Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: If you could record a video around business development for your younger self, what would it say?

You learn a lot more from failure than you do from success. Early on in Bill’s career, he had developed a relationship with an art collector, but after the collector passed away the business went to other people because Bill didn’t consider what would happen after that point or lay the foundation to make sure the family would work with him.
It’s important to not rely on a single individual for your relationship with an organization. You need to create a team of advocates to work with a team of counterparts within the organization.
Remove your ego from the equation and focus on building a team to team relationship.
We tend to focus on our expertise and believe that’s how decisions get made, but that’s not the way it works. What should drive those decisions is that your company has a collection of skills to help clients solve their problems.

Mo asks Mike Duffy: If you could record a message to your younger self about how they should think about business development, what would it be?

Mike’s message would be to essentially to cold call for a couple months right at the beginning to get used to hearing no.
He would also tell himself to feed his brain. Read books and consume information that keeps you moving.
Treat your profession like a profession. If you treat your profession the same way that a doctor does and invest in continuing education every year to be a better leader and sales person, you will be successful.
Mike invests in programs that he’s heard about on podcasts and consumes books referenced in other books that have made an impact on him. You have to invest in yourself if you want to get better.
Mike also builds relationships with people that are learning themselves and is curious enough to find out more about them. He’s always thinking about how he can add value to a conversation or relationship, and thinking about the questions that allow him to dig deeper.
When you ask questions, you learn. When you learn, you connect dots, and when you do that, everyone gets better and the effect can snowball. Asking the right questions is instrumental to Mike’s ability to grow.

Mo asks Debby Moorman: If you could record a business development tip and send it to your younger self, what would it be?

The bottomline is the idea of sales can be scary because we usually think of our worst sales experience and extrapolate that to everything. Debby’s advice to her younger self would be to take a breath, and realize that it’s all about meeting people and getting to know them, then helping them solve their problems.
Changing the label from “sales” to “helping people and solving their needs” is a powerful mindset shift.
People usually don’t realize that they are selling everyday, they just don’t label it that way. If you substitute “solve problems” for “sales”, you’re probably doing it all the time.
Debby tells the story of an earlier experience where her job was traditional sales, literally going door to door, and how by simply asking questions and identifying the needs of the company, she turned a no into one of the biggest sales of the hotel she was working for.
Everybody already sells, they just don’t call it that. When you substitute solving problems, you realize that you’re already great at what you do, and if you plug in a process like the Snowball System, you can keep getting better at it.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Eps 531: Action and advocacy for our youth with Traci Baxley and Dani Ferrigno