19 Deadly Business Development Errors By IT Pro's

IT professionals who market their services can attract more clients by avoiding the following deadly business development mistakes:

ERROR #1: Talking about technology more than about solutions.

ALTERNATIVE: Speak your client's language. Show him or her how you will get specific results that will help their organization, career, or personal aspirations.

ERROR #2: Focusing on you instead of on the prospect. At first, prospects only marginally care about you, what you do, and how smart you are. Instead, they care about solving their problems and taking advantage of their opportunities.

ALTERNATIVE: Focus on the prospect's problems and opportunities. Build trust by establishing yourself as the expert who understands the prospect's situation and ways to get results.

ERROR #3: Letting your achievements or expertise speak for itself. This is a huge mistake. You may be brilliant, but that doesn't mean clients will come to you.

ALTERNATIVE: Invest in business development. Reach out to prospects in ways that establish your credibility. For instance, provide education and information that matters to them.

ERROR #4: Not choosing a specific niche or target market. This will give you the false security of having unlimited prospects, but ultimately will get you fewer clients at higher cost than if you focus.

ALTERNATIVE: Focus on a specific target market.

ERROR #5: Not reaching your target market effectively.

ALTERNATIVE: Develop a series of messages and strategies that reaches and attracts prospects from your target market.

ERROR #6: Not dominating your target market. If you don't dominate, someone else will, and your revenue will suffer.

ALTERNATIVE: Position yourself as the leader by establishing your credibility and authority with prospects. If you can't be the leader, find or define a new niche.

ERROR #7: Creating an incomplete or non-compelling marketing message. With a poor message, your business development efforts will go nowhere.

ALTERNATIVE: Develop a complete, compelling marketing message that describes the problem you solve for your market, how you solve it, the specific results you have achieved, and why you are better than anybody else.

ERROR #8: "Hawking" yourself and your firm like a traditional salesperson. Relying on traditional sales and marketing approaches will position you as a generic vendor, no different than anyone else.

ALTERNATIVE: Build trust with your prospect, without selling. Instead, provide a series of educational messages and services to establish credibility and attract qualified prospects to you. Get rid of the sales pitch. This will establish you as the authority in your field, lead to more sole source deals, and earn loyal clients.

ERROR #9: Making poor use of publicity. Getting mentioned in the news is an exercise in vanity if it doesn't get you clients.

ALTERNATIVE: Use publicity to attract prospects to your business, capture their information, and build a relationship with them.

ERROR #10: Not asking for referrals. Few IT professionals take full advantage of their opportunity to generate referrals.

ALTERNATIVE: Ask for referrals at key times in the client relationship.

ERROR #11: Relying too much on referrals. Referrals are a fine source of additional business, but they put you in the position of being dependent on others.

ALTERNATIVE: Make sure your marketing strategy includes tactics to attract requests and inquiries directly from prospects.

ERROR #12: Competing on price. This error is a sure way to lack enough high-paying clients to meet your financial goals.

ALTERNATIVE: Develop a strategy to raise your prices and use that as a competitive advantage. When you establish trust with prospects so that they perceive you as the authority in the field, you no longer need to compete on price.

ERROR #13: Forgetting to stay in touch with past clients. Remember the old adage, "Out of site, out of mind." You forfeit one of the best sources of profitable work if you forget to stay in touch with, and continue to support, past clients.

ALTERNATIVE: Develop a plan to strengthen your relationships with past clients and maintain their loyalty.

ERROR #14: Providing poor or mediocre service during engagements. Word spreads fast when you do this, and can quickly destroy your reputation.

ALTERNATIVE: Develop a system to delight clients on every engagement.

ERROR #15: Cutting or delaying your investment in business development, especially in bad times. This error will only hurt your bottom line more.

ALTERNATIVE: Commit to investing in business development. There are plenty of low-cost ways to attract clients in good times and bad.

ERROR #16: Not creating a simple, clear business development plan that lays out goals and a way to achieve them. If you don't set goals, how will you know if you are successful?

ALTERNATIVE: Create a plan every quarter that sets aggressive goals and lays out a path to accomplish them.

ERROR #17: Creating a business development plan that misses some crucial steps in the process of attracting and retaining clients. Your plan must establish yourself as a credible authority, build a relationship with prospects, earn trust and commitment, and keep your clients' loyalty.

ALTERNATIVE: Evaluate how well your business development plan achieves these outcomes, and revise it accordingly.

ERROR #18: Not taking action on your business development plan.

ALTERNATIVE: Make business development a top priority. Budget time as if you were your own client. One of your primary jobs is business development because if you don't do that, you won't be doing much consulting.

ERROR #19: Not getting help. IT professionals tend to want to do it all on their own. In business development, this can cause them to repeat common marketing mistakes and get poor results.

ALTERNATIVE: Hire competent professionals who can help you build your business. The investment will more than return itself in results. I sincerely hope you don't make these, or other costly mistakes. The market is extremely competitive, filled with consultants who are struggling to attract clients.

The good news is that you don't need to be a huge firm, or have a huge budget to succeed. You do need a proven system, and that's what I can provide to you. My system helps you attract clients without the awkwardness and indignity of having to sell.

Copyright Andrew Neitlich. Andrew Neitlich is the Senior Editor of The IT Accelerator, a newsletter which helps information technology consultants and professionals attract more clients and high-paying projects.
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