How to Incorporate Business Development Expertise Into Your Career Plans

Hi, this is Mo Bunnell, your business development expert author of "The Snowball System". And today I'm gonna give you a tool you can use to navigate your career. I was with a person that I mentored yesterday. Somebody I like a lot, and we were talking a little bit about this. The topic came up, and I realized this is a model I used to share a lot back in the day when I was working in a big consulting firm.

And I realized I sort of lost track of it. So I thought I would give it to you today. I was a little bit fired up yesterday, as we both talked about it. It helped her a lot, and I thought it might help our viewers too. Here's the deal. There's sort of two big things to think about as you navigate your career.

And I think of these on like an X, Y axis. I know I was an actuary in a prior life, so I like math and X, Y axis sounds awesome to me, right? Well, maybe we'll add some statistical correlations in a little bit. But on one axis, think of your expertise. And a lot of times when people think of expertise, they think of people in professional services. Consultants, lawyers, accountants, people with deep expertise in an area, but expertise can also be in a very complicated industry like healthcare or outsourcing or complicated services and things like that.

Well in this axis, the more you can learn things that no one else knows, the more that you can differentiate yourself based on expertise, the better. So it's really important in your career, I think, to be able to know things in depth and be able to deliver these things in a way that no one else can.

And that involves study and practice and trying to figure out 'What do other people struggle with?' Running at it, devouring content, and being able to build models, and be able to explain complicated things in simple ways that benefits others. So that's expertise here. The other axis we could think about is business development.

That's a craft of its own. And obviously "The Snowball System" is this comprehensive system for business development. Our live training trains people how to do business development. Business development is a craft of its own. How good are you at attracting others towards you? Having great lead generation methods? Guiding people through a process to realize that a high percentage of the right people need you or your services, your organizational services in building those client relationships to where they're absolutely outstanding. And after they use you, they wanna run around and tell others about you. That they love you so much. There is a craft of that just as powerful as the craft of whatever your core expertise is. Well, how do you put these two things together?

Well it used to be that 10 years ago or earlier,  you could be really great at the expertise part and, not so great at the business development part and your future's fine. It used to be that organizations would hang around people like that. Or let them hang around. They would give them leads, have them do work, and it would be fine.

They'd be more service professionals. If you were to account manager at a big outsourcing company, you might be able to just  service accounts, but not grow them. Well, those days are over or quickly ending. Now people and organizations are expecting deep expertise and the ability to grow client relationships.

And here's the thing. It's the people that can do both at a very, very high level that are the most successful and going to be the most successful, and are the ones that are invaluable. If you can have ridiculously high expertise and have the ridiculously high ability to find clients, bring them in, service with your deep expertise and grow them... Those are the people that are gonna win the day.

Here's sort of the ending of all that. The conversation I had with the young woman that I get to mentor a little bit yesterday, and she's 28, 30 years old thinking about her career. She can start to think about how can she put herself in positions where she's growing both at the same time, or which job over the long term is gonna give her the deepest, most unique expertise and the practice at the craft of bringing clients in. And using this model, you can start to figure out if you've tapped out one area in an organization, maybe it's time to go talk to your boss, and think about how you can take things to the next level. Maybe it's a time to move. Maybe it's time to start your own business or grow on your own. Whatever the right next move is. It's when you're really hitting on all cylinders on both of these things that really, really, really great things happen.

Hey, I hope this model helps you. And as with all of our videos, we hope this one helps you help your clients succeed. Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much for watching. For more content like this, check out my most recent video and be sure to like them so other people can find out about us.

But make sure you subscribe. That's how you'll be automatically alerted to the great content that we put out. And if you want access to a comprehensive system for business development, then just buy my book. "The Snowball System" at Amazon. The link is in the description below. Thanks again.