Beyond Tools: Motivate Teams with Strong Business Development

Hello and welcome to the show. Today I figured I'd share a a post that I put up on LinkedIn recently and that's because LinkedIn has been sending me this sending me these messages, you know, contribute on this topic, contribute on that topic. And well, at first I used to ignore them, but then I noticed that it said, you know, contribute on X number of topics to be considered a LinkedIn top voice in something something something.

And I figured, well that's a good idea because I've always wondered how people get those tags. So I've started responding to some of these things and OK, so in answering one of the questions that they put up, I got inspired to craft a larger article and that I put on LinkedIn. And so I want to share that with you today. And since I'm posting on LinkedIn almost on a daily basis now, I figured I might as well. In addition to the regular scheduled podcast recordings, I

might as well just share the the articles that I put up on LinkedIn. So I guess that would be added motivation for you guys to follow me on LinkedIn. So now with that out of the way, let's begin. Now bear in mind I'm reading an article that I put up, so expect it to sound different. Expect it to sound artically, and that's a word. So the title of the article was Beyond Tools Motivate Teams with Strong Business Development.

Now the reason why I wrote it because was in response to a question asking how you can use collaboration tools to motivate your team. Now, in case I wonder what collaboration tools are, there are lots of collaboration tools out in the market, but I'm assuming they also mean things like what's it called, Asana, Evernote, you know, blah blah blah. Things like that, that you can use to collaborate around specific projects, maybe even project management tools, you know, things like that to keep motivation going.

Now I noticed that a lot of the people who were contributing to the post were all agreeing that you can use collaboration tools to keep motivation up. But for me, the cross of my article basically was that yeah, collaboration tools are cool, but motivation comes from something else. So with that, let me get straight into the meat of the articles. So again, beyond tools motivate teams with strong business development. Collaboration tools are great,

but they can't single handedly keep your team motivated and in high spirits. True motivation comes from strong business development principles. Clear goals and a compelling vision is what energizes teams. Collaboration tools help with communication, but business development principles ensures that everyone understands the why behind the work. The why is what creates buy in and keeps people sufficiently motivated over the long run.

Celebrating milestones and achievement fuels motivation because business development focuses on results and keeping teams invested in the bigger picture. It's part of the process and the culture to celebrate goal achievement and significant milestones hit by the team members. Collectively and individually, This hurrah is sure to keep teams motivated. Collaboration can become routine and humdrum. Business development prioritizes continuous learning and skill development which are sure to keep things at work.

Stimulating collaboration tools and frameworks definitely have a role to play in team member motivation, but these are strong reasons why business development frameworks trump tools and tactics when it comes to building staff and team motivation. So that was the article pretty much Whenever I write for LinkedIn, I try to keep things under 1000 characters because you know what they say, you know, folks don't like reading long pieces anymore.

Kind of disagree, but there's a limit for most of these platforms, whether it's LinkedIn or threads or Facebook or whatever, they have a limit anyway, so you have to just work with those limits. So in case they haven't been able to figure it out, the thrust of what I was trying to say in the article is this. That is nice that you have your Asana, your Evernote, your project management tool, your this tool, your that tool.

They are great. But that is not what is going to keep the motive teams motivated and in high spirits. And it's something that I can talk of from a real life experience because we work with several teams across different businesses. Everybody has their preferred tools. But you notice that no matter what the tool is, there always is a law, you know in one time or another. And you know, it's because of things, other things that have very little to do with the collaboration tool.

In fact, I started off a compelling vision because sometimes it's a lack of a compelling vision that energizes the team. I'm currently working with a a real estate firm in the startup space. They're trying to create an app that has this new, at least new in the Nigerian context, way for selecting houses, paying rent and deciding which which flat that you're going to rent, you know, with your spouse or maybe rent for office space or whatever.

So yes, it's a cool idea, but then the execution sometimes has a lot wanting. And so when team motivation Flanders every now and then, it's because of the lack of a compelling vision about where we are in the product map, where we've gone with development and what are the plans for making its way into the market. So it's a lack of a compelling vision at times like this that leads to people not being motivated, whether it's the sales people not being motivated or the tech team not being motivated, you know, things like that.

So it's possible that you can have all the fancy gadgets, all the fancy apps, all the fancy websites, all the fancy project management software tools, you know, have all the Gish Brown, but all your people are not motivated. And this is one of the reasons why you as the leader have not been able to craft a compelling vision to say this is who we are, this is where we're heading, this is what the next step is. And the people don't know they're going to flounder and also spoke about how business development principles come in handy.

Because with business development we have this whole thing of celebrating milestones because we want to want to give people on a path on the back so that they move, they keep moving the ball forward. Because when it comes to sales and business motivation, you know, that's our thing pretty much since sales and business development professionals. I mean, we only get paid, we only make money when we hit milestones when we get a customer, you know, things like that.

So that's the whole point. So we always try to motivate people, whether it's giving them a part on the back, celebrating them in some other way or giving them their bonus or whatever it is. But it's a core part of sales and business development that people do some work. You have to reward the work. Most of us prefer that, you know, you reward me in cash, give me a huge fact Commission check, but it's part of the process.

So regardless of whatever tools it is that you have, that's not going to keep people motivated if you are not acknowledging that this is who you are, this is what you've done for the team. Thank you very much. Here's Long standing award or here's 50K Guam Buy Pizza or whatever it is. So these are some of the things that I touched up in the article. And the reason why I'm sharing it today is not just to let you guys know that I'm sharing stuff daily on LinkedIn, but also to let you know that please, let's not fall into this trap that lots of people fall into in today's modern space.

They just assume that if I get the perfect tech, the perfect tool, the perfect app, the perfect website, the perfect framework, the perfect, you know, whatever, that is going to solve all your problems, solving all your problems is going to involve a whole lot more. And I hope I've been able to start convincing you guys that really having a sales, a sales framework and a business development framework is going to be a lot useful for solving a lot of business problems.

Because I'm sure you guys have been able to see from this example that sales and business development frameworks and attitudes lend itself quite nicely to solving a whole host of business problems. So that's it pretty much for today. There will be the regular podcast which is scheduled for later. In the meantime, thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode or and please connect with me on LinkedIn.

The name is Tabashima Ayade. I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of my name and my e-mail address if you want to reach out to me through e-mail from the link. We are currently listening to this episode.