5 New Business Development Strategies To Try This Week

Did you know, it takes an average of 18 attempts of contacting someone before you can win any business from them.

With cold calls alone, it’s an average of 6 calls before you can even speak to someone on the phone.

It’s time to switch up how you approach business development in 2021.

Create your own personal newsletter with market information

Don’t underestimate the power of a great newsletter. Providing insights once or twice a month to prospective clients puts you in their peripheral vision without seeming pushy.

It’ll save you leaving voicemails asking for a “catch up”, or emails that never get responded to. You’ll be saving time by creating two pieces of content a month, and you can use free platforms such as HubSpot or MailChimp to make the process run smoothly. You could even do this as a weekly or bi-weekly LinkedIn post if creating a newsletter would be too much work.

If you’re not convinced, maybe this article will help.

LinkedIn Voice Messages

Writing out well-crafted messages and responses on LinkedIn can often take up a large portion of your day, especially if you aren’t a natural wordsmith.

If you focus your business development efforts through candidate work, warm, informative voice messages take away from the coldness that can often be associated with how recruiters are perceived. Top tip: you have 60 seconds to start and finish your voice note, so it helps you be concise and make an impact.

Quartz summarizes my thoughts on this perfectly, as: “voice notes offer an antidote to the fear that emails, texts and instant messaging rob conversation of emotional nuance.”

Run an online event

We all know how powerful online events and webinars are, and 2021 is the year that you should create an online space for prospective clients.

In the current climate, I also recommend hosting a space for candidates in your network who are looking for roles – to facilitate collaboration and answer all of their questions in one place.

It saves time on having multiple phone calls repeating yourself and can be a long-term business development tool which will undoubtedly pay dividends. If you want to hear first hand from a recruiter who has done this successfully, listen to episode #224 of the podcast.

Share market information at least once a week on LinkedIn

If you haven’t heard of Adam Karpiak, then I suggest you go and check him out. An accounting recruiter from New York, he’s a great example of someone who uses LinkedIn and social media as a constant business development tool.

Whether it’s a poll (not about remote working, please), a curated news article, or, a few sentences about your vertical market – it’s a long-term strategy that will position you as the go-to person in your network for specialised information and engaging conversations.

Share testimonials

If you struggle with sharing your wins, it’s important to know that it’s not self-indulgent, it’s crucial to building long-term relationships.

Clients and candidates want to see physical evidence that you can provide a good service, and unless you show them – they aren’t going to go searching for it.

Ensure to follow up after each placement and request testimonials – then you have an endless bank of content to share as a business development tool.