What is business development?

We use the term “Business Development” throughout this website but what do we actually mean – what is the Incognate definition of business development?

New business development is the activity that needs to take place in order for a company to generate more leads that lead to quality, qualified opportunities, and ultimately to you generating more new business.

The Incognate QUICKstep Methodology combines the use of the telephone, the internet and other sales and marketing tools and resources to help you generate more business.

So, why didn’t we use either of the more familiar terms such as telesales or telemarketing?

After all, these are terms that are likely to be more familiar to you and would better describe the role of using the telephone to create business opportunities. However, we believe that each one of these roles is quite different and which one a business would and should employ would depend on what is being sold and to which market.

A customer recently raised a valid point when they remarked that they had attended several seminars, each promoting different approaches; one seminar said that direct mail was best another email marketing and so on and now we were presenting the telephone as being the tool of choice. He asked, ‘which one of you is right? To which we replied ‘all of us’! We don’t believe that the telephone should be used totally in isolation or in place of any other good marketing practices, but it plays a key part in supporting everything you do, it is interactive, flexible, and when use in an effective manner can make a huge amount of difference to your sales.

Telesales, telemarketing and in particular business development are frequently misused and we trust that the following will help you to understand how we identify the key differences between telesales, telemarketing or lead generation and business development.

Telesales

We believe that this role can be defined by the product or service you are selling, if you can complete a sale of your product or service over the telephone then you would employee telesales people.

As the name suggests, the role is very telephone intensive and the number of calls made here are often more important than the overall length of any call. Usually, the product or service proposition is fairly easily understood and communicated to prospective customers and there is less need for any in-depth knowledge.

Telesales teams are often used to service large geographical areas at a reduced cost to the company. It is generally easier to find telesales people, the costs are lower and the main requirement would be a good telephone manner and a tenacious attitude. Training telesales people is straightforward and more often than not sales scripts are developed that will take an initial sales call from introduction, through qualification and finally to a commitment to buy all in one call.

Attrition is generally higher in telesales teams as constant use of the telephone can burn people out (recruitment sales is probably a good example). Companies and individuals will often use telesales as a training ground on their journey to becoming an all round sales person.

Benefits

Low cost

Easy to set up

The ability to outsource this function is also widely available, and can be the most cost effective and efficient way to achieve success

This approach is becoming extensively used for selling straightforward products and services along with the worldwide web

Potential Issues

High attrition rate of people

Most effective when selling low value products, but is often employed to sell business to business services and solutions

Telemarketing

As the name suggests this is more of a marketing activity carried out using the telephone and as marketing departments are generally very small outsourcing this activity is very appealing. There are hundreds of telemarketing companies in the UK offering services ranging from list building and data cleansing to seminar booking and basic lead generation.

The main aim of telemarketing is to raise the profile of your company’s product or service to prospective customers and identify more immediate opportunities. More specifically a telemarketing team will work on set campaigns and you will be able to monitor the return on investment. Telemarketing will go through some basic qualification and then any leads would be passed on to “sales” for further qualification.

Individuals would require a better understanding of the products, services on offer and also to better understand the target companies and sectors being approached.

Benefits

Reasonably easy to find experienced people

Useful for list cleaning, getting people along to events, appointment setting and clearly defined campaigns

Good for raising the company profile with a target audience, particularly where you have either no internal team or a small team.

Potential issues

People don’t often see this as a long term career option

You will feel more of an impact when you lose an experienced team member

An experienced telesales person could take on a telemarketing role as part of their career progression, but generally people in this role will be drawn from a sales or marketing background.

The early to mid-nineties saw a number of Telemarketing Companies enter the market and so many of the telemarketing activities could be outsourced. External telemarketing companies offer a range of services including data base cleansing, attracting attendees to various one day events, and in some cases basic lead generation.

Business Development

The Business Development role is a mix of sales and marketing activity that enable you to create an effective approach and unique approach to the target companies, and markets you are or want to approach. This role is an all-encompassing role with the aim of helping companies to “generate more business” in their target sectors.

The approach to achieving this involves a mix of skills from market research to sales. As well as a reasonable use of the telephone for research, marketing and sales calls it also relies on world-wide-web research, and other more traditional forms of research such as libraries, magazines and newspapers. Also, going as far as, one on one meeting with players in the market in order to understand the issues.

It is harder to find business development people but a good telesales; telemarketing, sales or marketing individual could be educated in carrying out the role effectively. For the most part it is advisable to look for a more experienced person with a at least a couple of years solid experience in sales or marketing.

To find out more about the Incognate QUICKstep Methodology contact us to find out the benefits that you will find when operating an effective business development operation.

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