Management Tips - What it Takes to Create an Effective Business Development Strategy

If you are a manager at the same time an owner of a business or an organization then, one of the challenges you are faced with is the challenge of developing and taking advantage of business opportunities that are provided to you and your company. Moreover, as a manager you always have to strive for growth and development. To achieve that aim, you have to have an effective business development strategy? Now, how are you going to do that? What does it requires creating an effective business development strategy? Read on and learn from the following tips.

1. Brace yourself up with sufficient knowledge as well as excellent management practices and strategies. As a manager who aims for growth of his or her business or organization, you have to have sufficient knowledge and excellent management practices and strategies. Well, these will all boils down to whether you will be revolutionary or evolutionary in coming up with ideas and strategies for development. The idea or strategy you will come up with will be the basis for your company to either revolutionize or evolve.

2. It takes a mulch-disciplinary approach. An effective business development strategy entails a mulch-disciplinary approach which includes financial, advertising and legal skills from you as the development manager. This means that you need to come up with creative ways that are flexible to be applied with just about any circumstances that may hit your business. of course, these ways should contribute to the prosperity of your business and not its failure.

3. Create a strategic marketing plan. There are various aspects in your business wherein business development strategies can help your business to grow and prosper. Strategic marketing plan, as such, will deal with the changing customer base and market dynamics. It will also aid in understanding horizontal and vertical target market opportunities and help you learn how to pick out and develop products, services or solutions to address the needs of your target market.

4. Decide on what kind of approach in planning. Take note that a plan shouldn't be on its own to work nor will you solely manage it to work. A plan can take the form of either a 'bottom up' approach or a 'top down' approach. A plan in a bottom up approach involves employees to come up with ideas and suggestions. After which, the best one are passed on to the management. On the other hand, a plan in a top down approach involves higher position personnel such as the managers to establish the business development strategies and then, imposed them down to their subordinates. Additionally, there is the use of collaborative process where managers and employees work together as one in performing this task.

5. Evaluation. Now, after the business development strategy has been decided on, it will be your task as a manager to make sure that this strategy will work out. To do so, you will need to conduct evaluation of its weak points, strengths, the risk involve and its growth potentials. You may want to hire a strategy consultant for this matter as there are indeed, various factors that must be taken into serious consideration. However, it will be dependent on the complexities that come with its implementation. Some of these factors involve assigning of responsibilities, hiring sufficient human resources and establishing a chain of command. It will also involve a specific timeline to determine whether or not the preferred goals are being accomplished or not.

Evidently, there is no single type of business development strategy that will be enough for any business. So as a manager, you have to brace yourself up with more and more knowledge to know what works for you and your business and determine the corresponding advantages of sticking to it.

Discussing the Business Developer Resume

The Business Developer is a very crucial role in a company's growth and thus is a pivotal position within it. It is a managerial position usually assigned to existing senior managers or dedicated business developers with a proven record. Perhaps there is no position in a company as challenging and therefore it is amply rewarding from the point of view of both job satisfaction and money.

Key Responsibilities

The key responsibility of a business developer is to attract new customers and penetrate existing markets. For the purpose, he assesses marketing opportunities and targets markets, gathers intelligence on customers and competitors, generates leads for possible sales, advises on drafts, implements proper sales policies and follows up sales activity with a review and appropriate modifications. He also drafts formal proposals and prepares presentations regarding the identified sales opportunity and develops a proper business model design. The business model involves evaluation of a business and then realization of its full potential using tools like marketing, information management and customer service.

They may follow one of two models: sales-oriented (client facing) and operational function to support sales. In the sales-oriented or client facing role, the concentrates on developing strategic channel relationships or on general sales. It is an operational function to support the sales of a company is often made the responsibility of a separate functionary known as the capture manager, while they continue with finding other sales oriented leads.

Level of Education Required

They are professionals with qualification and experience in financial services, investment banking or sales. Many enter the area by climbing the corporate ladder in fields like operations management. Thus to be one must have a formal degree in business management with specialization in finance, investment banking or sales, along with considerable experience. They must be skilled or experienced in marketing, company law, strategy, finance, proposal management or capture management. The exact set of skills will depend on the business environment being dealt with.

Career Path

Since they are existing professionals with considerable skills and experience, one can't acquire this position at the beginning of a career. So, future business developers must enter the corporate sector as junior level managers and go on to acquire skills and experience in areas like finance, investment banking or sales. At the same time they must continue to develop their skills in the area of business development. Once they feel confident enough to take up the challenge, they must enter the field at the right opportunity. The opportunity may be in their existing company itself or in some other company that is looking for business developers.

A business developer's career is immensely satisfying and financially rewarding although stressful and demanding physically and intellectually. With continuing growth of the economy business developers are sure to be in increasing demand in the coming years.

Organizational Development Manager

Organizational development manager is usually the one who manages design and implementation policies and procedures of the organization. He initiates appropriate changes within organizational transaction activities. Manager supports the establishment and improvement of human capital for critical success of organization. Generally he manages the group of specialists who are considered experts in organizational decision making and in planning goals.

An OD manager can also serve as advisor to utilize organizational methodologies and tools. He works closely with design and implementation goals of organization leadership. An effective manager will utilizes the people, structure, strategy and process in the best way to build the organization. He is not a solo leader. Instead, he maximizes the use of teams to achieve organizational goals.

Part of the responsibilities of organizational development manager are:
• Day to day management of strategy and functional planning.
• He initiates policies, procedures, programs and budgeting.
• Manages department staff and ensures accountability.
• Designs functional programs to improve organization effectively.
• Responsible for adaptability, employee development, employee satisfaction and retention
• Manages legal and financial risks of the organization.
• Acts as consultant to the executive management, president and CEO.
• Responsible for the creation of programs to solve highest level complexity.
• He works with HR leaders to design, develop and implement corporate learning programs.
• Train the HR team members and business managers on design and implementation solution
• He identifies and develops various training programs to prepare successor candidates.
• He trains business managers on job rotation, formal training and development coaching programs.
• Works closely with business managers and senior leaders to develop leadership skills.
• Manage projects, employees and business leaders.
• He gives practical exposure of different organizational activities to all people associated with the business.
• Performs job analysis, evaluation, business mapping culture and team based interventions.

A development-oriented manager sets strategies for organization and ensures the business initiatives as requested. He also manages and supports internal staff development. If you consider manager activity is 100% then 40% of it goes to program design, development and technical assistance. 30% goes to program delivery and management, 15% supervision, 10% to budget and 5% to other related activities. Decision making and problem solving are the two important characteristics of any manager. He is responsible for short term and long term planning of the organization.