Resources 
 

The biggest growth opportunity your business has is already inside your current accounts. Most companies never find it. You've had the same clients for years — but you've never met their other divisions A competitor is already having those conversations Your team asks for more of the same. They should be asking about what's next. Growth doesn't wait for the market to improve Account growth is not account management. Managing an account means keeping what you have. Growing o

Every service business has them—the account managers who know the customer's operations inside out, who get called first when something breaks, who could recite the client's org chart from memory. They're valuable, but they're not growing the business. Take a client your team has served for six years. Three other divisions sit inside that same company, and none of them has ever heard from you. Account management was never set up to catch that. The job is keeping today's relat

It's not charisma. It's not a network. It's not even talent. It's curiosity—and most people stop using it the moment they feel competent. The good business development pro answers the client's questions. The great one asks the ones they haven't thought of. Understanding the goal—not just the bid—changes what you propose and how they see you The best-paid "unpaid employee" on your client's payroll is the one who cares about their business Great is not a personality type. It's

You don't need charisma or a killer close. Every sales training program teaches the same three things: build rapport, ask questions, close with confidence. None of them explain why two people can run the identical playbook and one builds a twenty-year book of business while the other tops out. After watching business development professionals perform across industries for three decades, the trait that consistently separates the ones who build lasting books of business from th

Your team works with people from everywhere. "One size fits all" leadership is costing you deals and losing you talent. What reads as confidence in one culture reads as arrogance in another Silence in a meeting isn't disengagement—but you might be treating it that way The nod doesn't always mean yes The team you're managing doesn't think about hierarchy the way you do Global business means your business development and leadership teams are working across cultures every day—wi

A blunt piece of feedback lands as clarity for a German employee and as a public humiliation for a Japanese one. Same words, manager, and intent—completely different outcome. Multiply that across a whole team of different backgrounds, and a manager who thinks they're being consistent is really just being unpredictable, one conversation at a time. McKinsey's research on this is stark: companies in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity are 36% more likely to outper

Your team is answering questions the client never asked. The best business development professionals are asking ones the client hasn't thought of yet. "What do you need?" is a vendor question. "What keeps you up at night?" is an advisor question. Most salespeople pitch too early because they stopped listening too early The question you don't ask is the opportunity your competitor finds Understanding the problem is 80% of the sale Asking better questions is not a communication

A customer tells you, "Your product is too expensive." Most business development professionals do one of two things: defend the price, or offer a discount. Both responses assume they already know what "too expensive" means. Usually, they don't. There's a third option: "Our product is too expensive?" said back, almost verbatim, with a slight lift at the end. The customer fills the silence—and what comes out is rarely about price. It's about budget cycles, a competitor's quote,

The best business development professionals don't win deals. They make losing them difficult. Your client calls you before the RFP goes out You're involved in shaping what they're going to buy—before anyone else knows it exists Price comparisons don't apply when you're the one who defined the need "Preferred vendor" is a position. This is how you earn it. There is a tier of business development professionals who almost never lose a competitive bid—not because they're better a

The best outcome in business development isn't winning the deal. It's getting to a point where the customer has already decided before the process starts. It sounds like luck. It isn't. The professionals who reach that position got there deliberately—by making themselves so embedded in how a customer thinks about their category that going to market feels like a formality. Procurement runs the process. The result is rarely a surprise. That's not relationship selling. That's po

You didn't lose on price. You lost on value—and nobody told you. The buyer smiled through the whole process. Then chose someone else. You bid what they asked for. They needed something you didn't offer. Your proposal answered their question. Not their problem. The competitor who won understood the business. You understood the spec. Most business development professionals debrief a lost deal and conclude the other side was cheaper. Sometimes that's true. More often, the winnin

Nobody buys from the cheapest vendor when they're afraid of being the person who made the wrong call. That decision happens before the spreadsheet comes out, before the proposal gets scored, before anyone mentions price. The customer across from you is running a different calculation: if this goes sideways, how bad does it get, and whose fault is it? Business development professionals who understand that win business at better margins. The ones who don't end up in a price war

Saying yes to every term doesn't mean you won the negotiation. It usually means you lost it. Your team keeps giving ground when they don't have to Price pressure is real—but it's rarely the whole story The other side always has a "why." Do you know what it is? The best negotiators win before they get to the table Most negotiation training teaches tactics: anchoring, silence, making the first offer. GWA's approach goes deeper. The negotiators who consistently win aren't the on

Two people can negotiate the exact same deal and walk away with completely different outcomes, depending on one thing: whether they were arguing about positions or interests. A position is what someone says they want. An interest is why they want it. Most negotiations fail, or end in a worse deal than necessary, because both sides spend the entire conversation trading positions back and forth—price, terms, timeline—without either one asking why the other side cares about the

The lunch, the golf, the relationship. It used to be enough. It isn't anymore. · Your buyers research suppliers before they call you · A competitor just walked in with insights you didn't bring · "We've always worked together" is not a competitive advantage · The relationship gets you in the room. Value earns the business. If your team is good at relationships but the business isn't growing, the playbook has changed. Today's buyers are under pr

Every service business has them—the account managers who know the customer's operations inside out, who get called first when something breaks, who could recite the client's org chart from memory. They're valuable, but they're not growing the business. Take a client your team has served for six years. Three other divisions sit inside that same company, and none of them has ever heard from you. Account management was never set up to catch that. The job is keeping today's relat

You didn't lose that client to a cheaper competitor. You lost them long before the price conversation started. The invoice kept going out—but the relationship quietly went cold They stopped returning calls as fast. You didn't notice. Someone else was having the conversations you weren't By the time they left, the decision was already made Client retention isn't a service delivery problem. It's a business development problem. Most companies assume that doing good work is enoug

When a customer switches suppliers, price is almost always the reason they give. It's clean, it's defensible, and it lets everyone move on without an uncomfortable conversation. It's also rarely true. The pattern is consistent across industries, and the numbers back it up: a large share of clients who leave a supplier do so not over price, but over a negative or indifferent attitude toward the relationship. The vendor who wins the business stops working for it. The check-in c

Coffee and lunch used to be enough. Not anymore. Learn the proactive BD approach GWA clients use to grow through any market cycle.

In professional communication, receiving no response—being ghosted—can be frustrating, especially when you’ve invested time crafting...