Reading Ernesto Sirolli writing about “Enterprise Facilitation” his methodology for economic development of which I’m a huge fan.

He says

Enterprise Facilitation is born of two ideas:

• Only go where invited
• Help people do beautifully what they love doing

And I find that a really good maxim for our work in biz dev.

When trying to sell new products and services the campaigns only really fly when there’s a clear match between service and customer need and into the recipe mix we add in a shedload of passion, energy and enthusiasm.

But that won’t make up for a mis-match between what’s being offered and what is needed.

Only go where invited

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make suggestions about working with prospects.

An example: today I got an email from Miles a local realtor, it was dull and irrelevant to my current needs [I have a house and I don't want another one].  So I got in touch and pointed out that he could be getting much better marketing returns for his email newsletter efforts – and a conversation started.  We are meeting with him and his boss to discuss some work on the company website and the local office marketing.

How often do you ask a question like that?  Open questions can start conversations.

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