How to succeed in Business Development?
Business Development activities involve a lot of business functions within an organization. It encompasses a lot of functions together. Sales, Marketing, New product/ service initiatives, Strategic Alliances and Customer Success. Irrespective of how the organizational function is set up, the main objectives Top line Revenue growth and Bottom-line profit.
What enables the Business Development Team to achieve Success? Since this function involves a lot of high-end decision making, a successful BD would always be mindful of the following things:
Where is the Organization and the current state of business in terms of Profit and Loss
Knowing the exact factual position will help the BD to assess the current business need and guide in focusing the efforts towards the over all business objective at that time. The end objective for the organization is always growth but there might be some project specific or time specific objectives that need to be met as well. For instance, cost cutting and contribution towards the budget has better impact on the P&L than the revenue growth. But sometimes the company has a growth aspiration and is ready to plough in some resources at a certain time.
Industry Landscape
While intrinsic elements are in your hand, the extrinsic factors are beyond your control. However, this does not mean that you cannot pave your way towards growth. Knowing the industry trends and knowing the market always helps intaking proactive strategic actions. Like nothing more than this pandemic has taught us of how the world where we live in can change in a few months’ time. From the emphasis of on ground to virtual set ups, we have seen how the organizations, that adapted quickly to the needs of the world today were way more ahead in the race.
Customers
Who are your customers and why would they buy? To acquire new business either through direct selling, marketing the features or through strategic partnerships is not easy. However, knowing your customer enables you to present a value proposition that makes sense to the customer.
Look out for opportunities
A successful BDM will always have a pool of ample market opportunities to explore and a hunter mentality to lookout for new ones all the time. Success rate is highly dependent on the pool size. The more you explore, better are the chances of finding the right opportunity to avail!
Strategic Vision
No matter how attractive the low hanging fruit appears and even tastes, a good BDM will always be strategic to ensure the growth and success is sustained. The idea is to chalk out a long term vision and mid-term and short term plans to achieve that. Customer Success plays a major role to ensure that the growth is sustained, and the clients/customers are with you for a long time.
Having the knowledge of these things contributes a great deal to successful Business development. There is no one right or wrong formula but if you keep on churning the right ingredients, you will crack the perfect one!