Understand the importance of setting a winning new business culture.
Never be at a loss for words; discover how to have something relevant to say.
Find out how important first impressions truly are.
Know that, used carefully, technology can give you a huge advantage.
IN THIS CHAPTER
Beginning with the basics With the possible exception of research and development, you could take away most other functions within a company and still be left with a business that existed to some degree. Try taking away new business, though, and you donât have anything left that can operate as a business entity.
Winning new business is at the very forefront of every successful company and is a cultural thing. Itâs not just the function of a group of new business salespeople acting independently from the rest of the business; winning new business is the fusion of different parts of the organization working together to deliver a winning solution for your clients. The specific role of the new business salesperson is to be the front end, the customer-facing part of this dynamic, building on the great things that back him up.
To introduce a winning new business culture (the topic of this chapter), you need to have a plan. I call it a methodology and refer to it a lot throughout this book. A methodology is essentially a structured approach to achieving an end result, in this case being able to successfully and constantly win new business. Think of it as a road map to guide you to your destination.
Winning new business is not an easy task, but it is a rewarding one. The buzz of securing a new deal is one of the best feelings youâll experience in your working life, and no matter how many deals you go on to win during your career, that buzz never gets lost. To maximize your chances of success, you need to bring a winning mentality to the table; be a âglass half fullâ type of person, a winner with a positive outlook. Pair that with a successful new business methodology, and youâll be on your way to achieving new business success for yourself and your company. New business sales is truly a profession of choice and in the 21st century has become recognized as such. Be proud to work in new business sales and wear it as a badge of honor as a career choice and not something that you stumble in to.
If thereâs one pointer I seek to give to a business owner looking to introduce a culture of winning new business into his company, itâs to recognize and reward the new business role, not just in financial terms but as a status within your business. Donât just employ someone and then sit back and expect miracles, but support him and work with him to create the right environment, and your efforts will more than pay for themselves.
Focusing on New Business Fundamentals
The strict definition of new business is to call it the commercial, customer-facing part of your business, the part that liaises directly with potential customers and turns them into real fee-paying clients. Without this function, you donât really have a business at all. If you operate in a small business, you may not have the luxury of being able to employ a specialist for this role, so you have two choices: You either outsource the role or do it yourself. Not winning new business isnât an option.
From time to time, I come across companies that claim not to âdo new business,â and sometimes they really do believe that. But the reality is still that they need to win new work, and they choose to go about it via referrals and recommendations rather than have someone directly responsible for the task. Itâs still new business, though. These people who claim not to âdo new businessâ are deluding themselves and are generally the ones who go on to wonder why their business isnât growing.
Winning new business is far from what many consider to be âsales,â which has developed a bit of a stigma as a result generally from a lack of understanding and training. Today, winning new business is the fusion of different skill sets brought together into todayâs modern and highly respected profession that I, for one, am proud to be a part of. It encompasses not only selling in its traditional form but also understanding the commercial and technical considerations that make up a client-facing solution to a problem. As I identify in Chapters 3, 4, and 9, research plays a vital part in the new business role, and throughout this book, the theme of building relationships with your prospects also keeps coming to the forefront. In addition, technology is one of the key drivers of change in winning new business, and you find out how to use it to your best advantage in Chapter 4.
One more theme thatâs prevalent throughout this book is qualifying prospects. You discover that you shouldnât chase every potential opportunity but carefully select the ones to target based on real quantifiable data, and you find out what to look for and where to look for it. (See Chapters 9 and 19 for details.)
In the following sections, I introduce some of the fundamentals of winning new business: getting a handle on your solution, the key elements of the process, the importance of the role, and its basis in science.
Understanding your solution
Before you can go through the elements of winning new business (see the next section), you need to go through some initial stages to gain an in-depth understanding of what youâre working with:
Understanding what you have: You need to take the time to understand the product or service that your company wants you to sell. Donât just assume that you know what it is; take the time to talk to colleagues in different parts of the company to get their views on what the product or service is and how they see it delivering benefits.
Donât try to reinvent the wheel in coming up with unique selling propositions. Start with what you have, and add value to it by talking to the people who work with it every day. They know better than most what key things to focus on. Discuss with existing clients how they make use of your solution, and use that information as the basis of presenting your solution to your prospects.
If you have a technical product or service, make sure you take the time to understand, at a least at a good overview level, what it does and how it does it.
- Understanding how it fits: After you understand what you have, then you need to understand how it fits into your target prospectâs environment. Without this information, you stand zero chance of being able to sell it successfully.
- Understanding what it delivers: What are the key benefits of your solution? By now, that should be obvious to you, but you also need to dig a little deeper to understand some of the finer points and some of the less obvious benefits that can make your solution different from competitive offerings, therefore giving you some additional advantages in selling it. Any form of differentiation is well worth investigating.
Examining the elements of winning new business
When you understand the product or service that youâre working with (see the preceding section), you can then turn your attention to the six key elements of winning new business:
- Prospecting: Prospecting is the early stages of winning new business, where you seek to fill the pipeline with potential clients and then set about the task of finding out as much as you can about them and their needs. A successful new business salesperson is always prospecting and always seeking out new opportunities; it becomes second nature. I talk about prospecting in Chapters 4, 9, and 23.
- Qualifying: If thereâs one true secret ingredient to making a successful new business salesperson, qualifying is it. When you qualify, you ensure that your prospect has a real need for your solution, the authority to buy it, and the necessary budget available to pay for it. See Chapters 9, 15, and 19 for details.
Handling objections: Dealing with objections is the bread and butter of the winning new business job; youâll be doing it all day every day. Check out Chapters 7 and 10 for more on handling objections.
An objection may not be presented to you in such an obvious form, but by objection I mean the need for you to cover and address any and all aspects of the proposed solution as it fits with your prospectâs business and addresses his needs.
Tracking: Typically, youâll have many prospects on the go at any one time, and you canât risk having to remember every detail of every deal that youâre working on. You also need to produce reports and sales forecasts, so you need a system to be able to track progress, keeping you on course for success. Generally, youâll use a CRM (customer relationship management) system here. I discuss the basics of tracking prospects in Chapter 19 and cover CRM systems in Chapters 9 and 21.
The more you use a good CRM system, the more youâll benefit from it, both in winning new business and in planning and forecasting roles. If your CRM isnât delivering benefits, then the first place to look is at your own use of it. Are you recording everything every day? Thereâs really no excuse for not doing so.
Measuring: How do you know whether your sales efforts are on track and whether youâre going to meet your targets? A wet finger in the air is one option, but these days you have somewhat more sophisticated methods, using metrics based on real activity as recorded by your CRM system. Check out Chapter 22 for more on metrics.
Take the time to understand the metrics and how they relate to you and your activities. Theyâre not based on some random set of measurements but on...
