“Thanks Alex but we have decided to invest in activity that we know will deliver an ROI. We’ll over-deliver on the current project and create a specific data interrogation app. It will appeal to all the Directors when we run through the first piece of work. And we can write it off as R&D.
From there one of the directors has already indicated he’ll sponsor us at the next regional meeting of their association. That will open doors, and after that we’ll have to figure out how to get in front of other regional associations.”
Understandable at first. The business is successful and has grown with a rigid focus on expenditure and ROI.
However, their growth has been gradual and haphazard; accidental meetings sparking opportunities to discuss their technology solution.
People are interested. CEOs exclaim, “Why haven’t we heard about this before?” and hope flares. To then fizzle once the idea goes into companies’ evaluation committees.
In the meantime, the business wants to scale, fast. The owners want to exit in 5 years’ time – but “haphazard” and “figure it out” takes time and luck.
- Doors being opened is not the same as signed contracts.
- Seven “sounds interesting” will take months of internal deliberations to deliver 1 to 2 maybes, and many more months till a signed contract.
And in the meantime – where’s the next local association?
There is a lot of time being spent on business development that is not costed & therefore not included in the ROI.
Building a sales pipeline takes time. You have to be doing the work now to create the next flow of opportunities.
When you are under the pump it can be hard to work out where things are going wrong. That's why it can help to have a second set of eyes, and a sounding board, to talk things through in more detail.