What is Business Development?
Business Development is the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets and relationships
BD creates Long-term value via:
- Increased revenue
- Capatilzing on opportunities
- Developing sustainable customers
- Creating competitive advantage
BD is a skill and is the craft of finding the right prospect and then designing the perfect buying experience for that prospect.
What are the keys to success in BD and Sales?
You must have the knowledge and skills to develop an implement a successful Business Development Strategy
Core BD Knowledge that you need to know:
- Current state of the business (SWOT)
- Industry and sector trends and key issues
- Competitors (SWOT)
- Primary sources of sales
- Customer profiles
- New product/ service opportunities
- Market expansion opportunities
- Long term perspective
- Business costs and savings potential
Core BD Skills that you must have:
- Product expertise
- Networking
- Marketing
- Cold calling
- Winning meetings
- Presenting
- Negotiating
- Cost saving
Join the NoLimits Business Community
Are you a business owner looking to take your business to the next level? Join our innovative community of like-minded professionals and gain access to a wealth of valuable resources, including a community portal to chat with other business owners, ebooks, business development software, and growth events that will transform the way you do business. Best of all, these resources are completely free and will be available to you forever.
But the benefits of joining our NoLimits business community don’t stop there. By becoming part of our community, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with other business owners, share insights and ideas, and build valuable relationships that will help your business thrive. Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity to supercharge your business and join us today!
What are the 7 essential element of a Business Development Plan?
1. Set your destination
The foundation of your business development plan is to define the high-level goals that you want to achieve in the next 12 months.
2. Focus your approach
Tightly defined target markets and buyer personal profiles are crucial for a successful business development plan.
3. Define your marketing channels
The next step is to define the channels in which you will generate leads for each market segment. Here are some typical marketing channels for professional services and technology firms.
- Inbound leads – leads generated on your website with premium content and other offers.
- Paid Search Advertising – leads generated by search engine advertising like Google Adwords.
- Paid Social Advertising – leads generated by social media advertising like Facebook Ads or LinkedIn Sponsored Updates.
- Outbound leads – leads generated by outbound prospecting, primarily targeted email prospecting.
- Referrals – leads that are referred by satisfied customers.
- Networking – leads resulting from your networking efforts. They could be direct leads with prospects you meet or referrals from your network.
- Channel Sales – leads generated by channel partners.
- Cross-sells – these are opportunities to sell new products/services to customers
- Up-sells – these are opportunities to sell higher levels of products/services to customers.
A modern business development plan has to be data-driven!
4. Choose KPIs and create dashboards to keep you on track
A data-driven business development process allows managers to keep on top of KPI performance so that there aren’t any surprises at the end of the quarter.
5. Define your sales process to align with your customer's needs
The key to a scalable revenue generation process is to consistently apply your sales approach in a way that corresponds with your target customer’s buying process.
6. Determine resource needs
Now that you know how you want to grow your business, you need to figure out the most efficient way to execute your business development plan. What are your people, technology, and resource needs?
7. Share your business development plan with stakeholders
Once you have developed a strategic business development plan designed to create long-term value for your business, it’s very important to share your vision with key stakeholders.
By Gary Hales
Join the NoLimits Business Community
Are you a business owner looking to take your business to the next level? Join our innovative community of like-minded professionals and gain access to a wealth of valuable resources, including a community portal to chat with other business owners, ebooks, business development software, and growth events that will transform the way you do business. Best of all, these resources are completely free and will be available to you forever.
But the benefits of joining our NoLimits business community don’t stop there. By becoming part of our community, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with other business owners, share insights and ideas, and build valuable relationships that will help your business thrive. Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity to supercharge your business and join us today!
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