What is the Role of a Business Development Professional?

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What is the Role of a Business Development Professional?

If you are considering hiring a business development professional for your company, or if you have recently been put in charge of business development, it can be difficult to know exactly what that job entails. If you aren’t sure what the role and responsibilities of a business development professional are, it will be impossible to hire the right person for the job or get the job done yourself.

As with any position, a complete and detailed job description is essential. Coming up with a list of requirements that a business development professional must fill is the best way to ensure that the job gets done right.

Business development involves increasing the exposure of a company while enhancing that company’s public image so that it attracts more business. In order to do this, there are five general areas that a business development professional must concentrate on:

1. Market Research. If you don’t know where your company currently stands and/or where it is headed, you need to—quickly. The first step is finding out exactly what the company’s target audience looks like. This involves gathering specific information about the company’s geographic market, as well as the specific industry and market trends in that area.

2. Competitive Analysis. In order to achieve your desired market position and share, you need to know your competitors. What do they offer clients that you can offer? How can you bring more value to your target audience so that they will chose you over the competition?
Current Client Assessments. Before you can secure new clients, you need to know how you are viewed by current customers. This involves things like warm calling or sending out customer surveys to gage satisfaction with your product and services.

3. Prospective Client Assessments. To assess where you stand with prospective clients, approach these prospects through things like email marketing and cold calls. Further, keep in mind that it may take more than one touch to get the information you require so follow-up is crucial.

4. Networking. New business development involves a lot of networking. Exhibitions, seminars, conferences and tradeshows are great places to show off your company, connect with current customers and meet new ones. If you find yourself spending a majority of your time in the office, you probably aren’t getting the job done.

Business development is a challenging role but its rewards are great. The most successful business development professionals are willing to get out there, get their company noticed and bring in the number and type of clients necessary for success.

All Leads are Not Created Equal

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All Leads are Not Created Equal

The best way to get more out of your marketing and sales efforts is by understanding the relationship between marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. Not all leads are created equal, and even subtle differences between them can lead to big differences in your conversion rates.

Marketing Qualified Leads vs. Sales Qualified Leads

Marketing qualified leads (MQL) and sales qualified leads (SQL) are often discussed in the world of business, yet seldom well understood. Even more confusion arises when companies in the same industry have different definitions of each of these terms. In general, a marketing qualified lead is an inquiry, or curiosity about a product or service that can be nurtured through marketing. An MQL requires further marketing attention to continue the journey down the sales funnel. A sales qualified lead is already further down the sales funnel and generally ready to engage with your sales department.

The Leads-to-Close Ratio

The leads-to-close ratio is an important metric in marketing and sales. This figure is the number of leads you have received over a specified time period divided by the leads you have actually closed. The leads-to-close ratio is essential for determining the effectiveness of your current marketing and sales efforts. For example, if you generate many leads with few closed sales, it is likely that a glitch in your sales process is preventing you from fully capitalizing on the success of your lead generation efforts.

Synergy between Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified Leads

In most cases, an MQL has been drawn in by your marketing efforts but requires nurturing through your sales team to follow the sales funnel through to completion. These leads are interested in your products, but more information, customer service or experience is needed before they feel comfortable making a purchase. There is also a synergetic relationship between marketing qualified and sales qualified leads. Many of the sales qualified leads your business generates have been nurtured through the marketing qualified lead stage. Others enter the sales funnel independently. The transition from MQL to SQL can be a smooth one if marketing sales leads are transferred seamlessly to your sales team.

With a better understanding of the differences and similarities between marketing qualified and sales qualified leads, you can tailor your sales funnel for optimum conversions. The leads-to-close ratio will help you assess the effectiveness of your efforts and identify shortcomings along the way. This is often a cyclic process that allows for continual growth in a changing market. Working with a lead generation company can help you optimize this process for even faster results.

Understanding the Difference Between Sales and Business Development

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Understanding the Difference Between Sales and Business Development

Sales, marketing and business development. They are all the same, right? Actually, no. Sales, marketing and business development are all very different tasks and it is important to know how they differ from one another so that your business is as successful as possible.

While many small businesses, out of necessity, may have just one person in charge of sales, marketing and business development tasks, it is still important to differentiate between the three job descriptions because each job has a very different objective, as shown here:

  • Business Development: An individual in charge of business development identifies and implements new areas of business. These include things like new distribution channels, new markets and/or new products. Those in business development never sell a particular product or service.
  • Marketing: A marketing professional will attract customers by identifying the needs of a certain type of customer. Marketing is a means of working toward the goal of getting products sold to customers. It also plays a role in gathering and confirming the particular features or benefits of a product or service that is desired by customers.
  • Sales: In the most basic terms, sales means transactions. A sale is what happens once a customer has been identified. A salesperson is responsible for selling a product or service at a determined price.

Here is another way to look at it. New business builds or creates new buildings. Marketing gets people through the door. Sales gets people from the door to the cash register. Sales professionals should always be closing but new business development professionals should always be opening!

If you are a business development professional you need to be able to look out for the needs of the entire company for which you work. Much of your day-to-day tasks will be spent with managers from different departments and helping them prepare for presentations, for example.

Business development and sales professionals are two parts of a whole. They both work to grow a business but they do it in different ways. Only when they do it correctly, however, will a business grow and flourish.

Is Your Sales Team Qualifying Leads?

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Is Your Sales Team Qualifying Leads?

Salespeople are good talkers. If they weren’t, they probably wouldn’t be in sales. While this is a great quality to possess, there are times when a salesperson needs to listen.

Qualifying a sales lead is an essential part of the sales process. Despite this fact, it is often overlooked. This is unfortunate since failing to qualify a lead can literally be the difference between closing a sale and going away empty-handed.

In order to qualify a sales lead, you need to find out the answers to some important questions. While these questions may vary from prospect to prospect, the following list is a good starting point:

Where is the business headquartered?
How large is the business?
What are some of the issues the business needs to address?
What would prevent this business from buying what you are selling?
How does the business choose its vendors?
Who has the final say in any purchasing decision?
When must a purchasing decision be made by?
Who is the competition?
Does the business already use this product or service?
Are there budget constraints?

While the answers to these questions are necessary to qualify leads, the way they are asked is as important as the information itself. When asking a prospect questions, that prospect should never feel as if he or she is being interrogated. If a prospect does feel this way there is a good chance the sale will be lost before it has even been pitched. In such cases, it would be wise to find someone other than the sales team to qualify leads.

There are other reasons why moving salespeople out of the lead qualifying realm is often the best course of action. Salespeople who are required to qualify leads and make sales will always (understandably) go for the sale. Therefore, lead qualification will fall by the wayside, which means an empty sales funnel. Further, qualifying leads is a specialty that requires a particular skill set. Most salespeople simply do not possess this skill set.

Businesses who make the decision to split up the roles of qualifying sales leads and selling report higher sales numbers than those who require their salespeople to do both. For this reason alone, it is something to seriously consider. If you don’t feel you have the in-house resources to do this, you might want to consider outsource call center services.