Business Development

In any enterprise business development is delivered through the working combination of a complex web of parts – marketing, advertising, sales pursuits, branding, partnering, product development, proposal management, customer databases, etc. Many organisations find their business development system lacks structure and coordination – a situation that may have been acceptable in good times, but not sufficient for today’s challenging market. Improved structure and coordination delivers more sales revenue and avoids waste.

Business Thinking is an approved implementation partner for the Business Development Institute, a not-for-profit organisation set up to research and promote a best practice model for business development – the Capability Maturity Model for Business Development. This provides a ready model against which organisations can baseline their current business development performance and plan for improvement.

Improving business development performance is often one of the most profitable investments an organisation can make – to find out how and to discuss further, please contact us.

• Improve Win RateWork on you bid capture ratio: value of work won divided by value of work bid. High capture ratios only happen if you win big deals, and you have to be a mature business development organisation to routinely achieve that.
• Strategic DealsBusinesses need long-term revenue streams on which to base profitable growth. Strategic deals deliver just that – long term, high value revenue. Winning a strategic deal requires significant coordination – across the whole business.

• Systemic ApproachBusiness development is a system – made up of many components that all need to work together to deliver results. Applying systems theory can help drive significant improvement.
• Forecast AccuracyInaccurate sales forecasts cause serious problems for finance directors. Just a small improvement in forecast accuracy can make a big difference to cash flow and financial management.