Business Development Must Haves: Top Executives Weigh In

Associations face growing pressure to deliver both revenue and relevance to their members and partners. A dedicated business development team that is strategically built and structured is essential to driving sustainable growth. In a recent virtual workshop, two members of the Professionals for Association Revenue (PAR) Leadership Advisory Board explored the key components of effective BD teams. Below is a brief excerpt that highlights two critical questions every association must address to build a business development function that is both resilient and results-driven.

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Q: What are core components of a business development strategy?

 John Bacon: “Having a deep market understanding, knowing the needs, challenges, and the goals of your current and prospective members and partners. If your strategy is focused on the member and keeping the market informed - and it's not assumption driven - I think you're in a good spot.

The second one obviously would be clear value proposition - being able to tailor those offerings, whether it's your events, sponsorships, thought, leadership opportunities to deliver what that ROI looks like to sponsors - but then, also what those real outcomes look like for your members.

The 3rd thing I would say, is the pipeline and partnership discipline. Business development is not just about selling once or selling one thing. It's about building relationships. And I think you need to be able to have a repeatable, scalable process for nurturing those leads, managing what those pipelines look like, and being able to foster those long-term relationships as well.”

Jay Ablondi: “I would also add leadership buy in for me is essential. Whether it's your board of directors or board of trustees, or even your staff leadership. They're all bought into the revenue. We all know that, but they need to be bought into the engagement, and knowing that members, our vendors, or suppliers or sponsors, they don't want to talk to staff. Really, they want to talk to the leadership and have access - whether it's affecting policy or just getting to the decision makers.

The second thing is really the long-term relationships. We don't want to be transactional. Obviously, you need to offer return on investment, but you want it to be long term. [If they say], ‘Well, I didn't get a lot of leads from a certain initiative,’ [you can reply] ‘But you got your foot in the door and you're moving down the road.’ I've been with the Mass Medical Society for three years, and I have sponsors that came on the first year who were much more engaged, and they're spending much more in year three because we had that long, relationship and I think that's key.

And then last thing would be to do an organizational audit of your assets. What do you have to sell that you can monetize? But also there might be things you're doing now that take a lot of resources. So rather than adding a new thing, if you find something you're currently doing like research and you say, ‘Hey, well, we could get sponsorship for that or get partners involved in that,’ then you could monetize that without having to add staff resources. We’re all strained with limited staff and resources.”

• Recap: Deep market understanding, clear value proposition, pipeline and partnership discipline, leadership buy-in, long-term relationships, organizational audit of assets. 

Q: What are the key skills of high-performing business development team members?

Ablondi: “Professionalism and patience. Have the patience to listen to your clients or potential sponsors and the patience to learn about their business and what they're saying to you, because you don't want to be talking past each other because you you've got your goal, and they've got their goal.

The third “P” in this other than profit obviously is persistence. Your goal might not be to make the sale, but it should be to get a meeting, or it should be to get an answer. If you get “ghosted,” and say, ‘I didn't get an answer.’ Well, go back, and think about if you're on the other side, you don't want to get harassed every day to get an answer. But you can nudge them. And don't say, ‘Just circling back.’ Just say, ‘Do you have any questions about that proposal? Do you have any questions about what we covered?’ Be persistent and be persistent about your plan. If you have a goal to make so many contacts in a certain week, make sure you hit that. And, if you do get a ‘no,’ that's not the end. That's the beginning of your next opportunity. And you say, ‘All right, well, we have some other stuff coming down, I'll be sure to keep you advised.’”

Bacon: “I’ll lean heavily into the follow through piece, because I think it's a lost art, in my opinion. It's such a great way to follow up on the momentum of a call to be able to create value and show that value. Right after a call is done. I would also say, active listening, understanding what their goals and objectives are, needs, pain points. I think that's what separates good from great. Quite frankly, being able to listen, strategic communication, being professional, but then also knowing how to clearly articulate value and how to position the solution, right? And being able to handle objections. I think that's so important. And then the resilience and follow through, is huge. They handle rejection really well with professionalism, and then they consistently follow-up. I always tell people when I talk about persistence being professionally persistent, but that follow up is so important to the overall funnel of how that ends up being a conversion.”

• Recap: Professionalism, patience, persistence, follow-ups.