Lisa Hendrickx
Can you remember your first day of school? Somewhere you will remember that feeling. Well, that's how I felt on my first day as a Business Developer coming straight from school. Many people say that you are a sales person. But sales is also something you can learn. The first question that is important here is: what is outbound sales?
As a Business Developer you develop something, but not PHP code like our developers at Calibrate. But you do develop customer relationships. You do this by talking to contacts you are looking for yourself. So you will make 'cold' calls to potential clients because our services at Calibrate can help them to grow more online. This is called outbound sales. Something I learned in outbound sales is patience. Let that be something I don't have. Patience is necessary, but in the end perseverance is necessary. ;-)
This perfectly describes what cold calling, a part of outbound sales, means. To do cold calling, you need perseverance. By monitoring and consistently using your CRM as a digital tool, you will be able to identify opportunities. After you've tried the thousandth call via cold calling: finally bingo! There is a chance for a YES. All this is made possible by a script, staying consistent in your approach and closely following up the contacts. The quote below perfectly describes what it feels like to do business development:
In addition, many have a general impression of sales, namely: "Ieuw, a sales person. He or she wants to sell me something again". A good salesperson tries to find out what type of customer is in front of him or her. Do you have someone who is looking for a partner, an expert or a quick solution? Each of these three types needs a different approach, each time looking at what suits that specific customer best. Lubricating something is never an option and we have proven that in the past. Feel free to take a look at what we have already realized for our clients. Or as it is so nicely said below:
Do you doubt yourself if you would go for sales? Or even a more specific question, is sales in the IT sector something for me? I advise you to shout YES out loud!
If you're open to a challenge (like any born/learned sales person) you can learn a lot from the technical side of your business. Do you need to become a technical expert? No, every company has specific people in house for that purpose. As a business developer you just need to find out what type of customer you have in front of you. What are the customer's needs and what advice do they need at an expert level? Then your internal technical colleague can always accompany/assist you with this customer. Teamwork makes the dreamwork!
