Business Development and selling
Our advice on business development and selling skills covers the theory and practical aspects of selling for professional people. We show clients how to maximise selling effectively by following a tried and tested method for developing prospects more quickly and more easily into customers, and then into the most loyal client category – “long-term trusted adviser status”.
Background
In the past, most professional people were very unlikely to have ‘sold’ anything; they naturally relied on their professional training and expert abilities to attract customers and clients. They have never had to go into their marketplace to find clients for themselves.
Those old markets all but cease to exist now, with clients switching their investment banking, stockbroking, accounting, legal, advertising, PR advisers and other suppliers with alarming regularity.
Changing your style
We show professionals how to understand clients’ needs better, how to differentiate themselves from the competition, and how to prioritise their time and selling efforts for maximum effectiveness.
Topics
- We advise clients on the best approach to selling in theory, with practical exercises and tips on how to avoid the usual barriers of objections, resistance and doubt.
- We explain why it is usually the sales person who puts up those barriers, and we dispel the myth of the ‘close’. We examine closely the ‘BD Funnel’.
- We explain the key stages of the GPB ‘BD Diamond’ (see diagram to the right), from ‘suspect’ through ‘prospect’ to ‘customer’ and ‘client’. Most BD advisers stop there. We show you how to create long-term, trusted adviser status clients – the ultimate client type.
GPB developed the diagram on the left to illustrate the entire BD process. Prospect Relationship Management (PRM) is our matching term for the commonly known CRM acronym, Client Relationship Management, used to describe the relationship once the business has been won.
The key issue is that business developers tend to reduce the effort made with clients gradually after being first appointed, until the dreaded day when the client fires the supplier. The key skill is to BREAK OPEN the diamond!
