Business Development Training

Business Development Training: Follow Up Business Opportunities
By Will Kintish

Consider the scenario of a business networking event. These are superb sources of leads and referrals that can be the life blood of your business. The business skills you develop in this arena can easily be applied in any business scenario. Assume you have engaged in conversation with a good potential contact. Once you have created a positive first impression start the interesting chat about various areas of common ground. By careful listening, you may identify an opportunity to do some business to your mutual benefit at some later date. You are looking for the moment when someone says something to you to make you think, "Ahaa, there's a potential business opportunity here." Suppose you are a business development consultant who specialises in the food industry and who has a good track record in helping companies to increase their margins. If you were asking all the right questions such as "So how you finding things at the moment?", and you hear the answer "We're doing reasonably well but we don't seem to be getting the efficiencies in the factory." That is an Ahaa moment.

Can I mention again, that networking using business development skills isn't selling; it's building business relationships, and gathering business information?

This should be the start of the follow up business development process which is as follows

1. Ask for their business card and read it carefully.

2. Always find something to comment on; maybe the spelling of their name or perhaps they have their business in a particular part of town which you know intimately. It doesn't matter as long as you show them that you are interested in them, their business and their circumstances.