It goes without saying that new business development is a vitally important aspect of any thriving business. However, it is easy to become overly focused on servicing your existing customers and fulfilling outstanding contracts, and therefore lose sight of where your next customers will be coming from.
Further, business development often requires a different set of skills to be successful, compared to other aspects of running a business and some managers find they are not naturally suited to this.
In the absence of large internal sales teams, many companies are looking to harness the expertise of external business development specialists to help them continue to grow.
Keeping the focus on business development
Long-term growth relies on a constant stream of new prospective clients, which is only achieved through concerted business development efforts. There are several key benefits of focused and dedicated business development efforts:
- Maintain your momentum – Spending time engaging with new clients and listening to their concerns and demands is a great way to keep your business fresh. An external perspective on your products and services gives you valuable information that you can use to refine and improve your business.
- Focus your efforts – By working with an external partner on new business development you can focus your attention on the parts of the business you’re great at and that you enjoy.
- Create a stable foundation – Looking at new business development on an ongoing basis ensures that you have regular inflows of revenue. This creates a stable platform for your business, gives you confidence that you’ll be profitable, and creates the funds necessary to invest in other new initiatives.
- Strategic planning – Planning in itself is useful as it gives your business a vision and direction to work towards which in turn can help to motivate your employees. It is also important to have forecasts and projections if you are looking to secure investment or a loan.
In today’s hyper-competitive business landscape, nothing stays still for long, so it is vital that new business development and strategic planning is something you give sufficient attention to ensure the long-term viability of your company.
Most people are familiar with stories of how Blockbuster Video was gradually pushed to bankruptcy by failing to identify and adapt to the shift to streaming video. And there are countless other examples of companies that failed to adapt.
Keeping a pulse of how your market is changing, dedicating enough investment to new business development, and looking for innovative ways to increase revenue will prevent your business from succumbing to the same fate.
Your New Business Development Partner
At AsOne we partner with our clients to help fuel their long-term growth. We create digital business development strategies that enable them to drive maximise value from their existing clients and help them identify new ones.
We pride ourselves on being an ideas agency and find creative ways to help our customers stand out from the competition.
If you’d like advice on how to grow your business, and see the value in creating strategic new business development plans, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
