Business Development vs. Sales
Sales = ABC (Always Be Closing)Business Development = ABO (Always Be Opening)
The focus of business development is not to close as many sales as possible in the shortest time possible (no quotas here), but to build as many relationships as possible over time. In business development you are looking to open doors to create opportunity for the sales team to close sales. These doors must be open or the sales team has less chance. Often, these relationships take years to nurture and are more than worth the trouble.
I thought I came up with this, but I found this from the Book Yourself Solid blog that mentions this different mindset. If you search for ABC, on the other hand, you will find a million articles.
Door kicker via
Labels: business, development, marketing, networking, sales
posted by Lincoln Murphy at
10/11/2007 10:23:00 PM
4 Comments:
This is probably the clearest differentiator of Business Development vs. Sales I have ever read. As a Business Development executive, it's a bit difficult to explain that my job is to open doors (strategic), not to close the sale (tactical).
Thanks
Ernie
January 1, 2008 6:04 AM
Hello guys,
What about the commission, does both get commission on sales?
January 23, 2009 11:00 AM
@Mahdi Without knowing any real details of your situation, I can only speak from experience.
Commissions are generally paid to those whose actions directly affect the closing sale (i.e. sales people, affiliates, channel partners, etc.).
For those who do not close the sale, they are generally paid in a different way but still based on performance. This could be a percentage of total top-line revenue or percentage of growth in the sector of the company they represent. It could be a piece of the bottom line profit or equity, perhaps via expedited vesting when milestones are reached.
No matter how you pay your Biz Dev folks, just know that few will accept a commission directly tied to the performance of just one or two sales people... it is not fair to have someone's compensation fully dependent upon the actions of others.
By tying the compensation for the Biz Dev folks to the productivity of the business unit or the company as a whole, or to individual milestones (such as signing a big partnership agreement), you create a vested interest in the overall success of the company/unit without putting too much "closing pressure" on the biz dev team. If that closing pressure is there, biz dev team members will lose their effectiveness as they try to help the sales people close sales.
I hope this helps.
January 27, 2009 10:11 PM
Your description is really helpful. Could you let me know the difference between sales and marketing with example.
August 31, 2009 1:09 PM
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