- Craft a plan to strategically grow, Leading a Team, Working on My Own BD Skills, Create success across my team so I can accelerate my career
2023: Take Control Of Your Growth (3 of 5)
What's On My Mind
Let's AC/DC PreBD!
In Part 1, we discussed through a simple model to evaluate your business or book of business.
In Part 2, we talked about differentiating your Solution.
Today, we rock out PreBD.
Here's the model again.
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But before we party with PreBD, let's master the model.
(Skip this if you already get it.)
We all have four things to pay attention to that might be limiting factors in our books of business.
These pinch points create friction, making it hard to grow.
The bottlenecks can be in four big areas:
- Undifferentiated Solution.
Symptom: Sounding like others in the marketplace.
Great solutions are unique in the buyer's mind in less than 5 minutes.
- Not enough or compelling enough PreBD.
Symptom: Not getting as many "predisposed to choose you" leads.
Great PreBD gives you more leads (that already want you) than your team can handle.
- Inefficient or unaligned BD.
Symptom: not enough of your opportunities are "closing."
Great BD playbooks and moves are seamless across your team in the way IT uses an agile–efficient system, common playbook.
- Inadequate Delivery.
Symptom: you aren't creating enough "Raving Fans" in your work.
Great delivery creates Ravings Fans very quickly and enhances the experience over time.
Partying With PreBD
Last week we differentiated your Solution.
This week, we'll show you how to get more potential decision makers predisposed to choose and use you!
First, context.
This will work if you lead one client relationship. And it will work if you're building a broad-based book of business. And anything in between.
Second, the goal.
We want you to have more people coming to you asking for your help, predisosed to use you and your teams.
Third, the method.
Super simple.
If you aren't getting enough inbound requests for help, answer three questions.
- Who's your perfect potential client?
Think of a persona–the type of person you want to reach out to you– the perfect decision maker.
- What are the most common things they struggle with where you can help?
To start write down the top 5 questions you get asked when you first meet prospective clients.
- What ways do these potential clients search for and consume training?
Think broadly and write them down–Google? Friends? Colleagues? Associations? YouTube? Webinars? Other?
Answering these three questions tell you what to create!
Create?
Yep, to rock out PreBD, you want to create content.
And put it where your perfect prospective buyers are looking for it.
Pro Tip: Create content with a ... reverse half life.
Remember the idea of a half life? It's the time a substance takes to reduce to half its value, like radioactivity.
Example of something with a fast half life: a speech given that isn't recorded.
If someone hasn't called you within a few days after your speech, they probably never will. You're quickly forgotten.
Example of something with a reverse half life: a highly valuable podcast episode.
That video's average watch rate is OVER 100%! That means we created so much value that the average viewer watches it more than once.
Amazing.
And because people get value out of it, they share it.
And because they share it, more people find it.
And because more people find it, more people find out about BIG.
That video has more impact now than when it dropped.
It's influence has grown over time.
That's reverse half life.
Ask yourself.
What can you create that grows in impact over time?
Back to the process.
Here are two examples to get you riffing.
Example One
You're a top client leader for one large client that calls on the senior leadership team and other decision makers across the globe.
Your PreBD could be a monthly email to senior leaders highlighting cutting edge thinking and industry news they should be considering.
Start small: simply email your thinking to some current clients and let them know you can add others to the list.
Scale up: you can use formal technology and even create client-specific microsite housing your older content.
Goal: You could use this client-specific publishing platform to highlight client successes, new ways of thinking (aligned with what the organization should be hiring you for) and industry news. Shape the agenda!
Benefit to others: People really appreciate a "digest" of information, letting them see the signal through the noise.
Benefit to you: This model lets you scale, writing once and letting you add more people over time. It also produces leads as your subscribers will inevitably forward what they find interesting around the organization. And you'll be able to steer interest because you choose the content.
Mutually beneficial!
Example Two
You're a professional growing a book of business across dozens of clients in an niche industry.
Your PreBD could be a lot of things, depending on your answers to the questions above.
Ideas:
- Quarterly (recorded!) speeches at association conferences.
- Monthly YouTube training videos.
- Monthly podcasts interviewing people in the roles you want to meet.
- Monthly webinars on hot topics.
- Monthly emails like the above, but where anyone can sign up.
- A weekly email asking 1 person "who do you know that would benefit from meeting us?"
Start small: Use your top 5 client issues from the questions above as a guide.
Scale up: Get feedback from your clients and evolve!
Goal: Create compelling content that's findable, valuable and shareable.
Benefit to others: They're learning!
Benefit to you: They're calling!
What You Need To Succeed
Did you notice some themes in all those ideas?
Consistency.
Being helpful.
And doing so where your buyers are looking to learn.
And there's one more thing you need to succeed...
Aligning your PreBD to your BD.
We'll teach you how to do that in the next article.
The key: designing your PreBD so it's clear people should call you to find out more.
What's Worth Lingering On
There's a lot of random acts of marketing out there.
Let's do this! Let's to that!
The problem is it's sporadic.
Then, when something doesn't produce results, people go back to...nothing.
They quit. Then ... random idea!
They get back in the ring to take another swing.
Skip sporadic.
Instead...
Set up systems.
Something that happens every quarter. Every month. Or week.
Systems outperform sporadic efforts.
With systems, you get great at PreBD, improving your skills.
With systems, you get to evolve your approach, improving your results.
And with systems, you build trust with your audience, building raving fans.
At it's core, PreBD is about being helpful.
But that's not enough.
You have to be helpful consistently.
Pick a path with your PreBD.
Stick with it for a year.
See what happens.
I have a feeling you'll be...
Mo
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