Katherine Wood
KATHERINE WOOD
Alaska Area Business
Development Lead, HDR
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business development
Zeus Is Dead. Long Live the Cloud!
By Katherine Wood, CPSM
C

lose your eyes and picture a rain maker. It’s someone wise and strong, weathered by years of experience, who can single-handedly throw a lightning bolt at the sky and pierce the clouds. Suddenly the rain cascades down and your dry land is awash with water. The crops are growing; everyone is fed and happy.

But I’m not really talking about Zeus and rain. I’m talking about that company leader who brings in all the business. There’s usually one in every organization. It’s that storied person who knows everyone, who seals all the deals, whose name is enough to open doors. Perhaps you are that person. Life is good, right? The projects are rolling in! Your company’s future is bright, and any time it gets a bit dry, you don’t have to worry. Just bring out the rain maker. Why would you possibly want to change anything?

Well, what if I told you that Zeus, by himself, might actually be a liability? You might laugh me out of the room! It’s not broken; only a fool would change a winning strategy.

No “I” In Success

Any time a company is relying on a single person (or two) to do all the business development, it is carrying what I call relationship risk. When Zeus retires, gets a better job offer, wins the lottery, or just plain stops wanting to be the god of lightning, suddenly your organization is left in the lurch. I’ve seen this happen to companies, and the realization nearly always comes when it is too late. When Zeus gives notice, you don’t have enough time to transfer relationships to new staff in a meaningful way. Even worse, maybe Zeus is going to take all his relationships to your next competitor! Building real relationships takes months and years, not weeks. Leaders who want their company to be self-sustaining need to address the unseen risk of concentrating too many relationships in the hands of too few.

The best way to mitigate the risk is to run business development as a team sport. You can and should hire Zeus with his awesome powers, but you will perform better in the long run if you can share this relationship wealth within your organization. While this might feel threatening to the key relationship holder at first, broadening relationships out across an organization is an investment in the company’s success, not just individual success.

Evaluate your relationship touch points within your organization. You can do this on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet, or using a flow chart. Identify your company staff and their relationships with key partners and customers. Identify who holds relationships, but also evaluate the strength of those relationships. To help quantify that evaluation, you can assign a value number for low to high. Search for the term “relationship strength index” online for additional guidance. Then find your weakest links.

First, you need to evaluate your relationship touch points within your organization. You can do this on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet, or using a flow chart. Identify your company staff and their relationships with key partners and customers. Identify who holds relationships, but also evaluate the strength of those relationships. To help quantify that evaluation, you can assign a value number for low to high. Search for the term “relationship strength index” online for additional guidance.

Then find your weakest links. The rule of three is extremely helpful here. You want to make sure that each customer target knows at least three people in your organization. Anything less is a gap.

Build Strong Connections

Once you’ve identified the gaps, create intentional strategies to shore them up by broadening and building new relationships. Talk to your team and assign action items and time frames to develop relationships, and then follow up, just like you would on any other work assignment. One easy way to get started is to never go it alone. Every time you go to a meeting, take another person with you and introduce them. Offer that person a chance to initiate their own relationship. The benefits of this extend beyond hedging your company’s relationship risk. Two additional good outcomes are the opportunity for career growth for younger professionals and getting a better read on what that person actually said. Two sets of listening ears always hear things slightly differently; correlating what you heard means your company has a better grasp of the customer’s needs, which means you can offer better solutions and win more work.

Plan for Tomorrow Today

Don’t wait for Zeus to leave the building. Take a look today at your company’s relationships, assess your risk, and redistribute the wealth of relationships. Long term, this means not just company resiliency but positioning for exponential growth. Not only are you hedging your bets against any loss of relationships, but a team of business developers has more reach, bandwidth, and creativity than a single person ever could. Maybe that’s why there were lots of Greek gods living among the clouds on Mount Olympus. The power of the many, the power of the cloud.

Katherine Wood is HDR’s Alaska area business development lead, responsible for overseeing business development and marketing for our growing infrastructure practice. She serves as outreach lead for the Society for Marketing Professional Services board. Wood’s super-power is collaboration. Her commitment, drive, and energy build effective teams to capture work.