1. 5 Common Mistakes inNew Business Development
For SMEs in the IT Industry

2. New Business Development is literally like Breaking New Ground. You take the landscape of wilderness, break the soil and make it ready for first ever sowing and first ever reaping.

3. 1. Help! I dont know what I am sowing! Issues in getting the Value Proposition right.

4. Not being able to articulate your value proposition in two to three sentences.
Not ALL members of your Business Development team know it by heart.

5. Every business exists to add value to someone or some other process. What is your Value Proposition? Unless you can articulate it in two sentences, unless your ENTIRE team knows it by heart, you will be ineffective in communicating it to your clients.
This introspection, reflection, and articulation does not have to be long drawn out exercise. Many times the entrepreneur, CEO or the leader of the business knows this instinctively.
What is important is the acknowledgement, communication and belief of this statement by the team.

6. I dont know where my New Ground is! Issues in defining your Target Market

7. Even though you may have defined your
Geography
Domain
Industry
Corporations
People
Your Target Market really is THAT ONE PERSON

8. Your final target market is a name, email, phone number. This is the person that you need to communicate with. This is usually the Executive Decision Maker or often called the C Level. You usually interact with the The Decision Supporters and also the Gate Keepers.
Have you got named employees for this responsibility (often called inside sales)? Inside sales does the job of treating this data with its deserved respect, creating it, combing through it for correctness, updating it regularly, literally like ants in an anthill. How tightly do you run this ship?
The Inside Sales Team usually relies on a CRM system (like Salesforce, Zoho, Sage etc) for the management and upkeep of the data. Have you analysed what system is best for you? Are you using it to its full capacity?

9. Not knowing if you are watering your crops right.
Issues in communicating your message.

10. Not having collaterals that are valuable for your target market.
Its not about what you can do but how clients benefit from what you do.
Its not about saying why and what you are doing but what market trends you can display that make sense to the client.
Essentially your belief of How can I help my client improve his business? needs to shine thru the communication for it to be effective.

11. You are using Customer Touch Points like
Email marketing
Telemarketing
Events, Seminars, Conferences
Internet SEO, Social Media, Webinars
And you disperse White Papers, Trends in the industry, Case Studies
But are all these coordinated?
For example do you use social media, webinars to talk about your upcoming event/seminar/conference and then send out an email and track if it was read and then make a call to see if you could send out a white paper and then get and appointment for a meeting / presentation?

12. Not knowing if your crop is growing at all
Issues in Monitoring

13. Weekly TargetActual
Emails ? ?
Leads ? ?
Calls ? ?
Appointments ? ?
Meetings ? ?
Events Set ? ?
Follow up calls ? ?

14. How religious and rigorous are your WEEKLY huddles?
Are they time bound, precise, stats oriented?
Do you discuss wins and losses and their reasons?
Do you have a dashboard that you look at every week?

15. Depending too much on the right person to reap.
Issues in sales closures.

16. Depending too much on Natural Born Talented sellers and very little on disciplined self taught sellers.
Depending too much on Aggressive Hunters instead of excellent listeners.
Focusing too much on high target, high incentive, quick turnaround, than methodical sowing in season and reaping in season

17. Have you got the 70% of steps right from Breaking New Ground to Reaping?
If not, you will tend to depend on high cost, talented sellers.
New Business Development is part Art, part Science and partly Talent. Its not rocket science, however. But it sure is an EXACTING discipline.
It is possible to INSTITUTIONALIZE this discipline.

18. Institutionalized and Disciplined process helps you to
Scale up
It builds your knowledge base
Improves your sales conversion rates
Reduces your dependence on high cost, difficult to replace talented sellers
At the same time it builds clarity of goals
And a culture of accountability and professionalism

19. Geetanjali Dighegeetanjalid@gmail.comhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/geetanjalid