Business development

Successful business development often requires a multi-disciplinary approach beyond just "a sale to a customer". Some consultants frequently recommend a detailed strategy for growing a business in desirable ways, which may involve financial, legal and advertising skills. Business-development practitioners cannot reduce their activities to simple templates applicable to all or even most situations faced by real-world enterprises. Creativity in meeting new and unforeseen challenges may help sustainable growth.
Small to medium-sized companies often do not establish procedures for business development, instead relying on their existing contacts. Or people in such companies may assume that because they know people in high places that this will solve any business-development problems and that somehow new financial transactions will come to them. Such thinking can have significant ramifications if one cannot exploit those relationships, which very often remain personal or weak. Such a situation may result in no new sales in the pipeline.
Business-development professionals frequently have had earlier experience in financial services, investment banking or management consulting; although many find their route to this area by climbing the corporate ladder in functions such as operations management or sales. Skill-sets and experience for business-development specialists usually consist of a mixture of the following (depending on the business requirements)
For larger and well-established companies, especially in technology-related industries, the term "business development" often refers to setting up and managing strategic relationships and alliances with other, third-party companies. In these instances the companies may leverage each others' expertise, technologies or other intellectual property to expand their capacities for identifying, researching, analyzing and bringing to market new businesses and new products, business-development focuses on implementation of the strategic business plan through equity financing, acquisition/divestiture of technologies, products, and companies, plus the establishment of strategic partnerships where appropriate.