Take a deep breath—and resist temptation

Imagine this. Your sales are starting to turn soft and your competitors seem to be gaining ground. Of course, you know what's wrong. Your business development process isn't exactly running on all cylinders. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, CEOs often react to stalled sales by blasting off in multiple directions in hopes of landing some new business. Stay cool. Successful business development often requires a team effort that leverages your sales force, product development group, and customer relationship managers. Nothing good is going to come of a team that doesn't know how to work together. So fix that first.

Set a clear direction and watch your team gel

The best way to get a diverse team to gel is to have a single objective and a plan for success. It's not as easy as it sounds. One of the hardest things to do in business is to focus. There's always a lot of pressure to produce results. And if a strategy doesn't pan out immediately, it's tempting to jump to something else. If your team isn't strong enough, that will only make matters worse. It's up to you to set the course and stick to it. That doesn't mean that you want to keep throwing resources at a failed strategy, but you do want to make sure to give it enough time. You are investing in your team and developing a model for how to pursue new business more effectively. It may take a little longer than you'd like, but you'll never be successful unless you have a well-oiled machine in place.

Select for success

There's nothing like success to pull people together. So set your team up for success. When you pick an objective to pursue, do your best to make sure that it's achievable. Once your team has had success at something easy, they'll be more prepared to take on harder challenges and play to win. And that's what you want. Make them hungry for more.

Give the process a tune up and move on

It won't work perfectly the first time, and there's bound to be some room for improvement. However, you can capitalize on the thrill of victory and get pumped up for the next challenge. The beauty of focusing on a single objective is that you can easily see what went wrong. If you are pursuing multiple paths simultaneously, you will have trouble isolating problems. There are just too many places to hide nasty little secrets. Keep everything open to the team, and make sure that there is continual feedback on what's working and what isn't. Correct problems early on, when they are simple and the stakes are low. Don't wait to spin out on the first sharp curve you hit in the road ahead.