7 Skills Every B2B Business Development Manager Needs

1. Increase sales from existing accounts
Existing clients offer huge potential for significant revenue growth but this valuable pool of revenue potential is often ignored in favour of a shiny new customer. BDM′s must be able to nurture their existing client base and deliver more services and greater value to grow revenue, particularly given the cost of acquisition is much lower for a captured client that a new one.
Low cost technologies such as Saas CRM′s like Contactually and Nimble make nurturing existing clients a lot easier than ever before.
2. Establish new partnerships and new accounts
The ability to generate business from new clients is a core skill of any successful BDM. In addition the B2B BDM must also ensure that new clients are a strategic fit for their organisation.
Looking beyond the direct client sale and thinking about the development of partnerships with suppliers or complementary service providers is critical in a world where technology is changing the shape of our industries at a pace we′ve not seen before.
3. Understand & implement revenue growth strategy
?Strategy? Rubbish, I just go out there and sell ? I′m a natural!?
While ?now′ sales are critically important, sophisticated business development is about more than the immediate sale. The modern BDM needs to understand corporate strategic purpose and objectives, and then be able to craft a revenue growth plan that identifies actions and activities which will connect with the right partners.
4. Understand what drives customers
The BDM, more than anyone else, is best placed to learn and understand what customers want and need now and in the future. To gain advantage the modern BDM needs to decipher what′s driving the customer′s purchase decision.
Understanding what drives customer buying decisions is critical. If you understand your customers better than your competitors you′ll stand a better chance of winning more often.
5. BDM′s must be competitive intelligence gatherers
Strategy is about winning. Winning is about being different from your competitors (and your substitutes) in a way that matters to the people you wish to matter to.
When it comes to competitors, the modern B2B BDM is the eyes and ears of the organisation.
The BDM in B2B markets is perfectly placed to gain insight about competitors and feed this back to management to establish how an organisation can out-position the competition.
6 Define & analyse new markets and service opportunity
Modern BDM′s must be capable of identifying new market and service opportunities through the insight gained from customer interaction.
With a time of rapid change and disruption comes opportunity to define new service opportunity or create new markets where none existed (think iTunes, Spotify and Mailchimp).
7 Leverage the move to mobility and embrace technology
The migration to mobile technology, the emergence of powerful and affordable technologies including CRM, marketing automation, social media platforms (eg LinkedIn) and sales pipeline tools (eg Pipedrive) requires the BDM to actively engage in these technologies in order to keep up with and get ahead of the competition.
BDM′s need to leverage these technologies to enhance their efficiency and increase the effectiveness of their business development activity.