Ok. Sounds kinda silly to ask doesn’t it, but it’s easy for these terms to become faceless generic phrases that people use in sentences but don’t entirely grasp. Like “hedge funds” or “bitcoins” or “monogamy”.
We’ve recently found ourselves pitching to prospects who seem to go to great lengths to ask ‘what exactly are your methods?” or “…and how exactly will you be doing our new business?”
Initially, I thought they were just testing us, but I’ve come to realise that while some folks will honestly tell you "I don’t even know where to start” when it comes to biz dev, many others simply don’t know what it is.
So, without wishing to patronise those in the know, I thought it’d be worth defining what WE mean when we talk about new business development. Put very simply, biz dev means increasing your client base (and revenue) by doing anything other than sitting waiting for the phone to ring or email to ping.
Networking at a show and sharing business cards? That’s new business development (as long as you bother to contact the new folks you meet once you’ve got back to the office).
Calling a couple of companies you’ve never spoken to before to introduce yourself? New biz. TICK!
Putting together a small batch of outreach emails to initiate some creds-sharing. Yep - that counts (although we wouldn’t recommend that particular one without some specific ‘tips’ in effect).
Many companies are successfully ticking over having come into being when someone went solo and brought old clients with them from a previous career. As a result, they’ve never needed to (or wanted to) do any cold channel prospecting; it doesn’t feel like fun and might involve people saying “go away”. We get it. That’s why we do it for you.
There’s much more to new business development than listed here, but it’s an interesting discipline that warrants investigation if you are one of the many uninitiated. Don’t feel embarrassed - come and say hello and we can tell you more.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.