I'm a business developer for a small systems integrator. My job involves creating, finding, and capitalizing on new opportunities for us to sell things to customers. What it boils down to is this: phone calls (LOTS of them), meetings (LOTS of them), and a great deal of thinking. The idea is to create a steady stream of new things for us to bid on and win.
It's the "steady stream" bit that never happens. Today, for example, I had my entire day mapped out: 1 hour of organizing the rest of my week, 2 hours of phone calls, 1 hour of e-mail processing, an hour of reviewing a new RFP I'm interested in, 2 hours of meetings, 2 hours working on some new marketing materials, and maybe another hour getting material prepared for meetings tomorrow.
By 10.30am, that was all blown away because we received three new RFPs and opportunities to bid in one shot. THREE! And they all happen to need attention right now. Sheesh. All I want is a little stream of opportunities to bubble on by.
I'm by no means complaining that the hard work of the last few months is paying off. But I admit I am whingeing a bit about Fate's lack of project planning.
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I feel for you here.
The thing I always found most difficult about these situtations is that history tells us a business is lucky to get 10% of the contracts they bid on. That can be a motovation killer. On the one hand causing you to think: "Jeeze, I've got to write three of these things and I probably won't get any work out of it."
The right way to think of it is to say: "Wow, proposals #5, #6, and #7. Just 3 more to go before I land that $500,000 contract." Of course, this doesn't change anything in the real world, and it doesn't mean that you're more or less likely to get any one contract, but it sure can help you get up in the morning.
That 10% figure kills me, it really does. I think an even better approach to this dilemma, though, is to improve that 10% number so that you bid on less and win more. That's a tricky problem, though, especially for small businesses that are trying to establish presence in multiple new clients, and is compounded by the fact that such businesses have fewer resources to devote to good sales planning.