Meet the Meetup: Bristol Business Development Meetup

The Bristol and Bath tech cluster has more encounters per capita than any tech cluster in the UK – we believe it’s that connection, support and level of knowledge sharing that drives innovation and makes our region the best place to be in technology to work. That’s why we decided to highlight the great groups that keep us connected.

Today we introduce you to the Bristol Business Development Meetup. Here to answer our questions is the meeting’s founder, Jack Thompson.

What is your Meet up?

Business Development can be a relatively lonely profession. Even if you are part of a larger organization, you may be the only person involved in Business Development, which is why things like peer-to-peer learning and professional development can be difficult.

Having lived most of my career in this first-hand business, I had looked for solutions to this problem myself and found that the only decent communities in existence were very London-oriented, and although they were often worth the trip to London I felt there was room for something in Bristol.

However, when I was working in-house I didn’t have time to organize it, so it wasn’t until I became an independent consultant in the summer of 2019 that I organized the 1st. The idea had been discussed with several people over the years, so I already had a list of people who said they would be excited.

We held our first event in September 2019 and we’ve had one pretty much every month since.

For who is it?

It is fully aimed at anyone who is actively engaged in Business Development in a B2B organization as most of their work if not all of their work. The current group includes a great mix of in-house BD people, business owners responsible for BD, independent consultants and providers of BD-related services.

If you like it, you are most welcome to participate.

What is the format of your event?

The format is a kind of ’round table’ on an agreed-upon business development topic, to which anyone can contribute if they wish, with a maximum number of 15 people attending a given event.

Ironically from the public point of view, however, there is a ‘no sale’ rule (although many attendees have inevitably done business with each other since meeting at the event), and we run the events according to Chatham House rules to ensure a create a safe space for everyone to share and comment honestly.

We started in person, using one of the meeting rooms on Runway East. We went online in April 2020 and have stayed online ever since.

Like many event organizers, we are considering going in person again, and it is definitely on the agenda, but it will remain online for now.

If you could invite anyone to your meeting, who would it be?

Stephen Fry, the Dalai Lama and Dame Dudi Dench.

What are some of the typical topics you discuss?

It’s always related to business development, so in the past we’ve covered things like:

Goal Setting Goals & Resilience Entering New Markets Positioning Statements Successful Disagreement Dealing with Prospect Q&A Sales & Marketing Alignment Strategic Partnerships Cold Outbound

Where can we register?

You can register for future events here!

Is sponsored by Ginkgo Business Development and BeKindred.

If you have any questions about the Meetup, please contact the organizer Jack Thompson at jack@growwithginkgo.co.uk

UNCODE.initRow(document.getElementById(“row-unique-30”));

The post Meet the Meetup: Bristol Business Development Meetup appeared first on TechSPARK.