Business Development Strategy

Whoever works as a business developer knows that it can be challenging to explain what they do. So when peeps around them get to know that they work in “business development,” most of them will look at you like you’re crazy.

So don’t worry if you need to understand business development fully-You’re not the only one. Putting business development into concise pieces is the best way to understand it. And we are here to do just that for you.

Read on to learn about all the aspects of company development:

What does Business Development (BD) mean?

Forbes’s latest article says that business development (BD) is “the process of using markets, customers, and relationships to create long-term value for an organization.” There is still a huge range of tasks that go into BD. Every step in developing a business plan helps the business get better. One could argue, though, that this is true of everything that every business member does.

So, what is different about business development?

BD is understandable if you consider it an umbrella of business development services that helps all other departments improve. BD is not selling, but it helps make sales better. It is also not marketing, but it makes marketing better.

When you look at BD this way, you can see how complicated it is. You have to look at all business development services to make your understanding better. So, for a business developer to make a difference, he just needs to know everything about a business.

Business Development: A Basic Overview of Activities

1. Research-Developing a Business Plan

Knowing your environment is the first step. Next, learning about your market, competitors, industry, and customers would be best. After all, you can only do something well if you understand it well enough.

Run full market research, or if your company has already done it, read it when you can. Then, ask Google stupid questions to find out how big your market is, what trends are important, and anything else that can help you move forward.

You’re just one of many trying to take over the market, so ensure you spend some time looking at your competitors. Your competitors are a great way to get ideas and can help you find new ways to grow your business.

You can learn a lot about your competitors by reading what their customers say about them, which is bad. You’ll find golden chances to set yourself apart and give your customers something they want. Last, research your customers to find out what they need and how your service or product helps them.

2 – Ecosystem Mapping-Developing a Business Plan

Second, ecosystem mapping is one of the most common ways to grow a business. Once you know where you stand in the market, you need to find the people who can help you reach your goals and who are important to you.

Think about all the people and groups that could help you get your end customers, and try to build close relationships with them. In general, you should look at organizations, the media, companies that offer services that complement yours, or influential people.

But of course, each company has its narrative, so you need to dig deeper to identify specific stakeholders important to your case. It’s about more than finding quick ways to get results, too. To build an ecosystem, you must know what your stakeholders want and ensure you can help their businesses.

3: Find Growth Opportunities-Developing a Business Plan

Seeing growth opportunities is, of course, among the most common business development strategy. That’s why you were hired in the first place. Though it’s also one of the hardest things to understand, what’s the deal? How do you look for chances? What is a chance, anyway?

Opportunities are everywhere, but you need the plan to see them. One good idea is to watch for new market trends and consider ways your business can take advantage of them. For example, earlier this year, Clubhouse, an app where you could listen to actual conversations and talk to your favorite people, was the talk of the town. It grew quickly, from 2 million users in January 2021 to 10 million just five months later. Then, many businesses jumped on it, and their reach grew overnight.

Don’t stop at trends. Speak to your customers, look at what’s on social media, go to events, look at deals that didn’t work out, ask your partners, etc. The main point is that you need to think uniquely and not just stick to things you know are safe and have always done.

4 – Idea Generation-Developing a Business Plan

Now that you’ve found some good chances, you must find ways to take advantage of them. Remember that an opportunity on its own doesn’t mean your business will grow. You must make the most of the chance and change it to fit your business development strategy.

You may think, “I’m not very creative; I don’t have those brilliant ideas in the shower. How do I do it?

The good news is that coming up with ideas is a process, and there are many ways to develop great ideas. For instance, you can use mindmaps to organize your ideas and show how different ideas can be linked to make new ones.

Collaboration is another tool you can use. This means talking about things with people who might have different ideas than you. Putting together the different ideas will help you come to conclusions that have yet to be considered.

Or, if you like being free, you can start “blue-sky thinking,” which means “brainstorming without limits.” The primary goal of this method is to help you break down barriers and look at problems differently. When coming up with new business development ideas, the only thing that matters is to keep an open mind and think creatively.

5 – Experimentation-Developing a Business Plan

Idea generation is the first step of experimentation, another common way to grow a business. Even if your ideas look great, testing them is the only way to know if they work. Experimenting means taking your idea apart, figuring out what you want to do with it, and making a plan for how to do it. And, of course, you need to keep an eye on your experiment to see if you’re approaching your goals.

You can try out many different types of business development experiments. For example, you can try to reach your audience through a channel you’ve never used. Or, you can improve your emails and do some A/B tests to see what your stakeholders like best. Once you have some data from your experiments, do more of the things that worked best and stop doing the ones that didn’t.

6 – Project Management-Developing a Business Plan

Business developers have to be great at running projects. This is because you will work with a lot of different people on a lot of different tasks. As a business developer, you must be able to track your time well and keep things organized.

Also, it would be best if you were good at talking to people in other departments or outside the company to reach your goals. Finally, it would be best if you were a master at documenting procedures to quickly scale the actions that produce the best outcomes.

There are many ways to work with others to help yourself. Our favorite app is Trello, which easily keeps track of complicated projects and is easy to use. Hubspot, Miro, and Canva are also in our tool stack. They help our business development team keep track of their tasks and work better with the design and marketing teams.

7 – Partnership Management

As a business developer, the important part of your position is to make and keep partnerships. Therefore, setting up a good process for managing partnerships is important to reach your goal.

To find the best partners to help you reach your goals, you should always start by setting clear goals for yourself. Then, once you know what you want to achieve, you can reach out to possible partners and choose the best ones.

Strategic partnerships involve a lot of negotiating and building trust, so you need to be proficient at asking questions, actively listening, and negotiating. Partnerships can help you skyrocket your results, but only if both sides benefit.

8 Analyze Data

Data analysis is the last thing on the common business development tasks list. Yet, business developers often need to explain what they do because they don’t seem to be getting results. When your boss keeps asking you what you’re doing, you don’t know what to say or do.

That’s never a good place to be, but you can fix it by looking at the facts and letting them speak for themselves. When you work on a lot of different tasks, especially ones that take a long time, it can be challenging.

But there is a way to measure every business development activity, and the key is to devise measurable KPIs for each. In short, you need to put a number on it!

For example, if your job is to find a partner, you can track how many potential partners you consult in a month and how many of them decide to work with you.

After keeping track of your activities, put them together in a report to see a bigger picture of what you’ve been doing. From here, you can make your work better, more accurate, and more effective.