Sarah sails the Solent!

Sarah joined with other members of the 100 Property Club on 4th October to enjoy a days sailing and networking on the Solent before the winter weather set in.  The day was brilliantly organised by Jeremy Needs and members included Ian Brown, Gavin Maber, David Tuffin, and Geoff Davis.

Market your way out of recession

I was reading Building magazine a year or two ago, you know the section “Building buys a pint”, and the usual senior people were present, but also their business development manager.  Anyway, the journalist from Building magazine asks “What exactly is business development”, and then silence ... no comment recorded.  “Was there any answer to this question?”  I asked myself.

This got me thinking...

If the key premise of any business is profitable growth, then surely one of the most important Board level roles has to be someone responsible for growth.  Yet how many construction companies or professional consultancy firms have people who are qualified and Board-level advising on sales and marketing?  If the Building industry doesn’t recognise or understand this important role, then perhaps the individuals who are employed in a business development capacity have failed somehow to impart the relevance and importance of the role.  Or is it that the title ‘Business Development’ is so broad and covers such a wide range of disciplines and activities that people aren’t quite sure how it delivers ROI?

Even our own industry publication doesn’t know what Business Development is... There are after all many Business Development people out there in the industry – but they cannot all be good at everything.  After all “isn’t the Business Development role supposed to do all of that stuff involving Marketing and Sales?”  Yet, how many people do you know that are good at truly good at it all?

So I sought to define it, after all, I do have 20 years experience in the role... And, after considerable thought, reflection, research and development and then a year of product ‘test marketing’ I believe I have defined business development into 5 key stages...,And I’ve developed a pretty little icon to help me explain it to you.

I often meet consultancy firms who say that their Directors do their Business Development – they don’t need to employ anyone at all in the BD role.  And, I suppose it comes down to aspirations and your medium term business plan  ... have they ever thought how much bigger and more profitable they could be if they did employ a BD on their strategy?  So, I’ve developed the Chapman Consulting view of what constitutes Business Development.

And, guess what - we’ve developed an amazing auditing tool made up of over 100 questions which enables us to assess very quickly where we would recommend you invest your time and money in terms of sales and marketing activity.

And, guess what – we deliver it to you in a month ... yes just four weeks!  Your marketing manager probably takes 6 months to do that and will cost you over £30,000!  We charge considerably less.

And, we have a brilliant team of associates with many years industry experience just ready to pounce on any little problems that are encountered as you ‘grow’ and ‘develop’ your business.

And, you don’t have to employ them on your books, nor train them, nor micro-manage them, nor deal with them being sick, pregnant, incompetent!

So, what have you got to lose – call me to book a meeting and find out how you can Market your Way out of Recession?