Business Development is Like Painting

Have you ever painted a room or even a whole house?

He long did you spend Painting vs. Preparing?

My guess is that you spent a lot more time, perhaps more than you ever imagined it would take, preparing to do the "real" work.

The Real Work

Finalizing a deal, securing a contract, receiving a commitment for a purchase order. These are all great things and excellent end results. However, the “real work” often comes long before these end points are achieved. The wise Business Development person take this into account and plans for it up front. Because the wise BizDev person realizes the hard work is in the prep.

So, just like painting … Business Development takes a lot of preparation.   

Something to Keep in Mind:

The only place Success comes before Work is in the Dictionary.

Business Development takes work and BizDev takes time. You spend a lot of time crossing your t's and dotting your i's. Plan for these efforts up front and you’ll find you achieve a lot more successful endpoints … and faster.

Two Tips for Business Development (and painting):

1. Prep takes most of the time
2. Be prepared to make the investment

Image Credit: Mod as Hell

Jeff Shuey is a veteran in the Enterprise Content Management industry. Over the past 20 years he has worked with customers and partners to design, develop and deploy solutions around the world. Jeff is currently the Director of Strategic Alliances at Winshuttle. He has worked for Microsoft, FileNet, K2, Captaris, Open Text, Kofax and Kodak. He speaks and blogs about ECM and the Intersection between Social, Mobile and Cloud Computing.

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