyers are worried about bumping into hard-nosed, manipulative salespeople who don't take no for an answer and refuse to get lost


2. Buyers can obtain all the information they need on any product or service without ever talking to salespeople


3. Buyers' plates are already full of mission-critical issues and initiatives. They simply don't have time


4. Buyers are tired of sitting through 99% identical dog and pony show sales presentations


5. Buyers, most often high-level, highly trusted and respected and reliable folks, don't have peer-level relationships with the seller company's lowest level, least trusted, least respected and most rapidly coming and going people: The sales force.

In most cases cold prospecting approaches can connect you only with opinion-formers but not decision makers, the commanders of the purse string.

To protect top decision-makers from the barrage of salespeople, companies have developed sophisticated peddler fodders, called purchasing and procurement departments, modelled after governments' purchasing departments, with budget-conscious purchasing agents.

These purchasing agents issue RFPs and then go on the hunt for the lowest bidder.

And we all know that the government's objective is not to find the best practical solutions, but to find competitive(ly cheap) providers that can match the RFPs' solution criteria. The very solution criteria that have been developed by the same people who have created the problem in the first place and have never been able to solve it. And now they are seeking external help to implement the pre-packaged solutions these problem-creators have developed.

It's like chronically obese people developing their own weight loss regimens and issue RFPs to hire competitively priced personal trainers to implement them as instructed by the fat folks. And we all know what happens when the people with the problem dictate the solution. Nothing. Not a sausage.

So, would you say that the government is a model of value acquisition and hiring external help should be used in the world of commerce?

Probably not...

So, What Is The Missing Link That Holds Technology Companies Back From Attracting Great Clients?

"How can we get droves of qualified prospects, who are hungry for our stuff, come looking for us as trusted advisors, so we don't have to hunt and chase them as peddlers and fungible vendors?"

You see, conventional business development wisdom still teaches sales, marketing and business development from a painful perspective. For many technology companies business development is really forceful selling, and most sales trainers believe that client acquisition is supposed to be an agonising "tighten your belt, grit your teeth tough it out" process for sellers and torturous ordeal for buyers.

The other answer is about integrating marketing, sales and client service into a seamless business development process which is smooth as a baby's arse, so prospects and clients don't even notice as they deal with different people and departments. And this is the hard part.

So What's The Alternative?

I'm Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, one of the fewer than 4% of all technology marketing strategists with a decade plus international industrial experience both as an engineer and, more importantly, as a buyer for high-ticket complex technology solutions. I sat through dozens of sales presentations and met a good few salespeople 1-to-1. In the process, I gained a good understanding and first-hand experience of how buyer buy high-ticket technical solutions, and this is the insight I bring to my clients' tables.

It's one thing to "learn" about the prospects' companies, but it's a drastically different thing to understand, not merely to know, how they think and make buying decisions. But what we all know is that they are allergic to cold prospecting, and in general they dislike salespeople and do their best to avoid them.

In 1996 I moved to the seller's side of the negotiation table, and since then I've been helping technology companies to sell their premium solutions to premium clients at premium fees and prices.

We achieve this by developing automated, multi-channelled client acquisition systems and building ethical peak-performing business development teams that are free of traditional, manipulative and sleazy marketing and sales tricks. As a result, my clients can magnetically attract qualified prospects instead of chasing them all over hell's half acre using legions of peddlers and traditional cold prospecting grunt work.

I firmly believe that growth is not about doing more of the same thing longer and harder, as most technology companies approach business development, but doing less of something, but doing something drastically differently that is more valuable to the marketplace, so you are able to charge more for your work. Remember, the marketing part of your business development sets the perceived value of your services. If you screw this up, you can easily send your profit margins and later your banker, into screaming agony.

So, Imagine That Instead Of...

...clocking in more miles and burning more shoe leather on the pavement in pursuit of reluctant suspects...

...pounding your fingers numb cold-calling and getting hung up on and screamed at...

...dodging " no solicitors" signs and combating gatekeepers in trying to see decision makers...

...wasting your mornings and evenings at beggar's banquets (a.k.a. 99% of networking events)...

...knocking on doors just to have them slammed into your face... (How did you get that boxer's nose?)

...you could be...

...consistently overloaded with qualified sales leads

...chased by qualified prospects asking you to make time for them

...able to carefully handpick your clients from the "cream" of your target market

...communicating your business case with integrity and authenticity

And this is all doable, and is happening while you're reading these lines.

A Problem You're Facing Now... And The Solution

By this point you've probably decided which way you want to build your technology business. Either by focusing on sales volume and assembling a legion of peddlers to roam the land and chase, hunt, hound and pound prospects for new business.

Or by building a small, fast and flexible business development "commando" and have the best prospects of your target market come to you, ready to do business with you on your terms and price, without whinging, whining, bitching and moaning about what an unscrupulous greedy bastard you are.

And this section is important to you if and only if a couple of times you've murmured to yourself, "Maybe there's something here for us. Maybe we can sell our stuff more easily with less chasing, hunting hounding and pounding. Maybe we can get better clients. Maybe we can get a bigger bang for our marketing bucks. Maybe, maybe, maybe."

To see different results, you have to change your approach. And for that change you need a new perspective, a different frame of reference. And this is the often problem. As James Allen wrote in his book, As a Man Thinketh...

"Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound."

Check any of the following that apply to you... If you're the owner of a technology company with complex, high-ticket sales: How would you like to stop being a "prospecting victim" and being abused by tyre-kickers and bargain hunters for free information and advice? How about demanding a definite return on every marketing and sales investment you make? How about having prospects come to you without your chasing them? If you're a sales professional: How would you like to end ugly, filthy cold prospecting drudgery, and get yourself furnished with qualified sales leads generated on autopilot? How about auto-screening your prospects and being able to cherry pick the best of them to work with? How about ending dog and pony shows for false buyers who just want to pick your brain for free information? How about never again to be pinned to the wall with "Your price is too high," "Send me a proposal and I'll show it to my boss" or "Let me think about it" bullshit? If you are a sales manager or a business development executive: How would you like to optimise your people's time and effort for maximum sales performance? How about having your marketing and sales folks work together like a Swiss watch, and achieve new levels of sales success? How about building a lean and mean business development "commando" as opposed to a behemoth army of peddlers?

If you've checked any of the boxes above, then what you find on this website could be one of the most valuable resources you've bumped into today...

So if you think your company suffers from some of these symptoms, then I recommend you to request a copy of my FREE Executive's Strategic Insider to Online Business Development. It's all about developing an online client acquisition system. No, this is NOT about a website. It's about a system, including but not limited to a website.

And if you need more immediate help and you're searching for the right source for that help and support, just go and check out whether or not we could have a basis for working together. Who knows? We may even have a connection, and one day we may even work together on some interesting stuff. So, check if this could be you?.

You see, business development shouldn't be a grind. It should be an enjoyable process. It's just a matter of finding those 20% of things that create 80% of your results. Then your company is on track.

In the meantime, best of luck with your business development. May it bring you both lots of money and enjoyment.

Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

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