In my business I like to say that my business development is driven by four key things:
- Writing
- Speaking
- Networking
- Referrals
The challenge for me is often making sure that I do the right amount of each of these activities to generate the amount of prospects that I need keep my business moving in the right direction.
Then, this morning I had a conversation with a colleague about the systems that he wants to put in place to make sure that his business is moving forward.
Which got me to thinking about how I can actually make my revenue practices repeatable.
Here are a few steps that we can all take to ensure that we have the right systems in place to deliver the results that we desire.
1. Understand your goals and the activities that you need to take to get you these results:
I just gave you the four drivers of my business development practice. And, within that, I know how many meetings I need to deliver the revenue I need.
Which means that when I am doing these activities, I need to get a certain number of conversations. Those conversations lead to a certain number of discovery calls. Those discovery calls turn into a certain number of opportunities. The opportunities become sales.
What are the important numbers and activities for you?
2. Build a system for delivery:
Within my main BD activities, I have become adept at outlining the actions and activities I need to drive business.
These include content creation, outreach, follow up, and new opportunity cultivation.
Within each of these things, I have a certain number of key activities that deliver the impact I need.
So that these lead to systems of actions for each day, week, month, and year.
Do you have any sort of plan for how you are going to take action on your plans?
3. Understand how to control for your activities:
In project management, we talk about control a lot. This means you need to understand how your project is moving forward.
In any revenue generating system, you need to understand that as well.
What is working?
What isn’t working?
How long should it take to work?
What should create immediate results?
These questions will help you understand and adjust your activities to fit your results.