BD & Sales Workflow
Establish and maintain relationships
Public appearances
Sharing articles, slides, and public-facing presentations/workshops.
Complete smaller projects and ask for feedback.
Create compelling case studies you are proud of
Ask ex-clients for feedback and referrals
After a project completes, ask the project participants or stakeholders for their feedback.
What did they like?
How could the session be improved?
How do they describe the pain point the work solved?
How it was solved in their point of view?
If they liked it, ask them if they know anyone in their network who could also use a similar product and if they could make an intro.
When asking for referrals:
“Do you know anyone who is [struggle] looking to [dream outcome] in [time delay]?
I helped [ideal customer] get [dream outcome] in [time period] without effort and sacrifice and increase [likelihood of achievement]”
Find new clients
Finding projects that have challenges that can be solved with our skills. There are multiple ways of approaching them, from cold to hot:
Go to conferences and talk to target customers:
After leaving an event, pass your badge on to someone else who tries to get inside.
Speak to sponsors with value-aligned or interesting tech at hackathons about their UX
Ask friends who might know of some UX related work or someone who might need help
Ask friends about what they are doing now
At events with an interesting topic
Find projects that seem aligned, understand their pain, and find out how to help.
When someone sees a project they are interested in
By finding someone who knows a friend/mentioning an existing connection
By being introduced by a friend/collaborator
Inbound leads by finding us through online search or from our public-facing material
Keep track of feedback and pain points
Put problems and positive/negative feedback on the session/solution into the appropriate product file in Notion or on a Miro board.
Update public-facing material
Put clients into BD CRM
Ensure value alignment, learn about broad goals, and skill gaps
From the first text or IRL conversation, review Audiences & Needs and send a message that speaks to their needs/pain points.
Screen them for values, past performance, and interest in quality work. Start a message with how their values resonated with you from the last conversation.
Ask them about their goals and what they need help with. Ask in your network about who might be a fit to collaborate on the project and fill the skill gap.
Decide which team members should join
Find team members with complementary skills and suggest collaborating on the project. It often helps to start with one other person to explore the collaboration together before adding more team members.
If there is interest on the client's side and on the side of the team members, suggest scheduling a proposal session.
Schedule a HMW/proposal creation session
Invite experts with relevant skills to the session in order to find a team that can execute.
Write a question script in the language of the problems/solutions, relative to the audience and the products you offer.
Prepare for the session:
Check the Miro board or Audiences & Needs for the appropriate audience.
Consider relevant products/services
Check product sheets for dream outcome, pain points/problems, time delay, solution, stories about similar past projects.
Use the questions below as a guideline and add the details from the product sheets.
What would the client save/make by working with you?
Review obstacles
Facilitate the session
This should ideally be a Miro workshop in which the basic information for the proposal is discussed and the proposal co-created.
Use this Miro template for the client session and invite whoever you think could help you on the project. Take HMW notes with everyone from the team to create the necessary context.
You need to at least discuss and align on:
Current problems, objectives, and goals (30-45 min)
After the discussion, the client can leave and you can work out the rest with the team:
Solutions and reference material/case studies
Clearly define outcomes
Agree on metrics
Set a timeline
Decide on the investment
If the meeting doesn’t end on time, suggest scheduling a follow-up within the final minutes.
Step 1: Identify their problems
Understand what exactly bothers them and why it matters to solve that problem. Check Audiences & Needs to get a sense of the target audience and ideas for questions.
The main goal of the conversation is to understand the client’s real needs and whether there is an offering that can solve their problem, i.e. - get the client from where they are now to where they want to go in less time and with fewer resources.
You can refer to the Conversation Guidelines for more details.
Step 2: Solutions & outcomes
With your team, come up with solutions and outcomes you can create. Vote to prioritise.
Step 3: Discuss solutions & outcomes
Provide case studies to give an example of what’s needed.
Step 4: Metrics for success
Discuss metrics for success. What value will this create? Can we quantify the outcomes in value over the course of several months or a year?
This discussion should give you the necessary information to create a succinct proposal.
Step 5: Investment
This is more of an art than a science, but the ideal amount invested in the work should feel like a "good deal" on both ends. Usually, if the client were to receive outcomes that would reduce their cost or time spent on something they would have to do themselves, you can take about 20% of that number as an investment.
For example, if a website were to generate the client $100,000 in customers over the course of the year, paying $20,000 would feel like a good deal.
This has to be discussed based on the metrics.
You can also refer to a more comprehensive explanation in the book "Value-based Fees by Alan Weiss".
Proposal
Based on the information above, create a written proposal that captures the discussed information. It should give an overview of who you are, your past experience, and how it's relevant to the project, and the details from the discussion above.
Try to adhere to the following format:
Objectives are the goal of the client, in their own words, as discussed.
Outcomes are clearly defined results that the client will get from the collaboration.
Process describes your process of producing the results.
If the client wants to negotiate, you can adjust the scope by adding or removing outcomes.
Follow up
If the client hasn't responded in 10 days, send them a question as a reminder.
Log results
From the notes on each conversation, put any new problems into the BD Miro
Write down who the person was and what defines the type of audience
Put any new obstacles into the product sheet
How do clients' needs relate to the current offering?
Add their needs and problems to the Miro, potentially also the database:
Then, decide how they can inform the development of new areas of work. Potentially discuss with experts what the offering could look like.
See if the offering can be optimised
Check the BD Miro board and evaluate whether an offering can be improved, based on client feedback and their problems. Are there new ideas or products that can address a specific problem?
Follow up with value
Regularly review the CRM and see if you can send your favourite teams and clients anything valuable.
Make introductions
Forward teams you screened to VCs and get feedback on their quality.
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