Training any new member of staff is challenging (especially when remote) but training new staff for new business development is particularly tough, simply because cold channel is a very unforgiving sector to specialise in. Unless you’ve previously worked in door-to-door charity sales collecting for slightly injured badgers, you probably won’t have been told “no” as much in your life as your first day in biz dev.
The temptation for any newbie is to take too soft a “win”. Someone absent-mindedly says: “sure, send me some literature” and ol’ newbie puts that down as an interested party. It’s the kind of well-meaning positivity that can only come back to bite you in the rear when a client asks for more information about this ‘promising new contact’ only to find it was really nothing worth reporting.
The simple trick is to be honest with yourself. If you have a chat and someone says, “call me in June” is that because something is happening/changing in June, or is it just a smart way for them to ensure they don’t have to deal with you for another six months?
When someone says, “send me info” feel free to say no. Say something like “I’d much rather know when is a better time to have this conversation so that our details don’t simply get lost in all the noise”. You might score a few points for being brave/honest and you might have a slightly longer conversation than if you just agreed to send over a PDF and let them hang up.
Running a dishonest new business agency would easy. You can make the most uninterested prospect sound like they’re on the cusp of buying (keep them dangling there for months). Being honest in your assessment of interest levels is a tougher line to take, but it’ll serve your business development endeavours much better.