CHAPTER 4

A Simple Framework for Developing New Business

I had a ten-year run as a sales hunter to refine my personal new business development sales process. Personal is the keyword in that sentence. It never crossed my mind that one day I might be sharing this process with others, let alone writing a book on the topic. I tell my children that when you use the words “always” or “never,” you probably aren’t telling the truth. But in this case, I am. Never did I picture myself becoming a coach, consultant, or author.

Born Out of Failure

I left the awesome direct marketing business about nine months after it was sold to a gigantic public company. The handwriting was on the wall and it became obvious the new owners were intent on wrecking everything I loved about the place. Not wanting to miss my opportunity to get in on the tech bubble and become an Internet millionaire, I jumped on board with a web-based learning management company that gave me a generous guarantee and a spreadsheet worth of phantom stock options. I was convinced this was it. A few years down the road I’d be famous for delivering more new business than anyone dreamed. The company would get acquired, we’d all be bazillionaires, and I would ride off into the sunset in my charcoal gray over burgundy leather Porsche 911.

It didn’t play out quite as planned. The bubble burst, venture capital dried up, and Internet start-ups with negative cash flow fell out of vogue. But it was still a high-paying job in an entrepreneurial company with great people. We supposedly had a powerful solution and I had a framework for finding and closing new business. What could be bad? A lot.

I came to the new company with a one-page sales plan. I sketched out a dozen questions for which I needed answers to begin attacking the market. Whenever I would meet with my boss to review the questions, our conversations grew progressively more perplexing as it became clear that there were no coherent answers.

The first few questions I asked were about selecting target markets and prospects. And the first few answers basically amounted to telling me to start by calling on my family and friends. I hadn’t realized I joined Northwestern Mutual to sell life insurance! By the way, I am a very happy Northwestern Mutual client and have nothing but respect for the company and its sales agents. After explaining to the partner in charge of sales (my boss) that I had reviewed my roster of relatives and friends and no one on the list was in a position to purchase an enterprise learning management system, I asked him who I should target next. Were there certain vertical industries or types of businesses more likely to need a learning management system? How about company size or geography? Without flinching, he simply said that what we had was hot, every decent-size company with training content could use it, and I should have no problem finding opportunities. Right.

Not long after I started, I was assigned to work with our major channel partner. Looking back, that was probably my punishment for asking too many questions the first week on the job. This channel partner was a behemoth of an organization with more people, positions, and overhead than the federal government. But they did have deep relationships with many Fortune 500 companies and a strong training and learning offering.

I was new to selling through partners. When I asked how to proactively begin working our partner’s accounts I was told to wait. Hmmm. Wait? See reason No. 2 in Chapter 2. Wait on what? I was told to wait for their sales force or learning experts to summon me for a meeting with one of their clients. Excuse me, you’re paying me how much to sit and wait? You want me to sit here in this very quiet office filled with mouse clicks and whispering software developers (free soda and a foosball table) to wait for someone to invite me to a meeting? Shoot me now.

It gets better. Still perplexed about this reactive approach, I inquired what I was supposed to do when the partner scored a meeting for us with one of its clients. How do I prepare for the meeting? What type of discovery work can I do on the front end? How should I conduct the sales call alongside the partner? By this point, you can predict the frustrating answer. I was told not to worry about it. The channel partner owned the relationship, knew the client’s situation, and would lead the sales call. My job was to show up, be passionate, do a presentation highlighting the magnificence of our superior system, and then conduct the “demo.” I’m getting queasy just writing it! Presentation and demo. Two of my least favorite sales words in the same sentence. If you’re not the patient type, feel free to jump ahead to Chapter 13 to see what took place on one of these “presentations.” You’ll come to hate the word, too.

Bottom line is that this little learning management system company failed. I failed. It was awkward and painful. I was one of the first people tossed off the ship to lighten the load as we were going down. In less than twelve months, I had gone from record-setting top salesperson to being fired for the first time in my life. It was one of the most valuable experiences of my career. It certainly was foundational. I promised myself, “Never again.” Never again would I let someone else dictate my sales process.

What does that story of failure have to do with this chapter on a simple framework for developing new business? Everything. I became more convinced than ever that I really did have a proven formula for acquiring new business. It took the painful lesson of being prevented from using it to realize that I might have something valuable and useful to others.

I spent a short stint at an intriguing boutique consulting firm. The firm self-destructed because of an overabundance of partner ego and a scarcity of revenue. Another valuable life lesson: Too much ego + Too little cash = Short-lived partnership.

But what emerged from the ashes was a thing of beauty. My friend and former sales manager Donnie was part of that little consulting practice. He’d begun doing sales consulting for a few clients. When it all blew up he came to me and asked if I’d join him in launching a sales coaching and consulting business. My immediate answer: I don’t think so. Reeling from having lost my job for the second time in two years, I just wanted to get a real sales job in a real company. Give me an opportunity to sell something and I’ll go out and do my thing. Three kids, a wife at home, and a fat mortgage payment required cash flow. I couldn’t stomach the thought of going very long without income.

Documented Out of Necessity

Donnie could sell, and he did a number on me. “Come on, Mike. You’re the best new business salesperson I’ve ever seen. Do this with me. I’ll do my management and leadership thing, and you’ll teach people how to sell, use the phone, structure calls—all that new business stuff you love. We’ll have a blast.” It was a good sales pitch, and since I had nothing imminent in terms of another job offer, I agreed to help get Donnie started. The business took off like the jet that was part of our logo. I jumped in with both feet, and for four years never looked back.

Very quickly, we had more clients and sales meetings to lead than we had content. I spent what seemed like a month straight working into the wee hours of the morning cranking out coaching content. For the first time, I was forced to articulate my theories about sales and a process to develop new business for someone else’s consumption. What I’d done intuitively for years needed to be codified and then converted to usable material. Donnie is a gifted teacher and he was extremely helpful turning my raw content into teachable modules and lessons.

One of our very first clients was the Bank of America Premier Banking team in St. Louis, which was led by a supremely talented woman who engaged us to infuse her team with energy and coach them to proactively pursue new lines of business from clients within their portfolio. The ink on the PowerPoint was barely dry when I stood in front of that team to share the introductory module of what I now call the New Sales Driver for the first time. Considering how fresh the material and how green the facilitator, the session went swimmingly well.

The Simplest of Models

It’s been ten years, fifty client engagements, and two stints as a corporate head of sales since the New Sales Driver debuted at that Bank of America meeting. It’s been heavily road-tested, revised, and refined. With each tweak, it has become more and more simple.

THE NEW SALES DRIVER

A. Select targets.

B. Create and deploy weapons.

C. Plan and execute the attack.

It’s as clear and simple as it gets. These are the three essential components for establishing a new business development sales initiative. I’m not a war hawk and know very little about military operations. If you’re an ultimate pacifist, my hope is that the battle metaphor is not a stumbling block. There are many similarities between prospecting for new business and planning for war, and I’ve found these descriptive phrases to be exceedingly helpful when communicating this framework to salespeople and companies.

If we’re committed to proactively going after new business, then we must have a clear picture of the customers we’re targeting. It’s challenging, to say the least, to pursue something if you do not know in which direction to head. Therefore, selecting targets is the first piece of the puzzle and first aspect of our new business framework. I’ll offer some rules, theories, guidance, tips, and options regarding target selection in the next chapter.

When attacking targets, it really helps when we’re able to create and deploy the necessary weapons. There’s an entire arsenal of weapons available to the salesperson. Not only must we be armed, but it’s critical that we become proficient firing those weapons at selected targets. Most of my coaching time and much of the balance of this book is dedicated to ensuring salespeople are armed with the essential weapons and become highly effective at using them.

Finally, we come to planning and executing the attack. I like to say that it’s all academic unless you actually take the field. Selecting the right targets and possessing the appropriate weapons are meaningless unless we get into action. Remember: SALES IS A VERB. Planning our sales attack forces us to have discipline and to take a hard look at our calendars. We need to declare what weapons we’ll be shooting at which targets, and when. And then we must do it, monitoring and measuring our activity along the way. If you recall, several of the “not-so-sweet 16” reasons salespeople fail at new business development stem from lack of execution. We’ll tackle this topic in Chapter 14.

A Bold Declaration

After ten years using this framework intuitively as a frontline sales hunter, and another ten formally as a sales leader, allow me to make a bold declaration: If an individual salesperson or a company’s sales team is not successfully acquiring new business, the cause of the failure can be found in one of the three components of the New Sales Driver. Said another way, if we are not closing new deals, the problem can be identified either as:

  Poor target selection or lack of focus on selected targets

  Lame sales weapons or lack of proficiency deploying weapons

  Inadequate planning or lack of execution of the plan

Truth be told, most sales teams struggle with more than one of these three issues.

However, there are a few critical assumptions that accompany my declaration. Yes, assuming can be dangerous, but in order to help fix a sales problem, we need be assured it’s a sales problem. I guarantee that the sales problem lies in one or more of those New Sales Driver categories, assuming:

  The business has a clear strategy, a defined place in the market, and there is demand for its offering.

  The sales compensation plan is not working against the desired sales effort.

  The sales talent would at least qualify as “average.”

Those are not outlandish assumptions. Said simply: The business knows what it is and where it is going; the pricing model makes sense based on the value delivered; the compensation plan is not incenting salespeople not to sell; and the person or people in question would rate as a B- or better.

Establishing an effective new business sales initiative is not complicated, especially when the business has a clear picture of the market it is attacking. We strategically select target accounts. We arm ourselves with the weapons required to pursue those targets and become proficient at firing those weapons. And then we plan and methodically execute the attack. New Sales. Simplified.