Every entry level business development position seems to go the same route. Good intentions of lots of training and hands-on supervision and mentorship rapidly deteriorate into head-under-water chaos as proposal loads get to be too much for well-intentioned supervisors.
I've had the opportunity in my consulting and coaching work to collaborate with a lot of folks working in the lower levels of business development teams - all the interns and coordinators and such.
Genuinely, these are amazing people - often the most enthusiastic and excited about the work they get to do. They're ready to learn and eager to apply what they learn as soon as possible. And don't get me started on how willing they are to engage technology to get work done faster.
At the same time, I repeatedly see these eager junior business development staff caught in a catch-22 – they can’t take on more because they haven't learned the core business development skills yet (e.g., how to manage proposals, hire consultants, prepare PPRs or CVs) and they can’t learn those skills because no one has the time to teach them.
Sure, you can send folks out to Shipley or Humentum for training. But I think all of us know that no proposal process goes the way that a training says that it will. Every organization needs a way to get junior business development staff up to speed quickly on core skills and how their specific organization navigates the business development life cycle.
This doesn’t apply only to technical BD skills.
Leveling Up Requires Soft Skills
Junior business development staff are often in the hardest positions for learning soft skills – essential stuff like negotiation, managing up, and communication.
Earlier this year I was working on a set of recommendations for a client, and we kept coming back to how imperative soft skills are to success on proposal teams. It was that combo of technical and soft skills that really help a junior BD staff member facilitate better meetings, navigate high stakes conversations, suss out nuance in partnering, and make smart decisions in general.
Yet, these soft skills take the most time to really learn. Why? Because they require constant use, reflection, and learning. Often our BD team leadership is so strapped for time that they assume that junior staff are doing fine and only get involved when there are issues to be resolved. This is a lovely assumption about the skills of junior BD staff members, but it leaves them without the space and care to navigate what they're learning with support.
Investing in Junior Business Development Staff
To truly invest in junior BD staff, it's going to take time and energy... That might look like:
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Identifying opportunities to improve specific soft skills in safer and/or lower stakes scenarios with support
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Naming which soft skills could improve and providing examples of what "improvement" would look like
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Jointly crafting strategies for challenging scenarios before they come up
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Reflecting on what went well, what could go better, and what to do differently next time.
Investing in this kind of mentorship is really time intensive - both for the mentor and the mentee. It means setting up regular meeting and not coopting that time for the latest fire. It means remembering that what happens in between those meetings is part of the process. Most of all it means making the time.
Finding Time for Mentorship
We know this is a time intensive process and that "more time and energy" is often the last thing that middle and senior BD team leaders have to give.
When business development leaders are navigating their own challenges - tight deadlines, hiring team members, managing budgets, making bid decisions, playing all the roles on proposal teams - it's a challenge to hear that more time needs to be dedicated to learning, mentorship, and coaching.
Working at Bid Boss, I get to know a lot of different business development teams, and this isn't a "just your team" or "just your organization" issue. It's everywhere and a real struggle. These folks that are in middle and senior BD team management are stretched.
The result? Junior staff who desperately need support and team leaders who can't find the time.
This gap in mentorship reinforces a negative cycle in BD - we've all heard the "two years and out" concept. With few people staying in business development roles for the long term and intense competition between business development teams, it can be a real struggle to find (or be) someone who can carve out the time and show up as a mentor.
I want people coming up in business development to have the support they need to grow personally and professionally to meet their goals. And I don't have a solution.
We spend a lot of time talking about issues like this - how mentorship can work well, how to get the most out of limited time, and how to navigate that transition into being a mentor yourself. We know you have limited time. This is about making the best use of the time you have, for your own professional development and the development of people coming up in your wake.
The status quo doesn’t have to stay, but it may mean investing in new approaches to mentorship and skill building.
So, I'm curious...
If you could find the time for a deeper focus on mentorship, what skills would you want to focus on?
Hope over to our free Clubhouse community at the link on the top of this page to share your thoughts!
