John Tyreman: 0:19

Welcome business developers to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I'm John Tyerman. As always, I'm joined by my trusty co host, Mark Wainwright. Hello,

Mark Wainwright: 0:29

John. good to be here today. We are going to hit at the core of really what you and I believe this podcast is all about. We are going to talk about what is broken in business development today, and we're going to do so joined. By some voices of other professionals in the industry. Yeah.

John Tyreman: 0:56

It's not just us talking about what's broken in business development today. We've got a range of different perspectives, which I think you're really going to enjoy. and, as you're listening to this, if you think of something that really grinds your gears about business development, send Mark and I your thoughts. we'd love to hear what you think and, if it strikes a chord with us, we'd love to include it on the show as well.

Mark Wainwright: 1:19

we heard some great things from some people that we spoke to, we would love to hear from others provided this, this episode works out, John, this is a little bit of an experiment for us, And, and I mentioned the purpose of this. This podcast, when you and I first sat down and started talking about what it is, what we want to talk about it, even what we're going to call it, all those things, the whole concept of, business development is broken in so many ways, or, business development is so complex that it needs to be. Split up, broken down, beaten up a little bit because everybody just sort of throws all of this marketing and sales stuff in a big pile calls it business development. So that's, that's core to this episode. That's core to this podcast is, There's so many things in there, makes it so complex, overly complex often that someone needs to really tease it apart, pull it apart, break it up a bit. And, again and again, we run across the, these instances where, we find that. Yeah. The whole world of business development is a little bit broken. And we're going to dig into some of that

John Tyreman: 2:25

today. I believe there were, there was a talk of sledgehammers at one point, breaking it up into all these little pieces. I think that's a great visual. so what, why don't we dive into it, Mark? we've organized our guests. in terms of the topics that they provided and how they map to the sales and marketing continuum, which is a tool that we've used on this show in the past. Imagine a scale of one to five, a linear scale where, the ones, the one end of the spectrum, Are your marketing activities? They're led by marketing individuals. And on the right side of the spectrum, you have sales activities that are operated and performed by sales, individuals in a sales role, and so we've got a range of different topics. From our guests today, we're, we'll be talking about the go, no go process. We'll be talking about, the role of marketing and lead generation. We'll be talking about the communications gap between seller doers, salespeople and marketing, the deployment of resources, channels, and tactics, and then your brand, your website. And, it's impact on the, the business development process. So we're really spanning the spectrum and we've got a lot of different perspectives on what's broken at each point along the way.

Mark Wainwright: 3:47

Good. So we are going to start at more towards the sales end of things. for lack of a better reason, we'll start at more of the force and the fives. I had a conversation with Kristen McCumber. Kristen McCumber is the founder and CEO of summit strategy. Summit strategy is a woman owned small business providing marketing and proposal writing services for government contractors. She does a. Bunch of GovCon work is how it's referred to, and it's complex, it's difficult. there's a lot, there's a lot to it. So, Kristen and I had an opportunity to sit down and talk about her work in the a EC architecture, engineering and construction world, and in government contracting. And I asked Kristen what she felt. Was broken about business development and she wanted to focus on the go, no cope process and the go, no, go process for those that aren't sort of intimately familiar with. And I would imagine most are the go, no, go process has to do with, when an organization, when a consultant is presented with an opportunity, what are they, what conversations they have? What do they have a checklist? What process do they use? to vet that and to figure out if they're going to pursue it or not. So we talked about that. Like I said, I think on the continuum, from our ones to fives, we think it's more sort of on the four end, I would call it a four. I think it's generally a sales led marketing supported activity. And, let's take a listen to what Kristen McCumber has to say. about the go no go process.

Krystn Macomber: 5:31

In my 20 plus years, I've spent 17 of those were in the corporate setting as an employee, obviously leading and building proposal teams and marketing teams. And then the last three of that as a business owner, working with businesses of all sizes. And it's really interesting because all of the firms I've been, had the experience of working with and for, struggle with the same things. And when you think about the pursuit process. And in particular, like proposals and how those kind of things dovetail. One aspect of the pursuit process in particular, the go/no-go process, and people really struggle with it. And sometimes when I say those words, it's like dirty words because people really just have a visceral reaction to the go no go process in general. But they really struggle with that piece of the process and for various reasons, you know, a lot of people just don't have a process in general. They're pursuing anything that crosses their desk or it's just completely ad hoc, undocumented, unstructured, just completely chaotic approach. It's like that go, I like to say it, the go, go, go, and then go some more process. I've worked at global firms that have thousands of people, but they all have limited time and resources, whether it's a global enterprise or a very small company, we all have limited time and limited resources. And so we have to make sure that we're spending our limited time and resources on the right opportunities. And so if you don't have that, the right go/no-go process, we're burning out our resources. And so not, not really having that strategic go no go process means that we're, we don't have that strategy, we don't have that game plan, we're throwing Jell-O at a wall and just hoping it sticks. If we have an ad hoc, undocumented process, It really means that it's easy for folks to go rogue. There's no roadmap, people aren't rowing in the same direction, there's low morale, which that doesn't feel good either, and that, we all know what that feels like. We've probably all worked in organizations that have that, uh, sort of environment. So then the flip side is when we put a process in place. I've seen it go, Too much like too processed and so I've seen firms where they get too hung up on the actual like form of the go no go Where it's like too complicated, you know, I've worked in firms where we had like these auto calculating Excel forms I worked at one company and you know had a big it was like a 40 questions, auto calculating Excel form, and then at the bottom of the Excel, it had a question that said, if your gut says go, add 200 points. And it's like, what's, what's the point of that? I've also seen it where you have these multimillion dollar CRMs that have all these, you know, embedded forms and questions. The form does not matter. And I think a lot of firms and a lot of people get hung up on the actual questions and the form and what the output of the go/no-go needs to be. And it's really, it's, it, to me, that doesn't matter. It's the, the habit and the. The conversation and really just getting into the exercise of asking ourselves the tough questions. And I think a lot of firms shy away from that because it forces ourselves to ask ourselves the tough questions and forces ourselves to really focus on client relationships. Because if we really look at the factors that weigh heavily into go/no-go decisions, it should be, have we talked to the client before the RFP? And a lot of times the answer to that is no. And so that's a lot of times the reason we shy away from putting go/no-go process in place. Because we don't do that hard work of having those client relationships and client strategies, capture planning, all those things pre RFP. So a lot of firms just get stuck on that form and that, that just tough conversation.

Mark Wainwright: 9:29

Kristen is so right about that. This, it is a tough conversation. It is constantly. I've been in the architecture, engineering and construction industry for over two decades or so, and nobody had it figured out then, and nobody's got it figured out now, and it seems to get more and more complex. It seems that all too often you find that people are chasing everything and anything. Which obviously puts a strain on internal resources. People are moving in many different directions. It's very confusing. Or, if they're not chasing everything and anything, they're, they have a go no go process that's overly complex. many pages long. Long forms to complete. people spend way too much time kind of going through this decision making process. But at the end of the day, she also notes that, yeah, it can be gained. Right? She mentioned the one example where, If your gut says, go add 200 points to the bottom of the score sheet. What a convoluted

John Tyreman: 10:31

process.

Mark Wainwright: 10:33

Right. So, so, and the point she wants to make is a really good one. firms need to really ask themselves the very hard questions. They need to challenge themselves to stick to a process and to really consider their clients. Consultant relationships, because, it's all too easy to say that, this industry is just about, it's all about relationships. It's not all about relationships, but they are really important. And, if you're trying to make a, a hard decision about whether you're going to pursue. Some opportunity or not. And when you pursue these opportunities, John, they are super expensive. People spend tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars just in the pursuit. Right. And that's, you don't get compensated for that at all. So relationships are really important at that point, because if the, if you're aware of the client, that they're aware of you, if you've built some relationship there, then, you can start to tip the scales in your favor. If there's no, if there's no relationship there, if there's no awareness there, then you're kind of behind the game a bit. So it is creating and building and maintaining those relationships is the hard work that people often, often avoid.

John Tyreman: 11:42

Well said. Yeah. I would summarize what's broken. What Kristen is describing as broken is really a lack of understanding of the ideal clients and the kind of work that benefits them. The firm, like you mentioned, chasing those low quality opportunities, put strain on the resources and increases the cost of sale, increases the number of proposals, but it might decrease the win rate as well. So those are a couple of empirical data points that could result at the hands of a poor no go go, no go process. Great points. So our next clip is from Florian Heinrichs. who is the founder at client friendly, which is a marketing consultancy for professional services firms. Florian is also the host of the unbillable hours podcast. if you're listening to this, you'd likely enjoy what he and his cohost Ash, do over there on, on his show. it's a good one. It is a good one. I've been a guest on that show. Have you been a guest on their show? I have. I have. Very cool. check out Mark and I and our separate guest appearances there. Florian, I asked him about what's broken in business development as it relates to lead generation, which I would put in the three category. So I think you'll enjoy what Florian has to say. Here comes Florian.

Florian Heinrichs: 12:58

If you make lead generation the objective and the outcome you go after. So we do X so that we can have Y as the outcome and Y is leads, you are setting yourself up for failure because the objective should be to help the audience. I have a friend, Luk Smeyers, who always says business development is rooted in educating the audience. I agree. But I would say the objective is not just to educate the audience, but help them. Your marketing should just be free consulting. Software companies have a free trial or a demo version or whatever. And, your marketing content should help people do stuff. That's, I'm just profoundly convinced by this. But you don't do that. That's one thing that is then broken in the industry with regards to lead generation. The other thing, however, that annoys me greatly is in the SaaS sphere, there are marketers who I respect like a ton. Chris Walker would be a prime example. Others also bang this drum about how the lead gen playbook is dead and so forth. I know where they're coming from. I understand they're basically saying the same thing, right? If you make generating leads the objective things go wrong, the way their stuff gets repeated and the way the message sort of permeates the market is also wrong because let's not kid ourselves. Of course you have to do lead generation. It's just a, it's just a step in the process. If you want to join Chris Walker's public podcasting sessions, you have to go to a form and submit an email. It's not as if he's saying never do lead gen of any kind. There is some sort of transaction has to happen. People have to give you some information about themselves so you can understand who's coming in the door. Right. So saying it's completely dead and wrong, not good, making it the Holy Grail is not a good truth somewhere in the middle. And I promised you one more point with professional services. I think in professional services, the prevalent virus is that marketing does lead generation and we have leads, however we define them and however we badly treat that process, stuff gets handed to the business and then it breaks down because everybody's busy. So, yeah. Um, Oh, that's a good one. There is often, if, if I step into firms where there is some marketing funnel, lead generation work, whatever happening, and it's kind of working, there's always dead opportunities. in the system because someone brought these people in the shop and then they were left alone because everybody else had to do some project work and that was Friday and you forgot.

John Tyreman: 15:14

I like Florian's example when he says that, uh, it's a Friday when the lead comes in and everyone forgot. if I was to kind of summarize what he said, it's really, kind of what's broken is an understanding of how new business needs to be balanced with that ability to deliver. On work.

Mark Wainwright: 15:30

hopefully there are, individuals and, and firms out there who start to reconsider what lead generation is all about. I know that, I am aware and am very close with a number of professional services firms who. Don't regard lead generation, accurately, you know, don't do the right things online. Don't believe that, that social media activities have an impact on generating new business. They think it's all, handshakes and backslaps. And, I think they are, they're off the mark there. So good one.

John Tyreman: 16:05

let's stay in this messy middle a little bit longer. Let's wade a little bit deeper into the murky waters. and let's try to separate, separate things out a little bit. So this, our next clip is from Pat Johnston, who was the president of Vista Research Services, and Pat helps companies with the data processing aspect of survey research. it's a B2B operation. He serves other businesses. he works with B2C companies as well as B2B companies. Um, so he has an interesting perspective on things, but, one of the things that we. Talked about, was the feedback loop between the people that are selling services and the marketing team, that's managing the positioning of the firm and, and all of the marketing activities. And that feedback loop is really important because there are some things that prospects may say in a conversation that would be relevant to, the marketing folks, but sometimes that information just completely gets lost. So here comes Pat.

Pat Johnston: 17:07

One of the things that crossed my mind just now is the whole tug of war that often, maybe it's a disconnect sometimes with your sales folks versus the marketing people that are creating the messages and so forth, because there should be a lot more communication, I think, taking place between those two parties, especially if a sales is observing certain behaviors like. In the field that marketing is unaware of, perhaps the person they're speaking to is frequently mentioning a trade publication or a digital magazine. And marketing is unaware of that magazine. So unless they have a conversation or some kind of means of communicating with marketing. That information is lost, and it could, could be quite valuable. So it's like, we have our finger on the pulse of the customer here. Is that, is this information being disseminated to all the, the relevant departments? And oftentimes it's not, and perhaps some people view it as. I don't want to look at this report or go to this presentation. So this is where I think it's important for leadership to go ahead and make certain that they recognize this is among their responsibilities. You need to digest this information and then internalize it and go ahead and carry it out in your, you know, daily functions.

John Tyreman: 18:33

I think Pat brought up a really good point about the, maybe they mentioned a trade publication or maybe they mentioned an association, the prospects, when they're in the sales, people are talking to them. so yeah, that's invaluable because that helps marketing understand maybe the channels. Um, that they can reach buyers on just as, as one example.

Mark Wainwright: 18:53

both sales and marketing. inside of firms need to be connected and moving in the same direction and tightly aligned. There are firms that I'm I've worked with and I'm aware of that have no connection whatsoever between the two. What doer sellers are doing out in the marketplace with their perspective or current clients is very different or just Completely in, in there's no regard for what's happening from a marketing standpoint. Individuals don't even believe those two things are connected. They are tightly connected because inevitably your clients are prospective clients. If they're having conversations with you and then if they're looking at your various marketing resources. social media, websites, et cetera. They start to see some conflicts there or just a complete disconnect. And we don't want, we don't want that to happen.

John Tyreman: 19:46

I'm starting to notice a pattern emerging here where there's a disconnect between either internal organizations, internal teams, or between those teams and the ultimate buyers of services. There's a lack of understanding. There's a lack of clarity. And our next clip, I think kind of touches on this as well. so now we're going to start talking about the reaching your target buyers and the deployment of your resources. one of those resources that every professional services firm is strapped for, Is time right and so spending time in the right places online in person is really important. So I caught up with Joe Pope, who is a partner at hinge marketing. He's a good friend of mine hinges a branding and marketing firm for professional services and Joe heads up new business development and marketing at the firm. So he's got a perspective on developing new business And, every year hinge puts out a high growth study, which looks at the fastest growing professional services firms and what they do differently. And so every year their team analyzes that research and. Teases out the different strategies and tactics that high growth firms use. And so that influenced Joe's response when I asked him, okay, well, Joe, what's broken about business development and professional services. And here's what he had to say.

Joe Pope: 21:14

One of the biggest things now, especially in this modern digital way, where professional services are going through the process of developing businesses, the one man army that we were talking about, that lone wolf who'd go out and find the work, bring it in, use their Rolodex. Rainmakers, right? The Rainmaker, right? Yeah. That. Methodology while still existing, that role while still does exist is really only one player in a larger spectrum. So when Hinge looks at business development and what this article breaks down is that these different roles are places like the management of digital SEO strategy. Or the creation of thought provoking and interesting content. It's also things like leaders of proposal development teams or the investigation of various opportunities that could exist by tools, softwares, you name it, we've got ZoomInfos, we've got LinkedIn Navigator, we've got all sorts of different platforms that are available and which ones are going to be most effective for your business? That's really the big question because. There's a lot of different things you can do, and we, as a marketing agency that's very focused in strategy development, we find it's very common for organizations to just try to just check boxes, but it may not necessarily be the right boxes. And that's a big reason why this research that we're doing, the high growth study research, is designed to help answer those questions and allow folks a better pathway to making the right decisions across these various different roles.

John Tyreman: 22:51

All right. So we touched on, uh, the rainmaker methodology a little bit, and some folks might have different ways to kind of phrase what that is. But essentially, a single person who develops most of the business at a firm, maybe they're a doer seller, maybe the, they're a partner who is more focused on new business development. really what Joe kind of dove into is, this lack of understanding Of what channels and formats buyers prefer to consume information. so that if you have that understanding, then you can deploy those limited resources more effectively.

Mark Wainwright: 23:28

Yeah. if your organization can embrace the fact that you are new prospective clients, your new leads, your new maybes, can come from just about any direction, then you need to be prepared for that. to, build those channels up, right, if they're coming in online, if they're coming in relationships, if they're coming in through that Rainmaker, however, they're coming in, you should be kind of marshaling your resources appropriately, continuing to focus on that ages old singular, Rainmaker and disregarding all these other opportunities or possible doorways that your, your new leads can walk into, is naive. So Joe makes a, makes a great point. Yeah. And he's the term Rolodex. That's one of my old favorite, sales words that everybody kind of harkens back to occasionally. and, uh, yeah, you can't continue to rely on the old Rainmaker with The big Rolodex, right? You've got leads coming in from all over the place. And frankly, you may have great ones coming in from other channels that you're not, you're under resourcing and maybe even unaware of. So good points.

John Tyreman: 24:33

It makes succession planning a lot harder when you depend on a rainmaker too. Very true. Well, let's, let's move a little bit more up the funnel. So I would say that Joe's was more of a two on our marketing and sales continuum. I don't know if I mentioned that. this next clip that we have, I would say is definitely more on the one end of things. So Perrin Olson is the chief marketing officer at Rex dot one in engineering and robotics company. And Perrin and I actually overlapped a little bit in my time at hinge. he was an account director. He's focused on, Construction marketing. That's where his, expertise lies is in marketing for construction firms. And, I asked him about what's broken in business development, and he came with a little bit more of a marketing perspective talking about how your website and your branding is critical. so I think you'll enjoy what parent has to say.

Perryn Olson: 25:33

If you do want to sell the big things, you're going to sell the Lamborghini of professional services. You should be doing something more than a Honda. Like it's made a comment on the other day. It was like someone's comparing construction marketing. A lot of people come think it's worthless, essentially, especially this guy was talking about social media for construction. And I'm like, you got to remind people about how they buy. If you're going to go buy a TV. How many hours on the research are you doing? Are you going to consumer reports? You're going to best buy. You're going to crunch through all these things. You're going to spend 2, 3 hours, at least researching a thousand dollar TV. You go buy a new truck, it's a$50,000 to$75,000 purchase. You're probably going to spend 10, 15 hours doing it. So why are you upset when the customer, who is going to spend multiple million dollars with you as a construction company, that they're doing research? Or they're asking you questions? Or even going to your website? I've heard for years, you and I met at a past agency and I was focused on construction marketing and I've been doing that for almost 20 years. One of the things I've heard a lot from people called the old timers. We don't sell buildings on websites. I'm like, yeah, but you lose them. There's that credibility check and it was amazing how many times that I've re-done a website and within a month or a couple of months, you get a call from that skeptic and say, Hey, I can't believe we're all of a sudden getting leads from our website. So what did you do? I'm like, it's not an SEO thing. It's purely just changing the look of the website or that was like, we're getting all these qualified applicants all of a sudden on our website. We used to get one crappy applicant in the past every week. Now we're getting like three or four a day that are really good. It's like. What changed? Your perception. You made a website that now makes them want to feel like they want to work there. It's not trying to falsify anything. Most professional service firms, they do themselves a disjustice with their website, with their brand. You know, it's one of the things that I think is a big misconception. Why do you rebrand? You need to rebrand because something's broken. Something's changing. Either you've evolved as a company over the years and that the brand doesn't say who you are anymore. Or. That you need to make a change and you want to make more of an aspirational brand and let the company catch up to it.

John Tyreman: 27:35

I think Perrin brings up some really great examples. and if I was to summarize what he said just there, I would say that what's broken is really this disconnect between a brand's current state and then how it's reflected on the firm website. And brands evolve, firms evolve, positioning evolves because of changes in the marketplace, because of changes internally. and so I think your website is the single place online really where that needs to be reflected.

Mark Wainwright: 28:06

Totally agree. This is another alignment, issue and, you know, a lot of times You'll find that, the clients that are in your pipeline or the clients that you're currently working with when you look at those clients kind of collectively, you look at what you're doing with them, the services you're providing, and then you look at your website, one's either ahead or behind the other, right? And I think all too often you find that those two things just start to leapfrog each other. Service delivery. I like that Visual. Yeah. Service delivery jumps ahead of the website, and then the website goes through a revision where it leapfrogs, the work that you're doing currently. And there's clearly, simply just a lack of alignment and coordination. With that. It's entirely possible that your firm can evolve from a service delivery standpoint, and start taking the organization a slightly different way. Conversely, your marketing can be pushing this deviation or this change in course, and your service deliveries and keeping up with that. But, clearly a need for the two to be tightly connected, tightly aligned and kind of evolving together. Love that.

John Tyreman: 29:15

So I think some common themes from all of these clips, alignment, communication. understanding. a lack of those things result in poor business development for professional services firms. And I think that's ultimately what's really broken. Agreed. Agreed.

Mark Wainwright: 29:33

It's not just us, John. We're not the only ones out there in the world that believe that business development is just a little bit broken. There's plenty of other people out there. Who think the same way.

John Tyreman: 29:42

Well, Mark, this was fun. We'll have to do it again sometime.

Mark Wainwright: 29:45

I totally agree. Until next time,

John Tyreman: 29:47

John. Until next time.