The Tools I Use To Cut Deals

Originally Posted on Medium: Jul 22, 2014

There are hundreds of blog posts about tools for sales professionals. But, look for tools specific to business development, and you won’t find much. The few posts that address business development parenthetically just mention a CRM or two.

I’ve met numerous entry-level business development folks (usually ex-sales professionals) who say, “I want to do bus dev, but I don’t know what to use! Should I just use my CRM system from before?”

It’s A Little Like Fundraising?

There was a cool piece on startup fund-raising in Entrepreneur the other day that featured Yesware and Pipedrive. That one got a bit closer to business development objectives because it focused on something that’s a little bit like business development — fund-raising.

When you’re fundraising, you’re essentially asking strangers to put money behind your idea. Co-marketing and integration-driven partnerships are similar; you’re typically talking to folks you may or may not know and asking them to go on a short joint-venture with you.

Sure, the financial commitment in a business development project won’t be as large as your next venture capital round. But, even a small marketing partnership between two small software companies can consume several thousand dollars in value, and product a hundred thousand dollars in value.

Skill Set Differences: Sales vs. Bus Dev

There’s a distinct difference in skills to what makes a great sales professional and what makes a great bus dev professional.

Where sales professionals need expertise in sales agility, deep listening, and sales methodologies, tech-industry bus dev professionals need expertise in the following areas. I made an acronym to make it easy to remember them — VIDEO.

Vision: Understanding a potential partner’s short and long-term goals

Evernote: If I didn’t write everything down in Evernote, I don’t know how I’d understand anyone I’m working with — I’ve found that by taking notes while someone is talking, it makes me far less likely to interrupt, and I can reflect on my notes later.
Google Calendar: I put all of my pre-meeting agendas in Google Calendar,so that everyone that I meet with knows what I’d like to learn from them, prior to our meeting. It also prevents misunderstandings, for example, if you wanted to meet for one reason, but the prospective partner you’re meeting with doesn’t want to discuss a given topic.

Insight: Unorthodox prospecting methods

Double Trouble: Bus dev prospecting requires some serious ammunition — I use a combination that I call “double trouble” — InsideView AND LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Salesforce. My theory on LinkedIn InMails is simple — if you aren’t out of them nearly every day, you’re not using them enough to stretch your company’s network.

Details: Killer project management skills and understanding of technical specs (i.e. APIs)

Asana & Google Sheets: For managing people-relationships, I use a combination of Yesware and Salesforce (shown below), but for managing things, I use a combination of Asana and occasionally Google Sheets.
UberConference & Evernote: It’s also a time-saver to have the same conference line at all times (I use UberConference — it actually dials you into your call, and then logs all notes to Evernote). In terms of managing the arc of the deal, in terms of what should happen when, the classic ‘80s book Strategic Selling still does it for me.
API Guides: If you’re a CRM bus dev exec, the Salesforce API guide is a must-have.
Conversion: If you’re doing landing pages without Crazyegg, you’re crazy, period.

Executive: Articulate, executive presence and the ability to present in front of other articulate executives

The book, The Articulate Executive, is a must-read.
Presentation Zen is one to keep on the desk. It helps for bus dev execs to have a regular speaking schedule, and perhaps even a speaking agency to book events for them.
Keynote: For presentations, I use Keynote, and when I’m doing big webinars, PowerPoint online as part of OneDrive.

On top of it: Legendary follow-up skills

Yesware and Salesforce1:My follow-up combination is pretty simple. I use Yesware Enterprise to manage my inbox. CRM is Salesforce Enterprise, with SFDC1 mobile app.
No Deal Left Behind: I’ve added a bunch of inexpensive Apex Triggers (about $150 each on Odesk), to make sure no deal slips through the cracks.
Pipedrive: We also back up our Salesforce to PipeDrive, so the non-sales team members of my team can see who I’m in touch with, in real-time — Zapier is great for this kind of thing.
Meldium: Meldium is my password solution, and it seriously saves me 20 minutes a day of busywork.

Let me know if you come across any solutions that allow you to do your business development work in a more seamless way. I’m constantly re-evaluating my tools, too.