Insights From the Habits of Dan Pink - The Surprising Truth About Finding Success in Business Development

Mo Bunnell breaks down the incredible insights shared by Dan Pink and talks about how to be truly successful in business development. You’ll learn why big goals aren’t motivating and what you need to do instead, the mindset you must have to consistently build valuable relationships, and why most people have the ability to be good at sales, they just don’t realize it yet.

• B2B sales is essentially management consulting. Mo doesn’t distinguish between sales calls and calls where he is working directly with a client. Both involve servant selling and coming from a place of providing value first.
• There isn’t much of a difference because at all stages of a business relationship the focus is in figuring out their priorities, in their words, and how you can help. It’s all about understanding what the next step should be and advancing the relationship in a way that's a win for everyone involved.
• The servant selling mindset is one of the reasons Mo’s company has grown so much. When you take away the stress of being hired or not and just focus on being helpful using expertise, that’s how we can be successful.
• No matter your profession or position, if you can shed the idea of only selling or fulfilling and instead embrace being helpful, that’s when you will be your authentic self and will start advising people on what’s right for them.
• Be targeted on how you spend your time and who you spend it with, be proactive and intentional, and be bold enough to ask for the next step if it makes sense for the person on the other side, while staying in the perspective of the servant seller.
• Most people are not extreme introverts or extroverts and often the ones who have a little bit of both personality types find success at selling. This means that most people have the potential to be great at management consulting and it doesn’t require being a natural-born extrovert.
• Any complex skill is both learned and earned, and that includes business development. Anyone can learn the skill and there is always a new plateau to reach.
• Mo has had more advances in his business development expertise in the last few months of the Covid-19 pandemic than he’s had in the last several years because it has forced him out of his comfort zone and to try new ways of approaching business.
• Business development can be learned, we all have it in us to get better at it, and no matter where you think you are on the introversion/extroversion spectrum you can use that to your advantage. The majority of us have everything we need to succeed, we just need to keep getting a little bit better every day.
• Dan Pink used to be oriented around setting Big Hairy Audacious Goals but now he’s focused on small wins. The Progress Principle states that the people that are the most successful are the ones who focus on incremental progress. They also tend to be the happiest as well.
• Mo wasn’t always good at celebrating his progress until he put systems in his life that allowed him to go back and see how far he has come. Celebrating your small wins leads to improved efficiency and a higher level of general satisfaction.
• Business development has one of the least amounts of quick feedback in all the areas and fields that Mo has studied. Most disciplines give you immediate feedback on your performance which motivates you to do more of the right things. The more you disconnect the action from the consequence, the more likely you are to not do the action anymore. That’s why it’s so important to create your own business development reward system to get that feedback.
• If you keep being intentional, keep being proactive, keep being helpful, then you’ve got a chance to grow your relationships and book of business. If you delay taking the next step until you close the feedback loop you will get distracted and lose your focus.
• Be HIP! (Helpful, Intentional, and Proactive) No more than a week should go by before you go back and look back on your progress. If you keep doing the things in your control, you will be successful.

Mentioned in this Episode:

bdhabits.com

The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile