<p>Do you know that in Alaska it is illegal to whisper in people's ears while they are moose-hunting?<br /><br />I mention this eye-poppingly inconspicuous fact because it seems there is an angel who is desperately whispering into the ears of consulting firms' hiring managers something like...<br /><br /><em>"Hire the best and cry only once!"</em><br /><br />...but hiring managers operate on the basis of...<br /><br /><em>"We hire the cheapest and try to survive the consequences!"</em><br /><br />And they are doing that in spite of the warning we all could have read in the Harvard Business Review's editorial in August 2006...<br /><br /><em>"Customers' buying processes have evolved in our world of ubiquitous, instant, global communication&hellip;but companies' selling processes have for the most part stayed the same."</em><br /><br />So this change also means that we have to change the hiring criteria to find this new type of business development professionals.<br /><br />So, in this article we discuss seven mistakes about hiring and retaining goo business development people for consulting firms.</p> <p><br /><strong>Mistake #1. "We Hire Only Highly Experienced People"</strong><br /><br />Yes, but experienced in what? If I apply for a job selling 5-6-figure consulting solutions, am I an experienced business developer because I've been successfully selling hamburgers for 20 years from my little cart next to the train station?<br /><br />Yes, I'm an experienced burger peddler, but not a consulting business developer.<br /><br />People become valuable to your company when they master three topics.<br /><br /><strong>1. Knowledge: </strong>This is a body of knowledge including sales and marketing skills, some subject matter expertise, people skills and the essence of your firm. People can have sales and marketing skills and people skills, but you have to teach them your business specifics, like your company's values, beliefs, mission and vision, so they know the greater cause besides making sales.<br /><br /><strong>2. Systems: </strong>This is the [Your Firm's Name] Business Development System, and no one is supposed to know this until and unless worked for your company. Using military language, your business development system is valuable intel material, and the less "the enemy" knows about it the better. <br /><br /><strong>3. Discipline: </strong>This is actually the emotional fortitude of doing what you're supposed to do in a way you're expected to do it. This is based both on your own core values and the company's values. <br /><br />Your salespeople may be excellent at commodity selling, using the typical "chase, hunt, hound and pound" approach, but you can't use this method to sell 6consulting solutions.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Mistake #2. "Our Business Is Complex. It Takes A Long Time To Learn It"</strong><br /><br />Business development in most consulting firms is far too haphazard instead of being systematic. And it's virtually impossible to teach anything that is haphazard. <br /><br />Imagine you explain the sunrise to your son...<br /><br />"Son, the sun rises in any direction it feels like rising. There is no logic to it. It just rises haphazardly. Sometimes it doesn't even rise. Just make your observations, hope and pray."<br /><br />When your business development is systematised, that's when it becomes a part of a teachable curriculum.<br /><br />So, with this "Our business is complex. It takes a long time to learn it" notion, many consulting firms don't even bother. They expect newly hired business developers to know everything.<br /><br />So, new business developers join, get frustrated, leave, and the process starts again at a tremendous cost to the company.<br /><br />Any business can be learnt fairly quickly provided there are some good teachers and students who actually want to learn. And as long as you have excited, enthusiastic people to teach, you have a pretty good chance to end up with a good team of business developers.<br /><br /><strong>Mistake #3. "Our Business Developers Have Lots Of Things On The Go."</strong><br /><br />This is just a euphemism for saying...<br /><br /><em>"We have no idea about what our business developers are doing."</em><br /><br />Having lots of things in the fire means nothing really. The poor fire tries to heat up so many things that it struggles to bring them up even to lukewarm level.<br /><br />And this leads to hyper-busy boondoggling from one appointment to the next, while not realising that 97% of the prospects have no intention to buy, and 35-60% of proposals end up in the "no decision" pile.<br /><br />But this shuffling madness impresses partners. It creates a nice, impenetrable smoke screen between business developers and partners , so no one can question business developers' productivity because they all look so impressively busy.<br /><br /><strong>Mistake #4. "It's Impossible To Find Good Business Developers Nowadays"<br /></strong><br />Exactly! It is hard indeed.<br /><br />First, the good ones don't work on a straight commission. They want to see commitment from the firm too in the form of a base salary.<br /><br />Consulting firms can't expect business developers to put in 100% effort, time and work and assume 100% of the risk when they get only a small fraction of the reward.<br /><br />I've seen far too many consulting firms where business developers were treated by partners as second-class citizens.<br /><br />In general, the annual attrition rate of business developers is <strong>43%</strong>. And what is sad is that many consulting firms don't even realise how much this turnover costs them because standard accounting doesn't focus on the human side of business.<br /><br />The reality most consulting firms are brilliant at demanding results from their business developers but are pathetically useless at helping them to produce those results.<br /><br />Sure, there are good business developers out there. But the good people are looking for good opportunities with good companies, and they refuse to waste their talents on the mediocre bunch.</p> <p><br /><strong>Mistake #5. "Our Business Developers Are Creative And Independent People."<br /></strong><br />This approach also implies that there is no cohesive sales team only individuals who do whatever they want to do to make the next sale.<br /><br />This culture attracts individualist, prima donna type people with personal agendas, working for themselves, that is, often against each other, and indirectly, against your firm, with no regard for achieving organisational goals.<br /><br />Having a great business development team is a double-edged sword. Partners and managers must be ready and willing to coach and mentor their people, and business developers must be ready and willing to be coached and mentored. They must recognise that there is always space for improvement.</p> <p><br /><strong>Mistake #6. "We Expect Our Business Developers To Hit The Ground Running"<br /></strong><br />The problem is that when your new people hit the ground running, due to lack of support, they soon fall flat on their faces a few times, and eventually leave your firm for your fiercest competitor.<br /><br />Hitting the ground running is that it's a temporary measure before your people permanently hit the ground failing, breaking their noses and bruising their faces so badly that won't have the courage to even stand up.<br /><br />You have to build your people for performance from the ground up. Just like building skyscrapers. You can't start building one by collecting the rent on the penthouse. <br /><br />New people have to settle into the new culture, and only then they can perform.<br /><br />A piece of rebar knows how to be a rebar, but it also has to know what it's expected to be a rebar in. Is it in a 50 storey condo, a townhouse or a single family house?<br /><br />Yes, your business developers can hit the ground running, but you have to let them settle into the culture within which to hit the ground running.</p> <p><br /><strong>Mistake #7. "To Sell More, We Hire More Business Developers"</strong><br /><br />I believe good business is not really about selling more and making more, but actually keeping more. What is the difference? Selling more is about volume. Increasing sales volume. Keeping more is about margins. Selling at higher margins. <br /><br />Hiring more business developers can increase your sales volume but it certainly increases the cost of sales. And very often the increase in costs is higher than the increase in sales volume, let alone the margin on that volume.</p> <p><br /><strong>On Summary</strong><br /><br />So, think about which mistake(s) your firm is making and what you plan to do about remedying the situation. The fact is there are good and even great business developers out there. But they act and behave drastically differently from ordinary aggressive, don't take "no" for an answer peddlers. <br /><br />Great business developers are not the aggressive pushers but the quiet diagnosticians equipped both with subject matter expertise and business savvy, so they feel comfortable and buyers regard them as peers.<br /><br />They can ask deep meaningful questions and help buyers to see their predicaments. The proverbial used car salesman with the "Hey man, give me an offer and I'll cut you a deal" is just not enough.</p> 2009-09-28T18:32:42Z 2009-09-30T15:48:06Z -2.241 132 6697 true 15 21997 seven-misconceptions-about-hiring-business-development-people-in-consulting-firms 0 2009-09-30T08:47:41Z 2009-09-30T15:48:06Z

Many consulting firms are unable to build reliable and high-performing business development forces because they fail to focus on the environment in which these people will operate in. So, the failure rate is high and the cost is astronomical.

1 2009-09-30T15:48:06Z