BD 101: Don’t Be A Cyborg

by Scott

Usually within the first 5 seconds of picking up the phone I can tell if its a cold call. A creative mispronunciation of my name followed by monotone script reading typically give it away.

The person on the other end could have the greatest offer in the world for me. But it doesn’t matter. For better or worse, I’ve conditioned my brain to turn off as soon as I recognize these interactions. Its as if a trigger goes off that immediately diverts all of my focus towards determining how I can politely extract myself from the conversation…I might as well be talking to a machine.

Pro-active business development often requires a lot of cold outreach. When I’m reaching out cold via email …
Continue Reading

8 Comments, add yours

BD 101: Less Obvious Ways to Find A Decision Maker

by Scott

Pro-active business development is about finding decision makers and making it happen when you do.

            

LinkedIn is a pretty powerful tool for finding a decision maker, but sometimes it’s not enough. Let me illustrate an example of what I’m alluding to from my subscription commerce days.

As a budding sub-com warlord, I wanted to reach the person in charge of allocating sampling budgets for a large brand. My guess was that I needed to talk to someone in the marketing department, but there would be 13 marketing coordinators on LinkedIn. Of course none of them mentioned  anything about sampling in their job description. What’s a little known startup to do?

When I find myself in …
Continue Reading

12 Comments, add yours