Business Development Manager Responsibilities: 5 Key Duties

Have you moved into the role of Business Development Manager? What are the responsibilities of the role?

Maybe you’ve even had a promotion and taken on this new title in your organization, and you’re wondering, what the heck does a business development manager do?

And let’s be honest, should you be spending your time in the same way that the other sales professionals do? That answer along with what you should be doing as a business development manager is exactly what we’re going to cover here.

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Business Development Manager: Primary Responsibilities

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Let me start with this. A lot of organizations have their own definition of what a business development manager does and what they should focus on. In fact, a lot of sales leaders, sales executives have their own definition of what this role is.

What I’m going to share with you are the responsibilities, traits, and common characteristics that every business development manager should focus on if they really want to be effective and be able to call themselves a business development manager (the key word being “development”). So let’s jump in to the first one.

1. Focus on the Future

business development managers are forward-thinking The first point I want to cover off here is pretty critical to being effective. As a business development manager, you have to be forward thinking. Here’s what I mean by that.

Sales is essentially a day-to-day activity focused role. You’re taking existing customers, connecting with them to try and sell them more. You are spending time finding new customers to sell your products or services to, and it’s very much a day by day by day activity.

Whereas, a business development manager, the key as I mentioned earlier, is the word development. The goal of your role is to go out and find new opportunities which are in the future. So as a result, you need to be forward thinking, always thinking ahead.

Now, there’s a problem with this. If you’re forward thinking and you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, you’re finding new opportunities, right? You’re finding new territories, new regions, new partners, ultimately new products maybe even that you should bring to market or that your organization could bring to market. You’re going to get a lot of pushback.

Step one is to make sure you’re forward thinking, but be prepared for pushback. Now, how do you deal with that pushback?

Well, what I want you to consider is that every time you identify through forward thinking potential opportunities, you have to be able to tie them back to where the organization is today and how this will help further them in the future.

And that really comes back to being very familiar with

the organization’s sales strategy or
their growth strategy.

Here’s an example:
Let’s assume for a moment the company wants to grow 10% year over year. You are going to have to identify opportunities that in two or three years might lead to 30% growth. Does that make sense?

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So we’re forward thinking and when you identify those, tie them back to how they will get the company to where it wants to go. That’s how you’ll get the buy-in to your ideas when you’re forward thinking.

So that’s the first point.

2. Business Development Manager Math: Seek Dramatic Growth Opportunities

The second thing you need to consider as a business development manager is that your math is a little bit off, meaning that I want you to be seeking opportunities.

Be strategic in seeking companies, seeking partnerships where the math equates to one plus one equals five, one plus one equals five. I know that’s not what you were taught in school, but bear with me for a moment.

You have to bring forward opportunities that the company can pursue that will equate to dramatic return on their investment. And that investment can be your time, the company’s time, it can be cash, it can be IP (intellectual property), it can be all sorts of different aspects.

But, whatever you bring to the table, it can’t be, “Meh, you found a new territory”, or “We can get a few more customers“.

You want to bring something forward where you can say, “Look, I’ve found a strategic partner that’s selling a complimentary product. If we’re to work together (and by the way they’re interested in working together), we could create a brand new product which opens up an entirely new market for our existing customers”.

That example, one plus one equals five. That’s a huge opportunity.

So you have to be thinking strategically and you always have to remember, ask yourself this question, “Is this opportunity going to equate to one plus one equals five?”

If not, move on to the next opportunity and keep monitoring that one to see if you can convert it into a stronger, more positive opportunity for the organization.

3. Protect Your Time

This third strategy, I think is something a lot of business development managers that I’ve met really get trapped into, and it’s protecting your time. Now, that may seem obvious, right? In sales, we have to protect our time, but as a business development manager, it’s absolutely critical that we protect our time.

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Now, what do I mean by protect your time?

Well, if you’re new to the organization and this is an existing role, you’re going to learn very quickly as to

How did the previous person spend their time?
Who did they talk to?
What kind of meetings did they sit in?

All those kinds of things.

If you’re formulating this new role, if it’s never existed before, you’re going to be dragging along the baggage of your old role. Let’s assume for a moment you’re moving from sales into business development, right? So you’re going to be expected to continue to work in areas of sales that may no longer make sense.

Regardless of what this role consisted of in the past, whether it’s new or existing, regardless of whether this is something you’ve done before or not, you really have to protect your time.

What that means is really taking a look at your calendar in all honesty and asking yourself, “When I look at the meetings and I look at the bookings that are in my calendar, do those equate to the previous point where investment in these conversations, moving these opportunities forward is going to equate to one plus one equals five? Or this is a matter of I’m just spending time doing things that aren’t really relevant to what I should be doing?”

So consider how to best protect your time and that will ensure that you have the time available to pursue these opportunities.

4. Establish Performance Metrics

This fourth area is something that is probably an afterthought, but I think it’s important you think about it early on in your role. You see, again, business development being a little bit of a different role, very forward thinking, very much capitalizing, identifying and capitalizing on opportunities that help create that one plus one equals five environment.

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And obviously you’re protecting your time in order to make sure you can pursue and identify those opportunities. However, you have to set up performance metrics or measures that make sense for you that drive your behavior.

When you look at performance measures, a lot of times we look at them on a team level. Very common measures, and I’ll give you an example in a minute, but what I want you to think of it as based on your objectives, the goals of your role, what are the measures that are really leading measures that drive your behavior to pursue those opportunities?

So an example might be new opportunities created or identified or new partnerships identified.

There’s a couple of examples of leading measures that inspire you to pursue those things. If you just take a look as an afterthought and say, well, what ultimately partnerships did I identify this year that’s really looking backwards.

It doesn’t really tell us too much, but when I measure myself on a monthly basis or even a weekly basis as to what partnerships am I identifying, it drives a certain kind of behavior.

Measures need to be aligned with our forward thinking approach and really be leading measures that drive our behaviors in the right direction. Now, some leading measures can also be looked at lagging, so that’s okay if that happens, but just ask yourself if you’re setting up performance measures for your role, what kind of measures will drive my behavior in the way that’ll ensure that I achieve the goals of my role?

Typically, those are leading measures, not necessarily lagging measures.

5. Business Development Managers Partner With Sales Early-On

Business development managers partner with sales early on in the process

Source: iStock

This last point I think is something that you’ll get trapped in and it ties back to my earlier point in protecting your time when you’re identifying, and let’s use an example here.

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Let’s just say you identify a new region or a new country that you could sell your products or services into, and you maybe identify a distributor you could work through or a company that could be a partner in that region. You want to make sure you bring sales into the process as early as possible.

Now, you obviously have to have a little bit of a foundation here. If you bring sales in too early and you really haven’t figured anything out, that’s not going to look good on you.

However, if you hang on to these new territories, new regions, new partnerships or new selling opportunities for too long, suddenly it becomes your account, which means it’s your problem, which goes back to protecting your time.

Your calendar will fill up with ongoing conversations where you could have turned these new regions, territories, partnerships, et cetera, over to somebody else that can really manage the detail.

So I’m not suggesting that when you identify an opportunity, to dump it onto somebody else and move to the next one. But you have to be very critical of when you make that change.

And generally speaking, what I find is good is that if you just consider that, “Hey, as soon as I’ve got something figured out here, I want to bring in somebody in sales”.

This could be the sales manager, or
a sales leader or
just a high-performing sales person.

That would be valuable in this conversation because suddenly you start to in the eyes of the partner, the customer, et cetera, create a partnership, but it makes it very easy for you to let go at some point rather than have to hold onto these things and get tied down and not be able to focus in that forward thinking aspect that is so critical to being a successful business development manager.

Are You Ready? Step Into the Business Development Manager Role

Gain confidence and step into the business development manager role

Source: iStock

(10:10)
Alright? If you are moving into the role of business development, you’ll need a way to track what you do and when you do it and to drive these new kinds of behaviors I mentioned earlier.

For that reason, I’ve created a tool that can be used in many different reasons. It’s called the 30-Day Sales Action Planner, and it’s meant to drive behaviors for you that are in the right direction over the next 30 days. I know the word “sales” is there, but let’s be honest, the end goal of business development is to make sales. So grab that resource. There’s no cost. It’s my gift to you to try and help you formulate the right approach so you can be effective.

Click on the link to download the PDF. Print it off, however you prefer to use it, and that will drive the right kinds of behaviors to ensure you are successful. Comment below if you have other strategies you’d add to this list so we can create a resource for future business development managers who are maybe going through a similar transition to you.

Now, what I would suggest is the next best tool for you when it comes to being successful as Business Development Manager is influence. You can learn how to be more influential in sales and apply those very same strategies to your new role to be successful as Business Development manager. And until then, let’s get out there and identify some new opportunities.