My personal view on Business Development
Ilja Pawel
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What it is and what it takes
Business Development (BD) is not equal to sales nor marketing. In fact, it starts long before sales and goes beyond marketing. Its main goal is to enable new sales that were not realizable before.
Business development can be very analytical and at the same time it’s all about building personal relationships and trust. Trust in persons, products and solutions. A common understanding is the position of business development somewhere between sales and marketing activities. It requires a broad skill set ranging from market intelligence, marketing and sales techniques to soft skills like communication and emotional intelligence with the right portion of creativity and entrepreneurial mindset.
How it works
A good business developer must have the ability to listen to all market participants in order to understand the needs of customers and translate them into product or service ideas. Asking the right questions and having the patience to listen to answers is the base for success.
In my experience, new products sometimes need to create the customer awareness for a new solution and this job cannot be done with conventional sales methods because the information needs to be created in the first place. Additionally, before sales you need to establish partnerships and sales channels to efficiently serve the market. On the other hand, you need to consider that growing the business also requires organizational growth to absorb the new business. This has to be appropriately communicated internally as well.
Business development can also mean business model innovation. Trying a new way to think of your business and gain advantage over competition by using methods of business model generation. This is the creative part of business development where existing models are being questioned and new models emerge.
It should be clear that business development is very important for long-term business success. Unfortunately, quite often, keeping the daily business running inhibits new approaches and thoughts about future business.
Why outsourcing may be a good idea
Although being of strategic importance for the company, there are some good reasons to outsource BD activities. Firstly, it offers you a greater flexibility to the current requirements and can be ramped up and down quite easily. Secondly, an expert from outside the company can communicate freely and independently from internal organizational constraints and is not involved in daily operations. Thirdly, involving an outsider perspective can lead to new solutions and innovation. And finally, having an independent business developer opens the possibility to embrace the entrepreneurial thinking and share some risk along the process of developing a new business.
I’m looking forward to some discussion and reaction, comments. E-Mail: [email protected]
#businessdevelopment #management
Consultant
5 年Well thought out paper Ilja.
C-Suite | Commercial & Project development executive | Renewable Energy, Battery Energy Storage, Hydrogen, Decentralisation.
5 年Thought stimulating Dr Pawel, and much of what you characterise in BD in the article brings true...because of the depth of understanding of the organisation that is required, the level of authority to transact on behalf of the organisation and the need for the BD to usually build the internal investment case for deals requires that type of person. This while also being able to develop the business case for the prospect/ customer and keep the lines of the game straight all demand the deep and broad characterization that you describe. However I cant settle in my head is that this is presented as an outsourcable role. Professional BD people in many ways have to make the same decisions that their CEO would make... in situ. Tough enough, but how could that be a skillset that is better served though it being outsourced. Lastly, BD team.members do their best work when they are the kind of person that is allowed to stretch the business progressively and be entrepreneurial. To have an entrepreneur outside a business, servicing the "intimate" needs of that business as the business model would provide an opportunity for the wrong kind of person to position against the very business they are supposed to be developing.