What Role Does Business Development Play in Your Company?

BizD Is Continuously Probing Through a Sustainability Self-Assessment

At Your Current Rate, What Will Your Business Look Like in a Few Years?

What is your state of the company with respect to the customer experience, and product and process innovation? Does your company do an excellent job of developing lifetime relationships with clients? Do your customers and market segments generate the necessary GP, repeat business, new applications, referrals and collaborative ideas? Do the current target markets offer the potential for new customers? What are your product portfolio sales and profitability trends? Are your product lines maintaining the right edge in order to be profitably competitive? Do channels and partners produce the expected ROI?

Self-assessment results provide rationale to design and implement the right programs and processes that support an Ansoff Growth Strategy Matrix decision. If your analysis suggests sufficient growth potential by doing a better job of selling existing products to existing target markets, market penetration is the right strategy. If market penetration does not provide enough potential for your company to achieve its goals, complement it with a market development strategy if substantial new segments are available for existing products. If interviews during the sales process and upon project completion [along with secondary research] reveal compelling unmet customer needs, consider a product development strategy that tailors and repackages existing products and develops new offerings for existing target markets. If the combination of these three strategies still does not offer the potential that your company needs to achieve its goals, consider diversification , the riskiest strategy, which relies on research and alliances to justify funding the development of new products for new target markets.

Leadership Team Delegates Mission Critical BizD Roles

BizD is a team sport whose arena is business sustainability. The team should be led by executives who are responsible for customer facing processes, operational ability to deliver on promises, R&D and finance. The leaders must assign mission critical accountabilities throughout the organization. Training will make existing staff aware of and competent in their respective BizD responsibility. In other cases, a role must be defined for a specific BizD responsibility.

1. Ongoing market research discovers vulnerabilities and opportunities through competitive and industry analysis, and by always asking for ideas from customers, prospects, partners, mavens and application providers. Study best-in-class companies across various categories as business process role models.
2. Manage customer and product portfolios similar to other key company assets. This includes additions, reductions and modifications.
3. Nurture and participate in programs offered by associations and other lead sources. Form complementary partnerships with companies that serve your target markets.
4. Negotiate joint venture agreements, manage ongoing relationships and facilitate cross-functional teamwork to ensure that each partnership launches successfully and runs smoothly.
5. Drive the design and launch of new growth strategies that may include parallel CEM, sales and marketing processes that will be transferred to the respective mainstream process once critical mass and momentum are established.
   

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