Jay LeonardThe term “business development” means a lot of things to a lot of people. To some, it’s LeadGen robo calls – the more dials, the better. To others it is pure appointment setting. At NuGrowth Solutions, however, we maintain that real business development goes far beyond lead generation or appointment setting.
Think about it this way. Suppose you bought a new chair and got home to find that it only had one leg. You’d be upset and, to say the least, your chair wouldn’t work very well. In much the same way, real new business development needs more than one leg to stand on – all four legs need to be in place to make it work. Why? Because to develop a relationship with a major opportunity you must build and develop relationships with multiple people within the account – not set one appointment.
At its core, Business Development is about uncovering opportunities, acting as a brand steward for an organization, building assets and developing relationships – four legs that will put your sales effort on solid ground.
Leg One: Uncovering Opportunities
A business development professional’s job is to identify new opportunities, new markets and new ways to reach existing markets – to predictably turn a broad undefined base of prospects into a solid batch of qualified opportunities. Doing so is not easy. It takes a hunter mentality, a drive to succeed and a lot of hard work. It can be made easier, however (and more repeatable) when there is a well-defined framework to operate in.
Organizations that do business development well have a distinct methodology/ territory management plan for their reps to follow – a plan that covers all aspects of the territory from market research and list management to segmentation, metrics and a consistently executed marketing plan to support and enhance outbound efforts.
For more information on Territory Management, read our August 2011 article, Creating a Roadmap for Consistent Sales Growth, Repeatability and Scalability.
Leg Two: Brand Stewardship
What is brand stewardship? No matter what the technical definition, pure and simple it is creating positive representation of (and excitement around) an organization or brand.
And really, who better to act as brand steward than a business development professional? In a B2B environment, contact made by a business development professional is often the first touch a prospective buyer will have with an organization. Make a good impression from the start and things can build from there. Make a poor impression and even the best of scenarios become an uphill battle.
For this reason, it is also imperative that any sales collateral – whether sell sheets, a website, a blog, a white paper or an email template – are relevant, grammatically correct and accurately reflect the professionalism of the organization.
Leg Three: Building Assets
On a very base level, one might consider “assets” to be names, titles, phone numbers and email addresses of prospective clients. Without intelligence gained by discovery, however, these are just names in a database. To be an asset something needs to be of value. To be of value, it has to be qualifiable.
Building assets then is really about discovery and qualification – about taking those names and numbers in the CRM and attaching solid data to them — Data like:
- Whether or not they are actively considering a change/purchase.
- If yes, what the timeline to purchase looks like.
- If no, what would it take to get them to consider change/purchase?
- The amount budgeted to make this change /purchase.
- Who the major players are in any decision making process.
- Other options under consideration.
While this may sound intuitive, if an organization does not create a culture of knowledge sharing and insist that this information be captured and held in a CRM system, it is often information that reps hold closely to the chest – only to leave with them should they choose to go elsewhere.
Leg Four: Developing Relationships
Although finding opportunities, brand stewardship and asset building are all core responsibilities of a business development professional, it is 
building relationships that completes the circle (or, to use the chair analogy, keeps the chair solidly upright) – because with all the noise in the marketplace these days, people buy from people they like.
In his article, “To Increase Revenue Stop Selling,” Forbes contributor, Mike Myatt made a good case that people don’t want to be sold to, they want a relationship with someone who has the ability to fill their needs and solve their problems – someone who is more interested in finding out about their needs than pitching a product.
The job of a good business development professional is to build that relationship step by step by asking the right questions, being available to respond to concerns, providing relevant educational information and, above all, listening to what prospects have to say and reacting accordingly.
As Myatt wrote, “It’s not about you, your company, your products or your services. It’s about meeting customer needs and adding value. When you start paying more attention to your customer needs than your revenue needs, you’ll find you no longer have a revenue problem to complain about.”
All that said, business development is not just about LeadGen, outbound calling or appointment setting – those are just pieces of the puzzle (not even a whole chair leg). A real business development team takes those pieces and blends them into a comprehensive system that can stand on its own to build a pipeline, generate consistent and relevant opportunities and ultimately close sales.
Partner Effectively
If your organization could benefit from a business development team acting as an extension of your company – one that uncovers opportunities, acts as a brand steward for your organization, builds assets and develops relationships – NuGrowth is your solution.
If you are interested in working with a partner you can trust to grow business, please give us a call at 800-966-3051.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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I believe your thoughts are very “old school”. You really need to reach out into the new way of young thinkers in business today. I will start off by giving you an example then i will try to explain in short detail. You mentioned you wouldn’t be too impressed if you bought a chair with only one leg. You are implying that It would not work. I disagree. You can hang the chair from the ceiling with two ropes or poles or wire or anything that will suspend it from the ceiling. Barber chairs only have one leg and have been around for many years. A business developer in todays world needs to suround themselves and seek out inovation by taking something like a chair that has been around forever and transform it into something else that people will be excited about. Having a full network to support a product is just overkill. You need to focus on the core reason someone will want to buy your product. Not because its a good working and reliable chair….but because its a chair that has no legs :). Get it? People are not going to buy from you beacuse they like you or because its made of the highest quality (all our products are made from china these days and people buy more of it today because it doesn’t last) People want to try something new and be the first to do it regardless of whether it breaks down fast. The mobile/personal device industry is booming these days with this appoach. They are all looking for ways to wow the consumer. No one cares it will only last 1 year before new technolgy comes out. They will just scrap their “old” phone after one year and go with the new and improved one. Oh and by the way the technolgy was probably already available when they sold you that phone to begin with. Just didn’t bother to tell you they will be launching it next year. get it? Its about being current. On top of your game. That will be the best business developer. Business will flawk to you if you know how to market yourself and your business as “cutting edge”. The brink of something new! Doesn’t matter if your customer needs to call india for customer service or you hug them when they are feeling bad or volnerable. Its about excitement. You will pay one million dollars for a 2000 square foot house today because there is a sense of urgency. Better get it now before its gone! “It’s a HOT property” (even though its 100 years old and a unlivable) Get it? remember no matter what market you are looking to enter or expand into. There is always someone there already. If your product doesn’t offer anything exciting you will lose to the competitor that is aready in this market and will distroy you when they are threatened. Its the ACE in the pocket game. Hold off on your new product until the copetition arrives. Then distroy them with your better product. You need to beat them at their own game. Make your competitor look old and worn out. You are fresh and new . A game changer! Facebook was not a professional or established company when it first launched. It was new and different. It evolved as it grew. It sold itself! People are looking for companies that have the guts to change and flexibilty to evelove and customize. People do not care that a chair just works and works well and the company that made has a solid reputation for quality and reliability. They want a chair that will be easy for them when they need to clean the floor. Convienince in their hectic lifestyle. Soemthing that will make their friends smile/laugh when they come over to visit. Your company and business developer will stand out alot brighter if his lights are brite! Borak Obama continues to preach this by suggesting we look to change the way we do things to encourage growth. Develop alternative forms of fuel…not to strenghten old deteriating relationships. Who cares if China wants to buy more Oil and as a result becomes the worlds best partner for oil. Its about growing new industries. People are going to look back 100 years from now and be completely disgusted about driving a car that burns toxic fumes. Its like the steam engine train when you see it coming down the tracks…first thought DIRTY eeeeeiiiuuuu…It will be socially unaceptable. If you are a business developer in the Auto industry or any other power supply…..you better be thinking about a clean image not trying to feed into old toxic industries. The tar sands are going to be short lived. There is no longevity in them. PM S Harper can try to sell it to anyone that will be willing to partner with Canada. but the future is really in Atomic energy. Its a dying cow. People do not want it anymore. Canada is only trying to make a fast buck from this resource and try to convince the world it will always be cheaper than other fuel. Wrong…