Since going freelance, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how my writing, public relations, and strategic communications consulting business has grown, and I realized I wanted to share my approach to business development with you because I think it’s good for the world more broadly.
After I left journalism, I spent a little while doing hard sales with hard targets, and I even took a course in “advanced selling techniques” from a guy with what looked like a drawn-on beard in a drab office near London’s Euston station. I had to sell £35,000 worth of films and animations each month from a standing start, or our start-up storytelling agency couldn’t sustain itself.
Not gonna lie, I loved it. I found the skills that make a good journalist also make a good salesperson. That dogged pursuit. We used to play the theme tune from Rocky when a job came in. 10 seconds per thousand pounds. At one point we got all the way to the end and had to loop it over again, when a car company asked us to make an animation about financing one of their vehicles.
But. David Mamet wrote Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glenross as a warning. Not a would-be motivational speaker.
These days, my “sales pipeline”, such as you might call it, is a spreadsheet of “people I’m invested in.” Folks whose missions and sense of general humanity are aligned with my own beliefs about what’s good for the world. People whose success I’m invested in.
It’s the same with networking. My friend Russ Finkelstein wrote a fantastic blog post about the one thing most people get wrong when they’re doing it, that is, they never ask how they can help the person they’re approaching. Everything becomes transactional.
Far from “always be closing”, I’d suggest that a sustainable business development approach begins with “always be considerate.” Of how a person wants the world to change for the better. And whether that aligns with one’s own desires. You might lose out on the odd scrap from the odd table, sure. But it means you meet other people you like better, and with whom you can really do your best work.
It’s easier said than done, of course, and it takes faith in the world. Still, here’s to your continued healing, and to my own. And to the future!
