Business Builders Podcast

How to Identify Great BD People

Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian Season 2 Episode 29

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Effective Business Development People are key to the success of most businesses. Today our hosts Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian are discussing how we can find great BD people for our businesses. They discuss the skill sets, personality types, experience and specific attributes that separate great  BD people from the rest, to help identify the best fit for our businesses.

The topics we cover in this episode are: 

  • When do you need to look for a BD person?
  • Defining what you need in a BD person
  • Training internal staff to become BD people versus going out to market
  • The attributes and attitudes of great BD people
  • What business owners need to do to help their BD people be succeed


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SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, keep building!

Brenton Gowland:

Today on The Business Builders podcast, we're talking about how to identify the kind of business development people who will help you grow your business. We explore the skill sets, personality types, experience and specific attributes that separate great BD people from the rest, and we discuss raising people up internally versus going out to market. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

Excellent to be here again this week, Ron, and it wasn't a great to have Bill Caskey from the United States with us last fortnight.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, to hear his insights into business development and sales, someone who has such experience in helping people in those areas, great to get his perspective on things.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely. And if you haven't listened to that episode, we'd encourage you to check out their podcast, which is the Advanced Selling Podcast, so you can hear a bit more of Bill Caskey. And I guess the thing we've been learning about this whole topic is business development and sales is such a huge area of every business, because if we didn't have sales, we wouldn't have businesses. And you've got that famous little quote about the three roles of a CEO. Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, Chief teambuilder, chief strategist and chief salesperson.

Brenton Gowland:

Chief salesperson. And I think we were talking about even people like Steve Jobs a few weeks back, and the fact that he spent about half or more than half of his time in the marketing and sales function of Apple to really get them on the right track in the right message and really fulfils that saying you were talking about the on that, because we've been exploring BD so much the importance of these to the company means you really need to invest in finding the right people to help you with that, if it's not you running it, because there comes a time when the CEO needs to expand the team.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's that's the first question I suppose when to start looking for a BD person as it is, when, in my experience, owners and operators of a business are the chief salesperson, chief business development person until the business grows to a point where they can't do it all themselves.

Brenton Gowland:

So that's what we're going to be talking about today. So today is going to be all about finding great BD people for your businesses. But let's start with our sponsors.

Ron Tomlian:

Ron, we have Business Builders, SA Business Builders.

Brenton Gowland:

And that's been an institution that's been running here at Adelaide, South Australia, if you're listening internationally, for a long while now, it's about getting CEOs and Young Guns together and getting them to cross pollinate and to build good business relationships, CEOs with CEOs, young guns with young guns, and then young guns with CEOs and CEOs with young guns. So it's about mentoring and reverse mentoring and really building a good business community. And I guess our encouragement, if you're in other states, and so forth, and other countries, is to find your own networks, and really, really encourage you to get into business mentoring and find people that can actually speak into your professional life as well.

Ron Tomlian:

And Adapt_CO.

Brenton Gowland:

Which is me, which is where we come in, and we operate as your chief marketing officer. And our job is to make your marketing function work for your business to increase your revenue, literally, like we're talking about with this episode, that sales is a very important function of a business and you wouldn't have a business without selling whatever it is that you're selling. And to do that, effectively, your marketing function needs to grow and grow and grow and get more efficient and more efficient. And that's what we help you do. So there are sponsors Adapt_CO and SA Business Builders.

Ron Tomlian:

Great. So let's get started.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So you were saying Ron that there comes a point when you need to start looking for a BD person. Can you talk to us about that a bit.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, I mean, when you're growing a business, and this is all about growing businesses, oftentimes it starts with one person who gets a couple of people around them usually in the operational area. And as a result, the person who fulfils the business development role is usually the owner operator, or CO manager, director, whatever you want to call them. And so they're the person out there representing the organisation looking for new opportunities. And that never goes away. But it gets to a point where there's just too many things in the business going on. That you can rely on the owner operator being the Rainmaker for the business, and at that point, it is at that point where to continue growing, it has to move beyond the owner operator, or the owner of the business to help have help in representing the organisation out in the business community or in the community in general. So then you need to start thinking about well what sort of business development person what do I need? What sort of skills do they need all the questions that come to mind? And so I suppose the the question and most people have is when do I need to bring a business development person on? It's when you can't do it yourself anymore?

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. And then there's a another string to that story. And that is businesses that have been around a long time and have been existing on pre existing contracts, actually interviewed a business that was 12 years old and quite a large business here in Adelaide last week. And they are starting to look for a BD person now, first time ever, because they've been existing on tenders that they've won. But now they want to start getting extra work in the door. And so they're starting to look for a BD person, which is actually what started this topic being discussed between us is, how do you find a good BD person. And it's so important that if you want that function, particularly if in the case you were talking about, it's been an owner operator, so it's been a role that's been close to their heart, if you want, because the business particularly with an owner operator is genuinely close to their heart. And you know, part of running a good business is forming that detachment, when you look at it as a business, not this extension of yourself. But on that you really need to find the right person and get them firing. All right, people dependent to make sure that your sales progress that that function in your business grows, and that it grows effectively and doesn't rope you back in as the CEO, obviously, you will be involved. Your definition is that the CEO or the owner is the chief marketing officer, chief revenue generator, all that kind of stuff, you will still be involved. And we'll talk about that in this episode. But you really need people who fit the culture, your business and can actually do their job to be able to make sure that it goes in the right direction. Yeah, when

Ron Tomlian:

I when I say the chief salesperson, it doesn't mean all sales rely on the CEO, it means that as the organisation grows, there was always a role for the CEO or the Managing Director, again, whatever you want to call that, to be the representative to be the figurehead for the, for people outside the organisation customers. And so under those circumstances, the CEO is always prospecting, always looking always representing the nation. But there are times when you can't rely just on that. And there's levels of detail. There's levels of planning, there's levels of activity that have to go beyond just what one person can do.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, if you want to develop your business, so it's a saleable asset. And really, that should be the goal of most business people is to develop it into something that can be sold.

Ron Tomlian:

It doesn't mean it has to be sold, it just can't be sold.

Brenton Gowland:

It's got to rely not solely on one person, you know, it's that key person danger. And if a business owner builds that around their skill set, that's what will happen. And I've seen that before.

Ron Tomlian:

Unfortunately.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, well, sometimes it's an eye opener. And some people come to the realisation that their business isn't worth anything, because it's all about them. And then they start to change. And that's a good thing. That's the transition that happens. To summarise, we're saying when it gets to the point that you can no longer do it yourself, you go looking for a BD person, or when your team, let's extend that a little bit when your team doesn't have the capacity to do it.

Ron Tomlian:

Because everyone in the business should be in one way or another involved in business development. We've talked about that before, it's at the point where you need someone who is looking after that exclusively, and can coordinate those efforts.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay. So that then gets to the point of what are you looking for? And defining what that person that this development person needs to be capable of? And what success looks like for them.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, because if you don't know what they need to be capable of, how are you going to find the right person?

Ron Tomlian:

And that will depend to a large extent on what stage your business is, then what you're asking them, what you will be asking this person to do, and what the needs of the organisation are at that given time. So the key here is being very clear about what you want them to do, and what the outcomes you're looking for. Very clearly defining what those outcomes are. Do I want them to go out and get new business that we currently don't have in areas that we currently don't play? Do I want them to encourage existing customers to do business with us more business with us? Or do business with us in areas where they currently don't do business, but we're capable of providing them with resources? What am I want this person to do? That's being very clear about that? And then it comes back to an understanding what success looks like, how will I know that this person is being successful? I need to define it before I start looking for them.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, and it also comes down to So you've given two examples there. One is that they're just going out there turning over stones and shaking trees just to find leads. So that's one thing and the other one is a whole nother skill set like it's being able to develop relationships that already exist. So it's about exploration of how to improve our service and how to better serve clients and how to find opportunities with clients. So that is to vary different skill sets, and they can be similar. I would say that the person who can do the ladder can also do the former. But then you also need to look at what kind of reporting do they need to be able to do? What kind of analytical skills do they need to have? What kind of experience? Do they need to have? Like, do they have to be? Because we were talking about, if it's selling a really bespoke engineering product, they really need to understand that product. So does that mean mean they need to have engineering experience in their former life? Or is it independent, all of that, and they're true BD professional, where you know, a true BD professional, should be able to jump across multiple industries and learn the product knowledge as they go, or, you know, in a short period of time.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's incredibly important that you define what skill set they need to have, and not just a wish list, but what is going to be the most effective. I've heard people say what I really need is someone with a master's degree in engineering, and is fantastic at dealing with people and great interpersonal skills and huge emotional intelligence, I've got to tell you, those sort of people are rare as hen's teeth, Oh, yes. To be able to have the capability of being highly analytical and highly emotionally intelligent. Those sort of people don't exist a lot, that usually they fall on one side or the other. So to ask somebody who is capable in both areas, what's, you know, you're going to either find it very difficult to find them, or they're in high demand. And so you're gonna have to either pay a lot for them, or go looking in a whole bunch of different areas to find them, because they're not there. So being clear about the specifics of what you're looking for, and how much am I willing to put out for to get those specifics? That's that's incredibly important, upfront.

Brenton Gowland:

Or do you make them yourself? And we talked about this a bit, and that is, do you employ someone from within the business or, you know, step them up? Or do you find someone from another business, who's got the technical skill set, and then the right set of attitudes that they can actually learn because oftentimes, an Ian Tennant spoke about this is that they trained him up, he was an IT professional, and they put him through courses, and they trained him, they obviously saw traits in in that lead towards him being able to have an aptitude for this job. And now look, again, if you're wondering who it is, go back, I think it's to Episode 25, or I think 25 was intended. So episode 25 of the podcast, we interview intendant, about his views on business development, and a bit about his journey is in professional business development dealing at a very high level, but he came from being technical. So

Ron Tomlian:

I think most people do, I think most people come from a technical area of technical expertise. And this is a, this is something we could talk about another podcast, in a lot of situations, people start with a technical or functional capability. You started as an engineer, you started as a technician, you start as a welder, you start with some type of technical expertise. And you develop into things like salespeople, you develop into leaders, you develop into supervisors develop into managers, which are other skill sets based, but most people are based in one core functional area and develop into that. And I think BD is the same.

Brenton Gowland:

Having said that, it's not always the case, I know examples where they've become professional BD people. And usually, because they've had a very social role within their current organisation. They've started in sales, and they've developed skills along the way. So it's either or, but general rule of thumb is people who are very good at selling in your industry know their product inside now. And most BD people have a background. But that then speaks to one of the most important things about finding the right BD people is, I guess, the attributes and the attitudes that you need to look for, to be able to find someone who's going to either grow into that position or fit in with your company. And look, let's be frank, most people unless you're paying a really handsome fee, and you're really attractive company, finding a perfect mix of those skill sets is going to be pretty difficult.

Ron Tomlian:

It's going to be a compromise always. Yeah, and and sometimes for the people coming into the organisation too.

Brenton Gowland:

Because really good BD people get paid very good money, because they're worth it.

Ron Tomlian:

And so what's sort of your experience, what sort of attributes are you looking for? We talked a couple of podcasts ago about, you know, the business development mindset. So we've already gone through some of those mindset aspects. But what are the what are the attributes that you look for when you're advising people on the business development people that they should gain?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, we were talking about DISC profiling a little while ago and you know, those personality types in And we can get into that in more detail later. But you've got the whole introvert extrovert thing, right? I think there's a certain kind of profile or a few certain kinds of profiles that would fit the BD attributes well, and I think rule of thumb not always the case, sometimes introverts can be great salespeople, depending on what it is. I know some really, you know, bicycle wheel, classic introvert style characters who sell health products and science products really well, rule of thumb is you need someone who firstly is confident in reaching out to other people, and often that gets their energy from reaching out to other people and extroverts do and introverts, it sucks their energy. So you really need someone who's confident and a little bit more extroverted than they are introverted, because otherwise the job is going to really impact on their energy levels and their mental kind of health level. So you really want to make sure that you've got to handle rejection, because that every sale you get, you're gonna get 20, 30, 40 rejections.

Ron Tomlian:

So not taking it personally.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And that detachment we talked about last time.

Brenton Gowland:

100%. So, first thing I'd be looking for is a fairly outgoing personality, someone who likes.

Ron Tomlian:

Enjoys being with people.

Brenton Gowland:

And this is what you know, when people will employ people from internal kind of resources, they recognise these things in people, you can't put a square peg in a round hole. But if you find someone who loves is confident having conversations, likes interacting with people, they don't need to be the biggest noise in the room. Because sometimes that can be a real negative because it puts people off today, they enjoy talking with people they enjoy getting to know more people, they enjoy being curious, as we've said before, so they've got a mind where they want to learn. So think for a BD person, firstly, or more extroverted personality, a comfort level with other people curiosity, a wanting to learn and a passion for what for other people really, and finding out what their problems likes and dislikes are, there are a few baseline kind of things.

Ron Tomlian:

I think the other thing too, is the willingness to be persistent, you can't be as you said before, you're going to get a lot of rejection, that's part of the that's part of the role. Apart from detachment, you've got to be willing to pick yourself up and go move on to the next BD assignment. So under those circumstances, persistence, and a little bit of discipline.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely, and discipline, otherwise, you're gonna get nothing done. But I want to also highlight something I believe is incredibly important. And that is a willingness to learn. If you've got all those other attributes, but you think you know, best, you're going to be at loggerheads with people in the business constantly. If you have a willingness to learn one, you can teach others and you can become a manager, because you model the behaviours that you want in other people. But the willingness to learn is, again, going back to n 10. And you got to be able to study business development is a science, it's not just going out and relying on your skills of being grey in a crowd or being able to be good one on one with someone, it's a science. And there is a lot to learn about a particular science, because you will always be learning people are constantly changing, we were just talking about the way people change. You know, we're talking about acronyms now. And people are having conversations about how they refer to people, which is new, it's not a big thing. But if you have someone who's really old school, and they act a certain way, they're going to get nowhere with generations that are more progressive. If you're not willing to learn and change and you think you know, best, you're not going to longterm, do well in sales, because you're going to rub people the wrong way.

Ron Tomlian:

And, you know, people who don't want to learn often push their perspective and their point of view, no customer wants that. Yep, customers may or may want to be guided at times. But at the end of the day, they want people to understand the situation and the problems, they have to see whether you can provide solutions. That means listening. Yep, that means probing that means questioning, I would say great businesses are built on when people are great at questions. Not so much answers.

Brenton Gowland:

That comes back to that curiosity thing, which I know that you go on about. So if you don't ask questions, if you don't want to learn, right. So we keep talking. Again, these are examples that you've given about malpractice is.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, the malpractice definition of malpractice being prescription before diagnosis.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, which says you don't want to learn. So that brings us back to so the key attributes we just talked about, let's list them off.

Ron Tomlian:

Being persistent, as I just said, being willing to question having empathy with people and being good with relationships, a little bit of extraversion. extraversion can help along the way. And a little bit of discipline, as I've said before, so being able to focus on where you're going to get your biggest bang for buck.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah and probably the lucky last one we'd put down to all of that as being a team player because you have to be to be successful with business development. You have to be able to organise and interact with other people within the business. As we've talked about to be able to really get things over the line.

Ron Tomlian:

So the capacity to collaborate with other people and be part of the team, rather than, I know, there's no question that the end these can be quite successful individuals. But I think especially in services, the concept of the lone wolf, who goes out there and wins big, yeah, it can work. But I think it only works in certain types of businesses where volume is important, or big contracts where but even then, under those circumstances, you need a team behind you. And that means getting people to collaborate and work towards a singular purpose.

Brenton Gowland:

I haven't seen too many examples where a lone wolf works really well. I can think of movies where it's kind of happened. But I think in reality, you need to be able to activate a team, as we've discussed truly good BD people. If you want the right attributes, it's got to be they're willing to be a team player. And again, if what we were talking about earlier, sometimes you need to develop them yourself, you'll look for those attributes within a person or at least very core for them to be confident with people confident with talking, get their energy from talking and be willing to learn.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think an important aspect of all this, the final thing I'd like to say is, it's not only what they're like, but what do you need to do as a business owner to ensure their success? Or how do you need to support them? And I think that's worth discussing at this point as well. Because it's, it's all very good to say we've got the right person, and we've chosen the right person. And that's where it stops. And I don't think it does.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, if you leave someone to their own devices, and then just harangue them about not getting results, you're not really helping them. I think, from what I've seen, and what I've experienced, if businesses set up their BD people for success, they're gonna do a few things. Firstly, I don't know what people think of this, but they need to set up KPIs, they need to set up clear measures about what that person needs to do, right.

Ron Tomlian:

In my opinion, that needs to be set up before the person is even engaged.

Brenton Gowland:

Correct.

Ron Tomlian:

So this is what I was getting to before about being able to define success that's having measurements, having key performance indicators, having, knowing what success looks like, in a quantified way.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So they need to do that. And then they need to also talk about what do you need to learn that people who run the businesses need to be committed to training that people and the reality is as we talked earlier, most BD people BD is a science, it's an actual field, you can't find many courses on it yet. And it's really wrong. Because this is something people need to learn just like they need to learn to run a business, it's more courses on running a business in there are about how to properly go out and sell or to be able to develop your business anyway, long story short, you need to be able to train your people, you need to be able to raise them up and be committed to training. So you've got those KPIs. Well, let's talk about getting you doing.

Ron Tomlian:

I would say not only training, I think training is terribly important, but it's getting the whole organisation but particularly those directly involved with BD to be willing to learn. And you know, whether that is going to a training course, or whether it's learning as a group, you know, the concept of learning within an organisation and reflecting on what's worked and what hasn't, and building a capability on the basis of those reflections. So this goes to the whole thing about organisational learning, and how important it is, especially in areas experiential, like business development, how important it is to build a body of knowledge within the organisation, about things like business development, what works, what doesn't work.

Brenton Gowland:

So from again, back to the business owners point of view, so we've set up KPIs, we're committed to training as a business owner as well or person leading the business, I'd be making sure that they had a weekly BD meeting. So if you've just put one BD person on to your point, and if the one BD person is all there is I would put in maybe your account managers, a couple other people, people have front facing roles with clients and establish a meeting cadence. Now, the BD person should probably call for that themselves. But you as a business owner, need to make sure that every week there's a meeting, that there's some sort of reporting mechanism. I also believe that if you want to set your BD people up for success, give them the right tools.

Ron Tomlian:

That being you know, you can't you can't expect people to do anything without the right resources to be able to do it.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh here's Microsoft Excel. That'll be all you need, won't it?

Ron Tomlian:

And being and continually talking about what is it that you need to be able to do it now. It's got to be justified. It's got to be on the basis of the development in the learning and that the organisation is going through, but starving any function from resources is a recipe for disaster.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. 100%. So and what I mean by that as well, like if you're giving them the right tools, then you need to give them a mandate to use it or not demand But you need to give them a reason to use it. So if you give them a CRM, and I believe every BD person needs to have some sort of CRM, you then as you're sending your meetings, you require them to input information into the CRM to be discussed at these meetings. So you also there's this saying, if you expect inspect, so yes, I'll give you this tool, or you've got this set of KPIs, I'm going to give you this training, I want to see your activities expressed through notes in the CRM and then report it on each month. So you set an expectation that they will use the tools that they require.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think that you're talking about KPIs, we've talked about it before, I'm going to emphasise that, again, make sure that there are KPIs associated with the outcomes, lag indicators, but also make sure their KPIs associated with the activities, lead indicators. Now, it's not just about getting the sale. It's what are the indicators before the sale that we are going to get the sale later on, for instance, activity in terms of meetings, in terms of tenders, in terms of networking, to making sure that you're helping people to be accountable, and that it's important enough to you that you give them the time to pay attention to the accountability.

Brenton Gowland:

Now, the last thing are probably there's probably a bunch of other things I do. But the one other thing I'd say, if you want success from BD people that you put on, is to give them a voice at the table. Right, and what I mean by that, so if you're, if you're training someone up from your internal staff, it might be that you see, oh, your upper management has a one on one, and then reports those things up until that person, then you give them some experience, whether it's in front of a management team or a board or whatever it is to grow them. But a good BD person should be a resource for a management team, a thermometer for what's happening out in the marketplace, a lead indicator, a someone who can speak into, if they're really good, where the business is going, and what they see on the horizon. So I believe they need a voice in the management meetings that at least not necessarily at the board level, sometimes yes, at the board level, you might bring them in to have conversations, but they definitely need a voice at the table, they need to be heard. And they need there needs to be an expectation set. So maybe monthly, if you have a monthly management meeting, or whatever it is, or that person attends they need to prepare a report on activities and what's happened and results.

Ron Tomlian:

I mean, in the absence of other activities, as businesses become more sophisticated, they the business development person, like salespeople are the voice of the customer inside the organisation, the advocate for what the customer is saying, You need to be willing to listen to what that person is saying.

Brenton Gowland:

And if that BD person, let's say they might not be running a team or whatever it is, but they would also listen internally to the account managers and what's being said. So, yeah, that's probably a wrap. Like that's a fairly big chunk of different bits and pieces for what do we look for when we're looking for good BD people? Hopefully, there's something in there.

Ron Tomlian:

I'd also like to hear from some of our listeners about what they found. Because this is a perspective at you know, it's an informed perspective. But there are other perspectives that are out there that would I think the rest of our listeners would be interested in. Oh, yeah. So if you've got some attributes or specifics about what you're looking for in BD people and what you found works, we'd love to hear about

Brenton Gowland:

because to that point, both Ron and I are committed to learning. Let's hope so we've made good BD people. Well, I hope so I think there's really something in that we always need to learn. So the whole mentoring reverse mentoring thing, but it would be great to think we'll look at this moving forward to your point is, you know, developing more community around even this podcast, because we've been just talking this morning that we've got listeners from all around the world. And we've been watching that kind of grow recently, which is been great to say, and it'd be nice to get some conversations going. So we'll explore that. And maybe in a couple of months, we'll create a platform where people can actually share, and talk and so forth. But in the meantime, well, you can find us on LinkedIn.

Ron Tomlian:

And people have.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh yes they have, so that's good.

Ron Tomlian:

It's goodbye from me.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, you just go straight to the goodbyes. Goodbye to all of you who are listening. We will see you in a fortnight and we look forward to hearing from you in the meantime.

Ron Tomlian:

So it's goodbye for me.

Brenton Gowland:

And goodbye from me.

Ron Tomlian:

Bye.

Brenton Gowland:

Bye.