How to Team Build for Business Development By wikiHow

To remain competitive and secure in the new economy, it is imperative that companies communicate to their employees the critical importance of proactive branding, marketing and business development. It is essential that management outlines corporate sales objectives and needs, thus creating an innovative business development atmosphere amongst all team members. The idea behind new corporate culture is to build the team for “exciting-times ahead” by communicating the key strengths, opportunities and competitive advantages of their company by first ensuring that all stakeholders are “on-message”. This article explains how to team build for business development.

1. Undertake strategic research and planning with your team. 
As part of doing this, you and your team will need to undertake the following:

• Develop a mission statement
• Create a vision statement
• Create business planning processes
• Do a S.W.O.T. assessment
• Assemble a competition analysis
• Do a risk assessment review

2. Source your competitive advantages. 
Have the team work these out together. When considering your competitive advantages, these are some of the things you should keep in mind:

• What is your unique selling proposition?
• Create a brand experience program
• Plan your sales and marketing thoroughly
• Investigate product and service life cycles
• Build the sales team
• Script the corporate sales

3. Target your marketing. 

In working out who to market to, have the team consider:

• Selection of prospects
• Segmentation of prospects
• Profiling of prospects
• Researching the decision-maker, timing, need, and budget
• Determining the entry point
• Customizing the sales approach

4. Assemble the distribution channel and communication tools with your team. 

When training up the team, get them to focus on:

• Matching the medium to the message
• Creating a brand design
• Using the 7 Touchpoints approach
• Considering how to implement brand delivery
• Overcoming barriers to entry
• Formation of business development tools

5. Have the team ready with a call-to-action program. 

As part of this final business development activity, have the team consider how the business will:

• Target a return on investment
• Target measurable results
• Review plans
• Target deadlines
• Construct programs to remain proactive

6. Get the team to report back to you their overall understanding of all the elements outlined above. 

Ultimately, all team members should externally “transfer this knowledge” to clients, suppliers, prospective customers, community, and, of course, to their families. In the new economy, the act of “team selling” is no longer a “luxury” for a select few but a critical “necessity” for all.

Source : wikiHow