Business Development
Use a Small-Team Approach for Creating Change and Developing New Business
New business development requires a different approach than selling your core capabilities
You have a successful business, but you can't understand why you've failed to penetrate new markets. Sound familiar? Many CEOs of small companies find themselves in a very similar situation. And it's usually because they have relied on their traditional sales and marketing approaches to venture outside of their core businesses.
Strip your business model down to its essence to create change
Just think back to how you started your business and you will quickly see the solution to new business development. If your company is like most, you started with a small team of motivated people who could cover sales, product development, and customer relationship management. In fact, you may have even covered everything by yourself. The point is that you didn't have an organization that was partitioned into different functional groups. There was one team, and everyone worked very closely together to create business. The organization was sales-driven, but the selling process was tightly integrated with product development and client interactions.
Dump internal politics to focus on what made your company successful
How can you recreate that powerful engine that you used to start a new business? You need to go back to your roots. Take the most entrepreneurial people in your organization and empower them to create something new. It's not just about sales. It's about penetrating new markets, developing new products, and leveraging your existing client relationships to get the feedback that you need to be successful. Let your people behave like entrepreneurs and isolate them from the overhead and politics of your organization. Free them to create the sales tools and prototype products that are needed to capture new business and grow the client base in that new area. They also need to be able to spin off new business to the rest of the organization so that they don't get too bogged down in management and divert their attention from growth.
Create new markets and new products by leveraging your strengths
Of course, you have a distinct advantage now that you didn't have when you got started -- you have an existing business. So start there. Let the new business development group leverage the strengths of your existing business: your clients, your technology, your relationships, and your infrastructure. You can create new business by letting the group bootstrap their way into new markets that are closely related to your existing business. Taking small steps will provide a quick succession of wins for the group and ultimately land your company in businesses that will help you build a diverse revenue base over time.
You have a successful business, but you can't understand why you've failed to penetrate new markets. Sound familiar? Many CEOs of small companies find themselves in a very similar situation. And it's usually because they have relied on their traditional sales and marketing approaches to venture outside of their core businesses.
Strip your business model down to its essence to create change
Just think back to how you started your business and you will quickly see the solution to new business development. If your company is like most, you started with a small team of motivated people who could cover sales, product development, and customer relationship management. In fact, you may have even covered everything by yourself. The point is that you didn't have an organization that was partitioned into different functional groups. There was one team, and everyone worked very closely together to create business. The organization was sales-driven, but the selling process was tightly integrated with product development and client interactions.
Dump internal politics to focus on what made your company successful
How can you recreate that powerful engine that you used to start a new business? You need to go back to your roots. Take the most entrepreneurial people in your organization and empower them to create something new. It's not just about sales. It's about penetrating new markets, developing new products, and leveraging your existing client relationships to get the feedback that you need to be successful. Let your people behave like entrepreneurs and isolate them from the overhead and politics of your organization. Free them to create the sales tools and prototype products that are needed to capture new business and grow the client base in that new area. They also need to be able to spin off new business to the rest of the organization so that they don't get too bogged down in management and divert their attention from growth.
Create new markets and new products by leveraging your strengths
Of course, you have a distinct advantage now that you didn't have when you got started -- you have an existing business. So start there. Let the new business development group leverage the strengths of your existing business: your clients, your technology, your relationships, and your infrastructure. You can create new business by letting the group bootstrap their way into new markets that are closely related to your existing business. Taking small steps will provide a quick succession of wins for the group and ultimately land your company in businesses that will help you build a diverse revenue base over time.