22 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
and act as a wake-up call about the important information that you should
have and which is currently unavailable to you.
With all this in mind, take a look through each of the questions in this
chapter, either on your own or working together with colleagues. Some
of them will require a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘don’t know’ response. If
you answer ‘no’, you will need to explore why this is the case and if you
respond with a ‘don’t know’, then you will be aware of those areas where
you should have more information. Other questions will require various
facts and gures and yet others will require more qualitative and creative
answers as you explore possible options.
Of course, not all of the questions will be relevant to all businesses. Where
it is obvious that a question doesn’t apply to you, simply move on. There
will be very limited commentary with the questions at this stage as they are
largely self-explanatory. As the book progresses, however, there will be lots
of coverage about many of the areas that relate to the questions. (See the
chapter/section references alongside the relevant question.)
Now let me give you the ve questions that will help you make the biggest
impact in the shortest time-frame. I call these the ve impact questions™.
They are followed by the 100 business development questions you should
be seeking to answer.
The ve impact questions
Here are the ve general questions that will help you make the biggest
impact in the shortest time-frame. Actively explore options for good
answers to all these questions and then act upon them and you can be
guaranteed of winning more protable business. After these ve questions,
virtually everything else is mere detail.
THE FIVE IMPACT QUESTIONS
1 What actions do you need to take in your business to increase the conversion
rate of your current leads, enquiries or opportunities into protable customers
or clients? There is no point spending money generating more leads and
enquiries until you have mastered your conversion tactics. (See Chapter 4,
priority 1.)
2 What other products or services do you have or can you create that you can
offer or ask your existing customers and clients to buy? (See Chapter 6, golden
rule 4.)
2
n
Asking the right business questions: a toolkit for business development 23
Actively make time, right now, to go through each of these questions,
writing down as many possibilities and options as you can come up with.
Even if they seem extreme at rst, get possibilities down on paper and then
play with them. Bounce them off colleagues and get advice and guidance
on them.
This is not the formal way to do business development or marketing plan-
ning, and many academics and purists will frown on this approach, but I
can tell you as a very experienced practitioner and pragmatist . . . it works.
Come up with effective answers to as many of these questions as you can
and act upon them sensibly and you are guaranteed to experience a dra-
matic improvement in your business fortunes.
Just consider for a moment the effect on your business if you could:
■n
convert 10 per cent more of your current leads, enquiries, visitors into
business;
■n
sell one additional service or product to 10 per cent of your customers
or clients;
■n
get 10 per cent more of them to recommend you to others;
■n
increase your prices to an appropriate proportion of customers and
clients;
■n
generate just an extra 10 per cent more leads, enquiries or visitors.
Even if you can’t manage to get these results in each of the ve areas,
the cumulative result from the categories you can achieve would result in
exponential growth of both your turnover and bottom-line prots.
3 What can you do to get existing customers and clients to spread positive
word-of-mouth and tell others to buy from you as well? (See Chapter 6,
golden rule 5.)
4 What can you do to increase your prices without loss of protable business?
(See Chapter 3.)
5 When you have mastered your conversion of enquiries strategy and done as
much as possible to develop your existing customer or client base, then what
more can you do at a sensible cost to generate additional quality enquiries
or visitors from individuals or businesses that you currently don’t have as
customers or clients? (See Chapter 7.)
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