Is your pipelin
e of BD opportunities real?
As you start off another year in BD, start off with a squeaky clean pipeline. I’m talking about a pipeline that is honest. Typically BD professionals will hold onto “files” too long while real opportunities are passing them by.
Create a spreadsheet with a heading that looks like this:
| Opportunity (Name) | Decision Makers | Decision Process | Impact | Deadline | Budget | Competition | Homework |
Who are the Decision Makers?
I’m not speaking of just the owner of the company. They are the:
- Initiator – the person who begins the process of considering a purchase
- Influencer – the person who attempts to persuade the group by imposing their choice criteria on the decision
- Decider – the person who has the power and/or the financial authority to make the ultimate choice
Typically what will be listed in the decision maker column will be one name when in reality there can be many people inside the company as well as outside that have their say. One example would be the banker who lost the deal because he didn’t see the ex-wife of the owner as a decision maker. Why the ex-wife? She is the mother of the children and was not about to be left out of a significant decision that may affect her kids and their economic future. My favorite story would be my dad who worked for a company as a tradesman for nearly 50 years. He was offered promotions several times and turned them down. He liked to be in the field getting his hands dirty. Do you think any significant decision that impacted my dad was run past my him, absolutely it was. He may have not had a title in the executive suite, but he had clout and could kill a deal with one simple “No.”
Go through your list and honestly ask yourself, “Do I know all the decision makers on this deal sheet? Who are my deal killers?”
Do you know the Decision Process of each of your deals?
Not YOUR process, THEIR process? A vanilla flavored process only exists in training manuals and books on BD. If you are assuming what their process is and do not have a concrete pathway to getting this deal done, back up and find out before you waste more time and resources.
Do you know the Impact of this deal to the customer?
I know the impact to yours is another project to work on and money in your pocket. The reality is, I may see the elephant in the room, but unless my customer acknowledges that it is an elephant and it is a problem that it is in the room, I don’t have a deal. Your sense of urgency to their pain doesn’t mean they feel any pain. Have THEY acknowledged the impact by moving forward with this project and have they acknowledged that it is significant enough to invest time, money, and resources.
Do you know what the REAL deadline is for this project? The deadline is defined as “bad things will happen if we go past this date.” Who declared the deadline, you or them? What is happening between now and the deadline? Are they scoping out the competition? Is there active participation by both parties in the process or have they gone dark?
Does the budget exist for this project? Have you seen it or are you going by their word? Have you done some research into the myriad of online resources to check the health of the company? Blind faith has causes so much damage in companies when the supposed secure deals fall through based on the lack of information on the budget.
Are you the winner of this deal or a seat filler? Do you know who the competition is in this deal? Do you know them by name of company as well as by rep? Do you know the extent of relationships between the competition and members in the company? Go out to LinkedIn and other social media platforms to find the connections you may not have been aware of when you started this deal.
The homework is the back and forth sharing of information. You send something to your customer; they are supposed to send something back to you. Is this process going smoothly? Are they holding their end up and getting the information to you on a timely basis with the least amount of requests for the information? If there is stalling on their part which could be a leading indicator that either the competition is in there or the sense of urgency and impact is not at a level that is moving them forward. Go back in there to diagnose what is going on.
If you have successful and confidently answered all of these questions, you have a real prospect. If not, you have some homework to do to tighten up your opportunities. You may find out you do not have the stealth pipeline you thought you had for 2015, but best you find out early. Hopefully this process, painful as it was can help you shore up the holes in your BD efforts as you start new deals. It can be used as a dashboard for all existing as well as new deals. It will also help you spend the time on the deals that have the greatest chance of closing. This keeps us less emotional and more objective about our pipelines.
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