“Successful relationship selling is not just a list of activity items. It is a thinking person’s occupation, requiring a plan, a process with targets and smart activity, and integrated skills measured against the only metric indicator of success – The Client Business Plan.” - Joanne Flynn, “The Relationship Management Model”©
Sales and Business Development is essential to look at from a holistic perspective, starting with:
All three must be part of a robust relationship management process that is critical for sales and business development success. Skip any of the three concepts, and you will build flaws into your business development program. All this information is absolutely necessary to develop the key management tools to monitor and measure success. It all comes together in The Client Business Plan.
Is it Activity or is it Smart Activity?
A big misconception regarding client management is that activity is the measure of sales success. Activity is an easy metric, and today numerous apps can monitor that activity. However, the only important activity metric is smart activity. The only way to determine and assess smart activity is relative to an evaluation context that determines if each activity is the best use of the salesperson’s time. Only then can we truly evaluate if an activity is a smart activity. The basis of this evaluation is the Client Business Plan.