What are the Differences between Business Development and Management
Business development and marketing go hand-in-hand. And when they are in sync, one can see increases in visibility, growth, profitability, and more. While both business development and marketing are responsible for growing the firm’s client base, they each have separate roles in achieving the same goal. In the fundamental essence of the two concepts, their basic definitions are:- Business Development – Responsible for forming partnerships, strategic relationships, and other professional contacts in target markets in order to bring in new clients.
- Marketing – Responsible for understanding the needs and wants of the target market and developing a strategic plan to establish the firm’s overall messaging, benefits, capabilities, and for communicating those out to the target audience.
Both these departments address the same issue, i.e., how to engage prospective and current clients, but they have different reasons and means for doing so. Here is a pictorial representation of what separates the two though their basic objective is the same:
As a general rule, business development and sales are typically used interchangeably, and include both developing relationships and closing the deal. Transactions, relationships, networks – these are all elements of Philip Kotler’s marketing definition, and they are components of business development. Organisations that truly differentiate marketing from business development, typically view marketing as “one-to-many,” and business development as “one-to-one.”
- Marketing in this context is about building brand, creating name recognition, and generating demand. It’s about figuring out where the prospects are and getting one’s message in front of them. It’s about delivering the product (services) to the right markets, and having an understanding of those markets. Tools used by marketers include websites, e-blasts, direct mail, advertising, public relations, research, and content like blogs, articles, and general presentations (at community programs, conferences of professional societies, or client organizations).
- Business development is about focusing on specific prospects and converting them into clients. Tools used by business developers include personal emails and phone calls, social selling, networking, trade shows, in-person meetings, proposals, and client or project-specific presentations and interviews.
- The marketer’s focus here is on the many, helping to convert suspects into prospects.
- The business developer’s focus is on the few, or the one, moving prospects to opportunities and converting them into clients.
Marketing is all about how to make it happen, where there is a marketing person and not a now-focused sales person. Business development (is about making connections) It’s building upon the brand that one has established through marketing efforts to connect their audience to their products and services. It’s prospecting (think networking events), qualifying leads and then converting those leads into clients. Business development is all about creating relationships. For example:
- Marketing: Figuring out where new customers “live” (both geographically and in terms of “buying mind-set”) and finding a way to reach them.
- Business Development: Building and leveraging relationships founded on trust and integrity to facilitate opportunities.
In conclusion, Business Development and Marketing are part of a continuous spectrum. Though they are part of the same spectrum, they are necessarily the same things as perceived by a few. There are distinct differences between the two, though faint sometimes as they share the same primary objective, but they are not the same.
Shaheela Tasneem
Business Development Manager
Aircrews Aviation Pvt. Ltd.
