What is business development?

Business development is so much more than just?a collection of sales techniques?and understanding how to be a good salesman.

Instead, it’s a general term for all the ideas, company strategies, and departmental activities that go into improving a business and navigating?through the stages of the business life cycle.

That’s why growing sales and company expansion are only some of the many potential business development goals, and why the entire company should be involved in the process.

For example, one company might focus their business development efforts on adding revenue, which means that?sales and marketing, as well as?product development, may be involved. For another company, business development might involve adding strategic partnerships or expanding into a new geographic territory or service.

With such a diverse set of objectives, business development requires a wide array of skills. These skills include knowing how to develop a strategy, how to understand the market needs and trends,?how to close a sale,?and how to nurture customers or clients.

How business development looks in each department

From marketing, sales, and product/vendor management to business planning, project management, and finance, numerous departments are involved in business development.

1. Marketing

The marketing department is responsible for attracting prospects to help achieve the company’s goal to raise awareness, expand its markets, and raise revenues.

Working in collaboration with sales, marketing produces promotions, campaigns, and content that illustrate why the company can solve a targeted audience’s issues.

2. Sales

The sales team targets certain opportunities to add revenue through leads, market expansion, and service/product development and diversity. They set certain goals to achieve as part of business development in line with the company’s overall strategic objectives.

As such, the sales department puts together a business proposal for each prospect, sends a?follow-up email?to these prospects, and manages all the information they have on the market and prospects often through tools like?CRM software.

3. Product and vendor management

A significant amount of work goes into managing business development activities, especially when they reach across geographic lines and involve markets and products. This work typically involves legal, product management, and manufacturing departments that work together to ensure business development in certain countries makes sense and goes as planned.

This business development activity may also include the assistance of outside vendors. These vendors will need to be managed and directed in order to efficiently handle supply chain and logistics issues that are critical to growing the business beyond its present size.

4. Business planning

The business planning department often includes executives who must make decisions related to new facilities, manufacturing locations, and additional resources like local talent to assist with the expansion efforts. They work in close partnership with the project management and implementation teams that then execute on what business planning decides.

5. Strategic partnerships

Working with legal, finance, marketing and sales, and business planning, the strategic partnership takes on the task of determining and identifying local strategic partnership candidates that may help achieve certain business development goals.

6. Finance

Finance plays an integral role in business development in terms of cost savings. In order to improve a business, it’s important to?look beyond the sales pipeline?and consider what cost-cutting measures can place the company in a better position to take advantage of available growth opportunities.

Finance undertakes internal assessments and audits that look at spending across the company to see where money can be saved on certain tasks and processes and then be better utilized elsewhere to achieve certain business development goals.