“Mob Business Development” - what is it? It’s a way of doing business, commerce, as a team, together, which has proven to be an exciting experience and which I wish to share here. Even if the competition gets hold of it? “life is great” said tribal leadership. After a pandemic, and Ubu king of a superpower, I feel light enough to share these victories, these learnings, with anyone, and since I’ve observed that it helps quite a few people grow, the world would only be better for it.

I work in an agency, a consulting firm, an esn, an ssii, a startup, a bit of all that, in any case a company that provides services and rents out the services of its experts, its knowledge workers, its coaches. One of the critical points for the smooth running of our company is to avoid too much time between contracts. That is, people without projects. A success both human and economic (one feeds the other and vice versa). (The subject is to explain how I think I’ve implemented a process that helps everyone grow around this issue and not to debate the good or evil of this type of posture, your life or entrepreneurial philosophy. I find all these debates generally disappointing, because they’re binary, I’m not getting into that here).

A rocky start

It begins with the consulting, management, coaching team. This team advocates autonomy, empowerment. These are the pillars of their message. With the help of Pauline Egea (I think this “Mob Business Development” dynamic, which is the modest name, we call it “commando biz” at the risk of alarming pacifists, anyway, this dynamic is the fruit of our duo, thank you Pauline). So we take them, we take ourselves, at their word. Let’s be autonomous. Let’s do commerce on top of everything else. And commerce, first of all, is making contacts, networking. And making contacts, first of all, is making phone calls. And damn it, making an interested phone call to a stranger is not easy for everyone and that’s very understandable. Nevertheless we launch ourselves.

And it starts very badly. It starts with the grumblers. It drags in every direction. It moves fits and starts. But I catch a glimpse of something. I sense something. The idea in summary is to gather four or five people around a table (the virtual table of a video conference) and one after another (and everyone listens) make phone calls to make contacts and move things forward. This first time we had to push the group as if we were stuck in gigantic mud. But as I told you, this reluctance from most people indicated to me that something important was happening. I don’t think having an idea is a strength, everyone has ideas. What I try to do is understand among all the ideas which ones are real breakthroughs, and what are the two or three keys that constitute them. And here I felt it.

Small liberation

The second attempt is liberating. The group is different and motivated. Everyone gets into it. And everything falls into place:

• The group’s kindness and the psychological safety of the exercise (everyone knows it’s not easy to make a phone call, and everyone will go through it, so…).
• The tension, that of having to call, watched by all the others, generates an emotion that seals the group.
• The learning: each person listens to the other with great humility.
• The effectiveness of the approach: it’s directly the expert who contacts you and not an intermediary. This expert makes contact in their own way with their own words. They are an actor in their own future.

Extension

Me, what interests me as a business leader, is that everyone behaves intelligently. For this I try to give them maximum information, learning opportunities, responsibility. Until now, commerce has been the zone of salespeople (the business developers) and know-how has been the zone of experts (the business developers are the experts in commerce, not in the end purpose of the value delivered to clients). After the first successes of this “commando biz”, of this “Mob Business Development”, which confirms my suspicions of a good idea, I extend it to teams that claim to be less autonomous, or who precisely don’t necessarily want to do this (everyone being comfortable in this dichotomy of commerce on one side, know-how on the other).

To get a foot in the door, two arguments: the first, no one is obliged to make a phone call (this one I regret, because I think the situation makes the choice difficult, but I remind everyone that everyone is supported, no one is mocked, everyone understands the situation). So the first, no one is obliged to call (which is true, because it happened, notably with the grumblers remember). The second: “if you master the ability to reach out and create your network you become completely autonomous for your future, if for example one day you become independent” (here again the debate is not company versus independent, I read vast binary nonsense on the subject I don’t want to add my own). In fact we make them autonomous, we deliver on our promise (be your potential), and this argument scores many points. So off we go with a very different population: around the virtual table two or three techs, coders, developers, and two salespeople alias biz dev (and me).

Warning: I was completely blown away.

Revelations

I saw people’s revelations. I saw people grow in just a few “commando biz” sessions. I saw that suddenly the techs understood the biz much better than before, and vice versa (up to the moment when we ask the bizdev to think about diving into code and starting to prepare their skills portfolio: the looks said a lot about the veil we were lifting, and the learning in role reversal). I had confirmation that a potential client who receives a call from an expert and not from an intermediary has much better listening and this is understandable. I had confirmation that all the stammering in the world with authenticity was better than a fake speech that rolls along (this is not what our biz dev do, we regularly question our authenticity, #nobullshit).

Most importantly, I also had people losing confidence, because they were between contracts, who became masters of their future again: they could control their fate, they knew the rules, they had feedback, and we invited them to participate.

I really saw delighted people, eyes sparkling all around the table. Everyone looks at each other differently afterwards.

This is only possible if the company has a truly empowering message, where genuine conversation can take place, where everyone respects each other. It’s possible at benext and I’m proud of it.

Reminder of the operating mode

• 1 hour every two or three days.
• Small group of 4 to 6 people maximum.
• We introduced an option: we launch a random selection from the following people and then, when the person has been selected, we look for who they could call (meaningfully). The selection is done using https://www.dcode.fr/random-selection. Thanks role-playing games.
• Everyone, whatever their profile, will make a phone call (yes I know we’re not obliged, I mean: everyone around the table is concerned, not some listen and others do). Naturally a natural rule has emerged: when you don’t want the person to answer, they answer, and when you do want them to they don’t answer (and you make contact another way, message, email, etc.), it’s funny.
• We discuss a bit before the phone call to talk about what will be said, and why, and how, we help each other, we tell each other what might make sense. Each person is different and no call will resemble another, it’s always a unique moment and combination.
• We congratulate each other after the phone call, because it’s always a tension.

A real moment of group building and emancipation of each individual.

Many thanks therefore to Pauline Egea. And also to Nils, Yannick, Benjamin, Florent, Jean-Christophe, Mike, who played along very well. And to Quentin and Elise who also quickly understood the value of this approach.

Feedback from our conversation forum

Some feedback from those involved gathered this week following the article.