What a business development manager should do in the first month

A business development manager's first month should leave you with four things. An offer they can explain in the buyer's words. A ranked list of accounts. Three scripts tried on real calls. A few first meetings with people from that list. Closed deals wait for later. The month exists to learn your buyers quickly enough to be useful before anyone asks for results.

Put the month in a note that both of you sign

A hire asked to "get twenty meetings" has been given a number and no map. Write a half-page note instead. Each side promises something, and you can both check it.

By day 3, from the owner:
  - the price rules that live in your head, including the discount you would never give
  - last twenty quotes, won and lost, with reasons
  - introductions to two customers who will speak well of the firm
  - ten minutes at the start of each day for questions
By day 30, from the new manager:
  - one page: what we sell, to whom, why they buy, why they refuse
  - a ranked list of accounts, A, B and C, one line of reason each
  - three scripts, written in their own words
  - first meetings held, notes filed, a plan for month two

The note stops the month turning into random calls. It also protects the hire from the usual trap, where the price floor is learned by quoting under it.

Week one is for listening

Sit them next to whoever closes your best deals. They are not there to copy anyone. They are there to hear how buyers talk. Ask them to listen for the first question a buyer asks, the objection that comes up most, and the moment a conversation turns warm.

Give them the lost quotes too. Lost deals are worth reading closely, because they show where the story stopped working. On day five, ask the hire to say aloud two patterns they found. If they cannot, they have not read enough yet.

The ranked list is the real deliverable

Start from your own past customers and old enquiries, because they match your real strengths. Add accounts that look like them. Mark each A (clear need, can pay, we know a person there), B (looks right, no contact yet) or C (maybe later), with one line on why them and who inside.

Keep the A list short enough to work properly. Our guide to building a qualified B2B prospect list goes through the sources.

A cycle-parts maker in Ludhiana, and a target nobody could use

Imagine a Ludhiana firm making cycle components that has grown on two large customers and now wants a business development manager to find others. This case is invented to show the pattern. The owner gives the new hire a phone, a login and a target of twenty meetings.

By day ten the hire has phoned forty-odd companies from a bought directory and collected polite refusals. The owner begins to worry. The cause is plain enough: no shadowing, no ranked list, no script. The hire does not know that the firm's best work was a close-fit component for premium bicycles, a fact no directory could tell them.

The owner resets the month. The hire sits in on two buyer calls and reads twenty quotes. The list is rebuilt around makers of premium bicycles and around enquiries that went cold. The A list has fifteen names. Calls to those produce four first meetings by the end of the month, and one of them turns out to be a buyer who only wanted a price comparison. The twenty-meeting target is dropped, and the owner has paid a month of salary for four meetings, not twenty.

The owner goes along to the first two meetings and says little. The hire notes how the owner answers a price question, and which questions get skipped. The third meeting the hire takes alone, and sends a summary that evening. Plan that hand-over: the owner sits in twice, then steps back.

Week three is when the first real calls begin

By the third week the hire has heard your calls, read the lost quotes and drafted the list. Now the calls start, in a fixed order. First come the warm names, meaning people who enquired and went quiet. Then the A accounts where someone in your firm knows a person. The cold ones come last. Warm calls teach the hire how buyers react to your offer with little risk, because the buyer already knows your name. Cold calls to the best names wait until the opening line works on the warm ones. A hire who rings the A list first spends good names on a script not yet tested.

Keep a short morning slot, ten minutes, where the hire reads out yesterday's log and you ask one question about it. Do not use it to check numbers.

Three scripts are enough for month one

• A warm call to someone who asked for a quote and went quiet.
• A cold call to a name on the A list, with one specific reason for calling.
• A first-meeting plan: the questions to ask, the case to show, what to propose at the end.

Have the hire write each after hearing you do it. A script borrowed whole sounds borrowed. Review them together, and listen to a recorded call if the buyer agreed to recording.

Ask for a call log from the first call: who, which account on the list, what the buyer said in their own words, and the next step with a date. Read it each morning for the first fortnight. A log full of "will revert" tells you the scripts need another question.

If you would rather not build the onboarding yourself, sales team onboarding is the service that covers it.

What you should not ask of them yet

Do not ask for closed deals. Do not hand over your two biggest accounts. Do not measure calls made, which rewards noise. And check your own side before blaming the hire: if the offer is vague, the price is a secret or the enquiry record is a mess, nobody can repair that in thirty days. If the role itself is unclear, read what separates marketing, sales and business development before writing the job description. For the strategy behind the role, see business development strategy.

One hour on day thirty

Ask the hire to explain your offer as to a stranger, show the ranked list, play one call and describe two meetings. Compare it with the note you both signed, then agree month two together. To plan the role before you hire, tell us what you need.