| A study has suggested that about 70% of real learning takes place on the job, but most investment to improve business development skills tends to go into formal training. Malcolm Sleath from coaching consultancy 12boxes suggests it is the learner who needs to make the biggest investment. |
| How to learn business development skills on the job |
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| | By Malcolm Sleath
Question: After
several years as a
specialist line manager,
I decided to capitalise
on my experience and
gain more control over
my working life by
moving into consultancy.
A medium-sized firm made
it clear they were
interested in adding my
skill-set to their
portfolio and promised
to support me with
practical training that
would develop my
consulting skills. In
fact, I already had a
lot of those because my
role often involved
internal consultancy of
various kinds, and I was
used to negotiating.
However, the part where
I really needed help was
in the area of business
development. My firm set
up a two-day course
where colleagues and I
were coached to ask the
right questions and
close deals. I learned a
lot, but I still find it
very difficult to apply
it in the field when I
am on my own. There are
plenty of leads, but I
find it hard to turn
them into cash. My
supervising consultant
says it is because I
give up on potential
opportunities too soon.
When she accompanies me
to see potential clients
it’s true that things
seem to go a lot better.
Does this mean I don’t
have what it takes to
make a real success of
this?
Answer: It | |
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| | depends...
Many people who
perform well in business
development don’t really
understand what makes
them effective, and tend
to attribute their
success to personal
characteristics. You
often hear high
performers say, “It’s
just my natural
approach. I don’t like
to analyse it in case I
spoil it”. There is
always the suspicion
that another reason why
high performers don’t
want to make the secret
of their skill too
public is that they
might lose their
scarcity value!
As a way of getting
around this issue,
psychologists in the
20th century tried to
introduce some
objectivity into the
process by looking at
what successful business
developers actually did.
They observed their
behaviour, what they
said and how they said
it, in the field. One
study concluded that
high performance was
associated with asking
particular kinds of
questions and took the
creative step of joining
them into a sequence. An
approach based on that
one idea was the
foundation for one of
the most successful
‘selling schools’ of the
second half of the 20th
century. It sounds as if
the training you did was
based on a similar | |
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| | approach.
Learning by copying
the behaviour of others
is a perfectly
respectable way to
develop a skill. For
hundreds of years it was
the way in which
apprentices became
journeymen and
journeymen became
masters of their craft.
If you want to learn how
to carve a beautiful
chair from wood, the
best way to acquire the
skill is to spend day
after day in the company
of someone who is
already doing it,
gradually taking on more
and more complicated
tasks as your skill
improves. But for that
approach to work, the
environment and the
resulting tasks have to
be unchanging over time.
It is surely no
coincidence that the
most satisfied buyers of
behaviour-based business
development training
tend to be larger
organisations where the
roles of professionals
and their services are
well-defined. The
personal skills of
business development are
just one element. They
are nurtured in a
structure where
procedures, organisation
and management behaviour
support them. They
become the ‘firm’s way
of doing things’.
Continued on page 14
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