Business Development

Business development is a combination of strategic analysis, marketing, and sales. Business development professionals can be involved in everything from the development of their employers’ products and services, to the creation of marketing strategies, to the generation of sales leads, to negotiating and closing deals.

Business development is a broad term applied to the process of increase ties with existing clients as well as educating customers in other sectors of the consumer market. In order to complete this goal, business development normally crosses the traditional barriers between sales, marketing, customer care, operations and management in order to promote this process of expansion on more than one level.

The job of the business development professional is typically to identify new business opportunities whether that means new markets, new partnerships with other businesses, new ways to reach existing
markets, or new product or service offerings to better meet the needs of existing markets and then to go out and utilize those opportunities to bring in more profits. One of the foundational aspects of business development is to charge the current assets of the company as they relate to the maintenance and expansion of the business. To this end, the business development specialist will work closely with sales and marketing professionals to identify the degree of dispersion already enjoyed by the company in various sectors of the consumer base.

Business development involves unstable degrees of sales and strategy. In some companies, people may focus on getting new corporate sales accounts, while in others they may lead new product development. Working in business development is an excellent way to become skilled at business strategy while gaining hands-on experience in negotiating deals and managing partner relationships. Business development jobs are also highly cross-functional, requiring close association with various internal and partner-company teams such as sales, engineering, and marketing to ensure that a deal is consummated.

It is important to note that the successful business development specialist is not focused exclusively on making sales or keeping current customers happy. While those aspects are part of the overall picture, the development specialist will also be concerned with making the best use of the company’s resources, decontamination the process and function of management and various departments, and addressing any authority that must be observed as the company continues to move forward. In many organizations, this gives the business development specialist a wide range of authority to request information from anywhere within the corporate structure and to influence every aspect of company function.