Whether you’re new to business development, have a sales background, or are an experienced campaigner simply seeking new ideas and a fresh perspective, Business Development That Works offers a simple-to-follow process bursting with practical insights and advice to bring the results you desire.
In Business Development That Works, Richard has distilled 35 years of experience working in senior business development, sales and marketing roles at leading organisations in both the UK and Australia, and his extensive experience training and coaching business development and sales teams across Australia and abroad.
Anyone working in a consultative sales environment would benefit from reading this book, including business development managers, sales managers and sales consultants, development managers, corporate sales executives, client relationship managers, client services directors, function and venue coordinators. Especially if you’re keen to avoid the guesswork and implement a clear process and system for repeatable results, this book is for you.
Business Development That Works explains the most crucial concepts of business development clearly and simply. It’s a welcome relief from the jargon-filled business books that frequently over-complicate things, leaving readers discouraged from trying new strategies and feeling far from inspired.
Richard’s processes and methodology reveal him to be a seasoned pro, helping the reader navigate the often tricky path of attracting new clients, while making business development activities robust, thoughtful, effective, and routine.
Richard’s unique blend of commercial experience, relevant qualifications, extensive training experience and broad client base make him a recognised leader in the business development field. From technology and financial services companies, to arts and cultural institutions, charities, sports, events, exhibitions, and city authorities, Richard has helped countless people to improve their business development process in order to compel the right opportunities to them. His process has yielded fantastic results across a broad range of sectors and industries, in a wide variety of situations.
This book makes Richard’s expertise and experience highly accessible. It’s the perfect introduction to Richard’s process if you’re considering hiring him to speak at your next conference, or for in-house training, consulting or facilitation.
Richard’s approach of emphasising everyday, practical actions that build consistently towards the desired result means you’ll instantly be able to implement what you read. For highly effective, instant results, this book is second-to-none.
Book chapters
1: Identifying your ideal client
Take the guesswork out of research and business development activities by identifying exactly who you’re seeking to target so you can hone your focus and better invest your limited time, budget and energy.
2: Developing your proposition
Develop a clear, compelling and concise value proposition so that you’re better able to attract your ideal clients.
3: Finding prospects
Learn how to develop a business activity plan that is realistic and robust by better understanding the rate at which your activities translate into new clients.
4: Refining prospects
Not all prospects are created equal. Refining your prospects will free up your time and focus to concentrate your time and energy on high-value prospects.
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5: Approaching prospects
Make your first impression count by making your first approach truly customer-centric.
6: Attracting prospects
Become magnetic to your prospects – demonstrating your expertise in order to attract your best-fit prospects to approach you.
7: Preparing for a sales meeting
Obtaining a first meeting with a prospect can be challenging – learn how to ensure you’re prepared so that these meetings are efficient and productive.
8: Building rapport
Building rapport is essential for effective business development and sales. Learn how to systematically build rapport and see how this naturally translates into new sales, repeat sales and recurring revenue for the organisation.
9: Uncovering needs
See a dramatic increase in your conversion rate when you learn how to better uncover the needs of your prospects.
10: Exploring solutions
Learn a highly-effective questioning and listening technique that will enable you to explore solutions together with your prospect in order to be far more effective with securing the sale.
11: Presenting compelling solutions
Keep your prospect, client and customer at the centre of all you do and you’ll immediately improve your results. This chapter breaks down every piece of a compelling, winning solution while highlighting where most presentations fall down. Learn the exact steps to present a compelling solution that wins new business.
12: Closing the sale
Learn how to build commitment throughout your relationship with the prospect and how to read buying signals so that you can recalibrate your approach and respond accordingly. Most importantly, provoke action in the prospect towards your desired outcome – yes!
13: Servicing and retaining clients
Explore the mindset, tools and techniques for effective client service and retention so you can make real impact on your client attrition rate.
14: Maximising performance
Your success isn’t just from win-to-win. Learn how to set yourself up for long-term success in business development with effective, science-based techniques to creating a confident, motivated, positive mindset on demand. Plus, how to use your business development experiences to further drive your personal performance.