Chelsea Spencer Smith, MBA, CPC, is an Executive Coach & Biz Dev Expert at The St. James Xavier Group & works with Fortune 500 companies.
Finding, retaining and maintaining clients is vital to any company’s success. Crafting the right business development strategy can go a long way toward helping your business accomplish those goals.
What Is A Business Development Strategy?
Business development is identifying and implementing new growth opportunities for a company. Thus, a business development strategy answers the question, “How is your business going to tackle business development?”
The specifics of a company’s business development strategy will vary based on the industry in which it competes and its internal structure. For example, a prominent business development strategy for a SaaS company might be cold-calling potential clients. A larger, more diverse company’s strategy could revolve around market analysis and new product introduction.
As with all business strategies, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for a business development strategy. Devising your company’s business development strategy will require a critical analysis of where your company stands today and your future goals. An external party, such as a consultant or contractor, can help you draft a new business development strategy or revise your existing one.
The Difference Between Business Development And Sales
While there is significant overlap between the work that the business development team does and what the sales team does, they aren’t the same. A business development strategy paves the way for the sales team to close the deal. If the business development strategy works correctly, it will make the sales team’s job easier.
The primary responsibilities of the business development representatives, while they depend on each company’s specific strategy, generally include qualifying leads, researching the competition and new market trends and actively seeking new business opportunities. Once the business development reps have identified and opened the lines of communication with ideal prospects, these prospects can be passed on to a sales rep to make a deal.
A clear example of this close relationship between the business development team and the sales department would be if the business development team determined that the market for the company’s product in a particular country is worth $300 million this year. The sales team could take that information and begin targeting customers in that market with a specialized sales strategy.
Customer Retention Through Business Development Strategy
Though the primary goal of a business development strategy is to take advantage of new business opportunities, it can also improve a company’s retention of existing customers.
Focusing on customer retention has an incredibly high return on investment; therefore, a great business development strategy will address customer retention and include clear measures to keep current customers happy.
How? It starts with analyzing customer metrics, especially the number of customers who churn and why. Businesses need a customer feedback loop to understand why customers leave (or stay). Collect customer feedback and share that data with the rest of the company. With this information, your company will be prepared to create a business development strategy that includes measures to improve customer retention and maintenance.
Retention Ideas To Incorporate Into Business Development Strategy
There are plenty of simple ways to retain more existing customers as part of the business development strategy.
One idea is to create a company newsletter. This simple measure can keep your company in the customers’ minds without breaking the bank. With email automation, sending a newsletter doesn’t require someone to hit “send.”
Offering surprise gifts and discounts to customers can help show a company’s appreciation and encourage the recipient to remain loyal.
Providing superior customer service is another measure that can be very helpful for retaining customers. High-quality customer service means a highly trained support staff and multiple contact channels for customers to use.
These seemingly small measures can differentiate between keeping and losing a customer. Consider implementing one or more of them into your company’s business development strategy and see what a difference they can make for your bottom line.
Final Thoughts
The key takeaway is that a carefully crafted business development strategy can be a game-changer for finding, retaining and maintaining clients. If your company doesn’t have a business development strategy or hasn’t updated its approach recently, you could be missing out on significant opportunities.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
Read the full article here
