In this era of growing technology, you can take your business to new heights. Business Development has been a key to a successful business as it deals with anything. A smart set of strategies is required in an organization which leads to business development.
What is Business Development?
The key to a well-established business is the outputs it produces which depend on the inputs. All the ideas, plans, strategies that are put as an input in the business decides its development.
To be precise a business development is nothing but a series of plans, ideas, activities, executed in such a way that it leads to increase of revenue which ultimately leads to the development of the business.
Being a major contributor to the growth of the business, this field and its employees are often misunderstood to perform all the functions solely.
Various Departments of Business Development
The activities will be taken care of by various departments extend across sales, marketing, project managing, product managing etc. Networking, negotiations, revenue-generating and cost savings are all the activities of different departments which aims solely on improving the development of the business.
Let’s quickly take a look at various departments :
1. Sales or Revenue generation
Sales focus on a single goal or a specific market to satisfy the targeted clients. Keeping achievable targets about the revenues and completing them leads to sales.
2. Marketing
Now this includes the advertising or the promotion of the products services.
3. Business management / Business planning
These are the facilities needed by the businesses for its expansion or the questions like where should the products be manufactured? The answers to such questions are the decisions which are concluded by the business development team.
4. Product Management
The marketing standards and the requirements of a business vary across the countries. A product of certain components may be allowed in India but not in other countries. For example, Vicks Vaporab is banned in America. Does the new market require a new altogether product or just some changes? These needs drive the work of product management and manufacturing areas.
5. Management of Vendor Services
Will the start-up need new vendors? Will a courier service would be efficient for shipping of product? What are the costs which will be related to these arrangements?
The business development team works through these issues.
6. Lobbying and Networking
Some of the initiatives require mastery in soft skills. Like lobbying is legal in some areas and is necessary for penetrating the market. Other skills like networking and communicating with the third parties.
All these activities are a part of business development.
7. Cost Savings
And here comes the last but not the least. With all the work of marketing, increasing sales and other stuff an organization needs to include the cost cut measures. Decisions like hosting video conference calls instead of on-site meetings or taking less expensive transportation modes are all decided by the business developers. These are the basic things. When it comes to implementation – business developers take a look into much deeper aspects.
Established Business Vs Startups
Applying the business development strategies and achieving goals is comparatively easy for the established businesses as they have been doing it for long to grasp customers. But talking about the startups its a long road journey.
Because of the inexperience and instability of the startups, it is very challenging for them to establish their business in the initial phase.
But here is a list of tips by following which even startups can do exceptionally good in developing their businesses :
1. Understand Failure
The difference which makes big businesses big and small businesses small is the ability to tackle failures. Failures should be treated as a blessing in disguise as it forces to take a look at what went wrong and what can you do to improve it.
So the first step towards taking your business to another level is to understand and analyse your failures very diligently.
2. Never confuse Business Development with its sub-areas
The most common mistake that startups do is that they confuse business with sales. Sales is indeed an important aspect of developing the business but an all-rounder approach is needed to take the business to new heights.
3. Going towards Online Marketing
In the growing era of technology, it has become essential for us all to be updated. By using platforms like Instagram, Facebook, youtube etc. one can not only interact with the clients but also promote their business widely.
Conclusion
Business development depends broadly upon the approach and the execution of the ideas. A successful business once a start-up and saw many failures. Hence the key to set up a business which would not only be successful but efficient also is to understand all the strategies that are required and a business developer will help you achieve this easily.
If you are a business owner and if you want to hire a business developer, contact us.