How and when to build your Business Development team

What is Business Development?

How many Business Developers does it take to boost growth?

Business development needs depend on 4 key factors:

1. Product Quality Characteristics

If your product's quality is obvious and consistent, like a commodity, you won't need many business developers.

If the quality is perceived differently across the BD value chain, you'll need more resources.

2. Business Phase

Your needs change depending on where your business is in its lifecycle. Different phases require different resources.

3. Business Orientation

How your company delivers value affects BD needs.

Product or Process Oriented: Focus on reducing costs to offer low prices. Typically called "Product-Led" growth.

Technology Oriented: Invest in R&D to deliver cutting-edge tech.

Selling or Marketing Oriented: Boost revenue through sales tactics and advertising. Typically called "Sales-Led" or "Marketing-Led" organizations.

Market or Customer Oriented: Aim to provide superior customer perception of quality. Companies with a Market Orientation often need the most BD resources.

Harvard's Ranjay Gulati showed that market-oriented businesses are more resilient in his 2009 “Reorganize for Resilience”.

According Dr. Hans Eibe Sørensen's "Business Development, A Market Oriented Perspective", numerous empirical studies show Market Oriented businesses perform better.

4. Business Development Scale

As your business grows, you might need fewer BD resources. This happens when you achieve economies of scale as follows.

Business Development Efficiency: Boost efficiency by increasing the effectiveness. This can be done through skilled team members, automation, and process improvements.

Product Quality: If the quality perception is steady throughout the customer journey, fewer BD resources are needed. Implementing Total Quality Management (TQM) or Six Sigma can help here.

Market Domination: When you dominate the market, the customer’s quality perception matters less because they don't have alternatives. You can reduce BD resources until competition arises.

So, business development needs hinge on product quality, business phase, business orientation, and scale.

Tailoring your BD team on these factors helps deliver the right amount of resources to boost growth.

Tony Gray, BDP


P.S. learn more in the “Business Development Body of Knowledge (BD-BOK).” Get your copy of the BD-BOK on Amazon today!

Boost your BD career with the Business Development Professional (BDP) certification from the Global Business Development Association (GBDA).

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