Most of us would think that starting up a business is a tough job. But, know that there is no end to it. To make a business successful, one needs to develop, improve, and constantly look at the company’s progress. Let us look at what exactly is a business development and some skills included in the same!
To begin with, what does business development mean?
To be precise, business development constitutes a set of processes and tasks explicitly meant to implement, develop, and improve growth opportunities between and within the organisations profitably and sustainably. However, different companies use different terms to describe business management according to their goals, needs, and convenience.
Top skills needed for Business Development:
Developing a business takes a lot of hard work and passion. Also, one needs to have a unique blend of communication skills, marketing skills, and sales skills.
- Communication skills: Business development mainly depends on how you communicate with your clients and customers. From sharing your ideas with colleagues to have long-term relationships with other companies to cold-calling prospects, the way you tell things is what it all takes. A business developer must be able to speak on point, write clearly, and reply confidently. Also, they must listen to other people talking calmly and patiently. Discernment, Assertiveness, Active Listening, Brainstorming, Emotional Intelligence, Public Speaking, Written communication, Oral communication, and collaboration are the primary skills that come under communication skills, which are equally essential to learn.
- Marketing skills: Not only do the business development managers should think about building and focusing on relationships, but they also should focus on how to promote their business effectively and creatively. One needs to understand how the market works, know which new brands are the new brands that compete with their ones, and identify and make new target prospects educate about their brand. Try to pursue some negotiation skills too. Stay subtle enough and try influencing people in positive ways. Earn their trust, be compassionate enough, listen to your customers actively, understand the sensitivity of a problem, if occurs, and so on. Also, collaboration can be one of the marketing strategies for you to develop your business.
- Sales skills: Marketing and developing a business takes a lot of strategies. One should possess skills such as nurturing relationships with existing as well as old yet potential clients, prospecting, qualification of leads, update of databases of sales customer relationship management on all sales activities, etc. As a BDR will usually work in a team, one needs to have a good relationship with the team members for the smooth functioning of the business.