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Asking the right business questions: a toolkit for business development 29
81 How well known are you to the local, regional or national press or
trade publications, for your knowledge and expertise about your
area of business?
82 How are you currently perceived by your target market?
83 Do you have a website and how effective are you at attracting
relevant visitors to it? (See Chapter 7.)
84 Do you have genuinely helpful content and information on your
site about your services or product range? (See Chapter 7.)
85 How effective are you at encouraging website visitors to make more
direct contact with you if that is what is needed? (See Chapter 7.)
86 If you want customers to buy from you online, does your system
inspire condence and trust and help you build relationships? (See
Chapter 7.)
87 How does your website help harvest visitors and build ongoing
communication and relationships with prospective customers and
clients? (See Chapter 7.)
88 If you are in the service sector, to what extent does your website
inuence prospective clients to want your rm or its specic
individuals? (See Chapter 7.)
89 If you are in the service sector, where can you get speaking
engagements to showcase your expertise?
90 Does your promotional material really communicate the genuine
benets of using you as opposed to a competitor, or is it simply a
list of features and generic clichés?
91 If you have had to compete for business with tenders and proposals,
what is your track record of success? (See Chapter 7.)
92 If you are failing to win the majority of these, do you know why
and what you can do about it? (See Chapter 7.)
93 Have you ever had any proper training in the subject of winning in
competitive situations? (See Chapter 7.)
94 What steps do you take to monitor product and service delivery
quality throughout your various business premises/locations and
operations? (See Chapter 6, golden rule 2.)
95 How do you monitor client satisfaction?
96 How do you currently use customer or client complaints as a way of
30 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
enhancing and building better relationships with them? (See Chapter
6, golden rule 2.)
97 Are you guilty of using too much technical jargon and language
about your services or products in your spoken or written
communications? (See Chapter 8.)
98 Are you spending the majority of your business time and resources
on those things that are giving you the best return? (See Chapter 8.)
99 What decision-making structures in your business need to be
changed to ensure that the answers you have given to the questions
in this chapter of the book are acted upon quickly? (See Chapter 9.)
100 How do you dene business development success?
Finally, think of this. All the decisions that you will ever take relating to
your business and the results that ow from them are actually inuenced
by the quality, range and frequency of the questions that you ask.
Improve your business questioning skills and you improve your business!
‘The answers are all out there, we just need to ask the right question.’
Oscar Wilde
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