Maintaining a routine that targets daily goals and varies just enough each day is the dynamic nature of a business development associate role. While their schedule largely depends on the industry, the product or service they sell and their own skills, their priorities reflect a much broader focus that each company strives for: business growth.
What Does a Business Development Associate Do?
Whether they're negotiating with a client or solving for their pain points, business development associates continually source and develop new business opportunities for the company. Their role heavily depends on their ability to manage and maintain customer relationships that frequently change depending on the market.
To guarantee business development on a daily basis, no matter the industry or how it’s performing, business development associates focus on the following:
Sell, Cross-Sell and Negotiate
Most business development associates tend to start their day on the phone. While some choose to prospect right away, others choose to start by assisting clients they’ve been partnering with for some time and already know how to help. Either way, they typically follow a schedule that accommodates their clients by starting with the east coast in the morning and following up with those on the west coast later on.
This strategic method is one of the several efficient tools that business development associates use to keep track of their call list progress. Call lists help business development associates systematically keep track of their contacts and tells them where their prospects and clients are in the sales funnel.
No matter how the company chooses to source their opportunities, it is the associate’s top priority to maximize on these relationships.
Study the Market, the Client and Their Needs
Market and client research looks different for every business development associate depending on their company’s sales culture, sales standards or CRM. However, it’s up to the business development associate to perform routine research on what they’re selling and its relevance to the market.
It’s important for business development associates to ask good questions of their clients to properly understand their needs. Associates may like to spend their time crafting helpful responses to these questions ahead of time so that the client feels listened to and ready to share as much information as possible about what they’re in the market for.
On the slower days, some business development associates choose to study the factors and changes that could affect the client’s decision-making. Whether these factors include future changes to a specific product or known oversights when it comes to another company’s product and customer service, successful business development associates tend to have a wealth of knowledge.
Make the Pitch, Earn the Reward
Business development associates may spend a large part of the day preparing for a pitch. Preparation typically involves researching a client’s experience with the product or service and their non-negotiables. Knowing how to respond to potential objections is just as important as learning how to close the deal itself when it comes to asking a prospect to spend their own time and money on something.
Pitching can draw from a pool of skills and qualities that include marketing, personability and clear communication with both clients and executives. Associates with these skills are well prepared when it comes time to present their suggested opportunities to leadership.
After leaders have decided which opportunities they want the company to pursue, business development associates can focus on bringing in revenue. It’s clear to see that an extravagant business development associate salary is for those with the rewarding skill of knowing who to pursue, and when to do it.
Collaborate, Refine and Report
After they’ve communicated with their clients, business development associates try to spend time collaborating with their peers and refining each other’s techniques in order to stay in front of the customer.
Specifically, cross-functional collaboration between associates and product or service developers can help each of them understand how overall company growth is achieved. Seeing a customer’s needs through the eyes of a different problem solver can help avoid unseen risks.
Reporting on all of these findings allows the strategic cycle to continue. It keeps leaders in the know about what’s going on with their teams and helps them identify new areas to focus on going forward. Most importantly, reporting successes and losses at the end of the day helps set mile markers as the business development associate continues to grow their book of business.
Likely on the road to becoming a business development manager, successful associates enjoy incorporating as much professional training and development into their daily routine as possible. At Shamrock, we invest in the early training of our up-and-coming sales leaders and offer ongoing opportunities for advancement to self-motivated individuals such as these.