Business Development Requires a Multitude of Skills

 Business development is one of the functions that every company, from inception to exit, performs at one time or another. It's also one of the most "unbounded" roles within a company. For some companies, business development means acquiring new customers. Others, it means raising capital. And, for yet another set of people, it means to build alliances and partnerships.

Whatever the term ultimately means to anyone, it is a function that clearly requires a multitude of skills. Let's take for example, raising money. A business development person in a small startup company would be responsible for building relationships to raise venture capital and/or general financing for startup operations. Oftentimes, the reason this function falls under business development is because the business developer is building strategic partner relationships. Some of these strategic partners deem the relationship critical to grow new business opportunities. In that respect, the strategic partner will then invest money in return for an equity stake in the startup company.

In the case of building and managing partnerships, the business development team is often called Alliances. In this example, business development or Alliance is responsible for recruiting, managing, and supporting partner companies. In addition to this, the Alliances organization would also have a responsibility for driving a certain amount of revenue through the partners, as well. This alliance function essentially builds a core ecosystem around the host company. The ecosystem effectively allows the host company to be in more markets, capture certain geographic territories, or even drive more revenue than it could on its own.

Building joint ventures is also a form of business development activity. There are times when a company needs to work together on a specific business opportunity. The opportunity could be related to driving new business in a specific country or perhaps in a particular industry. The two companies would develop an operating agreement under which they will work together. Shared revenue and expenses, team alignment and sales targets are examples of agreements created as part of this joint venture relationship.

Driving sales is another function where business development is often categorized. This is especially true when a company is first starting off in business. Many small companies categorize their sales efforts as business development rather than sales. One of the reasons for this is because the territory is new or perhaps the product line is untested with customers. The business development group is responsible then for selling new business in an uncharted environment.

Corporate development is another function often interrelated with business development. In general, though, a corporate development function handles aspects of mergers and acquisitions for a company. Their role is to identify companies that have synergistic business models and would complement the host company. In many aspects, a corporate development officer for a company has similar skill sets and experience as all of the above organizational roles.

As one can ascertain, business development is a "catch-all" term that can encompass many different roles within an organization. That said, the skill set and experience for a business development executive is fairly broad. He/she must be versed in areas, such as building partnerships, strategy, technology, geographic markets, sales, and, of course, finance. In addition, understanding the specific industry in which the company operates is icing on the proverbial cake.

The business development executive is a key contributor to the success of a company. This individual, if used properly, can help create the very foundation on which a company operates.

Sales Management - Selling and Business Development in the 21st Century

 The marketing components that used to generate leads -- product, performance, promotion and price --are no longer effective. The tools for selling -- lots of sales calls, lunches, golf and give-always -- are expensive and inefficient. In the 21st century, selling and business development require the following:

* Prospecting Using the Internet
* Relationship Selling
* Network Selling and
* Investigative Selling.

Prospecting Using the Internet

Cold calling is dead. It's not productive. It's demoralizing. It's expensive. Prospecting in the 21st century involves setting the stage for people and companies to find you so that you can solve their problems. Flaunting advertisements and brochures is also a waste. Everyone goes to the Internet these days to find solutions to their problems. Therefore, the successful sales person will have to know how to use the Internet to generate qualified leads. Corporations should have an Internet program, but territory and product-line sales people should have their own Internet marketing program as well. And it's not about having a website, it's much more. This is the passive side of prospecting. This means that sales and business development professionals must set up an aggressive Internet Marketing process for their territory or product so that the people they want to do business with will come to them.

Relationship Selling

The other 21st Century prospecting element is the active side of prospecting. This is where you use professional relationships to find out about problems or opportunities where you can assist. There are so many opportunities for a sales person or account manager to discover within their existing and old/lost accounts. Using professional relationships make this prospecting method effective and easy.

Sales and Business Development people with professional relationships are seen as a resource to protect or enhance buyers' careers. These people will be open to give information and coach you for cross-sells into their business unit, associate divisions and/or other product lines. If you develop professional relationships, these people will give you qualified leads, buy more and more from you, and refer you to others.

Network Selling

However, one has to learn how to use these relationships to get networked to others. There are two focuses for successful selling in the 21 Century:

1. You must spread like a virus in your customers' organizations. I use the phrase - move up and out.

2. You must get to the profit-center leaders, C-level executives, and senior staff of the business units you sell into and develop professional relationships with these people to effectively close sales, cross-sell and be seen as the preferred supplier. Hanging out with the subordinates will never secure your position with your customers.

The only way you'll move up and out and connect with the leaders is by using your professional relationships to network you to others. People with whom you've developed credibility -- your Golden Network as I call it -- will help you if asked. But if they are not asked for a referral and introduction to others, they will rarely offer to connect you with the leaders and others you should be meeting. So you must ask for their help.

To make the networking process productive, what you ask for, how you ask for it, and where you look for help will make all the difference between getting to the right people and getting to useless people for your initiative. This process is Network Selling.

Investigative Selling

Once a sales or business development person connects with a person of value, using his or her network connection, the goal is to convert that individual into his or her Golden Network. In other words the sales or BD person will have to develop a professional relationship with this new contact.

People will consider another individual a professional relationship only if there is something in it for them. So a sales or BD person needs to investigate the critical drivers of their target contact in order to learn what this person values that s/he can deliver. Everyone is different and without knowing each individual's triggers, a sales person will flounder or worst yet, become annoying. But if the sales person can make the connections between the desires and the deliverables, a relationship can be established, and then this new contact will continue networking you up and out until you are connected to the leaders and their staffs.

The process for determining one's triggers is Investigative Selling. It requires knowing the questions to ask and how to ask them. Although this sounds simple, it requires finesse, skill and confidence. Investigative Selling also requires effective listening, and the ability to expose and entice. Both of these are advanced skills never taught in schools and rarely taught in product or sales training. So the successful sales or business development person will have to learn these Investigative Selling skills and be able to take them seamlessly to the street.

The sooner the sales or business development person masters these Internet Marketing, Relationships, Network and Investigative Selling Skills, the sooner sales will close and closing ratios rise.

Tips For An Outsourcing Business

 Understand the handling of the business before contemplating outsourcing it offshore. Determine what facet of the business you want to outsource, why you want to do so, who will handle the offshore project and the time frame for its completion. Contact the outsourcing business company to do the necessary things.

Tips for outsourcing:

1. Define the current process. It allows you to understand the requirements and details of what actually needs to be done. It should be non-ambiguous and offer a measurement method. Information of specific customer queries and time required is of great help while transferring that process over to your new outsourcing partner.

2. Do a cost analysis of the proposed process. Have a realistic and solid estimate of the current operating costs of the process under consideration for outsourcing. Consider all the costs involved, even the marginalized expenditure to have a clear picture. The in-house calls can be answered within a certain time because of available support, but on transfer it can take longer both in time and in cost. Consider the costs honestly to work out the beneficial cost saving for the business.

3. Manage the relationship. Make efforts to establish a good relationship. Have a clear understanding of transfer terms. Communication channels should always be open with a flexible attitude. A liaison officer should take responsibility to address staff concerns of their jobs. He should keep the staff informed and have an effective and regular dialogue within the company. Transfer of employees should conform to employment legislation. A flexible contract benefiting both parties can be drafted. It allows you to innovate to changing circumstances and renegotiate the contract before the term ends for the employee's benefit.

4. Aim for smooth transition. Even with good planning, a lot of times the transition or migration of an employee can cause many problems. It can be litigator in nature or lead to severance of a good employee. Since it's a learning curve for both the parties, use this opportunity to modify the service level agreement (SLA) for the future.

5. Measure success. Quantify and measure the benefits your company accrues for outsourcing. The foremost is the financial benefit for the company. It could also lead to notching higher profile and credibility for your company. Outsourcing means fewer defects in your work and greater speed for work completion in optimum cost and time frame.

6. Plan a clear exit strategy. Have a clear exit term integrated in your service level agreement (SLA). Clarify who owns what and how much percentage of both movable/immovable assets. Specify the compensation or severance due in case of end of partnership. This clause is very important for amicable dissolution of collaboration if the relationship ends prematurely or simply runs its course.

Off shoring a part of your business makes sound economic sense, as it can lead to substantially reduced operating costs. A clear understanding of the outsourced work will avoid many a pitfall later and yield better results.

Business Meeting Creativity Ideas

Developing an innovative spirit in the workplace doesn't require extraordinary measures. As a manager, you can experiment with simple ideas that merely break routines, allowing your employees permission to drop the facade that we all don to some degree when we punch the clock. Here are a few ideas that will help you lighten things up for your staff and get their creative juices flowing, if you have the courage to take the leap.

1. Dart Board

Start every staff meeting by allowing everyone a shot at the dart board. Best shot gets to kick off the meeting, appoint the moderator, or tell what they did over the weekend. Starts things off on a playful note and gets your people out of their chairs. For safety purposes, stick with the magnetic or Velcro variety.

2. Colored Markers for the Flip Chart

Sounds simple, but we are programmed from an early age to correlate the amalgamation of colors with the awakening of our imaginations. If you need further evidence of this phenomenon, observe a classroom full of first graders the next time a teacher instructs them to put away their math books and take out their crayons. And experts agree that the key to creativity lies in the ability to awaken the child inside each of us.

3. Music Creativity

Ask each team member to write a 4-line verse to a song that relates to their job duties, hobbies, business ideas, etc. Go around the room and ask them to sing, rap, or simply recite (military cadence perhaps) their verse. Print the
compilation in the next company newsletter to get a little PR for your department or office (others in the organization might want to transfer in when they realize that you've given your staff permission to have fun).

4. Music Creativity II

Ask your staff to bring in a CD with a song that describes their personality, work attitude, or how their weekend went. Play excerpts before the meeting for a laugh.

5. To Serve Mankind

Ask your staff to convey what they did over the weekend that was a service to another person, charitable organization, or noble cause. Vote to determine whose action was most heroic and award a gift certificate to the winner, let them leave work early on Friday, or take a longer than usual lunch break. This will encourage your staff to think of new ways to develop a sense of community. It will also help your people feel good about their co-workers, get to know them better, and give them a sense of pride in the organization.

6. Vocabulary Expansion

Ask your team to bring a rarely used or obscure word to the next meeting. Have them use it in a context that is applicable to your business.

7. Memory Exercise

Read a list of 10 or 15 things, preferably something related to your business, your industry, or to a customer and give an award to the person who can commit the most items to memory. This exercise can help your staff become more familiar with your organization and with your customers. Memory development is also a key to developing new customer relationships that will help your business prosper.

8. "If I Ran This Place..."

Ask your staff what they would consider the ideal job, the ideal workplace, and the ideal location. You can't transform your place into utopia, but you might gain some insight into feasible, marginal changes that will improve things. Now that you have them thinking without barriers, ask them what they would do first or different if they ran the company, office, or department. You'll be surprised by the answers.

9. Show and Tell

Have your staff bring something that they've created, that they are proud of, or from their childhood that the group would find interesting or funny. Demonstrate an interesting or unusual talent, perhaps. We loved this game when we were in kindergarten, and for some reason they made us stop playing as we got older.

10. Top 10 Lists

Until David Letterman decides to pursue intellectual property infringement, go ahead and try this one. Give a topic at your staff meeting, and ask for the answers the following week. Remember to keep it clean and non-offensive. Have your staff rank the answers and use a point system to determine the winner.

Establishing an Online Business Development Strategy

If you have any aspirations of earning an income online you will need to establish a business development strategy. The reasons are simple, your business venture will have to have a product or service, a way to promote it to the public and a plan to make improvements as needed. In this way your chances for online success will increase dramatically. When working online you will need to adapt to an ever changing environment by adopting new and improved strategies as you move forward, you must evolve!

Here are the 3 stages of any successful online business venture you will need to address when working online.

Creation Stage

Perhaps the most critical stage of developing any business venture is the creation of the ideas and/or concepts upon which the venture is to be based. Without a viable product or service all other efforts from this point forward will be futile. It is this point of the developmental process that will 'dictate' the strategies and direction of all other future efforts!

Innovation or creative energy can make you a shining shine and a tidy profit. whether it is a new product, new marketing tactic, new niche or something other!

Application Stage

Applying your innovations or creations takes another type of energy which involves more patience and diligence. Although not the flamboyance of the previous 'creative genius' stage this energy takes your idea and builds it into something that can deliver you financial security and online success.

Creativity is great and obviously required but until it is applied it is merely a dream. The actual application is what turns your ideas into a reality and what can actually make you money. At this point you are now bringing together your product idea(s) and blending them with your marketing strategies. Here is where you begin to enact your plan and make your creations available to the marketplace.

Refinement Stage

This stage of the business building process is ongoing as alterations will need to be make to adjust to changing demands and the marketplace in general. Refinements will likely need to be made to not only your marketing strategy but also quite possibly to your original creation (product) itself. This is a very natural and expected part of the 'evolution' of your business venture and what will make it grow stronger. You are merely adapting to the changing environment!

When starting out online to earn an income it is advisable to have some sort of business development strategy. A plan like this will enable you to put together and grow your business venture from the early stages into an income earning juggernaut. In fact your long term online success is dependent upon establishing and implementing such a plan! As you can see from the 3 stages reviewed above these tactical measure are not complicated, but do not let their simplicity fool you. For anybody with the aspirations of earning a good income by working online a strategy like this will be critical in terms of the degree of success achieved

Common Functions of Business Development Department

Business development is being practiced by the almost all the major companies. It is now being adopted by the small business too as they also look forward to grow. Business expansion needs a set of skills and different approaches. There no single business strategy that could fit every business. Therefore, every firm or organization needs to work hard, identify its requirements and then work on them. There are a lot of functions which a business development department or a business development teams needs perform. Some common functions of business expansion department are as follows:

Thinking of new ideas 

The very first function of a business growth team or department is to think of new ways of doing business. They should either come with a new idea or they should bring improvement in the existing processes. This function of business development department brings continuous improvement in the business process and techniques.

Gather capital 

The main responsibility of gathering funds is on the finance department of any organization but the business growth department needs to play an important role in this regard. They need to gather the resources from which they can take up capital to enhance the business.

Managing relationships 

Managing relationships is one of the most important duties of the business development department. They need to manage the relationships with the existing clients whereas build relations with the new clients. In today's business world it is difficult to find a reliable and loyal client. And it is even more difficult to retain them. Therefore, a business development manager or the business development team manages the relations with the clients. Tries to identify their problems and report to the company so that the problems could be solved. In other words they are the one to make sure that the client is getting the maximum satisfaction or not.

Building joint ventures 

At times certain situations occur when a single business cannot handle a project and it needs the help of another business to run the project successfully. In such situations business enter into joint venture contracts and start join venture projects. There are a lot of examples in the business world where two major organizations start a single project. The business growth department of the organization is liable to find the most reliable business partners and maintain good long-term relations with them too.

Fulfilling commitments 

Fulfilling the commitments is the key to business development. One of the responsibilities of the business development department is that they must fulfill the commitments made by the clients. They must communicate with the other departments of the organization effectively and represent their organization in front of the business clients. They must be true and honest with the clients and they must make it sure that the commitments are being fulfilled.

Business Development Requires a Multitude of Skills

Business development is one of the functions that every company, from inception to exit, performs at one time or another. It's also one of the most "unbounded" roles within a company. For some companies, business development means acquiring new customers. Others, it means raising capital. And, for yet another set of people, it means to build alliances and partnerships.

Whatever the term ultimately means to anyone, it is a function that clearly requires a multitude of skills. Let's take for example, raising money. A business development person in a small startup company would be responsible for building relationships to raise venture capital and/or general financing for startup operations. Oftentimes, the reason this function falls under business development is because the business developer is building strategic partner relationships. Some of these strategic partners deem the relationship critical to grow new business opportunities. In that respect, the strategic partner will then invest money in return for an equity stake in the startup company.

In the case of building and managing partnerships, the business development team is often called Alliances. In this example, business development or Alliance is responsible for recruiting, managing, and supporting partner companies. In addition to this, the Alliances organization would also have a responsibility for driving a certain amount of revenue through the partners, as well. This alliance function essentially builds a core ecosystem around the host company. The ecosystem effectively allows the host company to be in more markets, capture certain geographic territories, or even drive more revenue than it could on its own.

Building joint ventures is also a form of business development activity. There are times when a company needs to work together on a specific business opportunity. The opportunity could be related to driving new business in a specific country or perhaps in a particular industry. The two companies would develop an operating agreement under which they will work together. Shared revenue and expenses, team alignment and sales targets are examples of agreements created as part of this joint venture relationship.

Driving sales is another function where business development is often categorized. This is especially true when a company is first starting off in business. Many small companies categorize their sales efforts as business development rather than sales. One of the reasons for this is because the territory is new or perhaps the product line is untested with customers. The business development group is responsible then for selling new business in an uncharted environment.

Corporate development is another function often interrelated with business development. In general, though, a corporate development function handles aspects of mergers and acquisitions for a company. Their role is to identify companies that have synergistic business models and would complement the host company. In many aspects, a corporate development officer for a company has similar skill sets and experience as all of the above organizational roles.

As one can ascertain, business development is a "catch-all" term that can encompass many different roles within an organization. That said, the skill set and experience for a business development executive is fairly broad. He/she must be versed in areas, such as building partnerships, strategy, technology, geographic markets, sales, and, of course, finance. In addition, understanding the specific industry in which the company operates is icing on the proverbial cake.

The business development executive is a key contributor to the success of a company. This individual, if used properly, can help create the very foundation on which a company operates.