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Business owners often face unexpected challenges in growth because of various factors that develop within and beyond an organization. That’s when they need someone to identify the underlying issues and provide a fresh perspective to problem-solving. This is why you see organizations hire business development professionals such as consultants.
The role of business development is one of the most challenging in an organization. Its success directly influences an organization’s future growth and stability. Key business development skills are instrumental in helping individuals perform their roles with greater efficiency.
Understanding Business Development First
In a nutshell, the primary function of business development is to create value for an organization. It includes ideas, activities and initiatives undertaken to help businesses perform better. The primary goal is to identify, nurture and acquire new business opportunities that’ll drive growth and profitability. Additionally, intelligent business decisions help create value for organizations and customers.
Business development activities extend to different departments, including
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Sales
Business development helps assess the sales that can be achieved within a stipulated time. With such goals, the sales department can target a new customer base with their strategies.
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Marketing
Business development professionals help allocate the marketing budget, which determines marketing strategies. It depends on the scope and resources available to the organization.
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Strategic Partnerships
Strategic alliances or partnerships are one of the most effective ways to enter a new market. Business development professionals help weigh the pros and cons of available options.
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Project Management
Decisions regarding manufacturing products in the base country or importing them into targeted markets are taken by business development professionals. The assessments are time and cost-bound.
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Product Management
A product may require different compositions across different geographical locations. Business development teams drive the work of product management and manufacturing by weighing in on business development plans.
Top Business Development Skills
Business development involves high-level decision-making. The professionals not only evaluate current business performance but also suggest ways to improve it. They identify opportunities while looking to improve and maintain long-term relationships with partners and clients. Therefore, there are plenty of responsibilities that a business development professional shoulders. Let’s examine the essential skills required for business development.
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Business Development Skills: Communication
As business development extends to other functional areas such as sales and marketing, communication skills become a top requirement. From cold-calling to building lasting relationships with clients and customers, and sharing information with colleagues and others stakeholders, you must be able to communicate clearly and effectively. In addition to verbal and written communication, you need to pay attention to your body language.
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Business Development Skills: Negotiation
Part of business development requires you to persuade other people of the value of your ideas and products. This means that negotiation—reaching an agreement that’s advantageous for everyone involved—becomes one of the top skills required for business development. You can earn someone’s trust and influence them through
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Collaboration
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Active listening
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Compassion
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Business Development Skills: Strategizing
A primary responsibility of business development professionals is building and assessing business strategies. Predicting issues and looking for ways to overcome obstacles calls for rational thought and the ability to understand the situation in depth. The key business development skills required for strategizing are
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Critical thinking
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Analytical ability
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Teamwork
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Business Development Skills: Project Management
A business comprises multiple projects that contribute to overall performance, growth and profitability. Typically, a business development professional is associated closely with multiple projects at any given time. Therefore, an efficient professional should have the same skills as a project manager. It includes goal-setting, establishing timelines, creating milestones, identifying objectives, managing risks, creating budgets, delegating tasks and managing teams.
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Business Development Skills: Business Intelligence
The scope of business development isn’t limited to the internal environment; it expands to understanding competitors and the market as a whole. Thorough research, data collection and analysis can help professionals understand which market segments to respond to and how. For example, developing sales pitches or new marketing campaigns if a market is changing.
Conclusion
Business development professionals wear multiple hats in an organization. With the increasing demand of ‘biz dev’ professionals, it’s evident that they’re instrumental in keeping the business as well as the economy moving forward. Harappa’s Expanding Networks course will teach you how to develop constructive relationships with people, maintain rapport and leverage connections to accomplish professional goals. Learn the tools to build authentic, diverse and mutually beneficial professional relationships and lead yourself to become an efficient business development professional today!
Explore topics such as Building Relationships In The Workplace, How To Build Rapport, How To Become An Extrovert, Advantages Of Being An Ambivert & Characteristics Of A Professional from Harappa Diaries to build strong professional networks.
