Business Strategist: business development

Monday, 28 October 2019

Step-up approach defining business development as organizational growth process

Thinking business development as the functional view and as a sub-set of the marketing is now out of date. Modern version of business development catapulted it as a key business strategy to be applied on the scale of organization wide item. This version incorporates the following step-up approach, in defining business development:

1. Business development brings in new relationship along with added sales growth from the target customers newly identified

2. Existing relationships are cajoled to make additional purchases or change-in to new products that are marketed as innovative and game changing ones

3. Building of strategic alliances is the cornerstone of business development activity that seeks to negate any differentiation competitors may try on the existing product lines

4. Creating more opportunities for sales must reflect back on the organization whereby new products and processes are introduced to optimize such opportunities

5. Every growth opportunity is identified and analysed so that the optimum one yielding commensurate return for all functions in an organization is selected. Thereafter, proper business strategy is formulated with a view to ensure seamless implementation

6. Business development must aim for incremental to phenomenal rise in market activity that sustains the growth momentum in corporate management, marketing, human resource, production/operation as well as in finance

7. Key partners are alerted on the business development parameters and key activities are streamlined to ensure efficient use of key resources that are procured in much more competitive terms

8. Finally, business development must garner long term value for the company by employing internal strengths to capitalize on external opportunities.

Cheers!

Muthu Ashraff

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail: cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog: Business Strategist

Friday, 25 October 2019

What happens when business development is just a marketing strategy?

When you have a situation where business development is consigned as marketing strategy spearheaded by marketing department the stated goal is restricted in bringing more business, customers and new relationship.

This leads to creation of buzz words such as business pipeline, capture management, competitive intelligence, business leads and probability of winning and so on. One thing surely happens is that rest of the firm is not concerned with the idea of business development.

While business development has twin function of beating competition and ensuring new strategic direction, marketing department does work with the mantra “more sales and more revenue from the existing product”. This tantamount to exploring new markets for the existing product, thereby ignoring the needs and wants of existing customers.

Sales pitch can improve the sales value temporarily, but in the medium term it can plunge to bottom if the customers feel that they are not getting value for money or the product does not have the qualities and features compared with new products introduced by competitors. A good example is the Microsoft Xbox one that failed after launch and vigorous marketing.

It is not out of place to mention that fundamental purpose of marketing strategy is to improve the value and reputation of the company and the product in the eyes of consumers. In doing so marketing department must be conscious of the competitors and what they are doing and the customer relationship and how it is going.

Purely depending on business development as marketing strategy on the existing product line and then thrusting it on the marketing department as their primary concern is a bad step taken by many firms. What firms must do is to study the target market searching for clues over their needs & wants and bring out innovative products that give real value. In doing so, primary attention must be given to existing customers who would turn out to be spokesperson extolling both new and existing products to incoming new customers.