So what exactly is business development anyways?
Does anyone really know? Is it sales? Is it marketing? Is it sales and marketing? Is it strategic alliances? Is it joint ventures? Is it mergers and acquisitions?
Here is the real test. Ask a number of different people what business development is and you will get a number of different interpretations. In honor of defending the turf of sales and marketing domains, here is my take. “Business Development” is a title that has crept into the vernacular of sales and marketing, in some misguided effort to embellish things. The ugly side effect is that, rather than being a proxy for the functions of sales and marketing, it creates fuzziness that results in negative synergy between the two functions.
If someone is in sales or marketing, and they are labelled as business development, it is an excellent way lose focus. What really happens is that the focus will shift around, shifting both priorities and responsibilities. Simply because of the lack of a clean delineation. And without the proper focus, it is more likely that the end result is a lack of business that gets developed.
When it comes to sales and marketing functions, roles and responsibilities need to be quite clear. Sales is all about the here and now. They must be focused on finding ways in which to solve particular issues that a prospective customer may be having now, with the products or services that they represent now. It is their responsibility to find those prospective customers who are qualified to buy now, and win their share of those opportunities. Marketing is not about the here and now. It is focused on generating all that awareness and interest that stimulates and creates the marketplace for those who can benefit from the product or services that they offer. It is their responsibility to find ways to create a pool of qualified candidate customers, who are ready for the here and now.
Given the completely different timeframes, and different outputs, these two functions just cannot be grouped together in any manner. Because if they do, the immediate and urgent priorities always take precedent over the longer term ones. This inevitably translates into more resources going into the sales effort, with marketing efforts being degraded into a random and dysfunctional set of activities. Unless you are in a business that does not need very much of one or the other (i.e. there is not much requirement for the sales effort, or there is not much requirement for a marketing effort), then the overall process of growing new business degrades.
In today’s marketplace, buyers have a myriad of choices. And they use the internet as a tool to narrow down a short list of potentially qualified suppliers. As it turns out, these buyers are spending more time engaging through marketing communications in order to narrow down that list. It means that the scope of the marketing task has increased, simply because of the fact buyers are weighing that information more heavily.
So what does it mean for your business? Start by jettisoning the mindset that ‘business development’ brings with it. Don’t allow sales and marketing activities to be blended together. They are separate tasks which are both vital to growing your business. Separate them. But make sure that the buyer’s journey effectively crosses over from one to the other as seamlessly as possible.