Answering more of your questions. If you have a question we haven’t answered email me at kschwartz@springboardbizdev.com.
How Do YOU know what we’re doing?
ACCOUNTABILITY – this can be an interesting word with business developers. We used to do huge spreadsheets detailing everything. What we found was that it detailed our networking as it pertained to that client, our partners, our prospect meetings, etc. but it didn’t allocate time for all the emails, calls and follow ups and no one read it anyway. Business developers by nature aren’t much for time tracking and it took hours per spreadsheet to complete.
Recently we changed our entire communications structure and each consultant follows similar requirements. While some do still prepare the big spreadsheet every month we are all in constant communication with our clients. We’ve had some clients tell us to limit communication until we have a strong prospect on the line and need their involvement, we used to agree to such a request but that’s no longer the case. We’ve found that even when the prospect asks us not to communicate they ultimately get frustrated because we didn’t communicate and so here’s what we’ve done to address the communication concerns. After every networking event, meeting, partner conversation, strategy discussion that pertains to a client it’s documents via voice recorded email and sent to the Springboard office to be added into our CRM under the client and the prospect. The office then sends the email to the appropriate client for a quick update.
This keeps our clients up to date in real time. While some find the additional emails frustrating we’ve found that it’s the best way to keep our clients in the loop so they can prepare, send us necessary information, give us any pointers or dates we may need, and feel more confident in their business development efforts.
