As a manager, one of the foremost concerns to an organization is developing and exploiting business opportunities that are presented to you and your company. It is indeed one of the high-compensating jobs in the market, which is only commensurate to the role and functions of a business development professional. Business development managers are employed across the public, private and charity sectors, in all types of businesses and organisations.

An astute business leader will subsequently promote branding, marketing and business development activities as factors vital to establishing the “next growth level” of the company. The fewer objectives your individual contributors (both in business development and sales roles) are responsible for delivering against, the more they’ll be able to focus on excelling and being more productive on the limited tasks at hand.

In a mature sales organization, that means sales reps are empowered to spend less (or zero) time researching prospects, qualifying leads, and booking meetings. As a consultant, these individuals can also formulate a good marketing strategy and help to market a business’s brand.

Those with one or two-year stint in business strategic planning as well as sales and marketing have good chances of becoming BD professionals, because they have acquired a general concept of how the market behaves. At this stage, business development deals with identification of various entry points to market.

On the other hand, it is critical to understand the level of coordination that sales and marketing can achieve. The function of sales is to sell products or services directly to the end user or client. Typical goals of business development strategies include market expansion, brand projection, new client acquisition, general awareness about brand, etc.