Business development is a procedure involved in implementing opportunities and strategies across a company with the aim of boosting revenue and promoting growth. Steven Rindner mentions that this process largely involves pursuing opportunities to help a business to identifying new prospects, convert them into customers and facilitate the overall growth of the company. While this process does seem similar to the sales functions of a firm, they are not the same. However, the business development-related functions, such as establishing and maintaining relationships with prospects and seeking new opportunities to promote growth does simplify the work of a salesperson or sales manager.
The business development strategy of a company can be the key to its success or failure. According to Steven Rindner, business development is largely focused on identifying, nurturing and acquiring new clients and business opportunities for the purpose of driving profitability and growth. The scope of business development can be wide ranging and vary a lot from one organization to another.
Business development representatives are the professionals who are responsible for managing the diverse tasks coming under this domain. They establish strategies, tactics, targets, employees, and prospects for a company, with the goal to find ways to help it grow and deliver long-term value. There are many important responsibilities that are carried out by business development representatives as per Steven Rindner. Here are some of them:
- Qualifying leads: These representatives should leads and identify prospects they wish to engage with. Ideally, leads are qualified with the help of calls, emails, web forms, and social media. The key to qualifying leads is to take their needs into account, and then evaluating whether or not the offerings of the company can cater to those specific concerns.
- Identifying and communicate with prospect: Ideal prospects can be competently identified by qualifying leads and searching for people who fit the ideal buyer persona. The business development representatives can communicate directly with those prospects to get a better understanding of their needs and pain points. This will enable them to understand whether or not the prospect will actually benefit from the company offerings, as that shall influence customer loyalty and retention.
- Proactively seek new business opportunities: No matter whether it is in terms of product lines, opportunities, prospects or markets, seeking out new opportunities is an important aspect of business success. These new opportunities can be identified while networking, doing competition research and even while communicating to prospects and current customers. As any new business opportunity is identified, the representatives must schedule marketing assessments and discovery meetings with the sales representatives on their team, so that they can collaboratively assess whether or not there is a potential for a deal.
In addition to looking after the operations of their own company, business development representatives must also keep an eye on the strategies, products, and target audience of their competitors, and closely watch any new market and industry trends related to them.
