Business development is the process of identifying, pursuing, and creating new opportunities for business growth and value creation. This includes understanding your market, customers, competitors, and partners and developing strategies and tactics to achieve your goals. But how do you create a business development strategy based on market research and analysis? Here are the main steps you need to follow:
expert opinion
LinkedIn members share important insights and examples from their own experiences to help answer this question.
define goals
The first step is to define the goals and scope of your business development strategy. What specific results do you want to achieve? How will you measure your success? Who are the key stakeholders and decision makers involved? What resources and constraints will you address? Do you need it? Having clarity on your goals allows you to align your strategy with your vision, mission, and values, and communicate them effectively to your team and partners.
Conducting market research
The next step is to conduct market research to gather relevant and reliable data and insights about the market. Market research helps you understand the size, trends, drivers, and challenges of your market, as well as the needs, preferences, and behaviors of your customers and potential customers. You can use a variety of market research methods and sources, including surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, secondary data, reports, and online tools. The key is to ask the right questions, choose the right sample, and analyze the data objectively and accurately. Analyze competitors and partners
The third step is to analyze your competitors and partners to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and how they affect your position and performance in the market. Competitor analysis helps you compare your performance to your competitors, learn from their best practices and mistakes, and predict their movements and reactions. Partner analysis helps you evaluate current and potential partners such as suppliers, distributors, employees, and influencers and learn how they support or hinder your business development goals. Various tools and frameworks can be used to analyze competitors and partners, such as SWOT, Porter’s Five Forces, PESTEL, and value chain.
Develop a value proposition
The fourth step is to develop your value proposition. This is a statement that summarizes how you solve your customers’ problems, meet their needs, and offer unique benefits over your competitors. Your value proposition should be clear, concise, compelling, and reflect your market research and analysis. They should also be tested and validated with customers and partners, and refined based on feedback. The value proposition is at the core of business development strategy because it guides decisions and actions to create and deliver value to the market.
design strategies and tactics
The fifth step is to design strategies and tactics, the plans and actions you will take to achieve your goals and realize your value proposition. The strategy should outline target market segments, positioning and differentiation, goals and milestones, and key performance indicators. Tactics should specify the activities and tasks you will work on to implement your strategy, such as: B. Marketing, Sales, Product Development, Customer Service, and Partnerships. You should also consider the risks and uncertainties associated with your strategy and tactics and how they can be mitigated or overcome.
Monitor and evaluate results
The final step is to monitor and evaluate the results. These are the results and effects of strategies and tactics on markets and customers. Results should be tracked and measured against the performance indicators defined in the strategy and compared against goals and expectations. You should also collect and analyze feedback from your customers and partners to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and areas for improvement in your business development strategy. Then use the results and feedback to adjust and optimize your strategies and tactics, and celebrate successes and insights.
