Devaisov

The private labeled bottled water industry is exciting with tremendous growth opportunities and the ability for suppliers to offer their customers and strategic partners creative, effective advertising solutions.

But like any business, care is required to develop the business in a profitable way and the best way to do this is to establish a focused business development effort that utilizes the tools and techniques established by successful business.

The first step is to define the concept “business development”.

Definition:

Business development “includes a number of techniques designed to grow an economic enterprise. Such techniques include, but are not limited to, assessments of marketing opportunities and target markets, intelligence gathering on customers and competitors, generating leads for possible sales, follow up sales activity, formal proposal writing and business model design.

Business development involves evaluating a business and then realizing its full potential, using such tools as marketing, sales, information management and customer service. For a sound company able to withstand competitors, business development never stops but is an ongoing process.” (source: Wikipedia)

From this definition it is clear that business development is more than closing the sale and each technique requires detailed planning and follow up.

Using the concepts of business development, it is possible to establish a profitable private label water business but it takes considerable initial and continuing effort.

The following case study involve a fictional Bottled Water company that entered the private labeled bottled water business. For discussion purposes it will be called ABC bottler (“ABC”)

Unique Value Proposition:

An initial challenge is the development of a Unique Value Proposition that answers the question “Why should I buy from you”.

After a review of the market and the competition it was determined that private labeled bottled water was a powerful, cost effective, advertising vehicle but because a customer’s brand was affected, high product quality and customer service was required. ABC’s Unique Value Proposition was established and stated:

“ABC will provide powerful and cost effective advertising and brand promotion for its customers based upon the highest quality consumable private label water, label design and customer service.”

Marketing and Target Markets:

Field and internet research was conducted with the basic question being: What are the characteristics of industries are most likely to use our product at a price that is profitable to us. Key characteristics were developed:

Prospects that provide a quality product or service. Industries operating in a competitive market environment where product/service differentiation was critical. Prospects that required drinking water for customers, clients or prospects. Prospects that maintained a quality brand image. Initial research indicated that the following industries were initially high potential targets:

Hospitality (Hotels and Spas) Banking Mortgage Brokers Real Estate Ski Resorts

Sales Channels and Market Access:

It was decided that two channels would be used to go to market – direct selling and e-commerce. An e-commerce site was developed that allowed customers to design their own label for the bottles or provide an existing design consistent with the customer brand strategy. Search Engine Marketing and Optimization techniques were used to promote this channel.

A direct sales staff was formed to develop and close sales opportunities and these efforts were supported by a direct mail campaign and networking with local chambers of commerce, local trade associations and lead sharing groups.

The sales effort, after a series of initial false starts and disappointments matured successfully as we reviewed and revised the fine points of our effort.

Product Quality and Customer Service:

ABC’s corporate strategy for all products was to stay at the high end of the market and this was particularly true for private label bottled water where the market is characterized by cutthroat competition and many low quality vendors who are slashing prices and selling on price rather than quality.

ABC focused on three areas of quality:

Water purity – ABC used a steam distillation/ozonation process that guaranteed 99.9% pure water that tasted delicious. Label Design Quality – ABC used an in house professional designer to guarantee label design quality. Label Print Quality – ABC used laminated label stock that was extremely durable and water proof and used digital or flexo printing technology to guarantee quality.

Customer service was particularly important as ABC established a reputation for delivering on time and correctly. If mistakes occurred, and they did, ABC adopted a no questions asked guarantee. ABC established a reputation as a reliable vendor for its customers.

If you are starting your own business it is important to come up with a business development plan. You might just sit in front of your computer for hours without having a clue as to how to write a business plan. Don’t sweat it, you are not the only one to have faced this challenge.

Here are 10 easy steps to take towards putting together a professional development plan.

Step 1: Determine Why You are Writing a Business Plan
Prepare a short paragraph that explains the reasons why you are creating a business plan and the reasons why the business plan will be awesome. Are you trying to raise funds? Starting a new business? Strategizing to annihilate the competition? Looking for strategic partners? Whatever your reason, please know that it is vital that you are committed to writing your business plan.

Step 2: Get a Sample of a Business Plan
Go to your local bookstore or library, or simply browse the internet for resource materials. Find out how a professional development plan looks like, what it is and what it is not. Prepare an outline which will include the key sections and sub-sections that you will want to appear in your business plan.

Step 3: Gather all The Information you will Need
Look through the files in your computer, filing cabinet, storage boxes and even your phone in order to get all the information you will need concerning the business you want to start. You should also consider press releases, marketing pieces, related articles, past financial statements, industry journals, vital notes and websites or ideas that have been gathered over time.

Step 4: Put Down your Thoughts
This perhaps, might be the best part of writing a business development plan. Type out your ideas, thoughts, questions and list of things you need to do into every section of your professional development plan.

Step 5: Create a Rough Draft
This is the part where all your thoughts and ideas begin to take shape. Simply move through the whole outline, section after section. Start a Business Development Plan To-Do List in order to keep close track of the topics that will need detailed research, back-up information or statistics. Print out a copy after you are done and go over it a couple of time and making revisions as you go.

Step 6: Do your Research
Carryout research and get solid information to support the claims that you have made in your business plan.

Step 7: Think Numbers
Start preparing your financial statements. If you state a specific marketing system in your business plan’s marketing section, you should include the corresponding expenses in the financials.

Step 8: Create a final draft
Most times finishing can be the most difficult part of completing a professional development plan. Double check your draft for spelling and grammar errors.

Step 9: Set a timeline
In order to ensure that you complete your business development plan, ensure that you set a timeline that you will not be able to ignore. Make an arrangement with a person whom you are not pretty close with, if possible, a professional acquaintance – this way, it would be more difficult and very uncomfortable for you to call and delay.

Step 10: Polish your professional development plan to excellence
The remarks you get from the people who have read your plan will help you improve the sections of your plan that will require attention. Search for any other information that you may require, include the ideas suggested by your readers and clarify points or sections that were not properly conveyed.

Business development is one of the functions that every company, from inception to exit, performs at one time or another. It’s also one of the most “unbounded” roles within a company. For some companies, business development means acquiring new customers. Others, it means raising capital. And, for yet another set of people, it means to build alliances and partnerships.

Whatever the term ultimately means to anyone, it is a function that clearly requires a multitude of skills. Let’s take for example, raising money. A business development person in a small startup company would be responsible for building relationships to raise venture capital and/or general financing for startup operations. Oftentimes, the reason this function falls under business development is because the business developer is building strategic partner relationships. Some of these strategic partners deem the relationship critical to grow new business opportunities. In that respect, the strategic partner will then invest money in return for an equity stake in the startup company.

In the case of building and managing partnerships, the business development team is often called Alliances. In this example, business development or Alliance is responsible for recruiting, managing, and supporting partner companies. In addition to this, the Alliances organization would also have a responsibility for driving a certain amount of revenue through the partners, as well. This alliance function essentially builds a core ecosystem around the host company. The ecosystem effectively allows the host company to be in more markets, capture certain geographic territories, or even drive more revenue than it could on its own.

Building joint ventures is also a form of business development activity. There are times when a company needs to work together on a specific business opportunity. The opportunity could be related to driving new business in a specific country or perhaps in a particular industry. The two companies would develop an operating agreement under which they will work together. Shared revenue and expenses, team alignment and sales targets are examples of agreements created as part of this joint venture relationship.

Driving sales is another function where business development is often categorized. This is especially true when a company is first starting off in business. Many small companies categorize their sales efforts as business development rather than sales. One of the reasons for this is because the territory is new or perhaps the product line is untested with customers. The business development group is responsible then for selling new business in an uncharted environment.

Corporate development is another function often interrelated with business development. In general, though, a corporate development function handles aspects of mergers and acquisitions for a company. Their role is to identify companies that have synergistic business models and would complement the host company. In many aspects, a corporate development officer for a company has similar skill sets and experience as all of the above organizational roles.

As one can ascertain, business development is a “catch-all” term that can encompass many different roles within an organization. That said, the skill set and experience for a business development executive is fairly broad. He/she must be versed in areas, such as building partnerships, strategy, technology, geographic markets, sales, and, of course, finance. In addition, understanding the specific industry in which the company operates is icing on the proverbial cake.

Everyone that has intentions of starting a business or branching out an existing business into new fields will realize how difficult that is nowadays. The competition is fierce, well organized and with the development of the internet there has been a great increase in marketing styles and tactics. Someone without enough experience will not be able to get off to a successful start in today’s business world and that is why it is important to have the help of business development solutions.

There are many forms that business development solutions can come in and each company will have to review themselves individually in order to be able to find the best method. In some cases it will be possible to have software tools or web based development tools that will be sufficient. These include a number of marketing, publishing, mailing and server devices that contain templates to choose from and which can also be integrated with one another. This has the advantage that you can oversee things your self and have total control, but on the other hand for a large business starting up this might be overwhelming. You will also need to have a great understanding and knowledge of software applications, communications and the internet in order to be able to actually use and integrate all the necessary features. If not sure, there are many courses or seminars that focus on business development software solutions and the training of how to use them. Any training and practicing on such solutions should start well in advance of actually needing to use them in a professional manner so that you will know what you are doing from day one. You will also have to do research and compare the different applications and their prices. Not all business development software is affordable and you will have to find and purchase the one that really covers all of your immediate and near future needs.

Other business develop solutions come in the form of consultants or even a headquarters in the case of franchise stores. Consultants can be expensive, but for the most part they have experience developing businesses and create a plan just for you based on all the information they collect on your branch, company size, budgeting, location and competition. This head start is money well spent and a successful start is one of the most important things needed for a new business trying to get hold of a customer share in the local market. Consultants or companies can also develop unique marketing strategies for you that will make you stand out amongst competition and this is not something everyone will be able to do without professional support and advice.

Starting a business is one of the most exciting things you can do. However, as a new network marketer, independent business owner, or product representative, you may not realize that the first year or two in business will be the most challenging. This is especially true if you have never built a business before or worked outside the home. To help you with your business development, here is some advice you can use to maximize your chances of business success.

One thing that you need to understand as a new business owner is that you are responsible for your own success. The company will usually provide training to help you with your business development and your sponsor may offer some advice. At the end of the day, though, you are the one who has to take action to move your business in the direction that you want it to go. No matter what your sponsor tells you, all businesses require some type of active participation on your part.

Business Development Tips for Your First Year

Get Used to Rejection

No one likes to be rejected. As a small business owner, though, you might as well get used to it. Not everyone is going to be a match for the products you are selling or your business opportunity and you will run into a lot more people saying “No” than those who say “Yes”.

Don’t get discouraged. Take each rejection as an opportunity to learn what didn’t work so you can refine your approach. Eventually, you will get to a point where you will be able to ferret out the best business associates and increase your conversions.

Automate as Much of Your Business Development as You Can

A big part of your small business success will depend on how well you handle your time. There are only so many workable hours in the day and you want to spend as much of that time on tasks that will make you money or help you grow your business. Look for ways to automate or outsource those chores you don’t have time to do. For example, you could hire a virtual assistant to help you with email or some of your marketing.

Get Training

Part of your business development strategy must include taking time to get training that will provide you with the knowledge you need to build a successful small business. A lot of business opportunities tout the fact that you don’t need to have prior business experience. While this is true, you must be willing to get the training required to bring you up to speed. Take advantage of what your company has to offer as well as books and seminars offered by business development experts.

Track Your Progress

Tracking is the key to determining what works in your business and what needs to be abandoned in favor of something more promising to your business development. This is particularly important if you are paying with time or money because you don’t want to waste either on stuff that isn’t getting results. While there are programs out there which will assist you in monitoring different aspects of your business, a simple Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet will generally work fine as well.

Learn to Separate Fact from Fiction

When you announce to the world that are in business, you will get a lot of advice from everyone. Some of it will be good and some of it will be plain wrong. In addition to that, other people may try to sell you products and services aimed at helping your manage your business. It is important that you learn discernment and be able to separate fact from fiction. Otherwise, you will end up wasting time implementing bad advice or throwing good money at worthless products.

Build a Brand

There are thousands of people in the commercial sphere selling all sorts of business opportunities. The only thing that will make you stand out from your competition is your branding. Not your company branding but your own personal branding. When you build a recognizable name for yourself, you will attract prospects to you rather than having to chase after them. Additionally, having a personal brand will make it easier to change business opportunities without being forced to start all over again.

Train for Independence

It’s nice to have people helping you with your business development and providing advice or tools to assist you in achieving small business success. However, you are the epicenter of your business and you need to be able to stand on your own two feet. Network marketing is an industry that sees a lot of turnover. It is not uncommon for people to drop in and out of a business opportunity. Keep yourself and your business strong by cultivating as much independence as you possibly can.

Focus on Long Term Success

A lot of people in the network marketing industry try to sell you on the idea that you can achieve instant success with your business opportunity. Overnight success does happen but it is very rare. Usually, what looks like an overnight success is actually the result of years of hard work behind the scenes.

It is best to focus on building a business for the long term. When you focus on attaining quick success, you will become easily frustrated because it won’t be happening fast enough for your tastes. Think of building your business as a marathon rather than a sprint. It may take awhile to reach the finish line but you will get there if you persist and persevere.

Hoping people will buy your published material or products will be the death of your business! No longer is the traditional one-way publishing model or company-centric thinking acceptable or profitable. According to Mark Rousseau, General Manager for Findlaw/Lexpert at Thomson Carswell, “You need to find out what the client’s needs are and develop products and services to address those needs to succeed in today’s business world.”

Let’s take for example, Mark Rousseau’s growth mandate of 30% compounded growth over the next 5 years. How does he plan to achieve this? According to Mark, they are undertaking a number of business development initiatives to meet their division’s growth objective.

Thomson Carswell acquired Lexpert Magazine in 2004 from entrepreneur and publisher John Alexander Black and hired Mark Rousseau who has more than 20 years of publishing experience to operate and grow the business. The staff size has since doubled from 15 to 30 employees. According to Mark, “the only other thing that has changed is billing and IT which has been centralized with Thomson Carswell’s operations”. The entrepreneurial operation of the publication itself has remained intact.

Always thinking of ways to grow the business, Mark Rousseau has shifted their advertising focus to include new potential advertisers in the business-to-business and luxury goods categories. This makes perfect sense when you realize that the average corporate reader’s annual income is in excess of $150,000!

If you want to be viewed as an industry leader, be the first to do something different! Lexpert is leading the way by planning and hosting the first ever Rising Stars Awards show this November for the top 40 Canadian Corporate Counsel and Leading Lawyers in private practice under age 40, in partnership with The Globe and Mail. This out of the box thinking has also led to other innovative initiatives. According to Mark Rousseau, the pilot for their business development course was so successful last year that they are planning to do six 1 ½ days business development courses in 2006. Each course will be taught by a leading lawyer in a specific practice area with his/her own unique course material for a maximum of 30 corporate counsel and senior level executives.

Building strategic partnerships is not a new idea but if you are able to leverage your partnerships like Lexpert has done with the two national dailies in Canada, National Post and The Globe & Mail, you too can have a captive audience of senior business executives in exchange for current and relevant corporate deal news. Once a week, features from Lexpert’s Big Deals column appear in the Legal Post section of the National Post; and coming soon, a new deal with The Globe and Mail which takes effect on Oct 1, 2006 will further assist Lexpert’s clients in reaching their target market of Canadian business executives.

Lexpert, now part of the global information powerhouse Thomson Corporation, understands the importance of leverage. Through joint initiatives with their U.S. sister companies Thomson West (the largest legal information provider in the U.S.) and Findlaw (a popular U.S. legal Internet site), Lexpert has been able to successfully enter the U.S. legal marketplace and reach 15,000 U.S. Corporate Counsel and 10,000 Leading U.S. lawyers with their magazine. They now do a 25,000 mailing twice a year in the U.S. market with the help of their U.S. siblings, to provide valuable exposure for their Canadian advertising clients and to increase the magazine’s readership beyond Canadian borders.

With an increasing base of web savvy clients, Mark Rousseau also plans to have everything in print, available online and has a team of web developers revamping their corporate web site at http://www.lexpert.ca to improve their users’ navigational experience. For example, if you are a corporate lawyer, you will be directed to view information on the site that is relevant to you.

Lexpert is certainly no stranger to launching successful products into the legal marketplace. Their print publications like “Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory”; “Lexpert/American Lawyer Media Guide to the Leading Top 500 Lawyers in Canada”; “Lexpert/CCCA Directory and Yearbook”; and “Lexpert Law Student & Associate Recruitment Guide” have all been well received by their intended markets. Even their much anticipated online product Deal Monitor, currently under development and slated to be released before the end of this year, is bound to be another huge success as this product promises to address the needs and demands of their key clients.

With assistance from Thomson Financial and Thomson West, this database will consist of Canadian and U.S. based corporate deals dating back 5 years. This online subscription tool will have analytical capabilities such as trending with historical data, customized search capabilities, and the ability to produce custom graphs and much more. According to Mark, they are not a magazine but “a vehicle to help their clients develop their business”. He contributes much of their success to the close relationships they have developed with their clients.

For those starting a publishing business, he recommends focusing on the web, as the print publishing industry is saturated and a tough model to build and sustain. He also suggests that you get audience generated content to guarantee the readership of your publication.

The moral of this story, no matter what industry you are from, finding out what your clients’ needs are and developing products and services to address those needs is the key to your company’s success and profitability.

Article Summary of Best Practices for Business Development:

- Find out what your clients’ needs are and develop products and services to address those needs

- Create a solid business plan to help achieve your company’s growth objective

- Research the demographics of your target audience to expand in the right direction

- Be the first out of the box with something new in your industry

- Create opportunities to allow your clients to demonstrate their expertise

- Form and leverage strategic partnerships

- Invest in the development of products and services that your target market needs & would pay for

- Create a company web site that is easy to navigate and provides a good user experience

- Have your products and services available online

- Focus on building partnership relationships with your clients

- Research the industry you are thinking of entering

- Survey your clients or potential clients for new ideas

In the almost 30 years that I’ve worked as a CPA, I’ve had the opportunity to see businesses go on to achieve amazing results in the marketplace and for their community and for the owners. And I’ve seen many more businesses founder and fail.

One of the biggest challenges for small business is figuring out how to grow your business, especially in the beginning. The problem is that the desire to grow your business can turn into “grow at any cost” and that’s a dangerous position. Growth can be deadly to your business if you don’t first weigh the cost of that growth.

That cost can come in two forms:

The expense of the development strategy itself, and The cost of ramping up your business with inventory and/or personnel to meet the demands of increased business.

In this article, we’re going to look at the expense of the development strategy itself. It really is the second thing you should consider, though. Fast growth can cripple a small business if there isn’t enough cash flow to fulfill on the sales. First determine how much growth your business really can stand.

Assuming that your business is able to handle new clients and/or sales, now let’s take a look at the business development strategy itself. A good rule of thumb is that you should expect to receive 5 times gross income (in other words, sales) for the amount you spend for promotion, marketing and advertising. In other words, if you spend $10,000 in total to put a new business development strategy in place, you should expect to receive $50,000 in new sales.

If you’re the typical small business starting, growing or even just surviving in a tough economic market with little or no credit, you also need business development strategies that don’t eat up your cash flow. There are plenty of people happy to sell you tens of thousands of advertising space, but can your business afford that? And what if the campaign doesn’t work? You’ve just used up some hard-won cash from your small business.

The best business development strategies are ones that take little or no cash flow.

Here are nine high impact, low-costs for your business:

Get noticed. Small business often start with an entrepreneurial urge to do something better than anyone else has done it before. That’s working in the business. And to a certain extent, you need that. But, in today’s world, it’s highly unlikely that the world will beat a pathway to your door based on something great you’ve done that no one else knows about. Some ideas to get you started: Write articles, post a blog, build a social media platform or press releases. It’s possible to get noticed in today’s world for little money. The trick is to stand out above all the other noise. The best way to do that is to provide solid content. Each product and product line must stand on its own merit. There is no room for dogs in a bootstrapping company. Unless, of course, you have a pet grooming business. Have a good accounting system in place so you can quickly make business management decisions. If something is working, then put more money into promoting that item. If something isn’t, cut it quick. Create a sales funnel. The sales process resembles a funnel. At the top end, the widest part, are the people who are just finding you, checking out their options, considering using your services or buying your product. If you can adapt your product or service to match the funnel, you can often pick up sales. For example, at the top, where the funnel is widest, you may want to offer an entry-level product or a special report at a reduced price. This may help you to capture some of those people who otherwise may not have gone past the looking point. Can you create some kind of recurring business model, where you receive automatic monthly payments? This is a great way to generate steady cash for your business and is often easier to sell then one big product. For example, our tax firm has a monthly billing service. Clients get unlimited consulting during the year and the cost covers the preparation of their business and personal returns. The benefit to them is that they have a budget and know exactly what it’s going to cost. The benefit for our firm is that we have steady cash flow. One of our clients sells equipment. They offer a monthly fee to provide ongoing maintenance. The benefit to the customer is that they have someone checking on the equipment. All costs of repair are covered as part of the ongoing monthly fee. So there are no big cost surprises down the road. Our client picked up extra revenue, a steady stream of cash flow and a happy client. Is there a way to create something like that for your business? Create different service levels. Not all clients want the same thing. Can you create a premium service level that allows you to charge a higher rate for some of your current clients? What are the things that would make your service more valuable? Increased access to you personally? Front of the line option? Our firm has 3 levels of service available. Ironically, it’s the most expensive option, with ‘front of the line’ service and unlimited consulting with partners in the firm that sells the most. Because of the nature, though, it’s limited and so there is a waiting list. That helps sell the other levels of service. As you create a product or a service, think about what other products or services could be offered to complement and augment it. What else do your clients or customers need? What other services can you give them to create additional streams of income for your business? For example, a chiropractic office may offer therapeutic massages, yoga classes or nutritional supplements. These services and products aren’t chiropractic services but they are related to health and something that chiropractic patients might be interested in. Form strategic relationships. When you focus on a niche, you often find that there are things you can’t do, but are things that augment your service perfectly. By affiliating with other service providers, you can create a bigger, higher-value product that benefits everyone. A website designer/programmer builds websites for business owners. He finds that his clients also often need quality writers. If he refers services, he may make a referral fee. To be honest and ethical, that relationship and possible payment should be disclosed to the client as well. Create a high-end and low-end solution. One of our new passions is talking about the bi-modal graph. Imagine a two-hump camel. One hump represents the people who want hands-on, concierge service. The other hump represents people who want the lowest-cost solution. The depression in the middle is what used to be our target market: people who wanted a little of both. Today, that market is largely gone. Bill and collect in advance. It’s much easier to collect money up front then it is afterwards. It might be a little harder with the first sale, because your customer doesn’t have any experience with you, but after that, you’ve actually got to question why they don’t pay you in advance. If you are willing to extend credit, make sure you bill at a premium. There is a cost to carrying debt, especially in a tight credit market like now.

In the almost 30 years that I’ve worked as a CPA, I’ve had the opportunity to see businesses go on to achieve amazing results in the marketplace and for their community and for the owners. And I’ve seen many more businesses founder and fail.

One of the biggest challenges for small business is figuring out how to grow your business, especially in the beginning. The problem is that the desire to grow your business can turn into “grow at any cost” and that’s a dangerous position. Growth can be deadly to your business if you don’t first weigh the cost of that growth.

That cost can come in two forms:

The expense of the development strategy itself, and The cost of ramping up your business with inventory and/or personnel to meet the demands of increased business.

In this article, we’re going to look at the expense of the development strategy itself. It really is the second thing you should consider, though. Fast growth can cripple a small business if there isn’t enough cash flow to fulfill on the sales. First determine how much growth your business really can stand.

Assuming that your business is able to handle new clients and/or sales, now let’s take a look at the business development strategy itself. A good rule of thumb is that you should expect to receive 5 times gross income (in other words, sales) for the amount you spend for promotion, marketing and advertising. In other words, if you spend $10,000 in total to put a new business development strategy in place, you should expect to receive $50,000 in new sales.

If you’re the typical small business starting, growing or even just surviving in a tough economic market with little or no credit, you also need business development strategies that don’t eat up your cash flow. There are plenty of people happy to sell you tens of thousands of advertising space, but can your business afford that? And what if the campaign doesn’t work? You’ve just used up some hard-won cash from your small business.

The best business development strategies are ones that take little or no cash flow.

Here are nine high impact, low-costs for your business:

Get noticed. Small business often start with an entrepreneurial urge to do something better than anyone else has done it before. That’s working in the business. And to a certain extent, you need that. But, in today’s world, it’s highly unlikely that the world will beat a pathway to your door based on something great you’ve done that no one else knows about. Some ideas to get you started: Write articles, post a blog, build a social media platform or press releases. It’s possible to get noticed in today’s world for little money. The trick is to stand out above all the other noise. The best way to do that is to provide solid content. Each product and product line must stand on its own merit. There is no room for dogs in a bootstrapping company. Unless, of course, you have a pet grooming business. Have a good accounting system in place so you can quickly make business management decisions. If something is working, then put more money into promoting that item. If something isn’t, cut it quick. Create a sales funnel. The sales process resembles a funnel. At the top end, the widest part, are the people who are just finding you, checking out their options, considering using your services or buying your product. If you can adapt your product or service to match the funnel, you can often pick up sales. For example, at the top, where the funnel is widest, you may want to offer an entry-level product or a special report at a reduced price. This may help you to capture some of those people who otherwise may not have gone past the looking point. Can you create some kind of recurring business model, where you receive automatic monthly payments? This is a great way to generate steady cash for your business and is often easier to sell then one big product. For example, our tax firm has a monthly billing service. Clients get unlimited consulting during the year and the cost covers the preparation of their business and personal returns. The benefit to them is that they have a budget and know exactly what it’s going to cost. The benefit for our firm is that we have steady cash flow. One of our clients sells equipment. They offer a monthly fee to provide ongoing maintenance. The benefit to the customer is that they have someone checking on the equipment. All costs of repair are covered as part of the ongoing monthly fee. So there are no big cost surprises down the road. Our client picked up extra revenue, a steady stream of cash flow and a happy client. Is there a way to create something like that for your business? Create different service levels. Not all clients want the same thing. Can you create a premium service level that allows you to charge a higher rate for some of your current clients? What are the things that would make your service more valuable? Increased access to you personally? Front of the line option? Our firm has 3 levels of service available. Ironically, it’s the most expensive option, with ‘front of the line’ service and unlimited consulting with partners in the firm that sells the most. Because of the nature, though, it’s limited and so there is a waiting list. That helps sell the other levels of service. As you create a product or a service, think about what other products or services could be offered to complement and augment it. What else do your clients or customers need? What other services can you give them to create additional streams of income for your business? For example, a chiropractic office may offer therapeutic massages, yoga classes or nutritional supplements. These services and products aren’t chiropractic services but they are related to health and something that chiropractic patients might be interested in. Form strategic relationships. When you focus on a niche, you often find that there are things you can’t do, but are things that augment your service perfectly. By affiliating with other service providers, you can create a bigger, higher-value product that benefits everyone. A website designer/programmer builds websites for business owners. He finds that his clients also often need quality writers. If he refers services, he may make a referral fee. To be honest and ethical, that relationship and possible payment should be disclosed to the client as well. Create a high-end and low-end solution. One of our new passions is talking about the bi-modal graph. Imagine a two-hump camel. One hump represents the people who want hands-on, concierge service. The other hump represents people who want the lowest-cost solution. The depression in the middle is what used to be our target market: people who wanted a little of both. Today, that market is largely gone. Bill and collect in advance. It’s much easier to collect money up front then it is afterwards. It might be a little harder with the first sale, because your customer doesn’t have any experience with you, but after that, you’ve actually got to question why they don’t pay you in advance. If you are willing to extend credit, make sure you bill at a premium. There is a cost to carrying debt, especially in a tight credit market like now.

The Business Developer is a very crucial role in a company’s growth and thus is a pivotal position within it. It is a managerial position usually assigned to existing senior managers or dedicated business developers with a proven record. Perhaps there is no position in a company as challenging and therefore it is amply rewarding from the point of view of both job satisfaction and money.

Key Responsibilities

The key responsibility of a business developer is to attract new customers and penetrate existing markets. For the purpose, he assesses marketing opportunities and targets markets, gathers intelligence on customers and competitors, generates leads for possible sales, advises on drafts, implements proper sales policies and follows up sales activity with a review and appropriate modifications. He also drafts formal proposals and prepares presentations regarding the identified sales opportunity and develops a proper business model design. The business model involves evaluation of a business and then realization of its full potential using tools like marketing, information management and customer service.

They may follow one of two models: sales-oriented (client facing) and operational function to support sales. In the sales-oriented or client facing role, the concentrates on developing strategic channel relationships or on general sales. It is an operational function to support the sales of a company is often made the responsibility of a separate functionary known as the capture manager, while they continue with finding other sales oriented leads.

Level of Education Required

They are professionals with qualification and experience in financial services, investment banking or sales. Many enter the area by climbing the corporate ladder in fields like operations management. Thus to be one must have a formal degree in business management with specialization in finance, investment banking or sales, along with considerable experience. They must be skilled or experienced in marketing, company law, strategy, finance, proposal management or capture management. The exact set of skills will depend on the business environment being dealt with.

Career Path

Since they are existing professionals with considerable skills and experience, one can’t acquire this position at the beginning of a career. So, future business developers must enter the corporate sector as junior level managers and go on to acquire skills and experience in areas like finance, investment banking or sales. At the same time they must continue to develop their skills in the area of business development. Once they feel confident enough to take up the challenge, they must enter the field at the right opportunity. The opportunity may be in their existing company itself or in some other company that is looking for business developers.

A business developer’s career is immensely satisfying and financially rewarding although stressful and demanding physically and intellectually. With continuing growth of the economy business developers are sure to be in increasing demand in the coming years.

Majority of the businesses discover the critical issues in which they are strangled in and every time they are in situation that are unique. This is the reason finding an everlasting solution is ultimate challenge. In past some businesses obtained the assistance of experts and professionals to solve their crucial business groeth needs. In the similar way, business development can’t remain confidential every time therefore for solving such issues business require entrusted advisor with swift response. With the advent of social media marketing the traditional consultancy also became obsolete. Now, businesses can use customized Face book applications for advanced business development.

Facebook application development can solve many business growth concerns significantly regarding social marketing over Facebook and Twitter and also critical business development problems. Facebook applications services provided by social media agencies enhances your business development that includes insights, consumer researches and development solutions that were difficult or never before seen done before by most of the businesses.

Very few Facebook applications are utilized in this way. In order to get your business development solution from Facebook application a business require customised or tailored application solutions that can measure the scope of business and other variables that achieve the purpose of the business significantly by utilising the available resources and data of consumers for generating insights and analyzing results using advanced analytics and correlation methods. Such solutions tend to be advanced but not necessarily expensive.

Businesses development discovers problems on regular basis. The real power of Facebook application development for business lies in generating the solutions. Now, individual users along with businesses can use Facebook applications to their page which can attract a lot of customers to the page. If your clients are other business then your application might help them in getting more customers. If they use your application to market them then your application with your name and ads can be promoted making your business development easy and hassle free. All this can be answered, but requires social programming. Usually a sociologist has the best answer for general social behavior of consumers. However, social media agency has the solution.

New genre of Facebook applications are being generated and discovered daily. Each providing a different solution to different business and can come in use due to solution to a known problem. Businesses that tend to incorporate solutions also focus on objectives these days rather than mere marketing. Therefore result oriented approach is very necessary in order to introduce a business development application that can be used by others especially for B2B business so that other businesses can easily link that application to their fan page.