What Does a Business Development Manager Do?

A busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er sounds impres­sive. Actu­al­ly, this title does lit­tle to com­mu­ni­cate how impres­sive, expan­sive and crit­i­cal this role is to a new, medi­um-sized or well-estab­lished business. 

The busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er wears many hats, as the role is often assigned to one per­son or a small team. 

Let’s take a look at some parts of the business developer’s job:

Generate new business

Busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers are effec­tu­al­ly sign­ing on new clients and build­ing new rela­tion­ships with part­ners to expand the busi­ness and increase profits. 

Communicate with stakeholders

As busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers find new prospects to sign on, they speak pro­fes­sion­al and pos­i­tive­ly about their busi­ness con­stant­ly through­out the day — in cold calls, over email, on con­fer­ence calls and with out­side PR. They also speak intel­li­gent­ly to stake­hold­ers and exec­u­tive lead­ers in an effort to explain how and why poten­tial prospects hold promise for the company. 

Relationship maintenance

Eye­ing a prospect and cold call­ing is only the first step in a new part­ner­ship. Con­vers­ing per­son­al­ly with a prospect estab­lish­es a rela­tion­ship. As the prospect is brought on board as a client or part­ner, the busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er embod­ies the medi­a­tor of the rela­tion­ship, field­ing ques­tions, nego­ti­at­ing con­flict, know­ing when to bring the client and exec­u­tives into the same room, etc. 

Main­tain­ing the rela­tion­ship extends out­side of the office, too. For every new part­ner a busi­ness devel­op­ment team has eyes on, there is an exist­ing part­ner from years or months ago that might cur­rent­ly be get­ting over­looked. If a said part­ner is over­looked for too long, they will like­ly leave and take their busi­ness else as new, more atten­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties arise. To avoid cur­rent rela­tion­ships from expir­ing, busi­ness devel­op­ment always stays in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with partners. 

Savvy research

Busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers are not get­ting new busi­ness for the sole pur­pose of mak­ing their com­pa­ny more mon­ey; they are strate­gi­cal­ly onboard­ing to keep up with or out­pace the com­pe­ti­tion. In order to fas­ten part­ner­ships that bring the developer’s com­pa­ny into the lead, the devel­op­er is con­stant­ly research­ing their mar­ket, the partner’s mar­ket, indus­try and finan­cial news. A smart busi­ness man­ag­er is well-expe­ri­enced in the rip­ple effect of the econ­o­my and is prompt to con­nect ideas between news head­lines and devel­op­ment leads. 

On-boarding persuasion

Even if your com­pa­ny is clear­ly the best fit for a prospec­tive part­ner, they’ll need to be con­vinced of it. Assume that for any rela­tion­ship a man­ag­er is pin­ing after has a dozen oth­er suit­ors con­vinc­ing them of why they should part­ner or take their busi­ness down the road. Com­pet­ing against a hypo­thet­i­cal dozen oth­er com­pa­nies does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean being the most aggres­sive and per­sua­sive; some­times, it means being the most strate­gic and patient. A good busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er always knows which angle to take.

Collaborating internally

Busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers are always nurs­ing exist­ing and bud­ding rela­tion­ships — it is a busy, time-con­sum­ing role that requires con­stant alert­ness, rela­tion­ship aware­ness and strategy. 

To keep a beat on all extents of the busi­ness that could impact a busi­ness rela­tion­ship, the busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er is in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with all oth­er teams in the office. A new ser­vice might sway a new part­ner to onboard; a mar­ket­ing plan might con­flict with a cur­rent partner’s brand mis­sion; a finan­cial flaw could scare some part­ners away. What­ev­er flukes or fluc­tu­a­tions come up, busi­ness devel­op­ment is on them and already com­mu­ni­cat­ing about the changes with partners. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, busi­ness devel­op­ment can part­ner and col­lab­o­rate with dif­fer­ent divi­sions of the com­pa­ny depend­ing on their exist­ing rela­tion­ships, intel or cur­rent projects. 

Work with Rosy Strategies

The ways to recruit new busi­ness are many, and you are like­ly over­look­ing some right now. Reach out to Rosy Strate­gies to learn more about new busi­ness devel­op­ment and which prac­tices to inte­grate into your busi­ness, today.