Unpopular Opinion: Develop a Marketing and Business Development Culture

Today, I want to share one of my most controversial stances in all of the land. It’s entirely counter-cultural to all of the coaching programs out there and even most of the business (leadership) books you’ll come across. Here it is… You, dear business owner, should not do all of your company’s Business Development. Instead: you should slowly and steadily develop a Marketing and Business Development Culture.

What is a Marketing and Business Development Culture?

I must admit: Business Development Culture is new terminology that one of our beloved clients, Sera Cremona recently taught me. Sera is the owner of Cremona Consulting, a Business Development consulting firm(!).

Cremona Consulting helps mid-large size real estate, construction, and architecture businesses grow their revenue by enrolling teams into an organization’s business development, through knowledge transfer, repeatable systems, and accountability. And furthermore, they ensure that those trusted with this responsibility feel empowered, excited, and purposeful about their growth.

Sera defines an organization with a Business Development Culture as one where:

• The CEO or key executives do not hold, nor gatekeep key knowledge and relationships to close deals.
• Expectations (and teamwork to support it) make everyone responsible for Business Development.
• New business is proactive.

Adding Marketing to this idea is my personal flourish. It means that your Marketing strategy (branding, messaging, digital channels, PR, etc) are integrated with your Business Development. You consider Business Development as one Marketing channel that’s part of your larger system. In our business, we go so far as putting Business Development as the leading pillar of our entire Marketing strategy. Afterall, I love how BNI says:

Relational Business Development is (still) the most cost effective form of marketing.

Not to mention enjoyable and authentic, if you ask me.

What’s the Traditional Way to Grow a Small Business?

Traditional advice says: when you’re ready to hire, delegate low-level tasks, in order to reallocate all possible man hours to income-producing activities. (I say “man” hours intentionally; more on that below). Hold your relationships close to the vest so that you’re “the guy” people want to know. Keep control and ownership of the business’s relationships.

No doubt that this traditional approach creates confidence for all parties. And assuming that the owner is good at their job and relationships, it’s absolutely the fast track to growth.

*Personally, I call this traditional “boy” advice; for as far as I can tell, it came up through the ranks of traditionally male-dominated businesses. Think professional services: financial advisors and insurance; real estate; and architecture. (All who make great Ellevated Outcomes clients, wink wink).

What’s the Ellevated Outcomes Way to Grow a Small Business (and Why)?

We advocate for developing a Business Development Culture, in Sera’s wise words. This looks like giving your team true responsibility in business outcomes. And let me emphasize: giving someone responsibility is delegating work.

But I want to give you a balanced view so must share a warning: short term, this will lead to slower growth. Why?

1. It’s not the way things are typically done. So it’s likely that you’ll need to put real work into employee buy-in. The smart employees with an abundance mindset will get it and be excited to share in the responsibility; but you’re likely to face resistance in others.
2. It’s a practice that takes tons of repetition and consistency. “Putting in the reps” is not for the faint of heart.
3. There will be mistakes. And you, dear owner, will have to accept this and teach / course correct along the way. It’ll be hard, and you’ll be frustrated by (very real) lost revenue opportunities. You’ll have to have hard (but helpful) feedback conversations. Not everyone wants this.

But now that I’ve listed some cons, here are the pros – and why they should win the day:

1. For the owner, this is an opportunity to start your perpetuation plan now. Even if you have no plans to wind down anytime soon, your future self will thank you. (When you’re trying to sell a business, how much of the Business Development depends on you is a mathematical factor that can increase or decrease your valuation).
2. For your team, this is an opportunity to teach one of the most coveted skillsets in business: adding literal value to a business. Every business needs this, so it’s the ultimate way for an employee to make themselves more valuable. And speaking of value: personally, I am constantly, proactively seeking ways to create growth paths for the team around me – in promotion opportunties and pay. And in my small business at least, we will always have growth goals. So the more value someone creates, the more opportunity they’re creating for themselves. I deeply want this for everyone I’m with.
3. Eventually, with enough time and practice, this effort will ladder up so that the sum is greater than its parts. Eventually, 1+1+1+… will not just equal 3 or 10 or even 50. It’ll become a multiple. Then at some point an exponential.

What’s the Next Step?

I suppose something I should’ve mentioned is: this assumes you want to grow your business beyond being a solopreneur. (And if you don’t, that’s totally fine; there’s other on-the-business work for you). Also, it assumes that you’ve established a Baseline of Business Development. You’ve been around for at least 2 years and have proven product-market fit. Better yet: you’ve proven pricing-market fit. (Here’s more on that, if you’re not sure you’re at the right stage yet).

But assuming you’re at the right time and place to think about sharing this responsibility, my advice is: weave it into the right people’s position agreements. As I cautioned, adoption will not happen overnight. So as soon as you can, start putting the pieces in place for the learning (and unlearning) that will need to occur. You need to decide which types and levels of jobs should partake in this responsibility. Who are the (types of) people who want career growth and runway?

Once you know the types of positions and people you want to bring along into this culture shift, talk to them about this during your monthly 1-1s. Hopefully, this article is a good starting point to form your own point of view. Then, communicate to people how you’d like to make this investment in them and why.

And although this doesn’t cover the tactical / execution steps (yet!), awareness, consideration, and decision are the first 3 stages of the process. So this should be plenty to chew on for a bit! And you may have guessed it, but this is going to kick off our 2^nd Business Development series of the year (part 2 of our Small Business MBA coming your way this fall 😉).

So stay tuned for more (tactical) and how-to’s re: building a Marketing and Business Development culture and the processes to support it. And once again, thank you to Cremona Consulting for educating me on this new vocabulary. It’s what we’ve been doing and teaching all along at Ellevated Outcomes; and it feels so clean and fresh to have succinct language for it.