Imagine working for a company without any employees dedicated to growing and developing the business.
Nobody to challenge you to improve or tell you about new business opportunities, changes in the market, what your competition is up to, or how you can attract your target audience more effectively.
This would make it pretty hard to succeed, don’t you think?
That’s why companies establish business development practices and hire employees to focus on these tasks (among others) to help them grow.
It involves pursuing opportunities to help your business grow, identifying new prospects, and converting more leads into customers. Business development is closely tied to sales — business development teams and representatives are almost always a part of the greater sales org.
Although business development is closely related to sales, it’s important to note what makes them different.
Business Development vs. Sales
As mentioned, business development lives on the greater sales team yet it serves a different function than typical sales work and responsibilities.
Business development is a process that helps your company establish and maintain relationships with prospects, learn about your buyer’s personas, increase brand awareness, and seek new opportunities to promote growth.
In contrast, sales teams sell your product or service to customers and work to convert leads into customers. Business development-related work simplifies the work of a salesperson or sales manager.
Let’s take a closer look at what business development representatives — the people responsible for carrying out the various business development tasks — do next.
Possessing the necessary business development skills and experience will help your BDRs achieve all of their day-to-day tasks and responsibilities.
Business Development Representative Responsibilities
Although some BDR responsibilities may change over time and as your business grows, the following list will provide you with a solid understanding of typical BDR tasks.
1. Qualify leads.
BDRs must qualify leads and pinpoint ideal prospects to determine who they’ll sell to. Typically, leads are qualified through calls, emails, web forms, and social media.
The key to qualifying leads (leads who are assigned to the BDRs as well as leads BDRs identify themselves) is to consider their needs and then determine whether or not your product or software could be a solution for them.
2. Identify and communicate with prospects.
By qualifying leads and searching for people who fit your buyer personas, BDRs will identify ideal prospects. They can communicate with those prospects directly to learn more about their needs and pain points.
This way, BDRs can determine whether or not the prospect will really benefit from your product or service by becoming a customer. This is important because it increases the potential of improved customer loyalty and retention.
Once the BDRs have identified ideal prospects, those prospects can be passed along to a sales rep on the team (or sales manager, if necessary) who can nurture them into making a deal.
3. Proactively seek new business opportunities.
Proactively seeking new opportunities, whether that’s in terms of the product line, markets, prospects, or brand awareness, is an important part of your business’s success. BDRs work to find new business opportunities through networking, researching your competition, and talking to prospects and current customers.
If a new business opportunity is identified, BDRs should schedule marketing assessments and discovery meetings with the sales reps on the team so they can all assess whether or not there’s potential for a deal.
4. Stay up-to-date on competition and new market trends.
It’s important to stay up-to-date on your competition’s strategies, products, and target audience as well as any new market and industry trends.
This will allow you to more effectively identify ideal prospects. It also helps your business prepare for any shifts in the market that could lead to the need for a new approach to qualifying leads and attracting your target audience.
5. Report to salespeople and development managers.
As we reviewed, at most companies, BDRs report to sales reps and sales managers. BDRS must communicate with these higher-ups for multiple reasons such as discussing lead qualification strategies and how to get prospects in touch with sales reps to nurture them into customers.
BDRs also have to report their findings (such as business opportunities and market trends) to sales reps and managers. Relaying this information and collaborating with sales reps and managers to develop and/ or update appropriate strategies for your business and audience is critical to your success as an organization.
6. Promote satisfaction and loyalty.
A BDRs interaction with a prospect might be the very first interaction that prospect ever has with your business. So, creating a great first impression right off the bat is crucial to promote interest early on.
Whether a BDR is working to qualify the lead, learn more about the prospect and their needs, or find the right sales rep to work on a deal with them, their interactions with all of your prospects matter.
Once a BDR researches the prospect or begins interacting with them, ensure they tailor all communication towards the prospect. Customizing all content sent their way shows them they’re being listened to and cared for. These actions are professional and leave a strong impression.
In addition to understanding how BDRs help you grow, business development ideas are another powerful way to engage prospects and identify new business opportunities. Let’s take a look.
Business Development Ideas
Business development ideas are tactics you can implement to positively impact your company in a multitude of different ways. They can help you identify ideal prospects, network more effectively, improve brand awareness, and uncover new opportunities.
The following tactics are here to get you started — every business and team are different, meaning these ideas may or may not be suited for your specific situation. (So, feel free to modify the list!)
Innovate the way you network.
It’s no secret cold calls are less effective than they once were. Instead, innovate the way you network by establishing strong relationships with your prospects. You can do this by meeting with them in person at conferences, trade shows, or events related to your industry.
Browse your online networks including LinkedIn and other social sites for potential customers, too. Reach out to the people who sign up for your email subscription or complete other forms on your site.
Offer consultations.
Offer consultations and assessments for prospects. Talking about the ways your product or service applies to their needs will help prospects decide whether or not they’ll convert.
In contrast, consultations and assessments may also bring to light the ways a prospect is not an ideal fit for your product (which is equally as valuable since it prevents you from wasting any time nurturing them or having to deal with an unsatisfied customer down the road).
Provide sales demos for prospects and leads.
Provide your prospects and leads with sales demos so they can see how your product or service works in action. Ensure these demos are customized to show a prospect or lead how your product solves their challenge. You can share these demos in person, over email, on your website, or via video chat.
Nurture prospects.
Remember to nurture your prospects, whether it’s by phone call, email, meeting, or another mode of communication. The point of lead nurturing is to provide any information needed about your product or service so your prospects can decide whether or not they want to make a purchase.
By nurturing your leads, you’ll be able to tailor the content regarding your brand and product so your leads can better understand how your product will solve their specific pain points. You’ll also be able to show your support for the prospect and ensure they feel heard and understood by your company.
Provide prospects with several types of content.
Provide your prospects with different content types such as blogs, videos, and social media posts so they can learn more about your brand and product or service.
It’s best to meet your prospects where they are and provide the content they prefer to read or watch. Ensure all of this content is downloadable and/ or shareable so prospects can send it to their team members to show them why your solution is their best option.
Communicate with marketing.
Although business development lives in the sales department, that doesn’t mean internal business development work only involves other members of the sales team. Host regular meetings and maintain open lines of communication with the departments at your company that impact your ability to succeed such as marketing and product development.
Think about it this way: Marketing creates content and campaigns for your target audience about how your product or service resolves their challenges. So, why wouldn’t you want to talk to them about the blogs, campaigns, social media posts, and website content they’re creating for the people you’re selling to?
Your reps and BDRs can share any content the marketing team creates directly with prospects to help them convert, as well as inform the marketing team of any content they feel is missing for prospects.
Business Development Process
A business development process is the combination of steps your business takes to grow effectively, boost revenue, improve relationships with leads, and more. These steps are what your business development team will work on every day. It includes everything related to delighting customers along each part of the buyer’s journey.
By working through your business development process, your team will have a strong understanding of your organization-wide goals, sales targets, current business situation, who your target audience members are, and more.
By compiling these elements of business development and sharing them among your team, you create an actionable business development strategy or plan that encourages and promotes success and growth. Let’s review the different steps involved in creating your business development plan next.
The purpose of a business development plan (or strategy) is to set realistic goals and targets that allow your reps to grow the business, close more deals, identify prospects, align members of the sales team (and other teams, company-wide), and convert more leads.
1. Craft an elevator pitch.
You can simplify any initial communication with prospects by having an elevator pitch ready to go. This elevator pitch should explain your company’s mission and how your product or service can solve the needs of your target audience. Your elevator pitch should grab the attention of prospects and leads, and get them excited to learn more about what you offer.
Additionally, you can help your team determine which elevator pitches used by both BDRs and reps are most successful in converting leads and then document it in your greater strategy so everyone has access to it.
2. Set SMART goals.
Set SMART goals for your strategy — meaning, make sure your targets are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. By creating SMART goals for your business development plan, you’ll be able to ensure these goals are aligned with those of your entire company.
For example, if one of your goals is to increase your number of identified qualified leads this quarter by 5{da2ef7ff2781dfb5887db3e3a6cf03c7c894e23a27536de3f64bd799872794d1}, make the goal specific by determining the type of prospects you’ll focus on and how you’ll identify them.
Then, decide how you’ll measure your success — perhaps by measuring the number of these prospects who then go on to talk with a sales rep to learn more about the product or service.
You determine this goal is attainable due to the fact you increased your number of qualified leads last quarter by 3{da2ef7ff2781dfb5887db3e3a6cf03c7c894e23a27536de3f64bd799872794d1}. 5{da2ef7ff2781dfb5887db3e3a6cf03c7c894e23a27536de3f64bd799872794d1} isn’t too much of a leap.
Your goal is relevant because you know it’ll help your business grow — it pushes you to make a greater impact on your team by contributing to the sales team’s ability to close more deals and boost revenue. Lastly, it’s timely because you’ve set this goal for the quarter.
3. Conduct a SWOT analysis.
As mentioned above, part of any role in business development is to stay up-to-date on market and industry trends and understand your competition. This is where SWOT analysis comes in handy — SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The key to using SWOT analysis correctly is to have a clear goal in mind first.
For example, if your goal is to determine the best way to handle outreach with prospects, you can begin talking to your BDRs, sales reps, sales managers, and current customers about what works best for them.
Next, think about your strengths — what does your business do well? Maybe you have a large support team that provides helpful onboarding for new customers. Or you have several remote reps who can meet face-to-face with prospects in their desired location.
(You might have multiple strengths that make you stand out, so don’t be afraid to list them all and which ones have the greatest impact on your customers.)
Now, think about your weaknesses. Are your product’s limited offerings requiring some leads to consider your competition’s product in addition to yours? Is the need for your product growing faster than your production, or faster than you’re able to establish a large customer support team to assist your customers?
Onto your business opportunities. Think about where you’re going as a business and what you know you can accomplish. For example, maybe your business has recently partnered with another company that can help you boost brand awareness and attract a much broader base of leads and customers.
Lastly, who are your threats? Think about your current competition — who’s producing a product or service like yours and is attracting a similar target audience? Who could become your competition in the future — is there a market gap that another company (new or established) could identify the need for and begin selling?
SWOT analysis allows you to identify the ways your company can create opportunities to grow and expand. It also helps how you establish new processes to address any weaknesses or threats such as identifying more qualified leads, efficiently converting prospects into customers, and shortening the sales cycle.
4. Determine how you’ll measure success.
Depending on the SMART goals you created and the SWOT analysis you performed, you’ll also need to decide how you’re going to measure your business development success.
Here are some examples of common business development KPIs that can help you analyze your efforts:
- Company growth
- Changes in revenue
- Lead conversion rate
- Leads generated per month/ quarter/ predetermined time
- Prospect and customer satisfaction
- Pipeline value
- Reach
5. Set a budget.
Depending on the type of business development goals you set for the team, you may determine you need to set a budget. Consider your resources, the cost of any previous business development strategies you’ve developed, and other important operational line items (what you need, who’s involved, etc.).
Collaborate with the greater team to determine the amount you’re willing to, and need to, spend on business development to get the process started at your company.
6. Always keep your target audience in mind.
Whatever it is you’re working towards, keep your target audience and ideal prospects in mind. Assess their needs and understand exactly how your business and product or service will meet their pain points.
After all, this audience is the group who is most likely to buy your product. Make sure your plan addresses them and their needs so your team can convert more of them and grow your business.
7. Choose an outreach strategy.
As we’ve reviewed above, a major component of business development is finding new prospects and potential customers. To find new prospects, you’ll need to decide how you’ll perform outreach, or connect with these potential customers. Here are some ideas:
- Network
- Use referrals
- Upsell and cross-sell
- Sponsorship and advertisement
Also, review any expectations or guardrails related to outreach reps are held to so your business has only professional and on-brand interactions with prospects.
Congrats! You’ve just completed your business development plan — with your strategy and ideas, your business will be growing in no time.
Business Development Helps You Grow Better
Business development is a crucial part of any successful company. It’s how you determine the best ways to boost revenue, identify your ideal prospects, generate more leads, and close more deals.
Think about how you can make a strong business development plan and ensure you have the right group of business development reps so you can begin growing your business today.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
SOURCE: Sales – Read entire story here.