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By Carolyn Shomali<\/a><\/p>\n The multi-faceted nature of business development means generating more revenue cannot be achieved through a single solution. The right leadership, resources, training, and collaboration all contribute to the success of a sales team – but in a recent PAR survey, 51% of respondents said their business development practices would improve if they had more staff focused on the task.<\/strong><\/p>\n As staffing challenges continue to disrupt the global workforce, adding more staff may not be an easy solution – or the right one.<\/p>\n Carrie Hartin<\/a> is the President of Association Solutions for MCI USA<\/a> and says hiring more sales staff could be necessary if a thorough market and product evaluation doesn’t reveal any problems, but it isn’t the de facto fix for revenue woes.<\/p>\n Below are four areas to examine within your association before posting that next business development job opening.<\/p>\n Leadership. <\/strong>Sales teams of all sizes will struggle without leaders who identify, understand and track data that will help their teams reach budget expectations. “In order to forecast effectively, you’ve got to be close to the data and you can’t be divorced from it,” Hartin says.<\/p>\n Resources. <\/strong>Before adding more sales staff, take inventory of the resources available to your sales team beyond the CRM. Sales intelligence tools, automation software and a cross-departmental approach can help maximize sales time and improve performance.<\/p>\n “Sales is an ecosystem,” Hartin says. “These days sales and marketing fit together hand in glove. There’s data that drives their actions and there is so much you can do to help a salesperson really maximize the time they spend outward facing with customers and prospects.”<\/p>\n Sales Culture. <\/strong>New revenue channels continue to emerge for associations. As unique opportunities arise, it may be tempting to increase budgets before developing a solid sales plan. This can lead to an overwhelmed and demoralized sales staff. Instead, consider establishing a ‘What If?’<\/em> culture within your business development team. It’s a good way to ensure every big ask is met with a level of curiosity.<\/p>\n “For people who lead sales teams and organizations, it’s important to help your salesperson get comfortable. They often hear a big ask and they shut down quickly and don’t want to answer the critical questions of, ‘What would it take for that to be true?\u00a0<\/em> or How could that be true?’,”<\/em> Hartin says.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dev.mypar.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/Carrie-Hartin-150x150.png\")
“There are places where it really just does come down to not having enough sales time and talent to generate revenue,” Hartin says. “But often people will jump to ‘I need more staff to develop more revenue’<\/em> when sometimes you just need a different staff, a different mix of staff, or a different mix of resources. It is important to look at the full ecosystem of what is needed in order to bring a sales effort to life and really have it be successful.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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