Business Development professionals frequently have had earlier experience in financial services, investment banking or management consulting; although many find their route to this area by climbing the corporate ladder in functions such as operations management or sales. Skillsets and experience for business-development specialists usually consist of a mixture of the following (depending on the business requirements):
* marketing
* legal
* strategy
* finance
* proposal management or capture management
* sales experience
The "pipeline" refers to flow of potential clients which a company has started developing. Business-development staff assign to each potential client in the pipeline a percent chance of success, with projected sales-volumes attached. Planners can use the weighted average of all the potential clients in the pipeline to project staffing to manage the new activity when finalized. Enterprises usually support pipelines with some kind of CRM (customer relationship management) tool or CRM-database, either web-based (such as the salesforce.com software-as-a-service solution) or an in-house system. Sometimes business development specialists manage and analyze the data to produce sales management information (MI). Such MI could include:
* reasons for wins/losses
* progress of opportunities in relation to the sales process
* top performing sales people/sales channels
* sales of services/products
For larger and well-established companies, especially in technology-related industries, the term "business development" often refers to setting up and managing strategic relationships and alliances with other, third-party companies. In these instances the companies may leverage each others' expertise, technologies or other intellectual property to expand their capacities for identifying, researching, analyzing and bringing to market new businesses and new products, business-development focuses on implementation of the strategic business plan through equity financing, acquisition/divestiture of technologies, products, and companies, plus the establishment of strategic partnerships where appropriate.
* marketing
* legal
* strategy
* finance
* proposal management or capture management
* sales experience
The "pipeline" refers to flow of potential clients which a company has started developing. Business-development staff assign to each potential client in the pipeline a percent chance of success, with projected sales-volumes attached. Planners can use the weighted average of all the potential clients in the pipeline to project staffing to manage the new activity when finalized. Enterprises usually support pipelines with some kind of CRM (customer relationship management) tool or CRM-database, either web-based (such as the salesforce.com software-as-a-service solution) or an in-house system. Sometimes business development specialists manage and analyze the data to produce sales management information (MI). Such MI could include:
* reasons for wins/losses
* progress of opportunities in relation to the sales process
* top performing sales people/sales channels
* sales of services/products
For larger and well-established companies, especially in technology-related industries, the term "business development" often refers to setting up and managing strategic relationships and alliances with other, third-party companies. In these instances the companies may leverage each others' expertise, technologies or other intellectual property to expand their capacities for identifying, researching, analyzing and bringing to market new businesses and new products, business-development focuses on implementation of the strategic business plan through equity financing, acquisition/divestiture of technologies, products, and companies, plus the establishment of strategic partnerships where appropriate.
