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BIZDEV

The Complete Guide To

Business Development
Gennaro Cuofano
Business development comprises a set of strategies, tactics, and ac‐ Gennaro is the creator of
tions to grow a business via a mixture of sales and marketing. In‐ FourWeekMBA which he
deed, while marketing usually relies on automation to reach a wider brought to reach about a mil‐
audience, and sales usually leverages on the one-to-one approach to lion business students, pro‐
close complex deals. Business development is about creating distrib- fessionals, and entrepreneurs
ution strategies to scale up a business. in 2019 alone | Gennaro is
also Head of Business Devel‐
A good business development process should have as the primary opment for a high-tech start‐

aim to drive business growth with strategies, partnerships and uncon‐ up, which he helped grow at
double-digit rate and become
ventional marketing to 10x the output of the organization. The suc‐
profitable | Gennaro is an In‐
cess of companies like Google also depended on their business de-
ternational MBA with empha‐
velopment capabilities.
sis on Corporate Finance |
Subscribe to the FourWeek‐
Although you might be looking for a straightforward definition of what
MBA Newsletter | Or Get in
business development is, you need to understand that this is a disci‐
touch with Gennaro here
pline in continuous evolution, which has as a main driver business
Read More...
growth. In this context, a good place to start is to define what busi‐
ness development is not.

Contents [hide]

Why does business development matter? Business Model Inno‐

Business Development vs. sales
vation Course
The successful business developer thinks like a marketer but acts
like a salesman
Business development is about nurturing the right relationships with
partners that can become distribution channels
Business development guides marketing automation
Business development scales up businesses
Business development is about a growth mindset
Business development requires a high level of understanding of a po- Most Popular This
tential partner Week
What activities does business development imply?
The sales pipeline is a basic tool for a business developer
Apple Mission State‐
What actions can the business developer perform to improve the
ment and Vision
sales pipeline?
Statement In A Nut‐
The channels you can use to get traction
What’s a secret weapon for the business developer? LinkedIn shell
A crash course in sales canvassing
What Is a Business
Why sales canvassing matter?
Model? 30 Success‐
Understanding the strength and unicity of the product/service
ful Types of Business
Focus on the problem and payoff
Set a target customer Models You Need to
Have a script but leave it flexible Know
Rejection is part of the process
How Amazon Makes
Focus on a single channel but leverage on several media
Examples of sales canvassing Money: Amazon
A crash course in sales and marketing alignment best practices Business Model in a
Marketing and Sales working together Nutshell
 Lead generation Nike Mission State‐
Automation ment and Vision
Viral marketing Statement In A Nut‐
More sales best practices to apply to your business shell
Action plan
Customer targeting Distribution Chan‐
Sales canvassing nels: Types, Func‐
Sales scripts tions, And Examples
Email templates
Personalized message How Does Uber Eats
Value proposition Make Money? Uber
10x goal setting Eats Business Model
Understand the client business model In A Nutshell
Follow-up
Fill your pipeline, always! Apple Distribution:
Keep in touch The Apple Store Is
Deliver value before closing Not About Selling
Outstanding support
iPhones
At the end of it, it’s about listening
Business Strategy:
Definition, Examples,
And Case Studies
Why does business development matter?
What Is OKR? The
Seth Godin does a great job in explaining why business development Goal Setting System
is so important: To Scale Up Your
Business

Business Development is a mysterious title for a little How Does Uber

discussed function or department in most larger Make Money? Uber
companies. It’s also a great way for an entrepreneur or Business Model In A
small business to have fun, create value and make money. Nutshell

Good business development allows businesses to profit

by doing something that is tangential to their core mission.
Sometimes the profit is so good, it becomes part of their
Methodologies &
core mission, other times it supports the brand and
sometimes it just makes money. And often it’s a little guy
Frameworks
who can be flexible enough to make things happen.
Business Model Canvas
Guide
Seth Godin also highlighted:
Business Model Patterns

The thing that makes business development fascinating is Business Model Navigator
that the best deals have never been done before. There’s
Build An Exceptional Viable
no template, no cookie cutter grind it out approach to
Product
making it work. This is why most organizations are so
astonishingly bad at it. They don’t have the confidence to Blitzscaling Canvas Guide

make decisions or believe they have the ability to make

Lean Startup Canvas
mistakes.
Business Model Framework

Those words resonate with me as I found myself in the position of Flywheel And Virtuous Sales
leading the business development of a tech startup. Business devel‐ Cycles
opment can make your organization successful overnight if a proper
Growth Marketing
deal is found. But searching and finding deals and executing them
successfully feels like a gold rush. Pretotyping Methodology

Therefore, to make business development work it is necessary to SEO Hacking Framework

make it a process. The process needs to be focused on understand‐
Technology Adoption Curve
ing how to drive value for your organization by leveraging on partner‐
ships that can bring your business to the next level. Business devel‐ Value Proposition Canvas
opment is also about how to leverage and tweak your existing busi-
What Is OKR
ness model to make it scalable.
What Is Scrum?
When Google closed the deal with AOL, overnight Google, a rising
star, could be featured on the largest online portal.

Before to move forward it is important to understand the difference

between business development and sales. Business Models Case
Studies

Business Development vs. sales Amazon Business Model

Thinking about the business developer as the sales guy, it’s limiting. Netflix Business Model
Not that a business developer doesn’t sell, but it does so by creating
Starbucks Business Model
a distribution. In other words, rather than looking at the single sale
the business developers try to find sales channels to tap into to speed LinkedIn Business Model
up the process of scaling up a company. If that means selling a prod‐
uct or a service directly, then the business development person will Google Business Model
temporarily become a sales guy.
YouTube Business Model

Imagine the scenario of a company that has no clients. In that con‐ Uber Business Model
text, a business developer will need to find the first clients as quickly
Lyft Business Model
as possible. Those clients will serve to launch the company’s growth,
while the business developer will look strategically at ways to have Robinhood Business Model
those clients to become partners. Therefore, all of a sudden a few
clients become your distribution channel. Even though the business Nike Business Model
developer acted as a sales guy from the outside, he never lost sight of
DuckDuckGo Business
the long-term strategy.
Model

ALDI Business Model

Apple Business Model

The successful business developer thinks
like a marketer but acts like a salesman TOMS Business Model

Slack Business Model

Business development is a mixture of sales and marketing. In fact, in
many cases, a business developer will use marketing and PR activi‐ Fiverr Business model
ties to establish critical relationships for the business. Those relation‐
Pinterest Business Model
ships will become partnerships to generate new distribution
channels. Telegram Business Model

TripAdvisor Business Model

Booking Business Model

Business development is about nurturing
the right relationships with partners that can
become distribution channels

Where the sales process ends up with a closed deal. The business Startup Resources
development relationship starts with a closed deal. The business de‐
veloper knows that a deal closed is just the starting point of a long- Business Strategy
term relationship that can impact the business in the long run. There‐
fore, the business developer will translate that paying customer in a Business Models
trusted partner, and an advocate for your business.
Business Model Innovation

Product-Market Fit
Business development guides marketing
Digital Business Models
automation
Sales And Distribution
Marketing automation is a powerful tool for any business. However, Lessons
marketing automation is also risky. Indeed, automating processes re‐
Business Development
quires a deep understanding of your customers. Thus, before you can
automate the marketing processes, you’ll need the business develop‐ Market Segmentation
ers to help the marketing team structure those processes. Indeed
with unique insight about the company’s customers, the industry and Marketing vs. Sales

competitors, the business developer will advise the marketing depart‐

Distribution Channels
ment on how to structure and set up automation processes that fit the
long-term organizational growth. Inventory Turnover Ratio

Business Books To Read

Business development scales up businesses What Is A Unicorn Company?

When Google closed its deal with AOL, it was a turning point for the
tech company that would become a unicorn first and a tech giant
then. It all started with a business development activity that allowed
Google to build a partnership with AOL and kill its competitors! Latest Posts

A successful business development person is a quick learner and a Amazon SEO: 5 Tactics To
renaissance man. He will be able to learn about as many disciplines Grow Your Business On Top
needed to have a deep understanding of the industry that will drive Of Amazon
the company’s growth. For instance, if you think of a business devel‐
oper in the digital marketing world, he’ll probably be someone that Five Reasons Why 5G Is
understands SEM, SEO, funnel optimization, content marketing, sales Beneficial For Business
and all the other channels available to grow a business.
How Does Twitter Make
Money? Twitter Business
Business development is about a growth Model In A Nutshell

mindset
What Is Market Segmentation

The business development process could vary quite a lot based on And Why It Matters

industry, business model and stage of maturity of a company. If you

Resurrecting Marketing Strat‐
are called as a business developer for a startup, most of the activities
egy In A World Driven By En‐
will be connected to grow the startup and bring it to the next stage of
gineering
growth.

What Is a Business Model

Therefore, the successful business developer will need to have a
Canvas? Business Model
mindset fine-tuned for growth.
Canvas In A Nutshell

How Does WeWork Make

Business development requires a high level Money? WeWork Business
of understanding of a potential partner Model In A Nutshell

To be able to build a relationship quickly, a business developer has to How Does Grammarly Make
understand the business dynamics of a potential partner. Indeed, just Money? Grammarly Business
by tapping into the economics of a partner, the business developer Model In A Nutshell
can craft the perfect deal/solution. For instance, when Google pro-
posed the deal to AOL, the deal was so good for AOL, and it had no Starbucks Chain Business
risk for them, that they couldn’t say no to it. Yet AOL was an estab‐ Model In A Nutshell
lished network, which was what allowed Google to get into the next
stage of growth and scale. How Does Etsy Work And
Make Money? Etsy Business
Model In A Nutshell
What activities does business development
imply?

Anything that helps build up a solid distribution strategy falls into the Interviews
business development processes.
The sales pipeline is a basic tool for a busi- Key Lessons In Lean Analyt‐
ics With Alistair Croll
ness developer
How To Design A Winning
Business Model With Adam

A sales pipeline is as a visual representation of your sales J. Bock

process where all your potential customers are displayed Breaking Down Digital Trans‐
and neatly arranged according to their phase in your sales formation With David L.
cycle. Rogers
Source: salespop.pipelinersales.com/sales-
A Guide To Disruptive Busi‐
professionals/what-is-sales-pipeline
ness Models With Thales
Teixeira
A business developer has to be able to build up predictable sales pro‐
Discussing Business Model
cesses to generate continuous streams of leads for the organization.
Innovation With Felix
The sales pipeline is a useful tool to set up those processes.
Hofmann

Also, being able to track your sales pipeline is a critical activity. A Lessons On Running Lean
sales pipeline is just a way to have clear in which stage of the sales With Ash Maurya
process you are with a potential client. As shown by Sales POP from
the initial contact to closing a deal it takes a few steps: Pretotyping: How To Find The
Right Idea To Avoid Business
Initial contact Failure With Alberto Savoia
Qualification
Inside The Creative Curve
Meeting
With Allen Gannett
Proposal
Close How To Self-Publish A Book
[With Tom Corson Knowles]
At each of those actions, we can assign a probability of closing a
The Business of Ghostwriting
deal. For instance, at the initial contact, you don’t have an idea yet
by Zara Altair
whether the person you’re reaching out would later become a cus‐
tomer. Therefore, the more you move forward down the pipeline, the Key Lessons In Buying And
more the chances of closing the deal improve. Sales POP research Selling Websites With
shows that each of those stages has a chance of success as it Michael Bereslavsky
follows:

Initial contact – 0 %
Qualification – 10 %
Meeting – 30 %
Proposal – 60 %
Close – 100 %

Therefore, after you have qualified a lead, you have 1 in 10 chances of

closing it. Once you have met, defined the project and sent a propos‐
al, then your chances will improve up to 60%. The chances of closing
a deal also depend on other factors. For instance, have you previously
worked with this person?

In short, if you have already built trust, it will be easier to close the
deal. If you are expanding a project you were working on, then it
might be easier as well. Therefore, it will depend upon several factors
crucial to any deal.

Yet the business developer can have clarity about the stage of a busi‐
ness deal. In that way, the business developer can plan the actions
and activities that will get the sales process going.

What actions can the business developer

perform to improve the sales pipeline?

There are several ways to improve sales processes. Some examples

comprise:

Experimentation with new tools, or channels

Finding out new tactics from your peers
Creating new partnerships
Managing existing partnerships to expand the scope of work
Direct sales (outreach, live demonstrations, free training)
Off-line activities (live seminars, or industry events)
Content marketing or PR activities
Talk to clients to improve product/service
Learn how to build relationships with influencers
Use LinkedIn for social selling
Experiment with new distribution channels
Develop relationships with media partners
Create new packaging for your service
Draft commercial offers
Up-sell, cross-sell, leverage on the core product to offer comple‐
mentary services
Create sales processes
Build up a predictable sales funnel
Help marketing to build sales funnels for continued lead generation

Why undertake a career in busi-

ness development?
Being a business development person means having an en‐
trepreneurial spirit. It’s almost like you are a business within your busi‐
ness. Therefore, working as a business development person helps
you:

Develop an entrepreneurial mindset

Get more freedom compared to a traditional job
Dynamic work that pushes you to learn new things quickly
Make more money (the variable is an important part of the
remuneration)
Higher pressure but also more fun than a traditional job
Be your own boss (if it is in a large organization, of course, you will
respond to someone. However, the only boss you have are the
commercial objectives you agreed upon)
Build a professional network quickly

What are some downsides?

Of what I can think of here are some I identified:

The bottom line is your mixed blessing. In fact, although you might
be doing things right for specific periods, you just don’t seem to be
able to close enough deals, partnership or create a proper distribu-
tion strategy. From the outside that might look like you’re not do‐
ing your job properly. What I like to call the outcome bias. In those
periods you have to be good to think about your track record
Your pay is proportional to the objective you’re able to achieve.
Therefore quite volatile
Some days it just seems you’ll never get to achieve the financial
 results agreed. It is normal to feel like that. The good side of it is
that you’ll feel what any entrepreneur experiences

Overall the balance is positive. Now the most critical question. How
do you make a business get traction?

The channels you can use to get traction

Gabriel Weinberg, CEO, and founder of DuckDuckGo, a search engine

that doesn’t track your data, put together in his book, Traction a list of
channels that are critical to allow a business to grow. He identified
quite a few channels:

Targeting Blogs
Publicity
Unconventional PR
Search Engine Marketing
Social and Display Ads
Offline Ads
Search Engine Optimization
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Viral Marketing
Engineering as Marketing
Business Development
Sales
Affiliate Programs
Existing Platforms
Trade Shows
Offline Events
Speaking Engagements
Community Building

As a business developer, you need to understand some of those

channels to grow a business.

What’s a secret weapon for the business de-

veloper? LinkedIn

65% of salespeople who use social selling fill their pipeline,

compared to 47% of reps who do not.
source: blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-statistics

LinkedIn is a fantastic tool to generate conversations that can help

you speed up the prospecting phase. What can you do with LinkedIn?

Find new B2B clients

Build new partnerships
Get media coverage
Personal branding for business

Those things are possible if you are consistent. Three ways to build
relationships with business are:

Outreach to people that might get value from what you offer
Use LinkedIn publishing to create awareness or become a thought
 leader in your niche
Share and like posts about people you admire to strengthen your
relationship and create value for your network

Check out the complete guide on how to use LinkedIn.

A crash course in sales canvassing

Sales canvassing is a sales process where you get in touch with po‐
tential customers that have never heard about your brand. Examples
of sales canvassing are door-to-door sales and cold calling.

Those are critical strategies as they might be an inexpensive and sus‐

tainable way to generate qualified leads without having to rely on
sales consultants or expensive lists. However, to be successful, the
process of sales canvassing needs to be structured.

Why sales canvassing matter?

As many new startups operate in the digital space, it is easy to as‐

sume that old sales techniques are also outdated. Thus, we all like to
speak about marketing funnels, automation, and multiple touch
points.

However, any business to be sustainable needs a continuous stream

of leads; and in many cases, this implies cold calling or approaching
people that never heard of you before. Indeed, unless you have a
massive marketing budget that you can use to grow your brand
quickly.

In most other cases you need a sales force that can venture in the
world and create contacts with customers that don’t have a clue
about you.

However, to make the sales efforts effective you’ll need to make sure
your sales force has a plan, a strategy and a process to follow.

That is what sales canvassing is about. That is a process through

which salespeople can have consistent results nonetheless of the sin‐
gle outcome.

When you make the sales canvassing process yours, that is when
your company can become sustainable in the long run as you won’t
need to depend on other companies to provide you with a consistent
stream of leads, you’ll be able to generate them on your own.

Also, you’ll be able to grow a sales department able to create new op‐
portunities independently from the marketing department.

That doesn’t mean you’ll need only sales canvassing. In many cases,
having multiple touch points with a potential customer via proper mar-
keting strategies is a good strategy as it makes it way more comfort‐
able for your salesforce to close a complex deal.

In other cases, though it is also critical to have an independent sales

force able to open up new opportunities, primarily when your brand
isn’t yet established.
So what steps do you need for your salesforce to take advantage of
sales canvassing? Some key ingredients are:

Have sales force once understand the product/service and its

strength and unicity
Make sure your sales force understands what problem your prod‐
uct or service solves
Have them set clear targets and share them with the rest of the
team
Make the value proposition clear to your sales force
Prepare scripts and speaking points but let them be flexible
enough to handle a complex conversation
Get them ready to be rejected
Rejection as a key to the learning process
Focus on a single channel but leverage on several media

Understanding the strength and unicity of the

product/service

When a salesperson ventures to bring in customers that never heard

of your brand before, it becomes critical that the sales force is very
knowledgeable about the product and service and they can explain it
in the simplest terms.

Focus on the problem and payoff

When approaching someone that never heard about your brand, why
even focus on explaining who you are. Instead, focus on their issue
and what solution you have for them.

They need a short term pay off. Find out what is the payoff and strug‐
gle your potential customer has and propose a solution. That is when
you’ll listen.

Set a target customer

During sales canvassing it is critical to have a laser focus. You need a

list of contacts, but it makes sense to start from a profile that fits best
the profile of existing customers your company has.

Indeed, when approaching a customer that never heard about your

brand, you’ll need to understand what problem you can solve. But
she/he won’t trust you can answer it unless you showcase studies
that resemble the situation they are in.

When you can tell a business owner you’ve already helped someone
in a similar situation it’s easier to trust you even if they never heard of
your brand.

When you take the time to understand the problem, propose a solu‐
tion and show a similar case study that is when sales canvassing be‐
comes way more effective.

Have a script but leave it flexible

Many salespeople like to use scripts. Scripts are prepackaged dia‐

logues usually drawn by old conversations with existing customers.
While scripts are a good starting point, you need to be flexible.

Indeed, with sales canvassing, you’ll deal with people that never
heard about your brand and your company. Would it make sense to
engage in a dialogue you had with a client that already knew you? Not
really.

Rejection is part of the process

During sales canvassing the risk of being rejected is exceptionally

high. It is critical to allow your sales force to understand that is not
something personal, but rather that is part of the process. Rejection is
what makes them more effective.

Focus on a single channel but leverage on several

media

During sales canvassing, it is important to focus on a single channel.

Therefore, if your preferred way is telemarketing, you’ll use the phone.
However, not all customers like to be reached by phone.

In that scenario, you’ll need to learn how to use several channels,

from social media to emails. The important thing is to be able to gen‐
erate a conversation for long enough that the person, on the other
hand, trusts you can bring an actual value. When you get there, you
won.

Examples of sales canvassing

Sales canvassing can be done in several ways, like:

telemarketing
door-to-door
direct mail
networking
events
introductory sales letters

Whatever medium you choose it is critical to have a process, with

clear objectives, which is repeatable and where rejection is part of the
learning process.

A crash course in sales and marketing align-

ment best practices

In Marketing vs. Sales a cleared out the distinction between the two
activities and when it makes more sense for an organization to lever‐
age on marketing rather than sales and vice-versa.

While it is essential to understand the difference between marketing

and sales, it is also critical to understand how they work together.

Marketing and Sales working together

As Peter Drucker pointed out in his book Drucker Management,
“there will be always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But
the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of mar-
keting is to know and understand the customer so well that the prod‐
uct or service fits him and sells itself.”

While marketing can get to the point of understanding the customer

and make sales team superfluous – to a certain extent.

The sales team though is a critical link between the marketing depart‐
ment and the customers. Salespeople are involved in the whole
process of and customer journey at a personal level.

Indeed, not only the salesperson might speak to the potential cus‐
tomer in the most delicate moment when she/he is deciding whether it
makes sense to purchase your product or service. But it assists the
customer throughout the entire process.

For instance, a critical moment of the whole customer journey is when

she/he needs assistance or support. While this phase might be in part
automated, in most cases you’ll need a support team, which is often
sales oriented to assist the customers.

In those phases, you can unlock many insights about the customers
that marketing will never manage to have with automation alone. That
is when sales and marketing come together to create a customer-
centric journey.

In what other ways than sales and marketing work together?

Lead generation

The usual funnel sees it the marketing department in charge of giving

to the sales team a list of leads (people that might be interested in
your product or service) they can work on and bring them in as cus‐
tomers. While this is the traditional process, it is important to remark
that often the opposite happens.

For instance, if you take the sales canvassing process that allows the
company to acquire customers that have never heard about your
brand. In that scenario, a sales team can give valuable insights to the
marketing team on where to focus their attention and understand the
areas where the marketing activities of the company might be
improved.

Automation

In the era of AI and machine learning, it’s easy to assume that au‐
tomation should come before anything else. However, automation, if
done with no coordination between the marketing and sales teams, it
doesn’t add any value.

If at all it can create irreversible damages to your brand. Therefore,

before you set up any automation, you need a deep understanding of
your customers, your product, your value proposition, and the whole
journey customers take to go from the first touch point with your
brand up to the referral stage and on.
Thus, before the marketing department creates any automation you
need them to coordinate as much as possible with sales team to
make sure the automation process leverages on customer insights
that only the sales force, which is in touch with the customer base on
a daily basis – has at its disposal.

Related: Marketing vs. Sales: How to Use Sales Processes to Grow

Your Business

Viral marketing

Many believe that all you need is a viral marketing campaign to make
the lead acquisition process smooth and inexpensive. However, even
though viral marketing can do that, you might initially need intense
coordination between sales and marketing (and engineering) to un‐
derstand what part of your product might carry some virality.

For instance, if you run a SaaS business in some cases, it might

make sense to create a free version of the product (the so-called
freemium model) that becomes an essential part of the lead genera‐
tion process.

However, what features, or how much volumes can you offer for free
to acquire enough customers? A/B testing and big data will help.
However, to set it up correctly you need insights from the sales teams.

Those mentioned above are just some of the activities for which sales
and marketing working together can really create an effective strate-
gy for the growth of your brand and business.

Therefore, even though it makes sense to understand and keep a

clear distinction between sales and marketing so that each of them
can focus on specific aspects of the business with accountability and
set results.

On the other hand, it is critical to understand the level of coordination

that sales and marketing can achieve.

Related: Dropbox Self-Serve Business Model In A Nutshell

More sales best practices to apply to your

business

Sales and distribution are two primary ingredients for any business
success. Thus, starting from the best practices for your sales team is
the first step toward building a profitable business. Of course, once
you have mastered those the time is right to start experimenting with
new sales strategies that none out there is doing. Yet if you’re missing
the best practices, this is an excellent place to start.

Action plan

Salespeople have to act and do it as quickly as possible. Procrastina‐

tion is the first enemy as the more time you spend thinking, the less
you’ll have time to act and start for instance sending those emails that
can lend you new clients or calling those contacts you have on your
desk.

However, to make your action more effective, a plan is needed. An ac‐

tion plan is merely a set of predetermined steps you will take and a
workflow you’ll need to make your effort more organized.

Customer targeting

One key ingredient to make sales processes successful is the ability

of the sales team to target the right leads. Indeed, imagine the case of
a salesperson contacting a hundred people and closing none.

In many cases that happens when the salesperson doesn’t know

who’s the ideal target that can benefit from the company’s service or
product.

Sales canvassing

When a company has mastered lead generation by automating part of

the activities from its marketing department it is easy to have sales‐
people forget about the first and hardest stage, get in touch with peo‐
ple that don’t know your brand.

Instead, have your salespeople spend a part of their time doing sales
canvassing or contacting with cold calls or emails people that don’t
know your brand. When they master this process, they can also un‐
cover insights about why your business didn’t manage to be recog‐
nized among valuable segments of the market as well.

Related: Sales Canvassing: How To Succeed In Door-To-Door Sales

Sales scripts

When a company starts up, you’ll probably have one or two salespeo‐
ple that have a weird profile. In short, they are not typically just people
that mastered the sales process; they are more like renaissance men
and quick learners.

They ventured in the business world when none or few people knew
your brand and built the company from the ground up. Thus, those
people know your company and product better than anyone else.

Therefore, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. Instead,
have the new team members of the sales team take advantage of
scripts that cover up the main concerns and questions potential cus‐
tomers might have and how to address them. Keep in mind that the
script is just a tool to guide the sales force, but it is meant to be im‐
proved over time.

Email templates

Just like scripts, email templates can be a great help to salespeople to

use what has already worked and rolled it out on a larger scale.

It is essential to keep improving those templates to allow sales emails

to gain higher and higher conversion rates. Even though templates do
work, it is vital to let for at least a small part of it to be personalized.

Thus, while you can have a template, you still need to do your re‐
search and make sure you offer some valuable information to get the
lead interested in what you’re saying. Why would anyone listen to you
if you’re sending out the same message to anyone?

Personalized message

Before contacting anyone make sure to do your research. People are

interested in listening to you when you can deliver to them solutions
to their problem.

None cares about your product or service or who you are (unless
you’re a rockstar). Thus, before sending our that message, are you
providing something valuable to the person on the other side?

Value proposition

One of the less understood aspects of selling is the fact that you only
need to pick up the phone as many times as you can and sell your
product.

However, while this is a prerequisite, it is not really what makes the

difference. When you’re reaching out to someone, you need to under‐
stand what motivates them, their value proposition.

Marketing usually can deliver a value proposition and make it seen

by as many people as possible. But that value proposition will be not
tailored. In short, your product or service doesn’t have a single value
proposition, but it will have as many as many potential clients exist
out there.

The salesman has to be able to find the value proposition in the prod‐
uct or service that most suits the potential customer on the other side.
That is how you get attention.

Related: What Is a Value Proposition? Value Proposition Canvas

Explained

10x goal setting

Among the most misunderstood things about sales is the goal setting
process. Many believe that is fine to set reasonable goals. Thus, they
won’t shot to the moon but rather be happy with a discrete objective.

For instance, they might say, “why don’t we increase sales by 50%
this year?” And for many, this is a massive increase. Yet if you are not
ambitious enough not only you won’t reach the objective but you
won’t even take the necessary actions to get there.

In short, to reach massive results, you need to have quite ambitious

goals, and targets. Those will ask for the kind of actions that will get
you motivated in the long run.

Related: Moonshot Thinking: When Growth Marketing Becomes All

About The 10X Rule

Understand the client business model

If you’re selling to another business, you need to understand its psy‐

chology. While indeed when you sell to a consumer, you want to un‐
derstand their necessities.

When it comes to the business, you want to study their business

model indeed. How do they make money? Who are their customers?
What do their customers want? What cost structure does the busi‐
ness have?

All those aspects will be critical to understanding what the person, on

the other hand, is motivated by and get you closer to deliver the solu‐
tion that works best for them.

Related: What Is a Business Model? 30 Successful Types of Busi-

ness Models You Need to Know

Follow-up

This is the most critical word in sales, yet many neglect it. When
you’ve spent hours in prospecting, researching, and meeting a client
you’ve done only part of the work.

However, when you don’t follow up, you’ve wasted your time. You
could have well not done the work at all. The follow-up is probably the
thing that requires the least effort (that is more a matter of organiza‐
tion), yet that is what gets you to close the deal.

Until the potential client gives you an answer which might be positive
or negative, you need to follow-up!

Related: How Does ConvertKit Make Money? CovertKit Business

Development Model Explained

Fill your pipeline, always!

In some cases, you might think your pipeline is good enough. That is
when you start losing ground. To avoid the risk of being left with an
empty pipeline, you need to be prospecting at all time.

Some deals might take way longer than expected to be closed, in that
scenario you need a backup plan, which is your pipeline and how full
it is.

Keep in touch

When you’ve closed a deal or received a No as the answer, you can’t

just leave it up there. You need to keep in touch with that person as
what might have prevented to close the deal might have been timing.

On the other hand, if you already closed a deal with that person keep‐
ing in touch might allow you to understand when that person has ad‐
ditional needs and whether you can help with your company to fulfill
them.

Deliver value before closing

Many think of selling as closing a deal. While closing is part of the

process, you’re selling (or serving) at all time. The common mistake is
to think you have to deliver value only when the customer has been
acquired and he has given you the credit card.

Instead, you need t deliver value as soon as you start interacting with
a potential client. Why does she/he need to trust you?

That person doesn’t know you, how she can be sure you’re the per‐
son she wants to have business with. There is only one way to prove
it, to deliver value before the sales are closed.

Outstanding support

After you’ve closed the sales, it isn’t like your work is over. If you pro‐
vide a service the most delicate part of it is the first stage of usage of
that service by the new customer. Indeed this is still a process in
which the person needs to understand whether you can be trusted to
deliver the value you promised.

Therefore, you need to be on top of it. The way you support the client
once she has acquired your product or service determines how much
your business can be trusted. Also, an essential part of any sales fun‐
nel is the referral side.

When you’re providing outstanding support not only you’re retaining

valuable customers, but you also have those people refer your busi‐
ness to others.

At the end of it, it’s about listening

Based on the research by Hubspot those are the top four ways to
create a positive sales experience, according to buyers:

Listen to their needs (69%)

Don’t be pushy (61%)
Provide relevant information (61%)
Respond promptly (51%)

Therefore, it is critical to learning to listen, which does not mean think‐

ing about what you have to say next when the other person is listen‐
ing. But instead to focus solely on what the other person says em‐
phatically. One mantra I have (or at least I try) to follow is “how do I
create value for this person?”

Once that becomes hardwired, it will be much easier to get things

going!

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