Sales vs. Business Development: What’s the Difference?

Sales vs. Business Development: What’s the Difference?

Sales and business development have the same goal: to improve the company. However, they work in different ways and require different teams. Salespeople focus on making customers aware of your work, while business developers work to create new offers.

What is Business Development?

Business development isn’t about generating revenue as it may seem based on the term itself. That part of the job is actually about sales and closing individual deals. The main goal of the business development team is to work on competitive positioning.

Defining the value proposition

The team defines the value proposition that will, later on, be used by sales to close deals. It’s what the company can offer to its customers and clients that sets it apart from the rest of the market. That can be unique features of your product or service or it can be about being competitive in pricing.

Communication Channels

Another key task for a business development team is to decide on the channels of communication that will be the most fruitful for a sales department to use. This depends on the clients you’re pursuing and on the costs associated with using those channels.

What Are Sales?

Sales are the process of generating revenue for a company by taking the potential customer through step by step process that culminates in making a sale. This process is a never-ending one and a sales team should always work on the perfect thing and tweak it to suit the needs of the market.

The success of a sales team is much more measurable than that of business development. It can be measured through the number of sales as well as their value, which means you can set up benchmarks and optimize the process.

The Sales Process

There are three main stages of a sales process from the perspective of a buyer. The sales team needs to have a plan for approaching the customer in each of these stages and adapting their work based on the stage that we’re in.

Awareness

It’s the first stage of searching for a product or a service. For instance, if you’re selling tools the customer will be in this stage when they know they need a hammer, but not much more.

Consideration

This is the most delicate stage of the sales process. Within it, the customer chooses between several different options and considers the pros and cons of choosing yours.

Decision

This is the last stage and usually one where the customer considers price and ease of service as their main reasons to use your services.

Key Roles in Sales and Business Development

The roles that are assigned to these tasks are also vastly different and you should hire experts according to the task. Therefore, separate teams should run business development and sales departments with a focus on interconnected but distinct goals.

Key Roles in Business Development

Itinerant business developer is a person in charge of finding new business outside of the market you’re currently operating in.

Business development manager is responsible for managing and deepening the relationships you have with the current prospects. They will work most closely with the sales team.

Key Roles in Sales

The major role of a sales team is to bring new leads into the pipeline and turn them into actual conversions and therefore profit. The roles are therefore usually divided based on the channels that the sales team will use.

Sales Associate whose job is to assist the customer through the sales process. There’s a lot of variety within this role depending on your business.

Sales manager is a person that manages the sales team in order to meet required quotas and fulfill the long-term task set up by business development.

Account executive is a point person when it comes to dealing with a particular client or customer with whom you’re having a long-term relationship.

The Difference in Approach

The overall goal of a business development team and those of the sales team are often similar and require cooperation. What makes them distinct, however, is the difference in approach. Sales are transactional in nature. They are about both sides getting what they need.

The buyer gets to use your service or product at a price they find to be fair. The company, however, makes a profit from each sale.

Business development, on the other hand, is relational – it’s not about getting something out of each transaction but about forming a long-term relationship that can eventually lead to individual sales.

What Can Happen When the Two Aren’t Distinct

If a business doesn’t have a clear distinction between the two teams and the two tasks, both will end up lacking. The development won’t be fast enough and the sales team will be spread too thin without the proper focus. Setting up a clear line when tasks are delegated from one team to another is therefore essential.

To Wrap Things Up

Business development and sales are different in terms of their tasks but done with a common goal. They require different skill sets and separate teams. Sales will be focused on individual transactions and they have a clear benchmark as to what to achieve at a given period. The team should also be divided based on which part of the sales process they are in.

#sales #busniessdevelopment #tips