Embracing Your Business Development Beast
Edward, a colleague in the creative and marketing industry, made the declaration, "You are a beast!" after learning how Perfect Image manages development activity. We track and measure all phone sales calls, client visits, written correspondence and the quotes we submit. My metrics alone include approximately 100 phone calls and 30 visits each month. So nearly six times a day, I call on existing and prospective clients. As I work to meet development objectives for which I'm responsible, I consider how our approach might benefit our clients, especially those in advancement and development.
Development is no fairy tale
I've been in professional sales for more than three decades and I love what I do more today than when I started. I'm also realistic. Business development is as real world as it gets. It made a difference that I received excellent training and worked with the finest managers and mentors. Early on I learned that there is indeed an art to sales - and an equal measure of science, too.
What gets measured gets managed
This is the science of development and it could not be more relevant for today's advancement professionals. The fundamentals begin not only with setting objectives, but also planned activities and measurements that will yield and sustain desired results. If you would like to see an example of how to do this, please e-mail me at ira@perfectimageprinting.com. I'm passionate about paying it forward by sharing what I have learned.
What about the beauty?
Development metrics, whether they represent revenue, marketing results or responses to surveys, have so little to do with real needs in the marketplace. Further, whatever we are selling - a worthy non-profit mission, a quality education, or in my case, great printing and marketing support solutions - is not what's important to our constituents. As management sage Peter Drucker explained with great clarity: "...what the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or service does for him or her.
So while there is a definite science to development, the beauty is found in asking and listening to what people and organizations need, and providing meaningful answers.
Happily ever after
Our favorite stories at Perfect Image are the ones in which we awaken education and non-profit organizations to a printer that respects the integrity of their brands, and who they can trust as a second set of eyes. We know they don't wake up each morning thinking about buying print, but we know they need this valuable commitment from a printing partner. For these clients, we leverage what we have learned in serving some of the nation's most focused brands, such as Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Macy's and UPS. Education and non-profit organizations have equally important needs, but due to limited resources, many are trapped into thinking they have to settle for low to average quality print and customer service. That is not the case at Perfect Image, and breaking that spell has helped our clients build more extraordinary brands and find new success.
Any discussion about effective development would be incomplete without the vital roles of marketing and communications. In the next part of this article series, I look forward to sharing thoughts on strategy, time, budget, cohesive efforts, ownership, accountability and a big one"...avoiding mixed drivers.
