READOS / Business
Selling and Business Development
Finding, qualifying and winning work, from prospecting and sales calls to tenders, negotiation and keeping customers.
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- 01Why business development is everyone's jobNothing moves in a business until someone wins a customer. Why business development matters at every level, what it really involves, and how non-salespeople can do it well.
- 02Prospecting: know who you are looking for, then fish where they areEffective prospecting starts with a clear picture of your ideal customer and a deliberate choice of where to find them. How to define both, and how to avoid busy work that produces nothing.
- 03Prospecting methods compared: referrals, networking, content and outreachA practical comparison of the main ways to find new customers: what each method is good for, what it costs, and how to choose a small mix that suits your business.
- 04Managing opportunities: identify, qualify, satisfy, solidifyA practical four-stage way to manage sales opportunities, from finding the right people to keeping customers long after the first sale, and what each stage asks of you.
- 05Qualifying opportunities: how to tell a real deal from a pleasant conversationQualifying is the discipline of finding out early whether an opportunity is real. The questions that matter, common frameworks such as BANT and MEDDIC, and how to walk away gracefully.
- 06Pre-call planning: be prepared, then be presentMost sales conversations are won or lost before they start. A practical guide to planning a customer meeting, and to conducting it with attention, purpose and respect.
- 07Timing a new initiative: whose readiness are you waiting for?Good ideas often stall because they arrive at the wrong moment. How to separate market, deal and message timing, read customer readiness from evidence and keep paused initiatives alive.
- 08Who can say no? Reaching the people who decide when you sell to larger organisationsIn big customers, many people can approve and a few can refuse, and procurement can only move price. How to map who decides, reach the outcome owner early and know who will carry your case.
- 09Selling benefits, not features: turning technical specifications into value customers understandHow to translate product features into customer benefits, discover which benefits matter, quantify value, back claims with proof and avoid overclaiming. With technical examples.
- 10Selling prevention: the customers who intend never to have the problemMost businesses see only customers in trouble. Those who want never to be in trouble buy differently and need a different model. How to find them, prove value and test demand.
- 11The sales funnel explained: stages, leaks and the numbers that matterWhat a sales funnel is, how opportunities move through it, where they leak out, and how to measure and improve each stage without chasing vanity numbers.
- 12Five practical ways to improve your conversion rateConverting more of the opportunities you already have is often the fastest way to grow. Five practical levers, how to measure them and how to choose where to start.
- 13From prospect to customer: proposals, objections and decisionsThe satisfying stage turns a qualified opportunity into a customer. How to build a proposal around the customer's own words, handle objections as information, and make saying yes easy.
- 14A tender response is a decision package: making your capability easy to evaluateBuyers score tenders against their own criteria, not your brochure. How to structure a response around compliance, evidence, delivery, price and risk, and when to decide not to bid.
- 15Learning from lost tenders: debriefs, win-loss analysis and a better bid decisionHow suppliers can get useful feedback after a tender, ask the right debrief questions, analyse wins and losses across many bids and use the results to bid less often and win more.
- 16Negotiating as a small supplier: preparation, walk-away points, trading concessions and protecting your marginHow small suppliers can negotiate with larger customers: research, must-haves and walk-away price, quantified value, anchoring, trading rather than giving, scope creep and contract terms.
- 17Solidifying: keeping and growing customers after the saleThe sale is the start of the relationship, not the end. What the solidifying stage involves, why retention matters so much, and practical habits for keeping, growing and learning from customers.
- 18Getting value from industry associations and chambers of commerce: networking, knowledge, credibility and a voiceWhat industry associations, professional bodies and chambers of commerce offer small businesses, how to choose and join the right ones, and how to get real value from membership.
- 19Building a high-performing sales team: accountability, trust and empowermentStrong sales teams rest on a few durable values and habits. What accountability, tenacity, trust and empowerment look like in practice, and how leaders create the conditions for them.
- 20Sales self-management: planning your time, pipeline and energySelling well depends on how you manage yourself. A practical system for planning your week, keeping your pipeline honest and sustaining the effort sales requires.
These topic-based reading collections are organised alphabetically; chapters may be read in any order.
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