Business development requires a duo of solid strategy and finely-tuned tools. Each bleed into the other, with the tools you use informing how to adapt your strategy and your methods relying on using your tools. Your business requires the right combination of both to help you work smarter, not harder.
In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the essential tools for successful business development, many of which are hiding in plain sight. The question is, are you leveraging them correctly?
Business Development Tools You Shouldn’t Overlook
- The Phone
We’ll say it again: cold calling is not dead! The phone remains one of your most valuable outreach tools. Everyone has one, and it’s now by their side at all times. The phone call is a reliable outreach method that gets a bad rap. The key is to approach each call as a conversation in discovery, not a sales pitch. Professional persistence pays off if you make each call an invitation to learn how you can help. - Skype and Other Virtual Meetings
Just like the phone call, a virtual meeting is an excellent connection method. Virtual meetings go a step beyond a call and allow you to show visuals and see your prospect face-to-face. That in-person connection makes a difference, allowing you to read facial cues and get a feel for the best next steps. In a globalized, fast-paced world, virtual meetings provide an opportunity to make a personal connection regardless of distance and timing. - Events and Tradeshows
Too often, businesses miss the chance to leverage tradeshow and event marketing properly. They show up with a booth and aggressively solicit passersby with their product. The problem here is those passersby didn’t express interest – and how could they, if they didn’t even know the business would be there? The missing piece is outreach before an event. Find out who’s going, and invite them to visit your booth or set up a meeting before or after the day’s events. This simple step can make a huge difference in your impact. - Online Content
Blog posts, sales sheets, client stories – all of these are useful content pieces you can leverage to gain leads and nurture prospects. All of your content should have a purpose matched to a spot in the buyer’s journey. Use them when you’re reaching out to prospects to encourage them to move forward. - Social Media
Leverage your social presence. Use it to reach out to prospects, engage current leads, and to establish yourself as an expert. Ask questions to put out a line for potential customers like, “What’s frustrating you in your business today?”. LinkedIn is an especially good platform for outreach and engagement – utilize it as a place to identify, learn about, and engage with prospective customers. - Marketing Automation
If you don’t have it, get it. Marketing automation has established itself as a lynchpin in lead generation and nurturing. With a marketing automation tool, you can track prospect activity, gathering information from their engagement on your website, on social media, and with your emails. All that data is used to score a lead and send them on a journey using your CRM’s outreach cadence. - CRM
As with marketing automation, CRMs are essential in the business development game. While marketing automation can gather loads of data, your CRM helps you analyze it and put it into action. Use the marketing segmentation you gained from automation to build buyer personas and create outreach templates and cadences to nurture leads of different kinds.
The One Tool You’re Missing
There is one last tool you’re missing, and it’s staring you in the face right now: NuGrowth Sales as a Service (SaaS). NuGrowth SaaS is an all-in-one business development, CRM management, and sales strategy solution that can be scaled to your business’s needs.
Our team brings in state-of-the-art CRM management and data analysis tools, along with out-of-the-box outreach templates and cadences to use as your jumping off point for optimizing your team.
With real result like an almost 20% increase in meetings held and over 50% increase in closed revenue, our reputation as the #1 sales as a service provider continues to grow. See what NuGrowth SasS can do for your business: contact us at here or at 614.304.3920.
Author: Sarah Deak
Sarah is a veteran copywriter and content strategist with NuGrowth Solutions. She likes to look for the unexpected angle and uses her background in education, business development, and marketing to create interesting and informative pieces to equip readers with actionable data.
Sarah Deak is a veteran copywriter and content strategist with NuGrowth Solutions. She likes to look for the unexpected angle and uses her background in education, business development, and marketing to create interesting and informative pieces to equip readers with actionable data