What Is Business Development?

Business development (BD) is the process that is used to identify, nurture and acquire new clients and business opportunities to drive growth and profitability. A business development strategy is a document that describes the strategy you will use to accomplish that goal.

The scope of business development can be wide ranging and vary a lot from organization to organization. Consider the model of how professional services organizations get new business shown in Figure

he first two stages of the model, Attracting Prospects and Build Engagement, are traditional marketing functions. The final stage, Turning Opportunities into Clients, is a traditional sales function. In the traditional role, business development would be looking for new channels of distribution or marketing partners.

But roles are changing and naming conventions evolve. In today's world many firms refer to the entire marketing and sales process as business development. I know, it can be confusing. So let's sort it out a bit.

Top Business Development Strategies

Let's look at some of the most common business development strategies and how they stack up with 'todays buyers.

1.Networking

Networking is probably the most universally used business development strategy. It's built on the theory that professional services buying decisions are rooted in relationships, and the best way to develop new relationships is through face-to-face networking.

It certainly is true that many relationships do develop in that way. And if you are networking with your target audience, you can develop new business. But there are limitations. Today's buyers are very time pressured, and networking is time consuming. It can be very expensive, if you consider travel and time away from the office. Newer digital networking techniques can help on the cost and time front. But even social media requires an investment of time and attention.

2.Referrals

The close relative of networking, referrals are often seen as the mechanism that turns networking and client satisfaction into new business. You establish a relationship, and that person refers new business to you. Satisfied clients do the same.

Clearly, referrals do happen, and many firms get most or all of their business from them. But referrals are passive. They rely on your clients and contacts to identify good prospects for your services and make a referral at the right time.

The problem is referral sources often do not know the full range of how you can help a client. So many referrals are poorly matched to your capabilities. Other well-matched referrals go unmade because your referral source fails to recognize a great prospect when they see one. Finally, many prospects that might be good clients rule out your firm before even talking with you. One recent study puts the number at over 50%. Importantly, there are new digital strategies that can accelerate referrals. Making your specific expertise more visible is the key. This allows people to make better referrals and increases your referral base beyond clients and a few business contacts.

3.Sponsorships and Advertising

Can you develop new business directly by sponsoring events and advertising? It would solve a lot of problems if it works. No more trying to get time from fully utilized billable professionals.

Unfortunately, the results on this front are not very encouraging. Studies have shown that traditional advertising is actually associated with slower growth. Only when advertising is combined with other techniques, such as speaking at an event, do these techniques bear fruit.

The most promising advertising strategy seems to be well-targeted digital advertising. This allows firms to get their messages and offers in front of the right people at a lower cost.

4.Outbound Telephone and Mail

Professional services firms have been using phone calls and mail to directly target potential clients for decades. Target the right firms and roles with a relevant message and you would expect to find new opportunities that can be developed into clients.

There are a couple of key challenges with these strategies. First they are relatively expensive, so they need to be just right to be effective. Second, if you don't catch the prospect at the right time, your offer may have no appeal relevance — and consequently, no impact on business development. The key is to have a very appealing offer delivered to a very qualified and responsive list. It's not easy to get this combination right.

5.Thought Leadership and Content Marketing

Here, the strategy is to make your expertise visible to potential buyers and referral sources. This is accomplished through writing, speaking or publishing content that demonstrates your expertise and how it can be applied to solve client problems.

Books, articles and speaking engagements have long been staples of professional services business development strategy. Many high visibility experts have built their practices and firms upon this strategy. It often takes a good part of a career to execute this approach.

But changing times and technology have reshaped this strategy. With the onset of digital communication it is now easier and much faster to establish your expertise with a target market. Search engines have leveled the playing field so that relatively unknown individuals and firms can become known even outside their physical region. Webinars have democratized public speaking, and blogs and websites give every firm a 24/7 presence. Add in video and social media and the budding expert can access a vastly expanded marketplace.

But these developments also open firms to much greater competition as well. You may find yourself competing with specialists whom you were never aware of. The impact is to raise the stakes on your business development strategy.

6. Combined Strategies

It is common to combine different business development strategies. For example, networking and referrals are frequently used together. And on one level, a combined strategy makes perfect sense. The strength of one strategy can shore up the weakness of another.

But there is a hidden danger. For a strategy to perform at its peak, it must be fully implemented. There is a danger that by attempting to execute too many different strategies you will never completely implement any of them.

Good intentions, no matter how ambitious, are of little real business development value. Under-investment, lack of follow through and inconsistent effort are the bane of effective business development. It is far more effective to fully implement a simple strategy than to dabble in a complex one. Fewer elements, competently implemented, produce better results.

Next, we turn our attention to the tactics used to implement a high-level strategy. But first there is a bit of confusion to clear up.

Roles And Responsibilities

The role of a business development professional will vary from company to company. A small company might have the business development executive looking at overall company growth, while larger teams might have each member dedicated to a particular project, like a product or market launch.

Job titles across different companies could be:

• --Business Development Executive
• --Business Development Strategist
• --Business Development Manager
• --Business Development Director
• --Business Development Consultant
• --Business Development Representative
• --Business Development Associate
• --Business Development Analyst
• --Business Development Officer

As some companies do see the business development role as overlapping with sales or marketing, you might find smaller companies merge the roles or fall under a different job title entirely.

Business Development Skills

As with any role, there is a set of fundamental skills that will lead you to thrive in business development. Here are our top 10 recommendations for what would make you successful in the role. We've put a couple together as sometimes you can't have one skill without the other.

Research & Strategy

Researching cutting-edge industry trends, new product potential, and market expansion is an essential part of the business development role. Strategizing what to do with your research is necessary for implementing business development as you'll need to have an action plan to take your research from theory into practice. Customer Focused With Expectation Management Being customer-focused is excellent, but only if you can give the client what they want without costing your business too much money. Expectation management is an integral part of business development, as it's walking the fine line between offering the client a fantastic product while still making a profit.

Analytically Minded

You need to be able to spot patterns and trends in a wide range of information, from reports and datasets to articles and industry research, to succeed in business development. Drilling down to the core problem is also essential for planning and strategizing along the way.

Communicative & Collaborative

Whether you're pitching to a new client or encouraging different departments to work with you (or each other), having outstanding interpersonal skills is essential for successfully managing many aspects of a business development project. Being willing to help others is also a vital element of strategic partnerships.

Creative Thinking

Businesses can grow only if the business development department has new and innovative ideas. Creative thinking for launching products or solving problems is essential for overcoming obstacles to growth and creating something unique for your clients.

Project Management

You're going to have a lot on your plate, and being hyper-organized is the key to success. Running each new development opportunity as a project will provide you with an overarching strategy, a set plan, and a budget to work with. It also allows you to spin many different plates in one go through implementing timeline management and having excellent planning skills.

Goal-Oriented

Any good business developer will be working towards a set goal. Which new product will reach our customers? Will entering this new market benefit the company? Working towards established and quantifiable goals, and enjoying the achievements, or learning from failures, will make you an asset to a business development team.

Negotiation

You might not be on the sales team, but you'll need to know how to negotiate. Whether you're trying to secure a new client account or negotiate a good deal with a supplier or strategic partnership, negotiation is a crucial part of business development.

Resilience

You're going to be pulled in 100 different directions and you'll need buckets of resilience to learn from mistakes and pick yourself up after your failures. There'll be times when you won't know whether something was successful, and you'll have to keep working through those uncertainties.

Critical Thinking & Decision Making

Making decisions and logical thinking is essential for ensuring business growth and project successes, especially while under pressure. You'll be the person people look to for solutions or advice, so you'll need to make logical decisions both for short and long term planning.

How to Create Your Strategic Business Development Plan

A Business Development Plan is a document that outlines how you implement your business development strategy. It can be a plan for an individual, a practice or the firm as a whole. Its scope covers both the marketing and sales functions, as they are so intertwined in most professional services firms.

Here are the key steps to develop and document your plan. 1.Define your target audience

Who are you trying to attract as new clients? Focus on your “best-fit” clients, not all possible prospects. It is most effective to focus on a narrow target audience. But don't go so narrow that you can't achieve your business goals.

2.Research their issues, buying behavior and your competitors

The more you know about your target audience the better equipped you will be to attract their attention and communicate how you can help them. What are their key business issues? Is your expertise relevant to those issues? Where do they look for advice and inspiration? What is the competitive environment like? How do you stack up?

3.Identify your competitive advantage

What makes you different? Why is that better for your target client? Are you the most cost-effective alternative, or the industry's leading expert? This “positioning” as it is often called, needs to be true, provable and relevant to the prospect at the time they are choosing which firm to work with. Be sure to document this positioning, as you will use it over and over again as you develop your messages and marketing tools.

4.Choose your overall business development strategy

Pick the broad strategy or strategies to reach, engage and convert your prospects. You can start with the list of top strategies provided above. Which strategy fits with the needs and preferences of your target audiences? Which ones best convey your competitive advantage? For example, if you are competing because you have superior industry expertise, a thought leadership/content marketing strategy will likely serve you well.

5.Choose your business development tactics

A great place to start is the list of the most effective tactics we provided above. Make sure that each technique you select fits your target audience and strategy. Remember, it's not about your personal preferences or familiarity with a tactic. It's about what works with the audience.

Also, you will need to balance your choices in two important ways: First, you will need tactics that address each stage of the business development pipeline shown in Figure 1. Some techniques work great for gaining visibility but do not address longer-term nurturing. You need to cover the full funnel.

Second, you need a good balance between digital and traditional techniques. Your research should inform this choice. Be careful about assumptions. Just because you don't use social media doesn't mean that a portion of your prospects don't use it to check you out.

When, how often, which conferences, what topics? Now is the time to settle on the details that turn a broad strategy into a specific plan. Many plans include a content or marketing calendar that lays out the specifics, week by week. If that is too much detail for you, at least document what you will be doing and how often. You will need these details to monitor the implementation of your plan.

Specify how you will monitor implementation and impact Often overlooked, these important considerations often spell the difference between success and failure.

Unimplemented strategies don’t work. Keep track of what you do, and when. This will both motivate action and provide a great starting place as you troubleshoot your strategy. Also monitor and record the impacts you see. The most obvious affect will be how much new business you closed. But you should also monitor new leads or new contacts, at the bare minimum. Finally, don’t neglect important process outcomes such as referrals, new names added to your list and downloads of content that expose prospects and referral sources to your expertise.

If you follow these steps you will end up with a documented business development strategy and a concrete plan to implement and optimize it.