Business Development ‘Gladiators’
– Triggering the real YOU!
Part – X
Professional Attributes to become
awe-inspiring Business Development Gladiators!
Welcome
back to my world as we take the concluding journey for all you Business
Development Gladiators!
On
this journey we will explore the last three professional attributes of
Executive Essentials for all BDEs: Presentation; Negotiation & Closing.
Presentation:
The
Presentation stage normally would constitute your second meeting with your
client. This is an important stage as it will now connect you with your client,
more closely, on a solutions providing mode. The contents of your presentation
would, quite obviously, be based on the probing that you would have done during
your previous meeting. Hence, your presentation (in most cases a power point)
should begin with a short description of your organization and its strong
presence in the market. Next you need to highlight concerns that your client
had expressed during your last meeting. Subsequently, you need to start
highlighting your product as a solutions provider to his concerns.
It
is very important for you to understand at this stage of your presentation that
you should only depict accurately how your product can be a solutions provider
for your client BASED ONLY on his concerns. Don’t go much beyond this even if
your product can do more. Remember, information should be given on a need to
know basis and not otherwise. Too much of information can confuse your client
and will therefore necessitate another series of meetings which could delay
closures!
Always
begin your product presentation (after having highlighted your client’s
concerns) with his most conversed concern. Try to epicenter your product
presentation around it for a while. Then start building his other related
concerns around it and provide solutions. There must always be a smooth
continuity to your presentation based on your past probings. Don’t jump from
one point to another unrelated point. It will not make your conversation with
your client seamless!
Negotiation:
When
you reach this stage you should have, by now, become quite familiar with your
client: enough to be able to have a conversation on an equal level foundation.
Reaching this level of a relationship is very important at the negotiation
stage because much of the conversation will be a ‘cat and mouse’ play between
you and your client who will continuously value the product’s solution
providers with its final price offered. At this point your client will take you
through a natural process of bargaining on the price. It happens in every deal
a BDE does and hence is unavoidable!
But
a powerful BDE could make this negotiating stage a winner for himself or
herself if the Presentation stage would have been well detailed and effectively
explained. If this has been achieved, the very superior core values of the
product as an ideal solutions provider for the client will deter the client
from overly fussing over the price!
Closing:
This
stage is the easiest challenge to overtake, actually speaking! Most BDEs have an
inane fear of this particular stage wherein they feel that, at the last moment,
something could go drastically wrong and all their hard work may get wasted at
the last juncture of actually collecting the order.
This
is a stage most feared by only those BDEs who have inadequately handled the
previous stages as discussed in my previous blog parts. As a BDE myself, this
stage was never a challenge but an opportunity to explore several areas to
build up a permanent relationship with my client. I never viewed this phase as
a ‘life and death’ situation to collect the purchase request from the client.
Instead, I would use this stage to further fortify my relationship with my
client by offering to assist in taking his products to the market or giving him
references for his BDEs to follow up with as an advantage to his organization
or building up a strong after sales schedule, with immediate effect, for the
products sold to him by me. For me this was a phase which I always looked
forward to wherein I could impress him as a hardcore professional who was
absolutely different from the rest: a World Class Gladiator!
I
do hope you enjoyed reading the entire series of blogs I very especially
crafted for all of you. This is the concluding part of the series and if any
one of you would like to know more on how to become Awe-Inspiring BDEs, please
do leave a comment below.
While
this journey ends here, I will be embarking on a new one next week called “The
Art of Effective Business Networking!” Do join me on this journey, too…
Ciao
for now J
Anand
K Nair
Leadership
& Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Educationist. Business
Consultant.
Founder,
Anand
Nair Leadership Foundation
AGNI
Leadership Initiatives
