Welcome to Coherent Business Development Consulting's first blog post. I'd like to start out with a case study from my own career that I think will illustrate what we mean by "coherence" in the BD realm.
One of the most fundamental steps for an organization, new or well established, is to define who they are, what they do best and why they matter. I call this the "What do I want to be when I grow up?" step. I'm not talking about mission statements or strategic goals, though they are related. I'm talking about defining the organization's core competencies in a focused, but broad way. Paradox? Yes, but you'll get over it.
Here's an example: Years ago I worked for a company that made underwater acoustic transducers for the US Navy predominantly. The company was started by transducer engineers. They are a rare breed and the technology is hard to master, so they were justifiably proud of that. The discipline requires various degrees of mastery of physics (acoustics), electronics, materials science, chemistry and other areas.
All was well until a downturn in defense spending. While the military was not the only customer, it was the largest by far. Sales were shrinking and prospects within the company's traditional markets were not good. The president of the company brought in a Fortune 500 consultant to help. As part of the senior management team, I was part of the group that worked closely with him. His first question to the group was: "What are you good at?" I'll spare you all the work done on this question and just say that the consultant determined that we were not "underwater acoustic transducer designers" we were "acoustics experts".
Why was that important? It focused in on the most valuable aspect of the core competencies of the company, AND it was broad enough to open the company up to entirely new markets that were not considered while we defined ourselves as an underwater transducer company.
The result? I was put in charge of new products and new markets. Within 2 years we were in the medical device business, industrial sensing and even looked into an acoustics based consumer product! New products soon represented over 25% of sales and almost 40% of profits.
But what does this have to do with "coherence"? There are several definitions of the word that differ depending on what context the word is used in. In our context, the most apt meaning comes from science: "a fixed relationship between the phase of waves in a beam of radiation of a single frequency". Confused? Think of the "waves" as the different functional disciplines of business development, sales, marketing, product development, etc. They need to be congruent, heading in the same direction from a single focal point. That focal point is the answer to that question "What are you good at"?
We'll get into more depth on this in future posts. In the meantime, I invite you to post your own comments, questions, examples. Until next time.