We might have come across the job titles and roles in corporate culture at the different hierarchy, like “Business Development Executive”, “Business Development Manager” and “Business Development Director”.
As a future Entrepreneur, you need to know what is Business Development? And essential business development activities. So that you will grow your business with clear insight.
Business Development Definition
Business Development has no fine Definition, as it involves various factors that need to function together for Business growth.
But in simple words,
Business Development means a set of processes and activities to develop, expand the market of the business, and to create long-term value for the customers.
Besides, it includes in finding new opportunities to grow the Business and building a reputation for your brand in the marketplace. This makes your business more sustainable.
When the business development activities are carried with proper Business Strategy, it will transform your business to be the best from the current state, in terms of revenues and profitability in the long run. There are several ways and means to develop the business. Which could be done internally by your own startup team or externally through a Business Development consultant.
This concept of building your business is applicable to small, medium, and corporate level companies. The size doesn’t matter, but the right idea and strategy you will put to manage the resources will give good results.
Essential Business Development Activities
Marketing
The marketing department in a company works to attract clients and customers by doing promotional and advertising activities.
The Business Development team supports marketers in budget estimation for marketing campaigns and helps in creating a marketing strategy in terms of cost, content planning, and event organizing.
Networking
Building a network with partners, entrepreneurs, delegates of other reputed firms would be significant for Business developers.
This grasps the attention and interest in your business, products, or services among them and the team will get updated with recent market trends via networking with those people. This makes the business developers to pitch the product easy as possible.
Lead Generation
The core job of the business development process is to generate leads for the company. It involves a set of processes to create customer interest in products or services. Various sources to generate leads are newsletter, personal referral, advertising, and cold calling via telephone.
Content marketing is an effective method to generate more leads in digital mediums. Lead generation brings an opportunity to get new customers, thereafter the sales team will describe and negotiate with the clients and successfully closes the lead.
Sales
Sales activities involve the task of selling a particular product or goods to the prospective customer in a given timeframe.
After the lead is generated by the Business Development team, it’s time for the sales team to meet the clients and demonstrate the product, negotiate and close the lead.
Building strong rapport and cooperation is much needed between the Sales and Business Development departments, which would be essential for the organization’s growth progress.
Market Research
None of the businesses will flourish to withstand as a sustainable business model without proper market research. Every marketer must have conducted Market Research at the grass-root level, before starting a business development process. It tells all about the behavior of the market and in designing the strategy to acquire it.
Building Strategy
A well-organized strategy and its successful implementation are vital to secure a position in the marketplace.
Business Development plays a crucial role in coordinating all the corresponding teams for business growth and in formulating a Business growth strategy.
Taking all the inputs from various teams, the Business Development team intends to take strategic initiatives to find the best way to attract potential clients or customers, which propels high profitability.
Business Development vs Sales
When we try to differentiate between Sales and Business Development, most people often get confused with both terms.
Because both the roles are similar in certain ways and integrate with one another at a functional level.
To make it in simple words, Business development involves in
- Finding new opportunities for expanding the business in the long-term by formulating a Business strategy.
- Creating a relationship with the partners and develop business through them.
- Generating leads through cold calls to get potential clients.
- Identifying the right customers for selling your product
- Finding the best product by researching and optimizing according to the customer persona.
Sales activities involve
- Converting the generated leads and opportunities through a sales pitch to get new clients into the business.
- Demonstrating the product to clients or customers, negotiate with them and close the deal.
- Focus on the number of sales conversions through salesperson by fixing the short-term goals or targets (for example, target on a monthly or yearly basis).
Reader’s Insight
Let us know if we missed out on anything in this article business development activities and share your thoughts in the comment section.
