For any business to be successful, you need to strategize and plan for the future. A clear game plan can help drive your business’ potential growth and drive sales, leading to more conversions and money in the bank.
The only problem is…
Not all CEOs have the time or expertise to fuel a full-blown business growth strategy.
This is where business development services come in handy.
A business development agency can help provide you with a “map” for success.
These services are designed to provide the expertise, strategies, and support you need to take your business to the next level.
In this article, we will discuss what business development services are, how they drive success (their benefits) and how to choose the right agency for your company.
(If you’re looking to partner up with an agency that promises 1 qualified sales lead per day, why not hop on a free 15-minute strategy session with us to see how we can help fuel the growth of your company?)
What are business development services?
Business development services provide essential business planning, strategies, and training for companies looking to grow and expand their business.
These services focus on identifying new opportunities; Whether it’s building relationships with potential clients, creating strategies for long-term success, or handling the entire marketing and lead generation process from start to finish.
This could include market research and analysis, prospect list building, outreach, and even training.
Business development services cover a wide range of activities aimed at driving growth and profitability. By partnering with experts in this field, businesses can enhance their competitive advantage and achieve their goals more effectively.
Business development is tricky, and that’s why there isn’t just one way to do it.
What are some examples of business development services?
Strategic business development
Strategic business development is the process of identifying growth opportunities for a company.
If you don’t have a strategy, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Strategic business development involves analyzing market trends, competition, and customer needs to determine the best strategies for expanding your business.
If you have a well-planned and executed strategy you can stay ahead of the competition, generate more qualified leads for your company, and increase ROI.
Strategic business development often involves forming partnerships, entering new markets, and developing products or services to meet your customer’s needs.
Repositioning your company
Another example of a business development service is repositioning your company. Perhaps you would like to rebrand and create a new identity that resonates with your target audience.
A new “look” might just be what you need to stand out from competitors and capture the attention of your ideal customers.
Here are some reasons why you might want to consider repositioning:
- You might want to work with different types of clients.
- The market could be changing, which means you need to pivot and adapt.
- New competitors may have entered the scene, and you want to stand out.
- Your current brand identity might not be generating as many leads as you would like.
A business development service can help you do this successfully or give advice on what would be the best strategy.
Strategic partnerships for business development
Strategic partnerships can play a great role in business development, allowing companies to work together to enhance each other’s strengths.
By collaborating with the right partners, businesses can tap into new markets, access expertise, and increase growth.
But there’s a caveat here.
You need to find the right partner.
You would need to conduct in-depth research on the company you would like to partner up with. What are their values? What are their strengths and capabilities? How is their market presence?
You would need to design a roadmap that would be mutually beneficial.
Establishing strong relationships built on trust and mutual benefit is imperative if you want your strategic partnerships to be successful. With clear communication, alignment of objectives, and a commitment to collaboration, businesses can create lasting partnerships.
Read this case study which shows how Salesbread helped a blockchain company, MDxBlocks, find partners in the IT consulting space: Outbound Lead Generation Case Study: Partnership Campaign
Product and service development
Another way to develop your business is through product development. This means updating and improving your products to meet the changing needs of your customers.
A business development service might help with product development which would involve enhancing what you already offer or creating new products to stay competitive.
To do this, they would start by understanding your customers’ needs and preferences. Use market research, gather customer feedback, and stay informed about industry trends to find opportunities for improvement or new ideas.
It’s similar with service development… Creating new services involves finding gaps in your market, understanding customer needs, and designing services that offer unique solutions.
A BDC (business development company) would start by conducting thorough market research, collecting customer feedback, and keeping up with industry trends.
Developing new services also requires good communication, marketing, and positioning in the market.
Business development makes sure the new service is not only well-designed but also effectively launched. This means planning strategically, clearly explaining the service’s benefits, and using targeted marketing to build awareness and excitement among potential customers.
Sales development and lead generation
Sales development is an incredibly important part of growing your business, finding the right leads can increase revenue and fuel growth.
If you had to hire an agency that handles this aspect of your business, they would be in charge of finding potential leads, understanding their needs, and guiding them through the sales process.
The agency should start with thorough market research to understand your customer preferences, pain points, industry trends, and potential sales opportunities.
Sales development isn’t just about getting new customers; it’s about building and maintaining long-term relationships through effective communication, personalized engagement, and meeting customer needs.
In short, sales development is about systematically growing and keeping strong customer connections to ensure ongoing revenue growth and business success.
What are the benefits of hiring a business development service?
Hiring a business development service can offer a few benefits for businesses of all sizes.
Here are some key advantages:
1. Expertise and Experience:
Business development services bring specialized knowledge and experience, helping businesses to identify growth opportunities more effectively, which in turn can lead to more sales and higher ROI.
2. Market Expansion:
They assist in exploring new markets and customer segments, increasing the potential for revenue growth and market share.
3. Strategic Planning:
These services help in creating and implementing strategic plans tailored to your companies specific needs and goals, ensuring a more focused approach to growth.
4. Networking Opportunities:
Business development professionals often have extensive networks, facilitating partnerships, collaborations, and connections that can be beneficial for business expansion.
5. Efficiency:
By outsourcing business development, companies can focus on their what they love doing.
If you are a founder, you might love closing a sale, but hate lead generation.
This is why hiring a business development service might be a great option because they will handle growth initiatives, marketing, partnership campaigns and more, leading to better resource allocation and productivity.
Allowing you to focus on what you enjoy doing in your company.
6. Risk Management:
They help in identifying potential risks and developing strategies to mitigate them, ensuring more sustainable growth.
7. Increased Revenue:
Through targeted strategies and effective execution, business development services can directly contribute to increased sales and profitability.
8. Competitive Advantage:
These services help businesses stay ahead of competitors by identifying new opportunities.
9. Innovation:
They encourage innovation by bringing in fresh perspectives and new ideas, which can lead to the development of new products, services, or business models.
10. Improved Client Relationships:
Business development services focus on building and maintaining strong client relationships, which can lead to higher customer retention in the long run.
How to choose the right business development service?
Choosing the right business development service is essentially figuring out which channel would be best for your business.
For example, think about which channel your clients would react the most favorably to; Would it be cold calling, LinkedIn outreach, cold email, or social media marketing?
You need to decide which channel you think would be most effective in winning over new business.
So, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a look at what your competitors are doing.
If you see they’re highly active on LinkedIn, there’s a good chance they’re there because it’s working and therefore finding a business development service that specializes in LinkedIn outreach would make a lot of sense.
If you see the website and there’s absolutely no presence on LinkedIn and that there’s an indication that your competitors are doing a lot of email outreach or cold calling.
If you want to answer those questions, ask yourself, are you in a market where you can easily find the phone numbers for your buyers?
Example:
If you were selling to realtors; Realtors will happily give out their cell phone numbers in a lot of different places on the internet. It could be on their website, on LinkedIn, or other social media channels.
And therefore, that vertical may lend itself to hiring a business development service that uses cold calling in their strategy.
So choosing the right business development service really depends on who your customers are, and which channels you could find them on.
For example, if you notice that a lot of your buyers are active on LinkedIn, a business development service that uses LinkedIn makes a lot of sense.
But perhaps if you’re selling to roofers and you notice that hardly any of them are active on LinkedIn, you might explore using cold emailing instead to reach out to them.
That would just make so much more sense.
Choose the right business development service, based on where your customers are the most reachable.
What are the components of a good business development strategy?
Ultra-targeted prospect list building
You need to figure out how to build a list of your ideal prospects.
If you can’t figure this out, you’re going to struggle to build a successful strategy that gets results.
You have to figure out, not only, who your buyers are but also how to prioritize that list, from those most likely to buy, to the least.
So based on signals you’re seeing from the companies you’re selling to, it could be that a company is hiring for a certain job title or they just received funding or they opened a new location;
There are a lot of signals that companies put out there that will help you focus your efforts on the portion of the list that is most likely to be in a buying stage RIGHT NOW.
If you build your prospect list based on your current buyers, it’s a lot easier to find patterns and go after look-a-like customers.
Therefore, if you would like to hire a business development service, ask them about their list-building process.
Reach out with the right message – Personalization is essential
This is essential. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sending a LinkedIn message, a cold email, or using a cold calling script.
Sharing a concise, personalized, simple message, that gets to the heart of what your buyer is dealing with right now, is going to capture their attention.
The message should show them how you can make their work life better.
That’s a big component of a business development strategy.
A solid follow-up process with a clear CTA
I think a lot of providers forget how important the follow-up process is. A good business development strategy does not hope for a reply.
So what should a good follow-up effort look like?
In our case, at Salesbread, we reach out multiple times not giving up on a prospect just because they ignored our first message or even the second one.
You can read more about how we follow up here – The Perfect Outreach Cadence For B2B Sales – With 7 Examples
We also always ask for a booked sales call, and this process has allowed us to get the following results on LinkedIn since 2019:
- A 19.98% Reply Rate on average and…
- 48.14% of those replies were either meeting requests or qualified sales inquiries for our clients’ products or services.
(Read this article, for a deeper look at our LinkedIn Lead Generation Service.)
If you’re looking for a business development service that gets you 1 qualified sales lead per day, hop on a free 15 minute stratgey session with us.
Remember that the right business development service should be able to do the above for you. If you’re interested in learning more about our services, have a look at some of our case studies and articles.