Marketing team’s are strapped with projects and plans from digital transformations to staying ahead of the evolving marketing shifts, and on top of this do their day-job. There’s more than $100 Billion in marketing spend every year. That’s a lot of money and not a lot of time.
After a full day of being asked to prepare, present, and solve business problems, corporate and brand marketers rely heavily on partners coming to them with solutions. Awarding business to proactive and thoughtful partners is a marketing professional’s favorite part of their job. So how do you get in front of them in a way that feels authentic?
The activities needed to attract, attain, nurture and win new clients can vary, but every successful new business development plan has one thing in common: It takes a team to make it work. A team based model to business development focuses everyone’s activities around increasing the visibility of your expertise. The first step in resourcing a new business development plan is identifying who will be responsible for the following types of activities:
Research
Which markets should you pursue? Who should you reach out to? And when would it be most effective? These are the types of questions researchers should be finding answers to. This team member will support prospecting efforts and provide critical information to others when a qualified business lead wants a meeting.
Strategize
Analyzing where you have a Right to Win and what gives you a competitive advantage whether through positioning or your offer is key. Even better, document your strategy and have it vetted by team members with experience in Go-To Market strategy.
Promote
With a digital-first economy, it is important to have someone with specific digital expertise such as search engine optimization, website management, marketing automation and analytics to support inbound marketing activities. Depending on your business, this activity can play a crucial role or it could play a supportive role in the overall program.
Enable
Creating a sales process that uses a tech stack, content, email assets, call scripts, and capabilities deck will enable your new business team to produce qualified business opportunities. These activities fuel sales and help prospects easily understand what you can do for them.
Expertise
Becoming a member or sponsoring organizations where other subject matter experts in your domain share ideas is a first step toward this. Then, you can move onto submitting work for awards, pitching subject matter experts for interviews or byline articles, and participating in speaking opportunities. All of which will help validate your credibility as an expert.
Write
Compelling content that demonstrates expertise will get used by almost every team member and will most definitely have reached your prospects before anyone else has. This activity is the fuel for enabling sales and promoting your business to prospects.
Guide
New business development is a journey, and on every great journey you have a guide. Having a clear understanding of the strategy and the ability to navigate day-to-day organizational challenges will be important to steer the team in the right direction.
Respond
The MVP on the team plays this role. Closers will typically excel in presentations, thinking on the fly and have deep knowledge of your business. A team approach to closing business can be very successful, especially when paired with a networker and subject matter expert.
Win
Taking a team approach to close a deal is a winning strategy. Creating a capabilities deck and customizing it to the prospective client’s problems will get you into negotiations.
Network
This is an age-old activity required for new business development. In-person or on social channels, this is something that will help expand your circle of influence.
Connect
Creating new opportunities for the business proactively requires dedication. Prospecting, qualifying potential clients, preparing the closing team to win, and facilitating conversations with the team in order to keep everyone on task – growing the business – takes dedication to drive everyone toward that winning opportunity.
When you’re building out a resource plan for outbound sales efforts, it’s important to focus on the activities around researching, strategizing, and connecting. Hiring a 3-5 person team with these skill sets will open doors for you proactively.
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