Business Development

Introduction

Two AV companies of the same size, in the same city, with the same equipment. One of them has been busy for ten years and the other is always waiting for the phone. Ask the busy one where its work comes from and the answer is rarely advertising. It is a venue manager who recommends them, an agency that has used them for years, a production manager who moved to a new company and took them along, and a former crew member who now books events for a university.

That is business development: the deliberate work of making sure new work keeps arriving, from clients you do not have yet and markets you are not in yet. It is different from selling, which wins a particular job, and from account management, which keeps the clients you already have. It happens before either of them, and when it stops, nothing seems to go wrong for about six months.

Technicians are often uneasy about it, because they picture a stranger on the phone with a script. The research describes something else. Opportunities mostly travel through people who know you a little. The first approach to a new client is a conversation to find facts, not a pitch. And the most valuable relationships a company has are often with other businesses that send it work.

This book teaches the method in AV terms: deciding what business you are in, choosing where to grow and who to go after, finding and approaching opportunities, building the network and the partnerships that carry them, and writing it into a plan you can check every month.

How to Use This Book

Read it in order the first time. It runs from the big decisions to the daily ones: what business you are in, where growth can come from, who to go after, how to find and approach them, the network and partners that bring work, how an opportunity develops, and the plan that holds it together.

Then keep two chapters open. Choosing Who to Go After produces a target list that you will revise every quarter. And The Business Development Plan is a one-page document to check every month.

Keep a notebook

One line for every new piece of work your company wins: who the client is, and exactly how they came to you. Not "word of mouth". Who told whom, and how did that person know you? After twenty lines you will know where your work really comes from, and it is rarely where people in the company assume.

A note on the words

"Business development" in this book means finding and opening new clients, markets and services for a company. A "prospect" is an organisation that could become a client and has not yet been approached or qualified. A "lead" is a specific sign of possible work, such as an enquiry, a referral or a new building. A "partner" is another business that sends you work or that you send work to. And the "pipeline" is the set of opportunities being worked at any one time.

A note on safety

Growth is where companies take on work they are not ready for. A new market can mean new venues, new rigging conditions, new regulations and new kinds of client, and a company that wins its first job in a sector it does not know often learns the rules on the day.

So the rule in this book is that a new market is entered with the competence it needs already in place, or hired in, before the first quote goes out. If a service is new to the company, such as flying a system, building temporary staging or working outdoors in weather, somebody qualified to do it safely is named on the job before it is sold. And a partner's referral never replaces your own check that the work is safe to do.

What Business Development Is

A company grows only if new work keeps arriving. Business development is the work that makes sure it does.

Growing the business through new opportunities.

Growing the business

Business development is the work of growing a business — finding and creating new opportunities for revenue and growth. This includes finding new clients (prospecting), opening new markets or services, building relationships that lead to business, and developing opportunities into new revenue. Biz dev is about generating growth — the pipeline of new business that lets a company expand. Where account management keeps and grows existing clients, business development brings in new ones and opportunities.

This matters because businesses need to grow (and replace lost clients), and biz dev is how new business comes in. In AV (rental, production, integration), business development brings new clients and projects that grow the company.

Biz dev vs. sales

Business development relates to but differs from sales. Sales is closing deals (converting opportunities into signed business). Business development is broader — finding and creating the opportunities and relationships that lead to business (prospecting, networking, relationship-building, opening markets), often earlier in the process and more relationship- and strategy-focused. In practice they overlap (biz dev often includes selling), but biz dev emphasises generating and developing opportunities, not just closing them. Biz dev creates and develops opportunities; sales closes them.

What business are we in

The sales textbook this book draws on starts its planning chapter with a question for the people running a company: "What business are we in?" Its answer is that the business should be defined by the customer needs it serves, and not by the products or services it produces. Its examples are a computer maker that sees itself in the business of rapid problem-solving, and car companies that see themselves as providing transport or status.

Ask the question of an AV company and the first answer is usually equipment: "We do sound and lighting hire." Ask what the client is paying for and different answers appear. A conference organiser pays for an event where every delegate hears and sees the content. A university pays for teaching spaces that work at nine in the morning without a technician. A church pays for a service where the congregation can follow the words.

The difference is practical. A company that defines itself by its equipment looks for clients who want that equipment. One that defines itself by the need it serves looks for everybody who has that need, and finds clients it would never have thought to call. The textbook's point is that the definition keeps the company thinking about customers, and also focuses every later decision in the plan.

The textbook's chapter on relationship selling opens with an older version of the same idea, from the management writer Peter Drucker: there is only one valid definition of business purpose, to create a customer, and it is the customer who determines what the business is. Business development is the part of the company whose whole job is creating customers.

Beside sales and account management

Three jobs bring in a company's revenue, and they are easy to confuse. Business development finds new clients, markets and services. Selling wins a particular piece of work from a particular client. Account management keeps and grows the clients the company already has.

They hand work to each other. Business development produces a lead: a new conference centre is opening in town. Selling turns that lead into a won job. Account management turns the first job into a client who comes back every year. In a small company one person may do all three in the same week, which is fine, as long as somebody notices when one of them has stopped.

Business development is usually the one that stops. Selling has a deadline and account management has a client on the phone. Business development has neither, so it is the first thing dropped when the company gets busy, and the gap appears months later as a quiet season nobody saw coming.

Two other books in this series cover the neighbours. Technical Sales Fundamentals teaches the selling conversation, from the first meeting to the close. Account Management teaches keeping and growing clients, including how to get onto a venue's or a company's approved-supplier list. This book stops where they start.

Everyone who meets a client

The textbook's chapter on relationship selling describes an idea from the marketing researcher Evert Gummesson: the part-time marketer. In a business built on relationships, it says, more people from outside the marketing department come into contact with customers, and each of them is doing part of the marketing.

In AV that is nearly everybody. The crew chief who stays calm when the client's laptop will not connect, the driver who is polite at the loading dock, the technician who answers a question from somebody else's event in the corridor: each of them is the company, in the eyes of somebody who may book an event next year.

That makes business development partly a matter of habit across the whole company. Crews who give out a business card when asked, and who mention it back at base when a stranger asked who they work for, produce leads that no salesperson would ever have found. The person responsible for business development should make it easy for them to pass those on.

How to do it

1. Write the answer to "What business are we in?" as a customer need, in one sentence.
2. Name who is responsible for business development, even if it is part of somebody's week.
3. Set aside a fixed time each week for it, which survives busy periods.
4. Agree how leads from crews and staff are passed on, and to whom.
5. Start the notebook, one line per won job and exactly how it arrived.
6. Review the notebook every month.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Take your own company, or one you have worked for.

Where Growth Comes From

Growth comes from a small number of directions. Naming them turns "we need more work" into a choice.

Look before you choose

The textbook's planning sequence starts with an audit of where the company stands, before any objective is set. It splits it into two parts. The external audit looks outside the company. Closest to home it covers the size and growth of the market, customer needs and buying trends, and an appraisal of competitors: their current strategy and performance, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they are likely to do next, including new competitors who might enter.

Further out, the external audit looks at broad trends outside anybody's control, which the textbook lists as political, economic, social and technological, with legal and environmental factors added in later versions. For an AV company these are concrete. A recession cuts corporate events first. A shift to hybrid working fills meeting rooms with cameras. New rules on power use or outdoor noise change what can be offered. The internal audit looks at the company itself: its results, its services and prices, and the people and equipment it has to work with.

The textbook then turns the audit into a SWOT: strengths and weaknesses inside the company, opportunities and threats outside it. Two of its points are worth keeping. A SWOT is not a lengthy set of statements but a few bullet points under each heading, and it should be short and uncomplicated. And an apparent strength, such as a reputation for quality, becomes a real strength only when it can be used in the market.

An AV SWOT might read like this. Strengths: a reliable crew, an LED wall nobody else in town owns. Weaknesses: one large client provides most of the revenue, and nobody has time to quote quickly. Opportunities: two new hotels opening next year, local colleges upgrading classrooms. Threats: a national company opening a local branch, hotels signing exclusive in-house AV deals. It takes ten minutes to write and an hour to argue about, and the hour is the useful part.

The directions growth can take

The textbook's example is the travel company Saga, which sold holidays to people over fifty. Looking to grow, it faced two options. It could sell holidays to other market sectors, or it could sell other products and services to the customers it already had. It chose the second, and moved into insurance and savings for the same customers. The textbook reduces the lesson to one question: "What would our customers want to buy from us next?"

Those two options, together with doing more of what you already do, give an AV company four directions to consider.

• More of the same. The same services to the same kind of client, winning a bigger share. This relies on beating competitors you already know.
• A new service for the clients you have. A hire company whose corporate clients ask about streaming adds a streaming service. This is the Saga question, and the clients already trust you.
• The services you have, in a new market. A company that does conferences starts serving universities, houses of worship or hotels. The skills transfer and the clients do not know you yet.
• A new service in a new market. Both at once. Possible, and the riskiest, because neither the service nor the clients are proven.

The textbook gives one more reason to look hard at existing clients first: when the cost of winning and serving a customer has already been paid, selling them something more may well be the most profitable way to grow. That does not make it the only way. A company with one dominant client needs new markets, whatever the arithmetic says.

Objectives worth the name

Once a direction is chosen it becomes an objective, and the textbook is specific about what makes a good one. It should be unambiguous, preferably measurable, and set within a time span. It uses the familiar acronym SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-related.

It adds a rule that most business plans break: a single theme for each objective. Its example of a bad objective is "reduce customer defections by 20 per cent through best-in-class service", which it says contains at least two objectives, each needing its own number. An AV version of the same mistake is "grow into the education market and improve our margins". That is two objectives, and they may well pull in different directions.

The textbook also separates three numbers that people confuse. Market potential is the most that the whole industry could sell in a period. Sales potential is the largest share of that your company could reasonably hope for under the best conditions. The forecast is what you actually expect to achieve. A company entering a new market should be able to say roughly what all three are, because a market whose total potential is smaller than the cost of entering it is not an opportunity.

Last, it insists on one strategy per objective, chosen after generating as many alternatives as possible. Its example is a revenue increase of ten per cent, which could come from raising prices, winning a larger share, or growth in the whole market. Each is a different plan, and pretending to do all three is how none of them gets done.

How to do it

1. Write the external audit: your market, your clients' needs and trends, three competitors with their strengths and likely next moves, and the economic, social, technological and regulatory changes that affect your clients.
2. Write the internal audit: your results, your services and prices, and the people and equipment you have to work with.
3. Reduce both to a SWOT of a few points under each heading.
4. Ask the Saga question of your existing clients: what would they want to buy from you next?
5. List the four directions and write one real option under each.
6. Choose one or two, and write each as a single-theme objective with a number and a date.
7. Estimate market potential, sales potential and a forecast for any new market.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A ten-person AV hire company does mostly corporate conferences. One client is half its revenue. Its clients have started asking about streaming, and two new universities are building teaching spaces in the city.

Choosing Who to Go After

Prospecting everybody is prospecting nobody. The work starts with a short list of organisations worth the effort.

Segments, and what makes one worth it

The textbook calls choosing who to pursue targeting, and says that to the marketer it is the same as segmentation: dividing possible customers into groups that can be approached in different ways. It names three bases for doing it with existing customers: by value, meaning how much they buy; by preference, meaning what they buy and how they like to order; and by stage, meaning whether the relationship is active, lapsed or dormant.

It then makes three points about segments that are easy to forget. Segments must be potentially profitable. They are not mutually exclusive: one client can belong to several. And they are not stable: a client moves between them over time. It adds the test that matters most for a small company: if a segment needs a special effort to reach, it must have enough buying power to justify that effort.

For new business the most useful segments in AV are usually sectors, because each sector buys in its own way and has its own calendar. Corporate events, conferences and exhibitions, hotels and venues, higher education, schools, houses of worship, sport, government, live music and touring, broadcast, and permanent installations in offices and boardrooms are all different segments, with different buyers, different budgets and different busy seasons.

A profile of a good client

Before writing a list, describe what a good new client looks like for your company. Your own records are the best source: look at the clients you already have and ask which of them you would most like more of.

A useful profile has six lines. The sector. The size of typical job, in money and in days. How often they buy. Who decides, by job title. Where they are, within the distance your crews can travel. And what makes them a good fit for you in particular, such as needing the LED wall nobody else owns, or valuing a crew that can work quietly in a live building.

The profile does two things. It tells you who to look for, and it tells you who to politely decline. A company that says yes to every enquiry spends its quoting time on work it does not want, and has none left for the clients in its profile.

The target list

The profile becomes a target list: named organisations that fit it, which you will deliberately approach this quarter. Not hundreds. A small company can do business development properly with somewhere between twenty and forty names at a time, because each one needs research, an approach and follow-up.

Each name on the list needs four things written beside it: why it fits the profile, the person or role who decides, any connection you already have to that person, and the next action with a date. The third column is the one that decides how you approach them, and the chapter on networking explains why it matters so much.

The textbook's chapter on relationship selling adds a point about concentration. In markets with many players, a small share of them often accounts for most of the business, so those are the ones to know best. In AV, a handful of venues, agencies and large employers in any city account for a large part of the event work, and every one of them belongs on somebody's target list.

Review the list every quarter. Segments are not stable, and neither is a list: a venue changes hands, a university's budget is cut, a new building opens. A name that has had three approaches and no response comes off, and goes back on in a year.

How to do it

1. List your current clients and mark the ones you would most like more of.
2. Write a six-line profile covering sector, job size, how often they buy, who decides, where they are, and why you fit.
3. Choose one or two sectors that fit the direction chosen in the plan.
4. Research twenty to forty named organisations in those sectors that match the profile.
5. Beside each, write why it fits, who decides, any existing connection, and the next action with a date.
6. Review the list every quarter, adding and removing names.

What goes wrong

Practice it

You have chosen higher education as a new market for a company that does conference AV.

Finding Opportunities

AV work announces itself months before anybody asks for a quote, if you know what to look for.

Prospect for new clients and business.

Prospecting

A core biz dev activity is prospecting — finding potential new clients and opportunities. This means identifying who might need your services (the potential clients, markets, and projects out there), researching and targeting them, and reaching out to start a conversation. Prospecting fills the top of the pipeline with potential business. Without prospecting, there are no new opportunities; with good prospecting, a steady flow of potential clients to develop.

Good prospecting is targeted (focusing on the right potential clients, not everyone) and persistent (consistently finding and reaching out to prospects). It's the activity that generates the raw opportunities biz dev develops.

Spotting and creating opportunities

Beyond finding existing prospects, biz dev spots and creates opportunities — recognising where new business could come from (an unmet need, a new market, a new service to offer, a problem you could solve for clients) and creating opportunities (proposing ideas, opening new areas, making connections that lead to business). This opportunity-creation (seeing and making possibilities, not just responding to obvious leads) is what distinguishes proactive business development.

This is strategic and creative: the best biz dev people see opportunities others miss and create new avenues for growth (new clients, markets, offerings).

Where AV work starts

Most AV work begins with a change in somebody else's world. The skill is noticing the change early enough to be there before the competition. Common signs, in rough order of how far ahead they give warning:

• A building. A new hotel, conference centre, school, office or church under construction, or an existing one being refurbished. Every one will need AV, and the decisions are often made long before it opens.
• A new event. A festival, conference or sports event announced for next year, or an existing one moving city or venue.
• A new person. Somebody who knows your work joins an organisation as events manager, facilities manager or production lead. People take their suppliers with them.
• A change of supplier. A competitor closes, merges or loses a client. Their clients need somebody next season.
• A change in how people work. A company moving to hybrid meetings, a university adding lecture capture, a church starting to stream.
• A published opportunity. A tender notice or request for proposal from a public body, which is the latest warning of all, because by then the specification is already written.

The earlier the sign, the more influence you can have. A company that meets the events team of a new hotel while it is still being built may help shape what gets installed. One that finds the tender notice is competing on somebody else's specification.

Market intelligence

The textbook's chapter on relationship selling describes information gathering as an increasingly important part of a salesperson's job: collecting intelligence about competitors, how they perform with their customers, and the company's own customers, and feeding it back so the company can plan.

It makes two observations that apply directly. Much of this intelligence comes from the company's own people, and field staff are extremely good collectors of it. And in concentrated markets with few competitors, their activities can often be found out simply by asking buyers a few questions, because buyers are usually willing to talk on the understanding that it may get them a better offer.

In AV the field staff are crews, and they hear everything: which venue is unhappy with its in-house supplier, which agency lost its production manager, which competitor's kit failed at last week's conference. None of it is worth anything unless it reaches the person doing business development, so make that easy, and thank people when they do it.

Add to that the ordinary public sources: local news and business press, building and planning announcements, trade association newsletters, event listings, and the announcements organisations make themselves when they hire or open something. Twenty minutes a week reading them, with the target list beside you, finds more than most companies realise.

The same chapter describes the modern salesperson's role as wider than selling: servicing, prospecting, information gathering, communicating and allocating. And it notes that prospecting skills will always be needed, working increasingly from leads generated by direct approaches rather than from cold calling. In a small AV company those are all business development, whoever does them.

The first approach

Technicians tend to avoid prospecting because they picture a sales pitch to a stranger. The textbook describes something more modest. It says cold canvassing training suggests the first call should be about fact finding, to gain information and then set up the next meeting. Its reason is that if the order is requested too early and the answer is no, it is difficult to change the customer's mind later, so it is better to ask when a yes is more likely.

It summarises the advice of one of the earliest sales training schools, the Tack school, as a short list: get the person's name right; use open questions to engage them; ask qualifying questions before any pitch; do not request irrelevant information; do not pretend to knowledge you do not have; do not sound too enthusiastic, which can read as desperation; and confirm appointments in writing.

For an AV company the first approach therefore has one aim: to learn something and earn a second conversation. "I saw the new conference wing is opening in the spring. Who is looking after the AV for events there?" is a fact-finding question. So is "How do you handle AV for your annual meeting at the moment?" Neither asks for anything, and both tell you whether there is anything to pursue.

The textbook also explains why the first approach is easier when the prospect has already heard of you. It describes the buying process as a series of stages: unawareness, awareness, comprehension, conviction and purchase. Advertising and publicity are more cost-effective at the early stages, and personal selling at conviction and purchase, and it notes that cold calling is rendered much more effective if the customer is already aware of the company. Making the company known is the subject of Brand & Business Development. For prospecting it is enough to know that an approach through somebody the prospect already trusts starts further along.

The textbook is also clear that being known helps the person doing the approaching, in business markets as much as consumer ones. It says the greatest benefit of advertising in industrial markets is not a direct effect on sales but a reduction in the overall cost of selling, because a representative facing a prospect who has never heard of the company has a much harder task than one who can build on some awareness.

How to do it

1. Choose a name from the target list and read about them for ten minutes.
2. Find the right person by role, and check whether anybody you know knows them.
3. If somebody does, ask them for an introduction first.
4. Prepare two open, fact-finding questions about their situation.
5. Make the approach, ask, listen, and do not pitch.
6. If there is something to pursue, ask for a second conversation and confirm it in writing.
7. Record what you learned and the next action, with a date.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A city council announces that its old civic hall will reopen in eighteen months as a conference and performance venue.

Networking & Relationships

The research on how people hear about opportunities found something that surprises most people: it is usually not through close friends.

Build the relationships that lead to business.

Networking

Business development runs heavily on networking — building a web of professional connections and relationships that lead to business. This means meeting people (at events, in the industry, through introductions), building genuine relationships, staying connected, and being known and trusted in your market. Networking generates opportunities (business often comes through who you know and who knows/trusts you) and is a primary biz dev activity.

Good networking is genuine (building real relationships, not just collecting contacts), consistent (continually meeting and staying connected with people), and generous (helping others, being a valuable connection). A strong network is a biz dev person's greatest asset — it's where much business comes from.

Building business relationships

Beyond networking broadly, biz dev builds business relationships with prospects and contacts — turning connections into trusting relationships that lead to business. This means engaging with prospects genuinely (understanding their needs, building rapport and trust, being a valued contact over time), nurturing relationships even before there's a deal, and being the trusted person they think of when they need what you offer. Business often comes from these relationships (people do business with those they know and trust).

This relationship-building (patient, genuine, trust-based) is the heart of business development — most business comes through relationships, not cold transactions. The biz dev professional invests in relationships that, over time, produce business.

Weak ties carry the news

In 1973 the sociologist Mark Granovetter published a paper called "The Strength of Weak Ties". He defined the strength of a tie between two people as a combination of the time they spend together, its emotional intensity, how much they confide in each other, and the favours they do each other. Close friends and family are strong ties. Former colleagues, people you know from shows, a venue manager you deal with twice a year are weak ties.

His argument starts from a simple observation: the closer two people are, the more their circles of friends overlap. Your close friends mostly know each other and mostly hear the same news. A weak tie is different. It connects you to somebody who moves in other circles and hears things you would not.

From that he draws the conclusion the paper is named for. Weak ties are the bridges between groups, and information passed along weak ties reaches more people and travels further than information passed between close friends, which tends to stay inside one circle.

Who actually passes on work

Granovetter tested this with a study of professional, technical and managerial workers in a Boston suburb who had recently changed jobs. Of those who found their job through a personal contact, he asked how often they had seen that contact at the time. Of the 54 interviewed on this, 16.7 per cent said often, 55.6 per cent said occasionally, and 27.8 per cent said rarely. The skew is to the weak end.

The contacts were often somebody only on the edge of the person's current network, such as an old college friend or a former workmate or employer, with whom contact had been sporadic. Chance meetings or mutual friends reactivated these ties. In his words, it is remarkable that people receive crucial information from individuals whose very existence they have forgotten.

He also traced where the information started. In most cases it came directly from the employer, or through one intermediary. And those who heard through longer chains received information without influence: as he puts it, reading about a job in a newspaper gives no recommendation, and neither does hearing about it fifth hand.

His study was about jobs, and AV work moves the same way. The production manager you worked with five years ago, the venue technician from a festival, the former colleague now running events at a university: these are the people who hear of work your close circle never will, and who can put in a word that carries weight. Most of them are not people you think of as your network at all.

Keeping weak ties alive

Granovetter makes a point about professional fields that reads almost as advice. Within professional and technical specialties, he writes, the movement of people between employers sets up bridging weak ties between clusters, giving the specialty a sense of community, activated at meetings and conventions. And he adds that maintaining weak ties may well be the most important consequence of such meetings.

That is what trade shows, association meetings and industry events are for, from a business development point of view. Not mainly for meeting strangers, though that happens, but for seeing the hundred people you know a little, once or twice a year, so the tie stays alive and they remember what you do now.

He also observes that for many bridging ties to exist, there must be several distinct contexts in which people can form them. One company's people should not all go to the same event and talk to each other. Spread across different shows, local associations, venue open days and the sectors on the target list, and you meet different people.

Weak ties need light, regular contact. A message when somebody changes job, a note when you see their event announced, a useful introduction to somebody else. None of it asks for anything, and all of it keeps you in mind for the day they hear of work.

Introductions and vouching

The same paper explains why an introduction is worth more than a cold approach. Granovetter proposes that whether a person trusts somebody they have not met depends heavily on whether there are intermediaries who can, from their own knowledge, assure them that the person is trustworthy. He also notes studies showing that people rarely act on information from mass media unless it also reaches them through personal ties.

In practice that makes the third column of the target list, any connection you already have, the most important. Before approaching a name, ask who you know who knows them, and ask that person for an introduction. An introduction from somebody the prospect trusts carries their confidence with it.

The textbook adds a caution. Liking a particular salesperson does make a buyer more favourable to what they recommend, but friendliness may be mistaken for a long-term relationship, and business does not automatically follow. A warm network is the route to an opportunity, not a substitute for being good at the work, and the people who introduce you are lending you their reputation. Never spend it on a job you cannot do well.

The same chapter has a case that shows the opposite failure. A supplier of technical solutions to the United States federal government, GTSI, found that its representatives and account managers were not networking within the large agencies they sold to, and that it was treated as a commodity, with falling margins. The fix it describes was training in demonstrating value and in planning accounts. For an AV company the lesson is that a client organisation is also a network: knowing only the person who books you leaves you one resignation away from losing them.

How to do it

1. List fifty people you know a little in the industry, especially former colleagues and people from other companies.
2. Beside each, note where they work now and when you last spoke.
3. Mark those connected to anybody on your target list.
4. Ask the marked ones for introductions, one at a time.
5. Plan the year's events so your company's people are spread across different ones.
6. Make light contact with ten people a month, asking for nothing.
7. When somebody changes job, congratulate them that week.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Think of the last three pieces of work you or your company won from a new client.

Partners and Channels

Some of a company's best clients are other businesses that never buy anything themselves. They send work.

Who sends AV work

An end client, such as a company holding a conference, often does not choose its AV supplier directly. Somebody between them and you makes or shapes that choice. In AV the common ones are these.

• Venues. Hotels, conference centres and theatres recommend suppliers, keep preferred lists, or have an in-house AV provider and a list of what outside suppliers may do.
• Event agencies and organisers. Agencies, conference organisers and destination management companies plan events for clients and bring their own suppliers.
• Other AV companies. Production companies, rental houses and integrators who need equipment or crew they do not have, or who pass on work too small or too far for them.
• Neighbouring trades. Lighting designers, staging and set builders, IT companies, electrical contractors, architects and AV consultants, whose clients ask them who to call.
• Former clients. People who move to a new organisation and bring you with them.

Each of these sees a stream of clients you will never meet on your own. One good partner can be worth more than a dozen direct clients, which is why partners belong on the target list in their own right.

Why buyers choose suppliers

The textbook's chapter on relationship selling describes what it calls reverse marketing: the situation where buyers take the initiative and seek out suppliers, rather than waiting to be visited. Its examples are from retail and manufacturing, where buyers source suppliers and keep them for a long period, and it names what those buyers look for: the quality of what is supplied and its reliability, when it is needed.

That describes how venues and agencies choose AV partners. A venue does not want the cheapest supplier for its clients. It wants one that will not embarrass it in front of them, that turns up on time, leaves the building as it found it, and treats its staff well. An agency wants a supplier that makes the agency look good to its client.

So winning a partner is mostly about proving reliability, and that is done one job at a time. The first job you do in a partner's venue or for a partner's client is an audition, and the partner is watching how you behave as much as what you deliver.

So after that first job, ask for feedback, and ask for the honest kind. "What would you change about how we worked in your building?" gets a more useful answer than "Was everything all right?", which invites a polite yes. Write down what you hear, fix anything that was raised before the next job, and tell the partner you have done it. A supplier who visibly acts on feedback is exactly the reliable supplier a venue is looking for.

A relationship with promises on both sides

The textbook quotes the marketing researcher Christian Grönroos's definition of marketing: to establish, maintain and enhance long-term customer relationships at a profit, so that the objectives of the parties involved are met, through a mutual exchange of promises. A partnership is exactly that, so it helps to be clear what each side is promising.

From you to a venue, typical promises are: to follow its rules, to protect its relationship with its own client, to treat its staff as colleagues, to fix anything you damage, and never to approach its clients behind its back. From the venue to you: to recommend you, to give you access and information in good time, and to tell you honestly when something went wrong.

Write those promises down, even informally in an email, and review them once a year. Partnerships fail quietly when one side starts to feel the other is taking more than it gives, and a written list makes that a conversation instead of a grudge.

Some partnerships involve money for a referral, or a commission paid to a venue or agency. If yours does, agree the terms in writing, and be prepared for the end client to know about it. A partnership the end client would feel deceived by is a risk to every party in it. When a venue already has a contract with an in-house AV provider, find out what outside suppliers are permitted to do before you agree anything with its clients.

Returning the favour

Partnerships work in both directions. The production company that sub-hires your LED wall may also take your overflow crewing. The lighting designer who recommends you for sound needs somebody to recommend them for lighting. Send work back when you can, and say where it came from.

Keep a record of what each partner has sent you and what you have sent them. It is not a ledger to settle, but it shows you at a glance which partnerships are alive, which have gone quiet, and which have only ever run one way.

How to do it

1. List the venues, agencies, AV companies and neighbouring trades that serve your target clients.
2. Choose three to five as partner targets and add them to the target list.
3. Find an introduction to the person who chooses suppliers at each.
4. Ask what they need from a supplier, and what has gone wrong with others.
5. Treat the first job through them as an audition, and debrief with them afterwards.
6. Write down what each side promises, and review it once a year.
7. Record what each partner sends you and what you send them.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Your company has just done its first conference in a new hotel's ballroom, booked by an agency. It went well.

Developing & Winning Business

Between a first conversation and a first order there is usually a long stretch where nothing seems to happen. Most opportunities are lost there.

Turn opportunities and relationships into deals.

Developing opportunities

Biz dev develops opportunities — moving them from initial interest/relationship towards actual business. This means nurturing the relationship and the opportunity (understanding the client's needs, showing how you can help, building the case and trust), guiding the prospect through the process, and developing the opportunity until it's ready to become business. Developing opportunities (patiently advancing them) is the work between finding a lead and winning it.

This is a process (often over time): an opportunity is found, a relationship built, the client's needs understood, a solution shown, and the opportunity advanced towards a deal. The biz dev professional manages this development.

Winning business and persuasion

Ultimately, biz dev wins business — converting developed opportunities into actual clients and deals (where it overlaps with sales/closing). This requires communication and persuasion (presenting your value compellingly, addressing the client's needs and concerns, making the case for choosing you) and bringing the opportunity to a close (or handing it to sales to close). Winning business is the payoff of biz dev — turning all the prospecting, networking, and development into actual revenue.

From stranger to client

The textbook describes a buyer moving through stages before a purchase: from unawareness of a company, to awareness, to comprehension of what it offers, to conviction that it is the right choice, and finally to purchase. It notes that different tools work at different stages: advertising and publicity earlier, personal contact at conviction and purchase.

For business development the point is that a prospect cannot be hurried from the first stage to the last. A university events manager who met you at a trade show is aware of you. To comprehend what you do, they need to see it: a case study, a visit to an event you are running, a conversation with a client of yours. Conviction usually needs a small first job or a strong recommendation from somebody they trust.

So developing an opportunity means asking, for each prospect, which stage they are in and what would move them to the next one, and then doing that one thing. It is slower than asking for the work, and far more likely to end with it.

The small first job

In AV the most reliable route from interest to conviction is a small first job. A breakout room at a conference whose main hall is already booked with somebody else. A single lecture theatre for one term. A one-day training event. The prospect risks little, and sees how you work.

The textbook's account of supplier loyalty explains why that first job matters so much. It distinguishes true supplier loyalty, a conscious decision to concentrate purchases with a supplier because it is considered better, from mere habit. And it says that among the most powerful and lasting impressions in buying are the face-to-face encounters with the supplier's people. The crew on that first small job are the strongest argument you will ever make.

Treat the first job accordingly. Put your best people on it, even though it is small. Debrief with the client afterwards. And ask, at the end, what the next piece of work they have coming up looks like.

Making the case to a stranger

A new client has no experience of you, so persuading them is mostly a matter of evidence. Granovetter's paper suggests which kind counts most: trust in somebody you have not met depends on people who can vouch from their own knowledge, and information that arrives without a personal connection arrives without influence. A brochure says what you claim. A client who will take a phone call says what happened.

Build a small set of evidence before you need it, and match it to the segments on your target list.

• A reference. A named person at a comparable client who has agreed to take a call. Ask them first, every time, and do not overuse them.
• A short case study. One page: the client's problem, what you did, what happened, and a photograph of the work. Written in the client's terms, not as a list of equipment.
• A visit. An invitation to see one of your events running, with your client's permission, or a walk round your warehouse to meet the people who would do the work.
• The basics, ready. Insurance certificates, your safety approach, and any accreditations, because a buyer from a new organisation will often have to collect these before they can book you at all.

Then let the evidence do the persuading. Explain what you would do for them in their language, offer the reference or the visit, and stop. The selling conversation that follows, once there is a real job, is covered in Technical Sales Fundamentals.

Keeping the pipeline honest

A pipeline is a list of the opportunities being worked. It becomes dangerous when it holds hopes rather than opportunities, because the company plans around a number that is not real.

The textbook lists the stages of a customer relationship as a company might track them: enquiry, conversion to customer, repeat purchase, up-trade, threatened dormancy and recovery. It also says that the probability of losing a customer usually falls as the relationship lengthens. A pipeline for new business covers the first two of those stages, and it helps to mark each opportunity by where it actually stands: a name only, a first conversation, a real need identified, a proposal sent, a first job agreed.

Two rules keep it honest. Every opportunity has a next action with a date, and one that has had no movement in three months is moved back to the target list. And the moment an opportunity becomes a specific job with a budget, a decision-maker and a date, it passes to whoever does the selling. Qualifying and winning that job is taught in Technical Sales Fundamentals.

How to do it

1. Place the prospect in a stage, from unaware through aware, understands, convinced, to buying.
2. Decide the one thing that would move them to the next stage.
3. Offer the evidence that fits their sector, whether a reference, a case study or a visit.
4. Do that one thing, and agree the next contact with a date.
5. Look for a small first job that lets them see how you work at low risk.
6. Put your best people on the first job, and debrief with the client afterwards.
7. Hand a qualified job to whoever sells, with everything you have learned.
8. Move anything with no progress in three months back to the target list.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A church's facilities manager met your company at a regional trade show and took a card. They mentioned that they are thinking of streaming their services.

The Business Development Plan

Without a plan, business development is a mood. With one, it is a list of things to do on Monday.

Objectives, strategies, tactics

The textbook describes the planning sequence with a simple hierarchy: objectives, which say where you intend to go; strategies, which say broadly how you intend to get there; and tactics, the precise route. It summarises the whole as MOST: mission, objective, strategy, tactics.

It also gives a worked example of a planning method called GOSPA, standing for goals, objectives, strategies, plans and actions, used by a public relations firm for a technology client. What makes the example useful is that every line further down is more specific than the one above, and the last lines are actions with names and dates: a meeting in Paris on a given day, a first press release to be written by a named firm.

Before the detail, the textbook asks for a strategy statement: the objectives, the strategies chosen to reach them, and what they mean for the target market and positioning, written down and then communicated to and agreed with every manager who will influence whether it succeeds.

A business development plan for an AV company can follow the same shape on one page. Mission: what business you are in. One or two objectives, each with one theme, a number and a date. One strategy for each objective. And under each strategy, the actions for the next three months, each with a person and a date.

What goes in the plan

Put these on one page, in this order.

• What business we are in. One sentence, as a customer need.
• Where we stand. The short SWOT.
• Where growth will come from. The direction chosen, and why.
• Objectives. One or two, each with one theme, a number and a date.
• Strategy. One per objective: the segment, the target list, the partners.
• Actions for this quarter. Each with a person and a date.
• The budget. Time and money: who spends how many hours a week, and what events or materials cost.
• The measures. What will be counted every month, and what happens if it is off track.

The textbook warns that budgeting may show the original plan to be unrealistic, and that it then has to change. In a small AV company the budget that matters most is hours. If the plan needs eight hours a week and nobody has them, it is not a plan.

Telling people, and checking it

Two warnings in the textbook explain why most plans fail. The first is about implementation: it says many companies have elaborate marketing plans that are not implemented because key people have not been informed or have not agreed the plan. In an AV company the key people include the crews, who are the part-time marketers, and the operations manager, whose schedule the new work will land in.

The second is about control. The plan should state what is to be measured, how and with what data, and what action will be taken if results deviate. The textbook describes this as contingency planning: plans need to be flexible to cope with changes nobody predicted.

For business development the measures fall into two kinds. Activity: approaches made, introductions asked for, events attended, partners met. And results: new prospects at each stage, first jobs won, revenue from new clients, and where each new client came from. Activity is what you control this month. Results arrive months later and tell you whether the activity was the right kind.

Check both every month, against the plan, in one short meeting. When results lag for two quarters despite the activity, change the strategy, not the effort. When the activity itself is not happening, the hours in the budget were not real.

How to do it

1. Write the business definition and the short SWOT.
2. Choose the direction of growth, and say why in one line.
3. Set one or two objectives, each with one theme, a number and a date.
4. Write one strategy per objective, naming the segment, target list and partners.
5. List this quarter's actions with a person and a date for each.
6. Budget the hours per week and the money, and cut the plan if the hours are not there.
7. Choose the activity and result measures, and how often they are checked.
8. Tell everybody the plan touches, including crews and operations.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Use the hire company from the chapter on growth, whose objective is to win its first three university events by the end of next June.

Business Development Mastered

Business development is a set of habits more than a set of skills. This chapter puts them on a calendar.

Generating growth through relationships and strategy.

The biz dev professional

Pulling it together, business development is growing the business — prospecting and spotting opportunities, networking and building relationships, developing opportunities, and winning new business. The biz dev professional combines prospecting, networking and relationship-building, opportunity development, strategic thinking, and persuasion. This makes them the generator of a company's growth — bringing in the new clients and business that let it expand, a valuable, often well-rewarded role.

Business development is central to growth (companies need new business to expand and thrive), and skilled biz dev people are valued and well-compensated in AV and beyond. It's a relationship-, communication-, and strategy-driven role for those who can find, build, and win. Understanding business development — prospecting, networking, developing, winning — is a valuable business capability.

Developing as a biz dev professional

Developing in business development means building relationship and networking skills (the heart of biz dev), communication and persuasion, strategic thinking (where growth comes from), and the discipline to prospect and develop opportunities consistently, gaining experience generating and winning business. It connects to sales, account management, and client communication. The best biz dev people combine strong networking and relationships, sharp opportunity sense, strategic thinking, and persuasive communication, built through doing it.

From here, growing means generating bigger and more business, building towards senior business-development and growth-leadership roles, and mastering the art of growing a business. It's a valued, well-rewarded, relationship-driven career in AV and beyond. The skills this book brings together — prospecting, networking, developing, winning — are the foundation; mastery comes from generating and winning much business over time. Keep building relationships and finding opportunities, keep developing your skills, and you grow into a business-development professional.

Glossary

Practical sign-off

Biz dev is learned by doing. The learner prospects and spots opportunities, networks and builds relationships, develops opportunities, and helps win business. A mentor signs off when the learner can generate and develop new business.

• Prospected for and identified new opportunities
• Networked and built business relationships
• Developed opportunities towards becoming business
• Helped win new business through relationships and persuasion

The week, the month and the quarter

Every chapter in this book produced a habit. Laid out on a calendar, they take a few hours a week in a small company.

Put the weekly hours in the calendar as a fixed appointment. The chapter on what business development is explained why: it is the work with no deadline, so it is the first thing dropped, and the cost appears six months later.

Who does this work

In a large company business development is a job title. In most AV companies it is part of the owner's week, or a senior technician's, or a project manager's. That is fine, and it suits technicians better than they expect, because so much of it rests on things technicians already have: a network built on shows, credibility with other technical people, and an eye for what a building or an event will need.

If you are a technician now, three habits start the work without anybody's permission. Tell somebody in your company when you hear about a building, an event or a person changing jobs. Stay in touch with the people you meet on shows, especially those from other companies. And when somebody from another event asks who you work for, give them a card and pass their name on.

From here the paths lead towards account management, sales and eventually running a company, all of which depend on the same thing: being the person through whom new work keeps arriving.

How to do it

1. Block a fixed weekly time in the calendar.
2. Each week, read for signals, approach, and keep light contact.
3. Each month, check the plan's measures and cut stalled opportunities.
4. Each quarter, review the target and partner lists and set actions.
5. Each year, redo the SWOT, the direction and the objectives.
6. Record where every new client came from, and act on what it shows.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Look back at the notebook of where your won work came from, or reconstruct the last ten jobs from memory.

Where to Go Next

This book covered finding new clients, markets and services. Brand & Business Development covers making your company known, so that the prospects on your list have heard of you before you call. Technical Sales Fundamentals covers winning a specific job once an opportunity is qualified. Account Management covers keeping and growing a client once they are yours, including approved-supplier lists. And Freelance Business Fundamentals covers finding work as an individual.

Three sources stand behind the method and each repays reading. Chapter 2 of Jobber and Lancaster's Selling and Sales Management sets out the planning sequence used here. Chapter 10 of the same book covers relationship selling, partners and market intelligence. And Mark Granovetter's 1973 paper "The Strength of Weak Ties", in the American Journal of Sociology, is short, readable and the best explanation of why networking works the way it does.

The first ninety days

Four things. Write what business your company is in as a customer need. Write a target list of twenty names with the four columns. List fifty people you know a little in the industry and ask three of them for an introduction. And start the notebook: one line for every new piece of work and exactly how it arrived.

At the end of the ninety days, read the notebook and write a one-page plan from what it shows you.

Where this leads

A company that can always find its next client can choose its work rather than taking whatever comes. The person who makes that possible is rarely the loudest in the company. It is usually the one who remembers everybody, notices when a building goes up, and keeps in touch with people long after the show is over.

What the gear actually looks like

Every device named in this book, in one place. Recognition is the whole point of Chapter 4 — use this page to attach a picture to each name before you meet it on a dock at six in the morning.

Audio

Dynamic microphone

Condenser microphone

Wireless handheld

Radio rack

Mixing console

Stage box / snake

Power amplifier

Main loudspeaker

Subwoofer

Stage monitor wedge

In-ear monitors

DI box

Video

Camera

Video switcher

Scaler / processor

Projector

LED wall panel

Confidence monitor

Lighting & control

Conventional fixture

Moving-head fixture

Lighting console

Dimmer

Show controller

Media server

Networking & infrastructure

Network switch

Patch bay

Equipment rack

Power distribution

Cable tester

A properly coiled cable

Connectors, close up

XLR

TRS / TS ¼-inch

SDI on BNC

HDMI

Cat5e / Cat6 (RJ45)

Fiber optic

DMX (5-pin XLR)

AC power — not signal