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Discover the FIVE steps to creating a business development plan that will boost your revenue and grow your business

Many business owners are complacent about securing new and better clients. Often communication and promotional activities are misdirected or minimal in nature and there is no analysis to determine if clients are profitable.

Our experience is that these firms do not have a business development plan for their activities. Consequently they waste money on inappropriate promotional strategies and suffer from fluctuating revenue.

A successful business development plan focuses on identifying and satisfying the needs of clients.

Whilst clients may come to your firm because of its products and/or services, they really buy the benefits or solutions your products and/or services provide. For example, people buy a gym membership because they desire to lose weight or be fitter. 

Five steps to creating an effective business development action plan

(1) Market analysis and segmentation - It is vital to first determine precisely who your targeted clients are and what they value.  Your clients will also have differing needs and decision making processes, thus it is important to group clients into segments. Strategies can then be developed for each targeted market segment.

(2) Sustainable differentiation - This implies that your firm is unique at something that is valuable to your targeted client segment. Successful differentiation will ensure that clients continue to want to use the products and/or services of your firm in the face of continual competitive market pressures.

(3) Positioning - This is one of the most important steps in developing a successful business as it requires the careful design and communication of the firm's offer, so that it has a unique meaning in the minds of each targeted client segment.

(4) Objectives and strategies - Develop a number of measurable business development objectives, such as to achieve more than 10 new clients (on average) per week. Then specific strategies need to be created to achieve the objectives.

(5) Performance measurement - Lord Leverhulme (founder of Unilever) said "half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the problem is I do not know which half". The lesson here is to measure the performance of all strategies, so that you know which ones are making you money and which are not.

The Benefits

The creation of a targeted business development plan, based on the above steps, and its subsequent implementation will result in:

• Identifying your ideal target clients;
• Increasing the success and response to your marketing and promotion;
• Increasing your sales and
• Attracting more profitable clients.

Best Practice Consulting is working with organisations to develop and implement business development plans.  If you would like to boost your sales, increase the number and quality of your client base and maximise the return from your business - contact us today.