While working with several clients across all sizes and product offerings, AG Salesworks has identified 5 common reasons why competent and capable Internal Business Development teams underachieve.
Reason 1: Preparation VS. Training
When we review training materials for Internal Business Development Teams, we often find little to no information on how to be a more effective at the job. There's never a shortage of product knowledge, benefits and features, objection handling, and standard qualification questions. Taken for granted are the tactics, methodologies, and science required to reach the proper contacts and initiate a worthwhile business conversation. The equivalent would be buying the ingredients for a Baked Alaska and having no idea how to prepare it. If you only hire "experienced" Business Development Representatives, chances are their last job had a very similar manual.
Reason 2: Focus in flux
When we ask potential clients to define the job description of a Business Development Representative, not only are the answers very different from company to company, but they are often very, very long. Duties range from order taking, event support, marketing follow up, sales support, and way down the end...cold calling. The most common response to, "How much cold calling does your Business Development Team do?" is, "Not enough". To further hinder progress, whenever ad hoc projects appear, it's usually the Business Development Team that is tapped first.
Reason 3: Funnel vision
The teams we encounter are often far more reactive than proactive. The dependence on marketing tools and data has shackled them to a limited universe of varying (if not poor) quality. Marketing data is necessary and essential, but often derived from nondiscriminatory actions; anyone can fill out a contact form. Sophisticated tools help sort the gold from the rest, but these tools can work as a detriment to the prospecting process as Representatives become solely focused on the highest scoring individuals. In the ideal scenario, the Internal Business Development Team should be feeding the Marketing department with as much, if not more, data as they receive, as their information is validated and real-time.
Reason 4: More! Motivation
Motivating the right behaviors is important for any employee, but it becomes critically important when managing Business Development Teams. Most compensation plans that we see focus on maximizing the number of opportunities produced, which at face value seems a decent strategy. What are often missing are the incentives for behaviors that generate those opportunities: quality activities and conversations. Compensating based on quantity not only forces Business Development Representatives to focus solely on ‘low hanging fruit', but to also slide less qualified opportunities into the pipeline. The results are devastated sales metrics, overinflated forecasts, and bruised morale.
Reason 5: Turnstile teams
For all the reasons above, and many more, it is not a glamorous job. Most people whom take an Internal Business Development position are doing so as a stepping stone to further their Sales career. A constant revolving door of talent can demoralize a team of any size, but on a smaller team, the dominoes fall much harder. A combination of management, infrastructure, and compensation geared at recognizing and celebrating the proper behaviors and correct results, is crucial to continued success. A room with X cubes, X phones, and X product dump scripts will produce X number of revolving employees, as well as boundless recruiting, training, and opportunity costs.
Conclusion
The clients we have worked with have all benefited from hunting for opportunities outside the comfort zone of their inbound marketing data. Not only do these clients see more opportunities of real merit progress through the Sales Pipeline, but at a quicker pace. Furthermore, they experience cyclical improvements to their direct marketing efforts, as programs become fueled with validated data and valuable intelligence generated from their outbound prospecting efforts. The engine that effectively drives these results is comprised of combination of relentless commitment to in-depth and ongoing training, the use of proven tactics and methodologies, a focus on quality minded behaviors, and persistent and consistent effort...every day.
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