Business Development Across Cultures

In this episode of the CQ for Global Leaders Podcast, Tom discusses how leaders can effectively engage in business development and build relationships when working across cultures.
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Business Development Across Cultures

• Business development is part of a leader’s role.
• There’s tremendous value in coming to different markets and visiting clients. It raises the profile of the organisation and at the same time, it opens a lot of doors which may be difficult to access for somebody in the local market.
• Prospecting is the first stage of business development. It is all about knowing your target market and the people you are trying to appeal to.
• Identify your cross border customer base. Think about how you can penetrate those and how you can build a relationship with them. Identify who the key players are and figure out how you can reach out to them.
• Introduction is key in relationship-oriented cultures.
• Be in the network. Show up. Identify the places where the people you want to talk to hang out and think about how you can be seen in those places.
• Be present on social media and in the digital world. It’s all about being able to contribute and share your perspective on things. When you put things out there, what it does is it builds a body of work. 
• Build relationships by having conversations. Open up and inform. Think about how you can challenge and energize each conversation. It is all about how you can add value so that it becomes useful to the customer. 
• Most of us are not into transactional selling. Therefore, the sales process is longer. It takes a tremendous amount of patience, perseverance, and methodical follow-ups to keep things on the go over that period of time. Having the ability to maintain the relationship is key.
• All leaders in an organisation have an obligation to think about business development whether doing it personally or as a team. 
• The CEO is the key salesperson in an organisation.
• Client acquisition is part of everyone’s job.

Today’s Take-away

• What is your view around business development? How do you engage in business development? 
• If you are working across cultures, how do you help your teams in those countries grow their businesses? 
• How do you get your team or organisation to think about client acquisition as part of everyone’s job?

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