Your Business Development Sucks? It's Likely!

Business development can be daunting. Do you buy email addresses or pay for leads or meetings (=OMG)? Are your cold emails ending up in Spam? Are Microsoft or Google blocking you? You can't apply AI, let alone automate your outreach, because you don't have clean contact data. Do you still "follow up" with your prospects, or are you "checking in" with contacts ghosting you?

If your strategies are more "meh" than "wow," fear not. You're in "good" company. Many businesses are clinging to outdated practices like they're vintage treasures. Let's unravel these common blunders and discover how to sidestep them with style.

What's Wrong with You? (or your Biz Dev)?

• Lead Generation: Only 56% of B2B organizations verify lead data before it enters their CRM. Poor lead quality wastes time and resources on unqualified prospects.

• Cold Emailing: Average cold email open rates hover around 23.9%. Many businesses struggle to get their emails noticed, potentially due to weak subject lines, irrelevant content, or poor targeting.

• CRM Usage: Up to 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Why? Because of potential issues with lead nurturing, sales follow-up, or CRM data management.

• Sales Follow-Up: Eighty percent of sales require five follow-up calls after the meeting, and 44 percent of sales reps give up after one follow-up. Many sales teams give up too soon, failing to nurture leads effectively.

• Sales Enablement: Only 29% of salespeople say they can apply four or more pieces of information learned during sales training. Inadequate training and resources hinder sales effectiveness.

• Outdated Practices: Strong performance management processes increase engagement by 14% and overall performance by 24%, asserts Gartner. However, many businesses lack standardized processes, leading to inconsistency and inefficiency.

• Content Marketing: 60-70% of B2B content created is never used. Content misalignment with buyer needs or lack of promotion leads to wasted effort.

• Social Selling: Only 31% of salespeople use social media content as sales enablement content. Many sales professionals haven't effectively integrated social media into their strategies.

• Sales Technology: Companies using sales enablement tools are 19% more likely to see an increase in their average win rate year over year. Failure to adopt relevant sales tools can limit productivity and growth.

• Data-Driven Decision Making: According to PwC research, highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to report significant improvement in decision-making. Yet, 62% of executives still rely more on experience and advice than data to make decisions.
  
  

What is Business Development?

Business development? It's the art of charming your way to being more helpful and being awarded more revenue in exchange.

Think of it as the lovechild of sales, marketing, and strategy, where you identify ideal partners and customers, woo them with irresistible offers, and build relationships that make everyone richer (literally). 

In a theoretical world, in a universe far away, Business Developments takes leads from Marketing, qualifies them (in or out), and delivers them to Sales happy people wanting to talk about ordering with the Sales Department.

In real life, business development is often a thankless function compensating for the lack of qualified leads and the insufficient number of qualified ones.

Business Development is to 

• Get more and better contacts to reach out to, as Inbound is often not working (yet, especially with startups). What are better contacts?

  • Contacts from companies matching your company's Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

  • Contacts (with target ICPs) who match target Buyer Personas

  • Contacts who, ideally, show a buying intent.

• Research and Prioritize target contacts. Understand and confirm potential needs, sense of urgency, and decision-making authority. There's little (good) sense in setting up activities with contacts who don't have a need that your company can address, a need that is lightyears away, and your content has no means to influence.

• Connect with target contacts on many channels, such as email, phone, social media, and face-to-face (at events).

• Engage contacts, validate buying intent, and create Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
  
  

The Perils of a Poor Outreach Infrastructure

A solid outreach setup is the cornerstone of any successful business development strategy. However, many companies falter at this initial stage. Without a well-defined outreach plan, your efforts to connect with potential clients can become haphazard and ineffective. This often results in missed opportunities and wasted resources.

Do you get or work with "ready-to-go" email lists for an initial outreach that contain: 

• Contacts without validated emails or with email distribution lists ([email protected])

• Competitor, ex-customer, or supplier contacts

• Contacts on a do-not-contact list

• Contacts who have unsubscribed or don't have any legal justification to get emails from you

• Contacts who had been contacted previously.
  
  

To avoid these pitfalls, ensure your outreach strategy is well-organized, targeted, and measurable. Use data-driven insights to guide your outreach efforts and continuously refine your approach based on feedback and results.

• Create defined, well-structured list hierarchies in each communication channel, here email, to identify:
  
  

  • Contacts available for email

  • Contacts in target ICPs and target buyer personas

  • Contacts in suitable lifecycle stages who have yet to receive the stage pitch or who aren't currently in an email sequence.

• Coordinate multi-channel communications, such as email and LinkedIn, so as not to send conflicting messages at uncoordinated times.

Depending on your business, have or quickly generate a list with 1,000 or (much) more contacts.

You don't win in Business Development by contacting a few dozen contacts.

The Dangers of Inaccurate Targeting

Inaccurate targeting is a common issue that can derail your business development efforts. If you're not reaching out to the right audience, your message will fall on deaf ears. This not only wastes your time and resources but can also damage your brand's credibility.

To improve your targeting,

• Invest in thorough market research to understand your ideal customer profile;

• Segment your contacts into target lists, e.g., a variety of ICPs, target accounts, to prioritize activities within an ICP segment and

• Research contacts in each segment to make sure to send targeted and individually personalized messages to each contact.

The Chaos of Ineffective CRM Segmentation

CRM segmentation is critical for managing relationships and nurturing leads. However, poor segmentation can lead to chaos, making tracking interactions and tailoring communications difficult or impossible. This often results in

• missed follow-ups and inconsistent messaging

• missed opportunities for automation or AI-Agent deployment.

Effective CRM segmentation involves categorizing your contacts based on specific criteria such as industry, company size, and engagement level. This enables you to deliver personalized content and follow-ups, enhancing your chances of converting contacts into leads, opportunities, and, eventually, customers. Customer segmentation with AI can expedite this process/

Hint: Effective CRM integration can help you drastically improve segmentation.

The Hazards of Subpar Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a powerful tool for business development, but subpar execution can do more harm than good. Poorly crafted emails can end up in spam folders or be ignored by recipients, diminishing your outreach efforts.

To avoid these hazards, create high-quality, engaging email content that resonates with your audience.

• Personalize your emails;

• Optimize send times;

• Mix different outreach channels into your email sequences;

• Consistently use A/B testing to determine what works best; and

• Ensure your email lists are clean and segmented to maximize relevance and impact.
  
  

Turning the Tables: Strategies for Success

Don't let your business development efforts sputter and die. The truth is, most businesses are leaving serious money on the table by making these common mistakes. But you have the power to change that. It starts with taking an honest look at your current strategy (or lack thereof). Are you relying on outdated tactics and hoping for the best? Are you failing to truly connect with your target audience? It's time to stop settling for mediocrity and start demanding results.

• Refine your outreach and ditch the spray-and-pray approach.

• Get laser-focused with your targeting by leveraging market research and analytics.

• Stop treating all your prospects the same–personalize your communication and deliver the right message at the right time.

• Ditch the tired old email blasts and embrace a multi-channel strategy that truly engages.

It's time to stop sucking at business development and start thriving. Don't let another day go by where you're missing out on potential customers and revenue. Ready to seize the opportunity? Let's talk.

Our team of expert consultants and certified trainers can help you develop a winning business development strategy and deploy the operational elements, tailored to your specific needs and goals.

Whether you're looking to generate more leads, expand into new markets, or build stronger relationships with key clients, Aspiration Marketing is here to give you the knowledge and expertise to guide you on your journey.