SALES VS BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

If you have any understanding of the sales industry, you would’ve heard about business development. It’s just a part of sales, right? Yes, but it’s not that simple.

When someone joins the industry, they may end up taking on a business development role – more likely than not – working closely with the ordinary sales teams.

Business development is an extension of sales, and some companies, especially smaller ones, combine the two where you’d have a full 360 position. However, when wanting to progress in your sales career, especially if you want to niche down or work in a corporate atmosphere, it’s a good idea to think about what path you’d like to go down.

Here are two simple definitions before we begin:

SALES: This focuses on identifying leads, moving them through the sales cycle, and eventually closing deals.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: This focuses on researching and strategy that will lead to finding new opportunities in the market and successful partnerships.

HOW DOES EACH MAKE PROFIT?

Both business development and sales teams contribute directly to a company’s financial success, but they do so in different ways with different focuses.

Business development is all about looking for new avenues to grow the business – mainly through partnerships and bringing on clients. They would then work with the sales department and give them warm leads to work with.

In sales, their focus is on selling – although some may be cold prospects, they’d ideally be pre-qualified by the business development team. They would focus on building relationships with clients to the point of being able to negotiate and close deals.

LONG-TERM VS SHORT-TERM IMPACT?

Put bluntly, sales is short-term, and business development is long term

In sales, they’re concerned about what the customer/ client can buy immediately and how the company can deliver immediately with a product/ service. Of course, they would also be expected to build and maintain long-term relationships to upsell and keep people renewing services etc. but this would usually come after making sales.

Business development however is where they’d network and build relationships that will provide the company with a new market and set of clients to sell to in the future. Their job is to do the groundwork by strategising and rapport building over anywhere from a month to a year, that will support the sales team make deals.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE IN DAY-TO-DAY TASKS?

Tasks will vary depending on the company but put simply, salespeople would focus on sales calls to customers/ prospects and business development professionals would do a lot of research and strategy before approaching prospects and building relationships.

Both are still very sales oriented in the way they operate. Targets are still set (monthly, quarterly, and yearly) and KPIs are used to track success. However, a Sales Executive’s targets may look very different to a Business Development Manager’s targets.

- Written by Shannon Matthews

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