"Can you teach the professionals in my firm Business Development?" It’s a question we hear time and time again, and the answer is a resounding yes! But what does that actually mean in practice? In this second article of our three-part series outlining our BD Blueprint, we delve into the essential skills professionals need to master in order to truly excel at Business Development. We’ll explore the outer pillars of our BD Blueprint: the Core BD Skills and the BD Super Skills that effective training must cultivate.
The outer pillars of our Business Development Training Blueprint
The first article in this series set out our Stakeholder Square. This article looks at the pillars of our Blueprint: Business Development Core Skills and Business Development Super Skills. You will notice that our focus is behavioural. Historically there has been a focus on skills over behaviours when it comes to BD training - however, by flipping this around, we unpick what is really going on. People might know what to do (the skill) but sometimes problems cannot be solved by simply increasing skills. By focusing on the critical behaviours needed for professionals to do business development, change happens.
You can strip this right back and ask: what do professionals do when they are establishing and nurturing relationships?
Business Development Core Skills
The left-hand pillar of our blueprint comprises Core Business Development skills. These are core skills that can be developed, and they are key for professionals who want to be successful at business development. However, it isn’t the case that every professional has to be good at everything. Some might be, others might not. When thinking about training for BD skills, the important thing is to make sure that every individuals knows where they excel and where they might not excel YET, so that they can start to fill in the gaps (or decide to focus).
There are numerous activities that people engage with when they “do BD”. These ‘middle of funnel’ activities all have the purpose of creating and nurturing relationships. They are activities that often come to mind when people think about business development: networking, having 1:1 conversations with key stakeholders, sharing thought leadership, speaking at events, or engaging with contacts via social media. There are many more.
When you strip some of these activities, you can see that they can be traced back to 5 core skills:
Core Skill | Needed For: | Behaviours |
Presenting | Webinars, conferences, podcasts, pitch presentations, speaking to client teams, stakeholder training | Speaking clearly, maintaining eye contact, handling questions with composure, being aware of the audience, encouraging interaction, noticing, link technical knowledge with business outcomes, and use client-focused language |
Writing | Social media, articles, pitches, communication with clients, Thought Leadership, Directories | Clear messages, avoid jargon, tailor content to audience, focus on client need, highlight take-aways, tone matches medium, use storytelling, share unique insights, results-driven, and personalise |
Communicating | Networking | Proactive and start conversations, show genuine interest, actively listen, demonstrate knowledge of what is relevant to the other person, clear way of introducing themselves, keep in touch and connect people with others to add value |
Being Strategic | Planning BD, Pitching, KAM | Set clear goals, identify targets and priority clients, plan efforts in advance, anticipate client needs, use client feedback to shape offerings |
Problem-Solving | Selling, CX, Pitching, Value Proposition, Commerciality | Actively listen, ask insightful questions, customise solutions, define the issues in a way that resonates, show how they create value, articulate solutions in a clear and persuasive way, make interactions seamless, remove friction, ensure clients feel heard and seen, and build trust |
Where rainmakers fit and the ABC of Business Development
We talk about the ABC of Business Development. These link to mindset and behaviours.
A – Act – For Business development to be successful, you have to trust the process and do “little and often”. Business Development seldom works when it is a big bang when things go quiet. What behaviours can you do more of, every day?
B – Bridge – Think of Business Development as a Bridge. In the sales funnel, it is the bridge between potential clients being aware of what you do and becoming a client. The BD Bridge is where you need to connect with stakeholders, and be the key joiner of dots for them. Whether that be filling in gaps in their understanding, linking them to information or to people who might help them, or helping them work through their problems. At this stage you aren’t selling, you are finding out about them and they are finding out more about you.
C – Convert – Business development is about converting opportunities to sales. However, sales and rainmakers (who excel at the C) happen at the end of the process. They might get most of the praise, but they don’t happen without the A and the B. Indeed, the best pitches are ones where there is no competition – the buyer has already made up their mind that they want to use you. You can solve their problem!
For more on our – different – take on rainmakers – see here.
Super Skills: key to the overriding objective of establishing and nurturing relationships
When we take a look at the traditional sales funnel, we can see that business development is all about the middle of the funnel. It is about building trust and establishing and nurturing relationships.
We often come back to the trust equation, and what it means to be a trusted advisor. Credibility and Reliability can easily be achieved through thoughtful action. Emotion is harder to establish, but can be a key differentiator and it can also be achieved through thoughtful action. As we know, self-orientation can also break much of what BD tries to build. It is why the B in our ABC is so important!
So what key skills sit behind the trust equation and what does it take to be a Trusted Advisor? Self-awareness. This in turn leads to emotional intelligence, which in turn helps build relationships. How do you build self-awareness and EQ? Coaching is a great way to do this! It is why so much of what we do uses coaching as a foundation. Business Development training shouldn’t be about telling professionals what to do. They will likely end up not doing it! It is about being curious and asking powerful questions to create those light bulb moments which will help professionals want to do business development.
The other skill that underpins so much of what is needed to establish relationships, is active listening. This helps with building rapport, influence, and even with the knottier side of BD; managing conflict and dealing with difficult clients and stakeholders. Active listening underpins much of what we do. Active listening sounds easy and achievable. It can be both of those things but it too requires a high level of EQ.
Super Skill | Needed For: |
Active Listening | Building rapport, Influence, Conflict Management, Adapting |
Emotional Intelligence | Building Relationships, Building Trust, Effective Communication and persuasion, Handling Rejection, Team collaboration |
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