Business Development, a.k.a., The Most Expensive Sandwich Orderer, by Bill Snow

This article originally was published in the November 2016 (Volume 4, Issue 11) update to a now defunct website called "Business Development." 

Professionals are guilty of creating job titles and descriptions based on internal interactions of the company. For example, we might think to ourselves: “Good Ol’ Charlie is supposed to develop business, therefore I will give him the title of VP of Business Development”

Ask yourself, when you’ve reviewed a website because you want to connect with a company -- perhaps you are thinking about retaining their services -- do you instantly seek out the business development creature? 

I don’t. Most people don’t. We want a decision maker. So why do we use “business development” to describe our sales people? These people are people who are supposed to connect with sales targets. Yet, the sales targets probably have no interest in connecting with the business development person. 

This is silliness in my view, just another example of people doing what they think they are supposed to do. Shouldn’t job titles and job descriptions be based on how we want the outside world (our sales targets) to interact with our sales people? The answer, of course, is YES!

If this still doesn’t make sense, think of it this way. Let’s say you’re a top executive in a company but you don’t want to be bothered by pesky people calling you to sell you things. You want to keep the riff-raff and hoi-polloi from bothering you. If that’s the case, why do you place your headshot, fancy title, and impressive bio front and center in the website? You know you are going to be pestered, thus, you hire a crew of screeners to help prevent the great unwashed from actually connecting with you. 

Instead, if you are a top executive and you do not want to be bothered by calls, your title should be “Director of Business Development for SEO, IT, and Insurance Products.” Nobody would call that person, right? So why do we insist on giving versions of that title to the people we have tasked with the responsibility of connecting with our sales targets?

Inward looking marketing, that’s why. When we use “business development” in a title, we are not marketing to our sales targets; we are marketing to ourselves. If I’m the president of the company, I know good Good ‘Ol Charlie is supposed to develop business for me. Why does he need a title that describes his role to me. Shouldn’t he have a title that describes his role to sales targets? The answer to that question is, of course, YES!

Solutions

First and foremost, rethink titles and job descriptions. I’m strongly in favor of banishing “business develop” from titles. Think of something creative, different, unique. Think of something that accurately describes the kind of person with whom the target wants to connect. Something that’s a conversation starter, perhaps. After all, you’ll never stand out if you strive to be the best at fitting in. 

Even more important than titles is making sure your sales people have the right tools to be successful. Do the marketing paraphilia and other “leave-behind” materials do a good job of describing the product or service? Are leave-behind documents even worthwhile? How about the website, are users directed to the appropriate sales people? Or are the sales people difficult to find and contact? Do your sales people have a budget, and if so, do they have autonomy to execute within certain parameters? How about meals and sporting events and golf outings? Does any of that make sense and are your people able to utilize those tactics?

Trying to come up with a one size fits all approach to what constituents the “right tools,” is impossible, of course. Different jobs require different tools. The most important thing to figure out is what do your sales targets want? What do they find interesting? What addresses a real concern for them? 

And even more important than titles and tools, do you even have the right people for the job? Far too many companies seem to think they need a “business development” person. Often, this person is young with very little experience. No offense to twenty-somethings -- they might be intelligent, decent, hardworking people -- but if the plan is to sell something to fifty-something or sixty-something executives, what does a 27 year old have in common? I’ll answer that for you: Not much and probably nothing. 

If your business development person cannot lead a meeting, close a deal, and requires senior partners to ultimately do all of the heavy lifting to win a client, you might not have the right person in the business development job. If that’s the case, your business development person will be able to do little more than handle some of the logistics of the meeting. Lunch, for example. 

Use the right title, provide the right tools, and most importantly, employ the right person. Otherwise, you run the risk having a business development person who is little more than an expensive sandwich orderer. 

This article was plagiarized from the book, “Networking Is A Curable Condition.” The author of the book doesn’t mind because he is also the author of this article.