“I do business development.”
Few times in history have more ambiguous words been spoken. Ask any business development specialists or similarly titled folks what business development is and you’re likely to get just as many answers.
“Business development is sales,” some will say, concisely. “Business development is partnerships,” others will say, vaguely. “Business development is hustling,” yet others will say, evasively. The assortment of varied and often contradictory responses to the basic question of what exactly business development is reminds me of the way physicists seek to explain what, exactly, the universe is.
At an APMP South Africa business development event earlier this year, members engaged with Ignaz Fuesgen, a strategic thinker and implementer with more than 18 years’ experience in transforming businesses toward value optimization and client service excellence. The aim of the workshop was to shed some light on the business development conundrum.
Most explanations as to what business development entails are elegant in their simplicity but leave one wanting more. At its heart, business development is about figuring out how the interactions of various forces—such as brand perception, long-term value, clients, and relationships—create opportunities for growth. A brief overview of what was discussed during the workshop about these forces follows.
Perception based on reputation and experience (value) + brand name / logo / slogan + values + history + associations = value proposition (promise) to clients, stakeholders, and employees.
Brand Perception
A very useful formula was discussed in terms of what one might think a brand is about. Fuesgen provided the following insight:
Perception based on reputation and experience (value) + brand name / logo / slogan + values + history + associations = value proposition (promise) to clients, stakeholders, and employees.
This is very powerful. It is often overlooked how perception is influenced by the way we interact with clients, in both our face-to-face experiences and our written proposals.
Long-Term Value
In its simplest form, “value” is cash, money, the lifeblood of any business, but value can also be access, prestige, or anything else a company seeks in order to grow. There are plenty of ways to make a quick buck for you or your company, but business development is not about I-win-you-lose tactics that create value that’s gone tomorrow as easily as it came today. Rather, it is about creating opportunities for that value to persist over the long term, to keep the floodgates open so that value can flow indefinitely.
Clients
Clients are the people who pay us for our products and services, and without them we wouldn’t have any business to develop. We must recognize, however, that not everyone is a natural client for our business. We have to acknowledge that our offering may not address their needs or have the features they require. Maybe our offering is perfect, but we don’t know how to sell it. Or maybe we are not reaching clients because we are not knocking on the right doors.
Relationships
And then there are relationships. Just as the planets and stars rely on gravity to keep them in orbit, any successful business development effort relies on a foundation of strong relationships. Fuesgen reiterated that building, managing, and leveraging relationships that are based on trust, respect, and a mutual appreciation of each other’s value is fundamental to enabling the flow of value for the long term. Relationships with partners, clients, and employees are all critical to the success of any business development effort; as such, they demand a bold-faced spot in any comprehensive definition of the term business development.
The pitching profession is a complicated and fascinating discipline that deserves a clear understanding so that we can marvel at the beauty of a well-done proposal as much as the stars. So, is business development actually sales? Is it partnerships? Is it proposal writing? Is it about hustling? Well frankly, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Business development is an integral part of the proposal process, and we can agree that it is all of the above, as seen in the multitude of methodologies and information provided by the APMP Body of Knowledge. It is time we realize that it’s much more than just capture planning and execution.
Cassandra Potgieter is business manager – executive management at Cliffe Dekker Hofmyer Inc., a South African full-service law firm. She can be reached at cassandra.potgieter@cdhlegal.com.
Join the Conversation