The Leadership Side of Business Development To Build a Kick-Arse Business Development Team?

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

We have three aspects to consider when creating such a team:

1. Leadership
2. People
3. Systems

But first let's clarify a few things that may need some explanation.

Why Is It a Holistic Team?

Because this team works on client acquisition and retention in an integrated - holistic - manner. Yes, we can split business development into marketing, sales and client fulfilment, but realistically it must be a seamlessly integrated process.

Look at medicine. There are specialist doctors like cardiologists, podiatrists, gynaecologists, etc. The problem is that they look at medicine from one angle.

When a podiatrist looks at a cardiac arrest victim, he may shake his head incredulously, "I have no idea why he died. He has perfect feet."

In contrast, when a cardiologist puts the stethoscope to the chest of a car accident victim with broken legs, he may say to this person in a reprimanding way, "Your heart is in perfect health. What are you wasting the taxpayers' money lying in hospital? Get back to work right now."

Compare this approach to how holistic healers and naturopathic doctors examine their patients. They check the flow of energy, "chi", in the body. They know that everything stands or falls on the flow or lack of flow of this energy. Not the heart, not the foot or other bits and bobs individually, but the overall energy flow.

Business development as a process and a business development team must be looked at the same manner. It is foolish to split it up by functions, which ultimately creates silos within the department. You have to work on creating energy flow both in your people and your processes.

With your people you have to focus on soft stuff, like passion, drive, ambition, enthusiasm, devotion to excellence, etc.

Your processes' success lies in how labour-light, predictable, repeatable and quantifiable they are.

And there must be seamless energy flow at three levels:

• People to people - How people interact while operating the systems
• System to system - How processes join together to make up the whole system
• People to systems - How people and systems interact with each other

So, make sure that your business development is done in a holistic way, so you will never have to revert to heavy-duty and highly invasive manual labour business development which can leave you with some pretty nasty scars.

Why a "High Expectation" Team?

Humans are interesting creatures. The more they are expected of, the better they perform. If you have ever worked out with a personal fitness trainer, you must have noticed that working out under the his/her supervision you could run faster and lift more. That is all to it. What happened was that someone expected more of you than you expected of yourself. So, you "simply" lived up to the trainer's expectation.

I'm a "hobby" personal fitness trainer and lifestyle coach for female entrepreneurs and executives, and I can report to you that most of my clients can perform as much as 15-30% better when they're working out under my guidance. Everything is the same except my presence and demands. And that means there is someone who always expects more than their "I'm doing my best" delusion. I acknowledge what they've achieved and then we raise the bar. In fitness this is called the S.A.I.D. principle: Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand.

And this "High Expectation" approach applies not only for team members but to prospects too. That is, you must do business development on your own terms, guided by your own values and sense of autonomy. Paraphrasing Peter Block's comments in his book, Flawless Consulting: The problem with bending over backwards for prospects and clients is that they assume that this is your normal working position. They keep dumping more and more work on you, demanding more and more from you (for the same fee of course), and you will never be able to walk and work straight up ever again.

So, what is autonomy? It is doing your work to the beat of your own drum, and when prospects ask you to bend over backwards for them, you have the spine, guts and balls to tell them "No", and walk away.

Not because they are bad people. No. They are great people, and they will be masterfully served by another company that can accommodate their excessive demands. There are lots of companies out there that happily accept the crappiest assignments.

For instance, one point of autonomy we teach our clients is to set all their appointments in their own offices and not to travel. No, it is not about the advantage of the home turf. It is simple time management. Many prospects are flakes and chronically late from appointments. Many simply forget about appointments, even the ones with fancy electronic organisers. And some intentionally stand you up. You show up at their places and they are nowhere to be found.

So, Let's Discuss Your Team Issues Here

People who actually operate the systems on a daily basis.

Systems which are operated by the people.

Leadership to set the vision and strategy of the company, so people always know what is happening and they have a sense of what they are contributing to.

1: Lack of direction. People are operating the systems very effectively, but they don't know where the company is going. It is like a rocking chair in motion: There is activity but no progress.

2: There is a problem. There is great leadership and amazing systems, but there is nobody to actually do the work.

3: People are re-inventing the wheel daily, wasting precious time and piles of money on manual labour grunt work, including cold calling, pavement pounding, door knocking.

4: All elements are in place. Under the guidance and direction of proper leadership inspired people operate effective systems, producing fairly consistent and predictable results with minimum effort and maximum success rate.

And remember! Don't sell harder. Market smarter. Both you, your employees, your clients and prospects will find it more enjoyable, profitable and attractive.

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