Business Development Process- A high growth strategy in 2021

Introduction

Business Development Process (BDP)An enterprise starts when someone with a vision for a product, service, or mission considers a new venture. They then begin to develop business development processes one by one. For that, it is essential to know about the various aspect of business development. Therefore, the current article is about the business development process in which we have provided you with a concise and concentrated best ten ways for the business development process in 2021.

Business Development vs. Business Marketing

What is marketing and marketing strategy? Marketingis the structural process of determining which products, items, and services a platform will offer targeted audiences at what price and with a strategic discount. It also addresses how a platform will position and promote your firm and its offerings in the competitive marketplace and defend others in the same field. The resultant activity should be an increasing awareness of your firm among your target audience — and a more robust flow of qualified leads and opportunities.

Historically, it is said that business development has been a subset of the marketing function focused on acquiring new marketing or distribution relationships and strategic channels. While this essential role still exists in many companies, platforms, and the business development title has become interchangeable with marketing and sales functions.

What is the strategic Business Development process?

Not all business development process has an equal impact. A lot of the activities and components of many professionals are very opportunistic and tactical. This is especially true with many seller-doers.

Caught between the pressures of excessive client work and an urgent need for a new business, they cast about for something quick and easy that will produce short-term results.

Strategic business development is aprocess and procedure with some firms’ strategic business goals and visions. The role of strategic business development is to acquire ideal clients for your highest priority services using brand promises that you can deliver upon.

Deciding which targets to pursue and strategies to develop a new business is a high-stakes decision. A sound system, well implemented, can drive high levels of growth and profitability. Conversely, a faulty design can stymie growth and frustrate valuable talent.

Best 10 business development processes in 2021

The business development process starts with the plantation of an idea in mind. It takes root and goes on to become a mighty tree. With time, it starts to bear fruit.
The process never stops; some activity takes place every day that helps in the business development process. If this process stalls, it means the organization is moving towards downfall. There is no middle ground here. Those who do not improve deteriorate.
So, it’s essential to keep this process going; for that, we need to know the purpose, extent, and critical areas this process touches upon. So, let’s start at the base and build this process up.

Mission and Vision

A company starts to develop in the minds of visionaries before anything material takes place. Business Development Ideas establish a vision of one or more people who decide on a mission for themselves. mission statement examples These ideas take root when shared with others who share the same concept.
Indeed, the vision and mission are two vital elements of any business development process. Without a dream, there is no purpose to the existence of an organization. And without a mission, there is no direction to a company’s journey. It becomes a lost vessel in a vast sea.
With this in mind, executives and entrepreneurs develop a clear vision for a business or an organization they want to start. For profit-making companies, usually, customer needs and expectations are the keys. They know what people want or what areas in their lives have problems they can resolve.
On the other hand, non-profit organizations have a philanthropic vision and mission. So, their Business development activities are different from profit-making corporations. They try to solve problems through help and support.
But, the common element in all businesses or organizations is a clear vision and mission.
Companies develop vision and mission statements and use them as general guidelines to make them a shared value.

Goals and Targets

The next element is setting up goals and targets for an organization. When a new entity comes into being, it needs direction and a plan to move forward. Its team also needs a coordination strategy to move in accord. With set goals and targets, a team can know how to gauge its performance.
For this purpose, a clearly defined goal is established at the beginning for a certain period. Then, as the company moves forward, it develops more and more goals and correlates deadlines for those goals. The plans are various, including sales targets, product launches, product innovation, market expansion, and many more.
At the same time, targets are also mapped out to achieve those goals. Targets are specific tasks within a plan, and they quantify the progress. A target helps management gauge the advancement toward a goal. After evaluating small targets, the management decides to keep the pace constant or increase the effort.
In addition, the targets have specific deadlines that help track and evaluate a team’s performance. If a company repeatedly misses deadlines, the management decides to change the strategy or make a significant policy change. This brings us to the next element, strategic decision-making.

Strategic Decisions in Business Development Process

Depending on how they play out, strategic decisions prove to be a lifeline or a death knell for a business. There are quite a few examples where a company took a nosedive in profits and sales because a critical decision turned out to be disastrous. Unfortunately, for many of those companies, recovery did not happen at all.

For this reason, executives and CEOs receive millions of dollars in compensation and a share in company stocks. This highlights the importance of strategic decision-making in a business development strategy. That’s why higher management considers many things before they make a decision.

Leadership and intuition were synonymous in the past, and executives were supposed to make decisions based on their knowledge and experience. A popular term for leaders was charisma which underscored the importance of personal leadership.

Modern companies make extensive use of data and technology to make a decision. Rational decision-making has replaced intuition and personal biases. With the advancement in information technology, data is used in almost every decision. Data analytics, statistics, and artificial intelligence help make better decisions.

So, today data and analytics combined withAIleadthe way and help make more informed decisions. This has enhanced the efficiency and effectiveness of business development services.

This brings us to an important decision that almost every company has to make in its Business Development Process. To be, or not be, a partner?

Strategic Initiatives or Partnerships

One is a person, and two is a team. This adage helps us put things into perspective when we see insanely successful partnerships. Similarly, companies take strategic steps to gain more market share and customer base or expand their organization. Unfortunately, these strategic initiatives prove valuable for some struggling companies but can also go wrong.
Strategic initiatives include launching new products or services, finding new markets, parallel or horizontal expansion, etc. These fundamental decisions occur after thorough research, extensive planning, threadbare discussions, and wide-ranging consultations. When making such decisions, you must ensure input from all stakeholders and an inclusive conclusion.
This ensures diverse business development ideas with insights from various corners. As a result, the process becomes more effective.
Similarly, partnerships are vital for a company to thrive in a competitive market. It is impossible to be self-sufficient in today’s world. It is a lousy strategy to not rely on others for supply and resources. Comparative advantage compels companies to become specialists in what they do best and refrain from indulging in things that are not their strengths.
In this regard, partnerships are vital and can save millions of dollars in cost and increase both parties’ profitability.
Cost-saving is another dimension of business development strategy and our next topic.

Cost Savings in the Business Development Process

Cost-saving is a significant aim of the business development process, and no company can flourish without controlling its expenditures. Therefore, companies utilize different methods to decrease expenses.
The system’s efficiency, including employees and organizational procedures, is one of the ways costs can be controlled. In this regard, different training and motivation techniques can be used. Also, the work environment and corporate culture can help increase employee performance. Finally, incentives also play a role.
In manufacturing, it is possible to reduce costs using technology and robotics instead of manual labor. This might be an investment initially, but it increases the efficiency, accuracy, and speed of the process, which helps with the expensive control.
In offices, additional software help increase the efficiency of the system by reducing the time required for a task.
Outsourcing is another essential method. Many companies now utilize freelancers and experts on a need basis. This helps bring down the budgetary expenses as full-time employees are reduced. For this purpose, you can use Fiverr to hire an expert for your project.

Negotiations, Networking, and Lobbying

Last but not least is networking and lobbying for a business improvement plan. This is part of the process of business expansion and helps build partnerships and new business ventures. Many businesses are working continuously in this area and creating new opportunities in the process.

Big corporations use lobbying extensively and sometimes to the extent of bullying. They fund many pressure groups and influence government decisions as well. However, this does not mean that rally itself is terrible. It depends on the initiator and the intent as to how lobbying is used.

Similarly, negotiations are a big part of the business development strategy and are means to achieve almost every end. Some negotiations take place internally, within an organization and its department. Others are held with outside partners, vendors, officials, and potential clients.

Networking

Networking is the most universally used business development strategy. It’s built on the theory that professional services buying decisions are rooted in relationships. The best effective way to develop new relationships is through face-to-face networking.
Indeed, many business relationships do develop in such a face-to-face networking way. And if you are networking with your targeted audience, you can create new business. But there are limitations. Today’s buyers are very time-pressured, and networking is time-consuming. It can be costly if you consider travel and time away from the office.
Newer digital networking techniques and advancements can help on the cost and time front.

Referral system

The close relative of networking, another process is referrals, often seen as the mechanism that turns networking and client satisfaction into new business. A platform can establish a relationship, and that person refers new business to you. Satisfied clients do the same.
Referrals can sometimes make a miracle, and many firms get most or all of their business from them. But referrals are passive. They rely on the clients and contacts to identify good prospects for your services and make a referral at the right time.

Sponsorships and Advertising process- a root masterpiece process for business development

Have you thought about developing new business directly by sponsoring events and advertising? It will solve a lot of problems because of its tactics. However, studies have shown that traditional advertising is associated with slower and stagnant growth. Only when strategic advertising is combined with other techniques and tricks, such as speaking at an event, do these techniques bear fruit.
The most promising advertising strategy for business development is well-targeted digital advertising. This allows platforms to get their messages and offers in front of the right audience at a lower cost.

Telephone and Mail professional services

Professional services offered by firms have been directly using phone calls and mail to target potential clients for decades. Target the correct firms and roles with a relevant and informative message. One would expect to find new opportunities that can be developed into clients and gather more authentic audiences.
There are probabilities of facing immense critical challenges with these strategies. First, they are relatively expensive compared to others, so they need to be just right to be effective. Second, if one does not catch the prospect at the right time, your offer may have no appeal relevance — and consequently, no impact on business development.
FAQs

Q.1 What are the strategies for business development?

Here are a few tips for effective business development that can help you hit the ground running.

• Know Your Competition.
• Add Value and Build Trust.
• Use Testimonials Wisely.
• Keep an Eye on Online Reviews.
• Ask for the Business.
• Pay Attention to Your Website.
• Don’t Let Relationships Go Cold.
• Beat Your Competitors to the Punch.

Q.2 What are the four growth strategies?

The four essential growth strategies are as follows:

• The market penetration-This strategy aims to increase sales of existing products or services in existing markets, thus increasing your market share.
• Market development.
• Product development.
• Diversification.

Q.3 What is the business development process?

Business development (BD) is the structuralprocess used to identify, nurture, and acquire new clients, audiences, and business opportunities to drive growth and profitability. A business development process is a document that describes the method you will use to accomplish that goal.

Q.4 What is the role of business development?

In the simplest terms, business development can be summarized asthe ideas, initiatives, and activities that help make a business better. This includes increasing revenues, growth in terms of business expansion, increasing profitability by building strategic partnerships, and making strategic business decisions.

Q.5 How can a business grow faster?

Eight ways to grow your business

1. Get to know your customers.
2. Offer excellent customer service.
3. Nurture the existing customers and look for new opportunities.
4. Use social media.
5. Attend networking events.
6. Host events.
7. Give back to your community.
8. Measure what works and refine your approach as you go.

Final Thoughts on Business Development Process

To sum it up, you must understand the purpose of the business development process and what it aims to achieve. In this process, different elements are essential. These elements are mission, vision, strategic decisions, partnerships, cost-saving methods, networking, advertising, and many more.
We discussed each in detail, as the process is incomplete without these elements. The business development process can only be successful if it touches upon these primary areas. We hope that we have explained The Business Development Process in enough detail for you.
In the following lecture, we’ll discuss the structure of a successful business and why it is vital to the business development process.