“We Need More Revenue”
Reviewing, auditing and enhancing the business development function in the London office of a global architect firm.
“We were convinced that we had the right people, the right product and a proven track record worldwide, but somehow we couldn’t create the leads and opportunities to generate a larger, more consistent pipeline of opportunities in our area. We had four sales people, so we could not understand what was going on and how we could turn things around. I had come across the people from Fourth Dimension Expert Resource, so I thought I would get them in for a chat. They presented a really refreshing approach with clear ideas about how to tackle our issues. We appointed them to do a full audit of all our sales and marketing activities. Over the course of the project they got a real feel for our company and the issues we faced.”
To get a great feel for how a company can enhance its position and create opportunity, we research the market to glean instant and insightful results:
“4th Dimension undertook a survey of the market and actually asked (discreetly and independently) old, current and potential clients what their opinion of our company was and if they would consider our products and services. The results were amazing and gave us a real indication of the problem: we were giving out inconsistent and confusing messages – potential customers didn’t know what we were selling! 4th Dimension gave us some great advice about educating our staff to use a consistent message and about reviewing our PR and communication strategy.”
Looking at the sales process from lead inception to closing is essential to understanding any issues or improvements that can be made:
“4th Dimension dug really deep into our business development processes: they attended our internal sales meetings, shadowed our sales guys and even attended networking events with us. When they reported back, it was revealing to get an outside view on our activities. We realised that our current efforts were great but that we were wasting a huge amount of resource as our processes to record and develop leads, opportunities and clients were not sufficient and poorly enforced.”
History is important in understanding what to change, enhance and improve. If you don’t know where you have been, how can you decide where to go?
“4th Dimension performed a really comprehensive analysis of where our work was coming from and how we were winning it. The results were very revealing – all our work had been coming from senior connections and global partnerships. We had a sales team that had not won us any new business for two years. It is not until it is presented in that way, that you can get a real feel for what is going on. They also enhanced and modified our very expensive CRM system so that we could actually use it properly, dramatically improving our client and account management. 4th Dimension gave us several different ways of restructuring the sales team and sales roles. One of the options was to clean up the sales team and to bring in more sales support for the directors to win more work. Since then we have used one of their recommendations and considerably streamlined the sales process and team. This has significantly reduced costs and has also seen an increase in the sales team’s success.”
Unless you have a compelling story, credibility and the necessary expressiveness, your opinions, advice and ideas won’t be heard and implemented:
“4th Dimension’s background in elite sport, their sociability and their expertise based on solid theory meant that the staff were keen to engage and listen. They were great to have around, and they really energised the office. The report, presentation and subsequent recommendations have been a great source of reference and have created a real focus on business development for all our staff.”
Result: Increase in business opportunity
“Since we appointed Fourth Dimension Expert Resource, we have completely changed our sales process, and the entire sales team has been replaced. We have more focus on our business development activity and have seen an increase in opportunity. We are now struggling to resource the work – a great problem to have!”