How to Use Business Development to Help Your Company Grow

Updated on 7 May 2022 by Pete

What if you worked for a company where no one was involved in growing the business?

There was nobody to tell you about all the new opportunities, market changes, what the competition is doing or how you could better attract your target audience.

Don't you think this would make it hard to be successful?

In this post, we'll define what business development is, why companies establish a business development process, and provide several ways for getting started to grow your business.

business development blogging advice

What is Business Development?

This is the process used to attract new prospects, build engagement with prospects and turn opportunities into clients, to boost growth and revenue in your organization. These goals can be recorded in an actionable business development strategy document.

The scope of business development (BD) can be wide ranging and vary a lot from organization to organization.

The art of successful business development will allow your business to profit whilst doing something that's relevant to your core mission. Sometimes it’s so profitable, that it becomes part of the core mission, or it supports the brand and its alignment of business development goals or sometimes it just makes more money.

Examples of Business Development

Best Buy: when you buy appliances, you are offered extended warranties. The warranty isn't provided by Best Buy themselves. Instead, one of their business development professionals made a deal with an insurance firm so they could share the profit.

Starbucks: In 2008, this coffee shop operator agreed to a licensing agreement with Unilever to use their name. This allowed Unilever to manufacture and distribute Starbucks ice cream in the U.S. and Canada, generating gazillions in royalties for Starbucks.

Although BD is closely related to sales, business development teams are often a part of a larger sales organization. As naming conventions and roles evolve, many companies use the term business development to refer to the whole marketing and sales process. To clarify this, let's see how key business development activities compare to typical sales and marketing roles.

The Difference Between Business Development and Marketing

Marketing is finding the right products and services to a narrow target audience and positioning your firm as the best choice compared to the competition. The goal of these growth tactics is to increase brand awareness of your organization's target audiences and increase the flow of qualified leads and potential buyers.

Previously, business development was seen as a subsection of marketing that was involved in getting new marketing relationships and channels. Today, business development has evolved into something that's synonymous with many sales and marketing activities.

The Difference Between Business Development and Sales

Some of the elements of business development are quite often confused as simply 'sales' because many people working in sales are seen as business development professionals. This may be because there may be some stigma related to being in a sales role.

However, business development tasks involve a much broader sphere, which reaches far beyond sales. In general, business development practices are related to sales, but there are subtle differences. Effective business development will involve a sales team, but it has a different function when compared to traditional sales. The business development pipeline can help company growth by developing buyer personas, finding ideal prospects, and nurture prospects to turn these leads into customers (but not directly closing new customers). These interactions with prospects can also lead to improved customer loyalty.

In comparison, sales is the process of converting high-potential leads into new customers. Sales teams work involves selling a product or service to potential customers and converting high-quality leads into customers. Successful business development efforts will streamline the salesperson's role.

Now, we can look at the role of business development representatives and what business development skills are needed.

Business Development Representatives (BDR) and their Responsibilities

Someone in a business management role may have searched for "business development" on LinkedIn, and the many different jobs related to it: from BDR Manager to Senior Business Development Executive. But what exactly does this business development person do?

A Business Development Representative is a member of the sales team who is focused on delivering new business opportunities to the organization. A business development reps primary role involves finding new leads (in new channels or untapped markets), qualifying them, then passing the prospects to their sales colleagues. Common business development strategies used by a BDR for lead generation include networking, social selling, cold email and cold calls. Communication with prospects is key. For instance, a BDR will make a discovery call to qualify individual prospects, before arranging a meeting with a salesperson.

The Top 5 Business Development Strategies

1. Market Research

The foundation to business development success is understanding your target market. If you have no idea about the current state of the market or the current industry trends, then the remaining strategies cannot be successfully executed.

Study your current customer base to figure out buyer behavior and see how your competitors fit into the wider market.

2. Marketing

One of the most important aspects of business development is raising awareness of your products and services to potential customers. Some of the common business development tactics that BDR's perform to connect with prospects include:

a) Raising Awareness

Developing an effective website, engaging on social media posts, using paid advertising, and building partnerships with your industry peers can have a significant impact on business development growth.

One content marketing strategy well worth investing in is creating content aimed at directly driving sales. For example, content from success stories, testimonials and case studies. This type of marketing content uses satisfied customers' own experiences to generate buying interest in your products or services.

b) Thought Leadership

A core component of business development is to build trust with your prospects. One way to increase credibility is long-form, detailed blog content, books and public speaking engagements (or webinars). If you're featured in leading industry magazines and regularly publish content on LinkedIn or YouTube, you will be seen as an industry expert. If you can prove your expertise by solving customers' problems, you will show credibility in their eyes.

c) Networking

One of the best ways to develop and nurture new relationships is via face-to-face networking with your target audience. The downsides are the expenses and time, especially if you are traveling long distances from the office.

d) Referrals

Referrals can be seen as a progression from the previous two topics. You engage with a prospect, build a relationship, and they refer their friends and colleagues to you. Satisfied customers will do this too.

e) Advertising and Sponsorships

It can be difficult to see a return from traditional advertising like sponsoring events. It's better to combine with other methods like targeted digital advertising, which can generate measurable results, by getting the right message in front of the right audience.

3. Outreach with Prospects

It sounds obvious, but you need to reach out and touch base with prospects, to qualify them and eventually convert them into customers. This step naturally follows on from the research phase, where BDR's will contact both cold and warm leads, but not in an aggressive way.

The two commonest forms of getting new business opportunities are outbound calls (aka cold calls), and outbound mail and email (aka cold email). Professional service companies have been using telephone calls and direct response mail to directly target potential customers for many years. The goal here is to target the right roles within organizations, with a message that resonates, at the right time.

4. Lead Qualification

Once a BDR has gained the attention of prospects, they need to establish whether they could potentially be converted by the sales team. This usually involves having conversations with leads. The key to qualifying leads is asking the right questions to see if they are the right fit for your service or product.

5. Customer Satisfaction

Providing exemplary customer service is important. By keeping your current customers happy, you will not only reduce any complaints (and less customer churn), but also increase word of mouth referrals and boost your organization's reputation. This high-quality customer support may also involve a customer support team.

By following these business development tactics, you will have a high-performance business development plan to implement.

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