What is Business Development?

Which functions of the business should be included in business development?

Are companies managing these functions to move the company in the direction to achieve its goals?
Posted 23 hours ago | Reply Privately

Stuart Brown
Managing Director at Vitalize Consultancy Ltd
See all Stuart’s discussions »

Comments (8)

1.
Laurent J.V. Dubois
Your French Sales Partner ☆ invite_me@sales.eu.org ☆ [8000+]
I'm always surprise by the number of questions that come from experts,
And most of the time, they receive a few answers,
Who want to help an expert on his main topic?

I'm sure that both of them will gain visibility and recognition with apposite answers in existing discussions ...

Perhaps can we launch an interesting discussion about how to generate contact and leads in Linkedin groups ?
Posted 16 hours ago | Reply Privately
2. Alan Gillies
Sr Sales Manager with Startup, New Business Development and Operations Exp; Entrepreneurial - Creative spirit
I met with a customer that understood BD to be design/prep of collateral and promotional material; I believe in a
broad sense that business development is any, an all, functions that promote and disseminate information on your
products, services and company
Posted 9 hours ago | Reply Privately
3. Ranjana Tripathi
Sr manager at Unitech Ltd
Business Development is revolves around all those functions and tasks of an organisation which helps in generating
revenues through new accounts. A person handling the profile of Business Development cant work isolated, he or
she should work with a team where Product Development, Marketing, CRM, and finance people are involved. His
part will be to use all the information from respective departments, present it to prospective clients in a manner that
it turns into a Business for the co.
Posted 9 hours ago | Reply Privately

4.
Shaunak ( Shaun) Dave
GM- Marketing & Techno-Commercial at SLT Ltd.
Hi Stuart ,

First of all , I wish to offer my compliments to bring this issue on this platform as I have been noticing lots of
confusion and lack of clarity about business developement function and sales in all the industries . People are still
believing that BD is the pre-sales activity and trying to relate it with sales targets in the short run. I have read one
article on internet and some of the points I mentioned below are from them along with my on the job business
developement experience.

Sales is more tactical & operational , whereas BD is more strategic appraoch . Sales, for the most part, are simply
the selling the product/service to the customer with a critical element being Client Management - development &
maintenance of the relationship with the client before and after the deal is executed. Sales is a more pure role of
client management & revenue growth role.
 Having done both roles in my career, Sales is typically a subset of Business Development which is a subset of
marketing eventually.

BD adds responsibilities as strategic & long term planning, market analysis, and competitive research ( either in
exsiting market or products or a new one ! ) in order to determine a list of prospects to approach, markets to
enter/exit, and new features to add to your product or new services to your portfolio. BD encompasses a number of
techniques designed to grow an economic enterprise. Such techniques include, but are not limited to, assessments of
marketing opportunities and target markets, intelligence gathering on customers and competitors, generating leads
for possible sales, follow up sales activity, formal proposal writing and business model design. Business
development involves evaluating a business and then realizing its full potential, using such tools as marketing, sales,
information management and customer service. For a sound company able to withstand competitors, business
development never stops but is an ongoing process.

Successful BD often requires a multi-disciplinary approach beyond just "a sale to a customer." A detailed strategy
for growing the business in desirable ways is frequently necessary, which may involve financial, legal and
advertising skills. Business development cannot be reduced to simple templates applicable to all or even most
situations faced by real-world enterprises. Creativity in meeting new and unforeseen challenges is necessary to keep
an enterprise on a path of sustainable growth.

BD is a very crutial task that once explored and established , the rest sales process will be simple and business will
be ongoing. To select the right partner requires effectiveness rather then efficiency.

Thanks for allowing me opportunity relearn BD.

Shaun
shaun6@gmail.com
Posted 8 hours ago | Reply Privately

5.
Lance Ross
MBA, CSE, CME: Sales, Marketing & Business Development Professional >>> Searching For A New Opportunity
Unfortunately, BD often gets confused as a sales role or even a marketing role when it truly is much more. With this
in mind, defining the words can sometimes be helpful to put things into context. Here are definitions from Princeton
University's WordNet[http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s ]:

Business: a commercial or industrial enterprise and the people who constitute it

Development: act of improving by expanding or enlarging or refining

May I also suggest it begins with the simple question of "What do we/I need to do to improve this specific
business?" Wouldn't it be great if everyone in an organization, no matter their functional expertise, asked this
question every day and then worked collaboratively to address the identified areas?

Notice that development is an action. Strategy can play a strong role beforehand or even be the first in a series of
actions to improve a business.

Either way, draw on every resource and functional area to simply DO what needs to be done. Isn't that how one
"develops" a "business"?
Posted 7 hours ago | Reply Privately

6.
Harjit Singh Ubhi
Senior Manager - Business Development
 I completely agree with Shaunak and to me BD is combination of driving the sales, crm, telemarketing in the
strategic direction + overseeing the operational side of the entire process to make sure customer signs off with a
smile. BD has to continuously align his strategy keeping in mind the global economy and target market, since
competition crops in very quickly and one has to capitalize on a product/service before it is too late
Posted 3 hours ago | Reply Privately

7.
Jeff Peter
Experienced Sales Mangement & Capability Development Professional
The common theme in all of the replies is to break down the silos and start Cross-Functional working. It makes
perfect sense in that all departments should be aligning thermselves in order to reach the company's long-term goal.
Alas, not many organizations are able to do away with the turf wars and work together.

Jeff
Posted 2 hours ago | Reply Privately

8.
Ramesh R.Narayanaswamy
Business Development Professional
BD is a very enjoyable role. Based on my experience i would state that those involved in this role should be people
oriented and not product or process oriented.

This role is a responsibility of the every staff member of the organisation.

There are some key concepts that need to be defined and understood before engaging into BD role.

a) The need/benefit analysis of the offering to requirement/s with time reference.

b) Seller and buyer engagement process should be visible. Ie from cold calling to deal handover.
c) Projecting a consulting, advisory image.
d) End result of BD should be the seed for future plans of the organisation.

BD is the basis on which promotion,sales, revenue management, etc happen.

Ramesh
Posted 19 minutes ago | Reply Privately