The Owners' Manual | Issue 15 | Spring 2019

what does “business development” mean to you?

BLICKLEY | It means working to get BL opportunities for new work, this often results from networking and connecting the dots from folks in BL/your personal network. Continually being on the lookout for ways to introduce BL and our services to new potential clients. work, I make sure that they know what BL does and how we can add value to a particular opportunity. MANCINI | Business development means that when I am talking with folks in our industry such as brokers, realtors, lawyers, town/city officials, developers and others in financial

MUHLBAUER | Business development is a one- on-one activity that is undertaken with the intent of developing opportunities for work. At it’s root is the process of developing and effectively leveraging relationships to make connections, build trust, and create opportunities to bring in work. By comparison, marketing is a broad-reaching process of increasing awareness of who we are and what we do.

CARLSON | It means working to find new clients and opportunities for work for BL. It also means taking care of existing clients and leveraging those relationships to get repeat work and introductions to potential new clients. It means attending networking events and always thinking of ways to bring in new clients/opportunities. Think out of the box.

How do you find success? MUHLBAUER | Success as it relates to business development is the creation of trust. Business development is not simply directed at potential clients, but at all contacts that can assist, refer, or influence others to provide us with an opportunity. In any case, whether a potential paying client, a contact (i.e. a real estate broker), or a personal friend, the likelihood of creating a business opportunity is highly unlikely unless you have developed some level of trust with either your referral source, or the potential client.

CARLSON | Developing relationships and trust so that Clients don’t go to anyone else with their work and they recommend BL to others.

MANCINI | I find success by finding new clients and working to get repeat business from them by being the best that I (BL) can be at doing what we do.

BLICKLEY | Perseverance. Developing relationships takes time and effort, you can’t take things too personal and you have to have follow up even when you don’t want to….