How to Use Whole Brain Business Development to Deepen Relationships, with Karim Nehdi

Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How do we use cognitive diversity and adapt to each of these four different ways of thinking?

• The baseline is to understand where you are likely to default and what your blindspots are going to be. Think about your pitch through the lens of what the stakeholder wants to hear and needs to understand in order to feel comfortable to move forward.
• This can mean adding in additional details for the structural buyer, including some ROI calculations for the analytic buyer, bringing in other clients to speak on your behalf for the relational buyer, or coming up with some novel ideas for the experimental buyer.
• Prepare your thinking in advance and try to start the conversation with where their preferences are instead of starting with where you are at.
• We often think about relationships on a one-on-one basis, but there are lots of people involved in the business development process. Business development is all about making your team work seamlessly with your customer’s team which is where cognitive diversity comes in. You need to make sure that the people on your team that think a certain way are being paired up with people that need to think that way.
• You need everybody to be on the same page and moving in the same direction to take advantage of an opportunity, and understanding how each person on the team thinks and facilitates that knowledge transfer.
• In just 10 minutes you can get a basic understanding of the mindsets on your team and identify some of the things you need to do to bridge the gap. Taking the time to think about your thinking has a massive ROI in business outcomes.
• Understanding the thought processes of the individuals at play builds trust and allows people to communicate and solve problems more effectively.
• Challenge everyone that is involved in the conversation to think about their thinking and how it’s going to play out in the success of the stakeholder.

Mentioned in this Episode:

GrowBIGPlaybook.com

thinkherrmann.com/mo