In this presentation, the speaker explains that business development managers (BDMs) operate either as hunters—seeking new, cold contacts—or as farmers—nurturing existing relationships. While both roles are relevant to client relationship and account managers, the focus here is on hunting within the NDIS sector. The key to effective hunting is identifying the "tribe" of participants, i.e., individuals with NDIS plans who need support services. Participants themselves rarely use LinkedIn, but the professionals they interact with—such as allied health providers, support coordinators, local area coordinators (LACs), and home‑care organisations—are active on the platform. By targeting these professionals, BDMs can indirectly reach participants. The speaker notes that while a small minority of participants (often corporate executives with a disability in the family) may appear on LinkedIn, the primary strategy is to map and engage the network of professionals who influence participants' decisions, using LinkedIn as the hunting ground.
Chapters
So when you're a BDM in most industries, you're either a hunter or farmer. Now, hunters, where you go out getting the, the cold calling ones, the ones that are not in your system, the ones that have never been anywhere near your system, your product, your service. And a farmer is probably one that's had some interaction with you in the past. Maybe an existing client that you're looking to, suppose, upsell or cross-sell to different services. Both are very relevant to the role of a client relationship manager, account manager, or BDM, and I'll use those, those terms loosely across the conversation today. Click once. So when you're looking at hunting, which is what we'll focus about today, the most important thing is to start to identify your tribe. Seth Godin, one of the most famous marketers of all, talks a lot about identifying where your tribe lives. Now, when we're in India as a provider, our tribe is our participants. Our clientele is our participants, those with an NDIS plan looking to seek support and assistance for them to get some assistance, therapies, management, invoice payment, whatever the case may be. So in a normal sales environment, they're better known as consumers. Oh, in our case, they're participants. Now participants usually hang around a couple of places. They'll go to a a parents forum. They might interact with an LAC. They may interact with a support coordinator. But in general, participants will generally interact with other professionals. So they might go to a therapy provider, an allied health provider, like I said, support coordinator, and so forth. Now, when we are hunting on a platform like LinkedIn, most likely, probably 99% of the time, Just checking the road. These participants will not be on LinkedIn. Having said that, I've had success with a couple that have been on LinkedIn because they're business executives, corporate high flyers who have NDIS or disability in their family. So there is that chance, but what we need to do is we need to think about These participants and who they interact with, their tribe is going to be those professionals. Now, every professional worth their, their money will be on LinkedIn. A lot of health professionals, support coordinators, NDIS providers, home care providers, or their organizations will be on LinkedIn.
