Stop causing good salespeople to fail as business developers!

Business Development and Sales are not the same thing and require different skills!

So why do companies keep promoting good salespeople to become business developers and then wonder why they fail or leave soon after?

Someone asked me what’s the difference between BD and Sales.  My answer was simply:

Sales is providing a existing product/solutions at a predetermined price.  Sales is mostly engaging with potential buyers and convincing them that they need what you have at the price you want for it.  Then negotiating to a mutually agreeable position.

Business Development is creating new products, solutions and heck even new businesses and joint ventures to create new markets for products/solutions that are not yet available.

Business Developers are not only selling to their user ecosystem they, have to sell their ideas internally to get alignment and most likely investment (which in my experience is often harder to do than dealing with customers).

Good business developers (in the Technology industry) require a lot of different skills including

-            Domain expertise (what business problems need to be solved)

-            Understanding business fundamentals (i.e. understand an annual report, read a balance sheet and under p&l ownership)

-            Understanding the fundaments of the technologies and ability to understand what’s coming

-            Legal and contracting skills

-            Excellent interpersonal skills

-            Personnel management experience

-            Product Management skills

-            Project Management skills

-            Marketing acumen

-            Story telling – The most effective BD’s can create a vision of what is to be!

Business development is really HARD! 

Unfortunately BD people are sometimes the first to get cut when companies don’t meet their quarterly sales targets (right after marketing staff), especially in the USA which is mostly quarterly numbers driven.  But that is a huge mistake because good BD people can easily do sales while it is more difficult to “train up” a sales person to be a good BD.

So when companies “promote” good sales people to BD positions who don’t have right skills then they are doing their company, the individual and partners/customers a disservice.  Remember the Peter principle.

I have to chuckle when I see these new VC backed SaaS companies hiring business developers to “develop business” for their products.  That isn’t BD, that’s just sales with a fancy title, call it what it is – SALES!

I worked with a company who wanted to measure their business developers on number of calls per day and number of emails sent to clients. Seriously this happened!

Also, an evangelist, futurist or technologist is not necessarily a good business developer. They often have many of the skills required for BD but often lack the business/contracting acumen or they are more enamored with the technology than the business. 

WITH THAT SAID:

So where can you find good BDs? I honestly don’t know, I am hoping that Linkedin is a good fishing pond for high quality BD’s but I won’t get my hopes up.

I am building up Virtualware’s USA business and will be looking for some good BD’s to join this amazing company.  We have an Enterprise Software Platform and we need people that understand how to “develop business” for new solutions/business areas across various industries like manufacturing, transportation, energy, healthcare, defense just to name a few!

Here is an interview question that I like to ask when hiring BD’s.  Their response tells me immediately whether we are able to continue a conversation. 

“Investigate XYZ corporation using their Annual Report, 10k’s and any other publicly available information. 

1)        Tell me where you think there is a business opportunity for us that aligns with what that company has publicly stated are their priorities and future plans.

2)        What is the value proposition that we pitch to the CEO, COO, CFO, and division owners. Include any potential impact on EPS and other business metrics as relevant.

3)        Recommend a strategy to pursue that opportunity.

DM me if you think you have the right stuff to be a BD!