Networking intelligence is not meant to be hoarded in one’s mind, spreadsheet or Outlook Contact file. All the intelligence a BD professional or seller-doer gathers does nothing for the firm, if that person hoards that information.

This is the view of Talin Espinoza, senior vice president of strategic growth at Twining, Inc., an engineering firm based in Long Beach, CA, with a network of  offices in California and a headcount of over 350.

Espinoza says: “I think one thing that is critical to the health and success of any group is for those BD professionals to be focusing on differentiation, and where you are important and different in your marketplace from your competitors—and bringing your intelligence back and improving the operation.”

“As business development professionals, we’re client-facing, we’re out there at the networking functions, and we’re responsible for keeping client relationships in good standing; and those relationships generate a lot of information about what’s important to the client, why people select your firm instead of another.

And so, Espinoza and Twining are constantly honing their sales pitches and differentiation messages.

Twining is an engineering firm, and says Espinoza, “If someone has a certain engineering license, then they’re relatively qualified to do your work; it takes some effort to really develop a niche and a differentiation for yourself that resonates with clients. Business development professionals are very aware of that, because it affects their ability to bring new work into the company.”

So, as BD professionals try messaging and branding with clients, “they need to bring that information about what actually resonates with clients and what’s important out in industry—and how we fit into that—bring that back to headquarters and inform the actual development of the business back at home,” Espinoza says.

That information can be shared in group meetings, lunch-and-learns, internal blogs, quarterly strategic meetings; it can also be entered into the firm’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, such as Deltek or Salesforce. But most firms report that the personal touch is the faster way to share such information; also to share the enthusiasm for a given prospect.

BD professionals with their “ears to the ground” are uniquely qualified to gather that information. “The day-to-day engineers aren’t in touch with that as much,” says Espinoza. “So, if a really super-excellent BD professional comes back and says this is what matters in our marketplace, and if the company is able to flex

and adjust to that need, then that’s the way we can stay current as a business. And it helps us reinvent ourselves as a company on the local level.”

Asked what the urgency is to reinvent, Espinoza says, “It’s inevitable that times change, and it’s fundamental to life that there’s going to be younger professionals and newer companies out there doing things a fresher way. If we’re not reinventing ourselves to stay current, then we’re going to get left in the dust, because it’s inevitable that one of our competitors will do that.”

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