Definition

Why the word “Sustainable” is so Important to Business Development

By Tom on July 21, 2023

Unlike sales, everyone seems to define business development differently. For me, I think of it as the act of sustainably growing your business. I consider business development to be a critical function for every organization looking to achieve long-term success. In this post, we will explore why I consider this definition to be so important.

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The Importance of Sustainable Growth

Sustainable growth is essential for any business that wants to remain viable over the long term. This means that a business is growing in a way that is consistent with its resources, capabilities, and values. Ultimately, the business is not growing too fast or slow and is not sacrificing core values in pursuit of revenue growth.

One of the main benefits is that it allows a business to maintain its competitive advantage. If a business grows too quickly, it risks becoming overstretched, losing sight of what made it successful in the first place. On the other hand, when a business grows too slowly, it misses out on important opportunities for growth falling behind its competitors.

Sustainable growth keeps a business financially stable. When a business grows too quickly, it can often take on too much debt or overextend itself financially. However, growing too slowly, can prevent revenue from covering expenses. A sustainable business balances both revenue and expenses in a way that supports long-term financial health.

The Role of Business Development in Sustainable Growth

Of course, business development plays a critical role in sustainable growth. It involves identifying and pursuing opportunities that are consistent with a business’s resources, capabilities, and purpose. Understanding the market, the competition, and the needs of customers allows your business to meet those needs.

Purposeful diversification of revenue streams is a key role of the strategic business developer. Identifying new opportunities for growth allows a business to reduce its dependence on any one product or service and spreading risk across multiple areas. Of course, this diversification helps a business weather economic downturns and other challenges.

Sustainable business development helps a business innovate and stay ahead of the competition. By identifying new opportunities for growth, a business can develop new products or services that meet the changing needs of customers. This helps a business stay relevant and competitive in a rapidly changing market.

Finally, business development builds strong relationships with customers, partners, and other stakeholders. By focusing on sustainable growth, a business can develop a reputation for being reliable, trustworthy, and committed to its values. This builds loyalty among customers and partners, creating a strong foundation for future growth.

Final thoughts

Sustainable business development is a critical function for any organization looking to achieve long-term success. By focusing on sustainable growth, a business maintains its competitive advantage, achieves stable financial performance, and builds strong relationships with customers and partners. The definition of business development as the act of sustainably growing your business captures the essence of this important function and highlights its significance in today’s rapidly changing business environment.

Sustainable business

If you want to upskill your work winning check out my flagship course Business Development Academy. Set over 4 modules and 10 videos this course leads you through the business development process step by step. Giving you the skills, system and processes to be more purposeful in the market place. To learn more click the button below.

Business Development Academy

Meet your customers.

Are looking to begin your Business Development journey but are not quite sure where to start? Download my quick start guide to business development. This gives a series of simple activities to quickly set you on the right path.

For a definition of business development you can check out my take in this post here.

If you are getting value out of my weekly free content I’d ask that you consider buying my new book. It’s a simple yet comprehensive framework to base your business development activity around and full of practical application to get you started now. It is available to order on Amazon now.

Secrets of Tall Trees and Low Hanging Fruit?

By Tom on June 23, 2023

A friend of mine recently began working for an IT company as a leader and business developer. On his first day the CEO gave him the following advice. “Think of your opportunities as trees. They are all of different heights with fruit that is either easy or hard to pick.”

What a great piece of advice. The concept of tall trees and low hanging fruit is regularly used in the business world, particularly in the realm of business development. But what do these metaphors mean, and how can they be applied to your business? Let’s take a closer look.

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Secrets of tall trees

Tall trees are businesses that have a large, established market presence. These businesses have a lot of resources at their disposal and can easily reach new customers through their existing networks and marketing channels. Tall trees are often seen as difficult to reach. But once there, you find a wealth of opportunities for growth and success.

Mysteries of low hanging fruit

Low hanging fruit refers to opportunities that are easily accessible and don’t require much effort to take advantage of. These opportunities are often the quickest way to grow your business and can provide a fast return on investment. Of course, Low hanging fruit are found in a variety of areas, including customer acquisition, marketing, and product development.

Applying fruit and trees to business development

In business development, the goal is to find and take advantage of the right opportunities that will help your business grow. This means looking for both tall trees and low hanging fruit. Here’s how you can apply these concepts:

Identify Tall Trees: Start by identifying the tall trees in your industry. These businesses are well-established with a large customer base. Consider how you can work with them or learn from their success.

Find Low Hanging Fruit: Look for opportunities that are easily accessible and don’t require much effort to take advantage of. This could be a new market or customer segment with existing products or services. Or a new product or service that you can offer to your existing customer base.

Balance Your Approach: It’s important to balance your approach, so you’re not only going after the low hanging fruit, but also looking for ways to reach the tall trees. This could mean taking on a new challenge, investing in your business, or developing new skills to align with the needs of these customers.

Final thoughts on low hanging fruit

Ultimately, tall trees and low hanging fruit are two important concepts to consider when it comes to business development. By finding the right balance between these two approaches, you can ensure that your business is growing and developing in the right direction. So start identifying the tall trees and low hanging fruit in your industry, and start taking advantage of the opportunities that will help you grow your business.

Low hanging fruit

For a definition of business development you can check out my take in this post here.

If you want a more proactive and personal approach to your business development I am available to help. My personalized coaching program is designed to give you the skills to achieve work winning success. I’ll help you be purposeful in your customer interactions and hold you accountable to taking action. To learn more click the button below.

Business Development Coaching

Why is Business Development Important?

By Tom on March 17, 2023

At it’s most basic, business development can be described as the ideas and activities that help make a business better. This includes increasing revenues, growth in terms of business expansion, improving profitability by building strategic partnerships, and making strategic, long term business decisions.

As a technical consultant, small business owner or entrepreneur you may not realise it yet but it should be one of the skillsets that you actively improve.

In this post I provide three reasons why business development is important to you.

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Do the Work You Want To Do

Relying on others to feed you work is fine when you stat out in an industry and are learning the ropes. However, as you gain experience you begin to find the work specialisation that suits you. Developing a career around the work that gives you the most satisfaction requires proactivity and thought.

Why would you hope that others are going to source the right work for you?

Instead, develop your business. Cultivating clients with a burning need for your skillset makes certain that you will do the work that you want to do.

Gain an Industry-Wide Reputation

Building a reputation in your field is the best way to do the work you love. Actively pursuing business development truly helps in this regard. Entering the market and talking to customers about your expertise. Discussing client issues and offering solutions to their problems. Posting thoughtful topics to LinkedIn about your specialisation. Activities like this grow your reputation as the go to person.

Compare this to sitting at your desk doing project work that others have won for you. Where other team members are interacting with the customers. How will the wider market get to know you for what you do?

The answer is of course purposeful business development.

Practicing purposeful business development lets you control your own destiny

Control Your Destiny

Undertaking purposeful business development is all about controlling your own destiny. Doing the work you want. Developing a reputation across your industry. Steering your career in your own direction. As a leader growing your team and business the way you want.

Recognising that the business world is a chaotic place. Ultimately practicing purposeful business development gives you more power over both your immediate situation and long term goals.

Why is business development important

Are you looking to begin your Business Development journey but are not quite sure where to start? Download my quick start guide to work winning. This gives a series of simple activities to quickly set you on the right path.

For a definition of business development you can check out my take in this post here.

If you are getting value out of my weekly free content I’d ask that you consider buying my new book. It’s a simple yet comprehensive framework to base your work winning activity around and full of practical application to get you started now. It is available to order on Amazon now.

If you want a more proactive and personal approach to your business development I am available to help. Through face to face video calls I’ll set you on the right path and keep you accountable to future activity. I currently have space on my 1on1 personalized coaching program. To learn more click the button below.

Business Development Coaching

What is Business Development, It’s More than Just Sales

By Tom on January 13, 2023

What is business development and why is it important?

In short, business development pertains to the ideas, initiatives, and activities that enables a business to grow. In effect, it is the lifeblood of any business. Those in business development work towards increasing revenue, growth and relationships. They do this strategically and in alignment with their company purpose. As such, they create a healthy, vibrant company that will prosper over the long term.

While people often define business development differently I characterize it as follows:

The act of sustainably growing your business

Its all about the long term. Relationships, alliances and opportunities must be pursued with the long term viability of your organization in mind. Entering the discipline with a mindset of short-termism may get you early wins but will ultimately see you beaten by competitors operating under a long term strategy.

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What is the difference between sales and business development?

Sales focuses on identifying leads, before developing them along the sales cycle toward a closing. On the other hand business development involves finding new growth opportunities for the company and forming strategic partnerships that open up new markets. As such sales forms a subset of the work winning discipline.

Business development and sales are not the same thing

I often think of sales as being more transactional and business development being focused on relationships and longer term strategy. I talk about the reasons you need a business developer in your organization in my blog post never hire a salesperson to grow your business. Ultimately you need the strategic skillset that a business developer brings represented in your leadership team.

What are the top skills for business development executives?

We now know that business development is long term and strategic in nature. Additionally sales is actually a part of the overall work winning skill set. What other competencies do you need to be successful at growing your company revenues.

Sales and Pursuit. An aggressive pursuit of sales opportunities that align with the company’s vision and intent.
Customer Relationships. The development of robust, trust-based relationships with customers, allowing for honest two-way communication.
Commercial Integrity. A strong commercial acumen with the ability to sell offerings at a profit margin that aligns with the company goals.
Productive Paranoia. An avid following of quoting (leading indicator) and revenue (lagging indicator) numbers.
Market Intelligence. A deep understanding of the market, the key players, and consequences of any changes therein.
Offering Intelligence. A deep understanding of the problem that your company offering solves.
Adaptive Feedback Loop. A conduit for information between the market and the company, to ensure that customer and market feedback is heard and acted upon.
Customer Service. A polite and professional approach in all dealings. You are the face of your organization.

If you are looking to grow your business, take on client facing responsibility or hiring someone else for this role consider the skills above. How do you rate in each? If you are interviewing a candidate ask them about each and gauge their competency.

Which of these skills do you most strongly identify with?

Grow your work winning skills

Of course, these skills are not necessarily innate to the individual and can most definitely be learned. What better place to start than by downloading my fast business development guide below. This gives a list of actions and activities to set you on the right path right now.

For a comprehensive and practical framework to base your business development activity around I recommend checking out my new book Business Development Begins Here. It is available to order on Amazon. Visit the link to reserve your copy now.

Coaching

If you want a more proactive and personal approach to your work winning I am available to help. Through face to face video calls I’ll set you on the right path and keep you accountable to future activity. I currently have one space available on my 1on1 personalized coaching program. To learn more click the button below.

Coaching for Revenue Growth

What is Business Development? Sales or Not Sales?

By Tom on June 24, 2022

Unfortunately business development (BD) means different things to different people. While often seen as another word for sales, this is doing the craft a massive disservice.

In this post I’ll explore what BD is and what it is not. I’ll also provide a simple definition before detailing why I think the craft is so important.

What Business Development is Not

Business development is not sales.

Sales by definition is the action of selling. On the other hand, BD involves more than seeking and closing the deal. It requires strategic thinking and decision-making behind who to approach, and how to approach. Additionally, it focuses only on new opportunities that align with the long-term success of the company.

Business development is not transaction based.

Traditionally, sales are considered short-term and transaction based. Get the sale, ring the bell and move on. The strategic position of the sale in the wider context of the company’s goals is missing.

What Business Development Is

True enough, BD is, at its core, about the sale of products or services. However, rather than focusing on the transaction it wraps around the long-term goal of sustainably growing the business.

I consider the core components of BD to be:

Sales and Pursuit—an aggressive pursuit of sales opportunities that align with the company’s vision and intent.
Customer Relationships—the development of robust, trust-based relationships with customers.
Commercial Integrity—a strong commercial acumen. The ability to sell products and services at a profit margin that aligns with the company goals.
Productive Paranoia—an avid following of your company’s leading and lagging indicators.
Market Intelligence—a deep understanding of the market, the key players, and consequences of any changes therein.
Offering Intelligence—a deep understanding of the problem that your company solves.
Adaptive Feedback Loop—a conduit for information between the market and the company. Ensuring customer and market feedback is heard and acted upon.
Customer Service—a polite and professional approach in all dealings. You are the face of your organization.

So, what does this boil down to?

The act of sustainably growing your business.
Business development: A simple definition

Why Business Development is Important

Business development should be at the core of every business. The BD leader must have a seat at the leadership table. No one is better suited at aligning company decision-making to the point of view of the customer. These leaders operate in the heart of the marketplace, allowing them to identify shifts in customer behavior and initiate meaningful change to adapt.

Gwynne Shotwell, an accomplished aeronautical engineer, is a great example of a strong business development leader. She quickly transitioned into sales and BD while maintaining her engineering skillset. Shotwell saw a gap in Elon Musk’s SpaceX venture and joined as employee number seven, as the vice president of business development. Using both her technical and BD abilities to successfully position the space explorer as the industry leader made her an invaluable part of the company. So much so that she was promoted to president and chief operating officer (Vance, 2016).

The argument for having business development integrated into company leadership could not be stronger.

Summary

Hopefully this post has given you an insight into what business development is and what it is not. I’ve provided a simple definition that sets it far beyond the remit of sales alone.

Don’t make the mistake of hiring a salesman to be the face of your company. Look for BD leaders who can align the purpose and goals of your business with strategic customer pursuit and the growth of the business as a whole.

My new book Business Development Begins Here explores the foundations of this craft and will provide the tools to set you up for successful growth.

If you would like to get some free resources to help kickstart your business development journey follow the download link below. This gives you access to our Assess Workbook to help you work out where your company sits in the Sales Ecosystem. At the same link is our LinkedIn Roadmap to get your profile working for you.

Introducing Triple A

By Tom on January 28, 2022

To the uninitiated business development can feel a little overwhelming. How do the Sales Ecosystem and Sales Funnel fit together? Who should I be speaking to and when? There are lots of questions that need answering. This is made harder when business development forms only part of your role description, and other work commitments compete for your time. To help make things simpler, I have formed the Triple A Framework. This has a cyclical structure that guides you through the process of business development (see the figure below). The framework is there to steer you towards strategic planning and systematic action to ultimately increase the revenues entering your business. It comprises:

Assess

Assess the strategic intent of your company, product offering, customers, and internal and external environments.

Aim (Plan)

You must aim your business development action towards achieving the intent of your company. Understand the available marketing options and develop an aggressive strategic, operational, and tactical plan with a systematic cadence to maintain daily, weekly, and annual business development activity.

Action (Execute)

Execute systematic pursuit and opportunity development within the Sales Ecosystem to grow long-term revenue. Implement Act as a conduit of information and feedback between the customer, market, and your organization.

Introducing Triple A Business Development Framework

Over the coming months we will be discussing Assess, Aim & Action in more detail. Each component will be explored and practical advice provided. This will allow you to create a robust and practical business development plan that you can action immediately.

In addition to the Triple A Framework we will discuss some simple marketing methods as a way of acquiring a variety of brand-customer touch points from your customer base. These simple and cost-effective marketing tactics allow your target customers to become familiar with your brand, products and services, feeding leads into the top of your Sales Funnel.

Call to Action

Do you use a framework to shape your business development activity? If so let me know what you are using in the comments below. Are there other aspects to this framework that you think I’ve missed.

I have written a book that takes a deeper dive into the Triple A Framework. It’s due to be released in September 2022. For more info check out the page here.

Is your Sales Funnel Full?

By Tom on December 4, 2021

An organism can only survive if it is fed regularly, and a business is no different. It requires a steady input of cash to maintain its viability. It is the role of the business developer to navigate the Sales Ecosystem (see our previous post here) and use it to keep a steady stream of opportunities, leads, quotes and sales flowing into the company. The traditional way to visualise this is the concept of a Sales Funnel.

A lot has been written about the sales funnel and it has been presented in many different ways. Fundamentally, the funnel comprises the stages of effort required to get a sale. Imagine this as a water funnel, your marketing leads (digital advertising, face-to-face meetings and social media activity) are poured into the top. Some of these leads are genuinely interested in your company offering and become opportunities for a sale. A few of these opportunities will develop into sales bringing much needed revenue through the door. A simple Sales Funnel model is presented in the figure below.

It is easy to see that if the leads at the top of the funnel reduce a little, the knock-on effect to the sales and revenue generation can be catastrophic. Keeping the funnel filled should be of prime importance to the business developer and to the business.

Basic Sales Funnel

A basic Sales Funnel process comprises the following stages:

Leads. Leads take a couple of forms. Firstly, these are people and or businesses who have shown enough of an interest in your offering to reach out to you. Secondly, they are projects or tenders that strongly align with your company offering. A full funnel of leads is generally gained from customer relationships, marketing efforts and an understanding of what is happening within your market.

Lead assessment/qualification. To thoroughly pursue each lead can be a large waste of time and resources. Each lead must be quickly assessed and qualified as worthy (key) for further pursuit. Don’t waste time on leads that will not go anywhere.

Opportunity pursuit. The qualified lead is now considered an opportunity and time is taken to understand the customer involved, their drivers and what problem they are looking to solve. Any gaps in understanding need to be identified. A simple pursuit comprises:

Phone call. Best practice is to call the key customer or stakeholder to learn more about the opportunity, establish or reinforce a trust-based relationship and fill any gaps in the opportunity. The power of a phone call to the right person is significant and can really make the difference between winning and losing the opportunity.

Proposal. Present your company offering to the customer. Your proposal should spell out the value of your offering and needs to comprise more than just a price.

Follow up. Once the proposal has been received, give the customer some time to absorb the contents and follow up. Ask them if they need any clarifications, or have any feedback? This can provide a chance to adjust the proposal to bring it in line with the customer’s expectations. It also gives you an opportunity to gain insight into how the offering is perceived, allowing changes to be made to future proposals.

Sale. Close the deal and secure the revenue. Now your team must deliver.

I can’t stress strongly enough the importance of keeping the funnel full. A good rule of thumb is that opportunities should value 3 times your monthly sales target. However, this may change depending on industry and organisation.

We will expand on the Sales Funnel in later posts, particularly around specific systematic processes for each stage, but it is important to understand that this is the general process that must be followed to keep your business nourished.

Call to Action

My call to action for you is to think about your own sales funnel. How do you monitor the different stages, is it healthy and are you constantly filling the top with opportunities?

Let me know your thoughts around how you use a sales funnel in the comments below.

Next week we’ll look at attributes of a strong business developer.

Sales Ecosystem Made Simple

By Tom on November 26, 2021

As mentioned in my previous posts this blog is all about back to basics business development. As such I want to explore some of the concepts that will form the foundation of the BD process. The first cab off the rank is the Sales Ecosystem. A Sales Ecosystem is much like a natural ecosystem in that all the components are interlinked and changes to one will have impacts on the others. Navigating this ecosystem is a key part of the business development professional’s role. The figure below shows a simplified diagram of the Sales Ecosystem’s components and those interactions that are important to the business development role.

Components of the Sales Ecosystem

Business
- The organisation that produces the product or service that the business developer represents. This can be thought of as the organism surviving and growing within the ecosystem.
Industry
- The wider industry or industries that the company and customers operate within. Examples could be Mining, Financial Services, Real Estate, Civils, and Construction etc.
Market
- The area in which the industry operates, usually signified by geography but can be broader. This can be considered the broader environment containing multiple industries.
Customers
- Companies and individuals with a need to purchase the product/service. These could be existing or prospective in nature. The revenue from the customers is the sustenance that the company needs to survive. This revenue is contested by the competitors in the system.
Competitors
- Competitors are those companies and organisations that are competing with you for customer revenue.
Stakeholders
- Other organisations and individuals that play within the industry and market. These can take the form of strategic partners, competitors, suppliers, influencers, consultants, and government regulators. This group can be thought of as the web of other organisms competing for space and resources within the ecosystem.

Call to Action

Understanding the different components of the Sales Ecosystem can help the business developer visualise the position of their organisation within the market place allowing planning and action to be undertaken within this broader context.

My call to action for you is to have a think about each part of the Sales Ecosystem for your situation. Who sits within each? Do you have contacts within each? We will be exploring different parts of this ecosystem in future posts.

How do you visualise the space your company operates in? Let me know in the comments below.

Next week we’ll be discussing the Sales Funnel.

What is Business Development?

By Tom on November 20, 2021

Business development is often seen as being synonymous with increased sales, however in my opinion this is doing it a disservice. True enough, business development is, at its core, about the sale of products or services, but this should be coupled with the long-term goal of developing and growing the business. Business development is more than just closing the deal. It requires strategic thinking and decision making behind: who to approach, how to approach, and the identification of new opportunities that align with the long-term success of the company.

In my opinion, the real difference is that sales can be considered short-term transaction based, while Business development is focused more on the long-term strategic outcomes of the business.

Business performance graph — Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash

The core components of any business development role should be:

Sales and Pursuit. An aggressive pursuit of sales opportunities that align with the company’s vision and intent.
Customer Relationships. The development of robust, trust-based relationships with customers, allowing for honest two-way communication.
Commercial Integrity. A strong commercial acumen with the ability to sell offerings at a profit margin that aligns with the company goals.
Productive Paranoia. An avid following of quoting (leading indicator) and revenue (lagging indicator) numbers.
Market Intelligence. A deep understanding of the market, the key players, and consequences of any changes therein.
Offering Intelligence. A deep understanding of the problem that your company offering solves.
Adaptive Feedback Loop. A conduit for information between the market and the company, to ensure that customer and market feedback is heard and acted upon.
Customer Service. A polite and professional approach in all dealings. You are the face of your organisation.

This is my view of the definition, what do you think? Get in touch or leave a comment, I’m keen to hear your thoughts.

Definition

The Importance of Sustainable Growth

The Role of Business Development in Sustainable Growth

Final thoughts

Secrets of tall trees

Mysteries of low hanging fruit

Applying fruit and trees to business development

Final thoughts on low hanging fruit

Do the Work You Want To Do

Gain an Industry-Wide Reputation

Control Your Destiny

What is business development and why is it important?

What is the difference between sales and business development?

What are the top skills for business development executives?

Grow your work winning skills

Coaching

What Business Development is Not

What Business Development Is

Why Business Development is Important

Summary

Call to Action

Basic Sales Funnel

Call to Action

Components of the Sales Ecosystem

Call to Action

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