What Singer Adele and Business Building Strategies Have in Common
Anyone that knows me, knows I love music and sing karaoke. I was learning one of Adele’s songs and listening to the lyrics: “Should I just keep chasing pavements, even if it leads nowhere?” I started thinking about the things we chase in our own life that lead nowhere. Even though this song by Adele is referring to love, it really can apply to pursuing business or ways to grow business. Does your firm have a way to analyze if the business you chase is leading anywhere? Better yet, do you know what efforts are paying off? Below are things to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of your business building strategies:
Are You Chasing the Flavor?
A recent client described that each week they discuss the potential business everyone is pursuing. However, each sequential week everyone was chasing the flavor of the week. She had no idea what happened to the previous week’s pursuits and if anyone was even following up until she received a proposal request. To avoid chasing the flavor and ensure your firm is following-up on all opportunities, consider these steps:
- Document All Stages with Action Items: You don’t need a proposal to document the opportunities you are pursuing. Even if business is in a discovery or assessment phase, documenting these efforts with actions items can remind you to follow-up.
- Identify Trends and Outstanding Items: Using an integrated system allows marketing and executives to track the progress of the entire company through reports to identify if there are trends or items that are outstanding.
- Administrator and Automation: Identifying someone to administer and review your pursuits is critical to ensuring progress. Also look at ways to automate alerts to remind you when you should follow-up.
- Win/Loss Report: It’s important to know how successful you are. Knowing the history of past pursuits can help future go/no-go decisions and improve your win rate. By developing a win/loss report and evaluating how successful you are by department, opportunity champion, and the type of project can help you make better decisions in the future.
Are You the Nurturing Type?
Many of us attend events, are a part of an organization, and are involved in business development efforts in hopes to nurture business. However, most individuals and firms don’t know the effectiveness of their efforts. To ensure your firm is making good use of your time, consider these steps:
- Network vs. Attend: Not every event you attend will result in business. There are many reasons to network. However, showing up to an event doesn’t equate to networking. After attending an event log who you talked with. What did you discover about the individual and what was important to them? Think about how you might follow-up with that individual. Maybe there is a subject they are interested in, someone they want to meet, a project they are working on, or you found out something about their personal life. How can you use your knowledge or connections to follow-up? Social media is making it easier to connect with people and stay up-to-date with their changes. Be sure to personalize your request.
- Get Involved: If you are a member of an organization, take the plunge and be active. Think about your audience when you chose an organization and then get involved in a committee, the board, or become a speaker. Volunteering can help you gain exposure, connect you with decision makers, and allow you to demonstrate your expertise. Joining SMPS was one of the best decisions I could have made for my company and career.
- Return on Investment: We all tend to hear the phrase, measuring Return on Investment related to effectiveness of business efforts. Another way to look at ROI is ask yourself, if you had to pay for the marketing or business effort out of your own money, do you think it would be worth the effort? A great way of looking at the marketing effectiveness is to track the time you spend toward business development efforts and compare it to the business you obtained from those efforts. When you compare the expense vs. the business you received, was it worth the effort? Sometimes efforts take months or even years to pay off. So to determine trade show ROI or events that happen on a yearly basis, allow two years to determine the effectiveness.
- Building Business: Most people look at clients as Existing or New. I would challenge you to look at them as one of three categories: Prospective, Nurturing, and Maintenance. Prospective clients are those you want to do business with, maintenance clients are those you continue to do business with, while nurturing clients are those you’ve done business with or have recently received business from. Your message and how your firm will gain business from all categories will vary. Keeping in mind that it is seven times easier to maintain an existing client than is to go out and get a new client; moving clients to the maintenance category is the goal. So where should you spend your time and how do you know when you are effective? First you need to define what justifies a maintenance client. Is it the number of projects or dollar amount over a period of time? With an integrated database system, your data can trigger when the criteria is met and send out an automated report. This information informs “Client Champions” and executives when client business increases or decreases and provides marketing with insight for nurture campaigns.
I hope my inspiration from Adele will help your firm build business and avoid chasing pavements. Let us know what inspires you and what your firm does to ensure growth. View our webinar: Get the Most from Your Conference.
Full Sail's Director of Marketing and Business Development, 
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