One thing the pandemic provided was evidence that the more agile a company is, the more it can cope with unpredictability. This evidence cannot be put aside. Unpredictability is not going away. Taking a high-growth approach to your business development strategy requires a look at more than just your sales and marketing but encompasses the processes, procedures, and systems that make the core of your business tick.
Let’s examine some answers.
What is a business development strategy?
First, let’s establish a working definition of a business development strategy. For a lot of companies, this means sales or marketing, but to develop a strategy that drives consistent growth, this definition needs to go deeper and broader.
According to business development expert Scott Pollack, the goal of business development “is the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, and relationships.”
Breaking that down:
The function of your business development strategy plan is to open up channels and make intentional connections to make deals happen. To reach your strategic business goals, your business development strategy needs to align your company’s processes and procedures to better leverage opportunities and relationships, acquire new clients, and enter new markets. Creating that alignment sets up a framework to meet your goals and create high-growth over the long-term. The plan is a set of actions towards meeting your goals and accelerating growth and profitability.
A few questions to ask about your strategic goals:
Considerations About Your Business Development Strategy
Startups Vs. Mature Companies
Where long-term value is placed or how it is achieved through customers, markets, and interconnected networks differs according to the maturity of your business. Start-ups are going to look at strategy and business development differently than more mature companies, but having a plan to identify and open up growth opportunities remains a vital focus.
Long-Term Value
The emphasis on long-term value means that business development growth strategies that drive growth and profitability do not rely on habit, quick fixes, fads, or a reliance on doing it the way it has always been done. A business development strategy is a plan for the long-game, and decisions need to be based on that insight.
High-Growth
A business development strategy is a plan to achieve business growth. Implementing a high-growth approach to your business development strategy involves planning to scale to achieve your business objectives.
Professional service firms will view scalability differently than businesses selling a specific product. Business development strategies for professional services will be nuanced with this in mind to facilitate growth. What innovations can be employed to enact that approach? What measurements should a strategy and business development analyst be focusing on to identify solutions for critical business decisions?
Business Process Development
A tactic is the “how” of going after what you want. If high-growth is your goal, then you need business development tactics that follow steps to create a business development strategy with a focus on high-growth. One tactic that is crucial to long-term growth and success is to ensure everyone is working towards the same business goals.
Business process development creates alignment for long-term growth through a series of actionable steps taken to achieve concrete business goals. Each step in the business process denotes a task that is assigned to a specified team member. By analyzing the system, you can extract the process, document it, and implement changes and standard operating procedures (SOP’s) that standardize each step and facilitate training. This aligns your team to work on the same goal and identifies gaps in the process. Those gaps can be staffed by virtual teams to extend your reach.
Some questions to ask:
This process stabilizes your business development platform, which in turn is the foundation that opens the gates for organizational growth over the long term. It weighs the factors influencing business growth and development and then aligns them with your goals.
Steps to be taken:
How can a virtual assistant help your business?
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, business growth depends on the ability to cope with unpredictability. Having the right personnel at the right time increases your ability to leverage growth opportunities and close deals. Hiring a virtual assistant gives you this ability.
Managing your time is a crucial skill at any stage of your business, but you do not have to do everything. If you are focused on scalable growth, then balancing time between operational and business development activities is less productive. It is more vital to allocate your time to leveraging opportunities and generating growth.
Investing in new methods and process workflows frees up time to:
Virtual assistants are the source of these innovative process workflows that free up your time to do income generating work.
Strategy is like a chess game, where you look for moves that strengthen your position further down the game, spotting ways to open revenue channels. When you hire a virtual assistant, your time is better spent on the strategy of the game rather than moving pieces around. Outsourcing time-consuming support roles gives you the space to act when the opportunity is ripe.
Scaling Up with Virtual Assistants
Virtual assistants are an investment to boost long-term revenue. A VA can boost your success by increasing your company’s flexibility and pinpointing opportunities for productivity and growth.
Outsourcing to virtual assistants can grow your business by:
Things to outsource to a virtual assistant include:
High-Growth Approach to Success
As 2022 gets underway and you plan a business development strategy that will yield the best results for your investment, looking deeper into your processes and procedures along with your sales and marketing allows you to build the agility needed for a high-growth approach to success. Focusing on what you do best and then creating a solutions-based plan to outsource the rest gives you the agility, scalability, and sustainability you need for long-term growth.
