What You Need To Know About Business Development Guide
Introduction
Business development is very vital for business growth. Likewise, every business owner needs a business development guide to properly grow their business.
However, most business owners don’t fully understand what business development is all about. And, the issue remains the confusion surrounding business development. Reports have shown that 71% of business developers are not completely aware of their job details.
Hence, this business development guide aims to explain what business development is and strategies that can be implemented to yield more sales for your business.
What Is Business Development?
Business development is any activity, strategy or idea that intends to grow a business with long-term expansion in view.
Business development makes use of customer relationships, partnership with other businesses and strategic business decisions to increase opportunities and build your company.
Strategies In Business Development
Using Referrals
This remains a very effective business development strategy. Especially as many small businesses get most of their sales leads from referrals.
A satisfied customer can open your business to a new set of prospects. Thus, always ask and encourage your existing, satisfied customers to refer your business to prospects.
However, referrals have been considered a passive business development strategy. And so, you can’t entirely depend on this for consistent leads.
Networking
This business development strategy is most popular and proven effective over time.
Admittedly, the best way to develop new relationships is by face-to-face networking. This could happen by attending workshops, seminars or even less formal places like a grocery store.
Therefore, it’s important to always stay prepared with either a business card or a quick summary about your company.
However, with the ever-increasing use of social media, networking can be easily done with platforms like LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
Advertising And Sponsorship
This business development strategy is most effective when done through digital platforms.
The best guideline with this strategy is to find your target audience alongside their most preferred platform and reach out to them there.
For example, if your audience is more active on Instagram, then spend more time and resources advertising there.
Utilising Phone Calls And Mail
Most businesses use this strategy to target prospects. First, you would want to prepare a relatable and relevant message, also identify the right set of people you can talk to that can be potential clients.
However, this strategy has some challenges. Having to do phone calls or maybe sending bulk messages to a list of contacts can be expensive (unless you opt for mail).
Also, you have to know the right timing to reach out to the prospects else your offer won’t be needful.
The best solution is to create an exciting and appealing offer to a list of people that can respond to you.
Content Marketing & Standing Out As An expert In The Field
With this business development strategy, the goal is to display your knowledge to existing clients and prospects.
Mostly, this is done by writing blog posts or articles on your business website. Otherwise, by speaking at an event or hosting a training session. With the fast growing technology, SEO has eased the process of most businesses, especially those that are up and coming to reach out to more people outside their physical region.
According to Content Marketing Institute statistics, content marketing yields more sales leads with less cost than outbound marketing. Also, it allows your audience to discover your business. However, with these benefits comes higher competition amongst businesses to stand out. This can be dealt with by focusing on a particular niche and providing valuable content to your clients. This will help deepen their trust in your business.
Business development plays different roles in the growth of a business. In this business development guide, you can see its importance and why your business needs it.
What Is The Role Of Business Development?
Stay In Touch With Customers
No doubt, customers are the life blood of every business. They contribute mainly to the success or failure of your business.
Hence, it is important to develop a good relationship with them and this is where business development comes into play.
Those handling this role should be able to identify what the business is selling and what the customer actually needs, so as to provide value to them.
Thus the goal is to establish relationships with existing and new clients, providing them with what they need alongside more value.
Increase The Company Reputation
How do people perceive your business? What impression does your business give? These are vital questions to help monitor your business growth.
It’s been established that customers won’t patronise a business that they don’t trust, and so you would want to ensure that this is not the case for your business. Especially as people won’t just pick up your products if they don’t know your business.
So, your business should be recognised and more so for the right reasons.
Although, this particular role needs to work with the marketing team to evaluate how your clients react to your products.
So, while the business development professionals appeal to the target market and develop the plan for that; the marketing team can create the marketing content and copy or even video marketing for a more effective work.
Establish Strategic Partnerships
This refers to collaboration with other businesses to achieve more results. It could be to increase your customer base, enter into new markets, fill in for services you don’t offer but your clients need or help your business gain particular skills.
Strategic partnerships are integral in business development and it’s needed at every stage, from start-ups all the way to established companies.
Therefore, a business development professional should be able to identify strategic partners that can work with your business, ensuring that they have the necessary technical skills and they share similar values as your business.
Establish a business relationship with them that is beneficial for both parties. Also, negotiate the cost involved and the details of the contract.
Look Out For New Business Opportunities
According to Matt Janaway at Marketing Labs, understanding your target market is the best way to succeed, irrespective of the market you are moving to.
Understanding your target market means that you know your clients needs, understanding them better to help your business create value for them and improve business growth.
Thus, your business development professional should find out how these prospects will react to your product. Most especially, to decide if the new market entry would benefit the business.
Business Development Plan vs Business Plan
Ever wondered the difference between business development plan and business plan?
This business development guide aims to clearly state the difference between both. Also, to help clear the confusion when next you hear about them or you have to talk about them.
A business plan is a road map that details the objectives and operations of a business and how they intend to achieve them. In most cases, a business plan acts as a reminder for business owners to remain on track and stay motivated.
Every start-up ought to have a business plan. However, there are cases where a new business plan is created for established companies that are steering towards a new direction.
A business development plan is a detailed document that states goals for growth and explains how to achieve them. A business development plan shows how to implement the best business development strategy to increase business growth.
So, a business plan acts as an overview of your business goals and objectives. On the other hand, a business development plan gives clear directives on how to grow your business, stating the strategies to implement and how to go about it.
Elements of Business Development Plan
Long-term Goals
First, you have to envision what it would look like to achieve major growth in your business. Always bear in mind that success is relative to every business and its owner.
So, after you figure out the vision of your business, now begin to identify what you need to achieve that goal.
It’s okay to have more than one goal, just list them out and rank them in terms of how profitable and feasible each goal is.
Know your Target Market
How well you know your clients, their buying pattern and needs determines how much business growth you can attain.
It’s not just enough to know how your clients are, you should know where to find them, what their interests are and how to establish a relationship with them.
Identify the Right Marketing Strategy
Once you know your exact buyer persona, choosing the right strategy and implementing it becomes easier.
In most cases, businesses use a blend of both traditional and digital platforms to reach out to their clients. This could be dependent on financial and human resources available at the moment.
Also, take out time to review your marketing strategies and be flexible enough to change to another marketing strategy that proves more effective.
Proper Use of Data
Most businesses fail to successfully execute their development strategy because they don’t utilise the data they have collated.
It’s important to analyse and review the progress you’ve made so far in your business. Hence, monitor your data report and adjust it to increase business growth as often as possible.
Sales Funnel
Using the structure of find, attract and engage qualified leads, you can easily scale the efforts of your business.
Initially, you may have to get the attention of a large scale before narrowing it down to potential clients – by offering those interested with more information. This would help them understand how your business can benefit them.
Analyse Resources
After setting up your business development plan, the next step is to ensure that the necessary resources are available.
Hence, you may have to find possible technology and human resources to help you achieve your goal.
Conclusion
Business development focuses on identifying long-term opportunities for a business to enjoy continuous growth and improvement. And this business development guide is necessary to help business owners implement the right strategies that are needed for effective growth.
