Business Development Consulting
Resources for growth - assessment - planning - training - implementation
The term, business development has stood for many things. Here I use it to describe activities that lead to a sustainable increase in sales. This can be as simple as winning a major customer, or as comprehensive as redefining a business. In most cases the purpose is to increase income and capital growth for a businesses stakeholders. While ongoing business development depends on some form of continuous focus, the resources for initiating and implementing change are usually not immediately available and may be too expensive to acquire on a permanent basis. These are the circumstances where a business can make great strides with the help of outside experts - consultants.
Comprehensive Business Assessment
Evaluating organisation, team, and individual effectiveness creates an invaluable foundation for planning and equips everyone in the organisation with a route map for success.
Creating Effective Strategy and Supporting Plans
Strategy effectiveness and plan quality depend on the amount of intelligence, experience, and expertise that is concentrated in formulation. The involvement of an experienced consultant who can introduce an outside perspective and contribute ideas and methods used successfully elsewhere, raises the quality of business planning.
Implementing a Repeatable Sales Process
Business growth depends on rigorous forethought, planning, and preparation. It is surprising how few individuals, teams, or organisations have an up to date and accurate model of current best practice for each step in their sales process. Having a framework helps ensure that customer facing people and their support organisation contribute to the best of their ability.
Preparation is much easier with a template or framework. Watch or listen to these two short videos to acquire a framework that I have used to help clients increase sales performance. You may be able to use our framework without recourse to outside help.
Developing or Improving Messaging
Identifying, reviewing, and revising business messages should happen continuously or at least once a quarter. It is not uncommon to find that sales messages that haven't been revisited since the inception of a company. In some cases they have never been defined.
Initiating positive business change may be as simple as finding an effective executive coach. All world class athletes benefit from the support of a professional coach, sometimes several. Why should business executives be expected to achieve great things on their own? In my experience of both having and being a coach, it has always been worthwhile. This article explains why a coach can make a tangible difference. Having a business coach or consultant with the right experience is often all that is necessary to accelerate business development.
Training | Coaching | Simulation
When current aspirations, standards and practices are understood and strategies and plans have been formulated, training and coaching becomes focused and significantly more effective.
Improving sales force software application effectiveness
Using technology and software applications to make sales people more efficient has been a quest for nearly two decades. Some have achieved a return on their investment yet many, perhaps most, have not. Because I have specialist expertise and an outside perspective, I can often propose and shepherd some simple changes that make a a bankable difference.
Having a score board that provides instant non judgemental feedback, while people still have time to correct any drift, is essential. Benchmarks can be compared internally and with data from competitors, providing continuous feedback on performance. It is an obvious thing to do however, setting up effective business wide and macro benchmarks can be time consuming and difficult. I have helped businesses get over this hurdle.
Resources
When you don't have people with the right business development skills in place, I can arrange representation. Whether you need temporary or campaign based telephone sales people, lead generation services, market research, channel development, or people to open up new territories, I can use my network to find and introduce experienced, credible, fully trained, and effective individuals who operate on a full time or part time basis.
Investment
Fees are an investment that is offset against a guaranteed return. I need to be sure that I can fulfil our guarantee and deliver a measurable business improvement before agreeing to work with a business.
The amount of the investment varies enormously according to the circumstances of a client. I can provide one to one coaching for as little as £95 per session. Larger projects might involve comprehensive assessment, strategy and plan development, best practice sales process definition, training, coaching, and benchmarking. Comprehensive engagements usually entail spending several days a month at a client’s premises.
Company's and individuals who need to increase sales of technology, software, or know-how based business solutions can achieve business growth through the use of temporary business development resources. To find out more about using my services, telephone +44 (0)118 933 1357 or send email to info@clivemiller.com. Alternatively, use the contact form here.