Business Development - Day In the Life in Business Development

Summary

This video by Patrick Dang offers an insightful look into the daily life of a business development professional. It covers the importance of prospecting, identifying ideal customer profiles, conducting meetings to qualify prospects, and the differences in approach between small-medium businesses and enterprise deals. The video also highlights the role of business development in product feedback and innovation.

Takeaways

• 😀 The primary role of a business development professional is to prospect, which involves finding potential partners and setting up meetings to discuss potential collaborations.
• 🔍 Prospecting is crucial as it forms the foundation for generating meetings and appointments, which are essential for business development activities.
• 🏢 For beginners in business development, a significant portion of their day, up to 90%, is dedicated to prospecting and identifying potential clients.
• 🤔 Defining an ideal customer profile is a key aspect of prospecting, which may require creativity and initiative, especially if the company's leadership does not have a clear idea of the target audience.
• 💼 Business development meetings are similar to sales meetings, focusing on understanding the prospect's challenges, aspirations, and blockers to determine if a partnership can be mutually beneficial.
• 📈 The nature of business development can vary greatly, from high-volume deals with small and medium businesses to fewer, more complex enterprise deals that can significantly impact a company's revenue.
• 🍔 An example of enterprise-level business development is Square's partnership with Shake Shack, where Square's software and hardware are integrated into Shake Shack's self-serve ordering system.
• 🤝 In business development, collaboration with multiple parties is often necessary to create custom solutions and integrate systems, as seen in the case study involving Square, Shake Shack, and the agency Fuse.
• 💡 Business development professionals must have strong presentation and pitching skills to differentiate their company from competitors and convince potential clients of the value of their offerings.
• 📊 The role also involves providing feedback to the product and leadership teams based on customer interactions, helping to shape the company's product development and strategy based on real-world customer needs and feedback.

Q & A

What is the primary focus of the video?

The video focuses on providing an inside look at the day-to-day life of a business development professional, helping viewers understand if a career in business development is right for them.

What is the first step in the business development process?

The first step in the business development process is prospecting, which involves finding potential partners and generating appointments or meetings to discuss potential collaborations.

Why is prospecting so crucial in business development?

Prospecting is crucial because without generating meetings and appointments with potential customers, there can be no business development. It's essential for establishing connections and opportunities for collaboration.

What percentage of a business development professional's day might be dedicated to prospecting at the beginning of their career?

At the beginning of their career, a business development professional might dedicate up to 90% of their day to prospecting.

What is an 'ideal customer profile' and why is it important in prospecting?

An 'ideal customer profile' is a definition of the type of customer a business should be targeting. It is important because it helps business development professionals focus their efforts on the most promising prospects and tailor their approach accordingly.

What are some industries that a business development professional might target?

A business development professional might target industries such as casinos, e-commerce, real estate, finance, or cryptocurrencies, depending on the services they are offering and the use cases that fit these industries.

What is the role of a business development professional in meetings with potential clients?

In meetings with potential clients, a business development professional is responsible for qualifying the prospect, understanding their challenges and aspirations, and determining if a partnership would be mutually beneficial.

How does the business development process differ between small-medium businesses and enterprise deals?

In small-medium businesses, the process might involve high-velocity meetings with individual shops or retail stores, focusing on volume. In contrast, enterprise deals might involve fewer meetings but require more intricate and complex negotiations, often taking longer to close.

Can you provide an example of a business development deal involving Square and Shake Shack?

An example of a business development deal could involve Square working with Shake Shack and an agency like Fuse to create a self-serve ordering system using Square's point of sale technology, enhancing customer experience and streamlining payment processing.

What are some skills a business development professional needs to succeed?

A business development professional needs skills such as effective communication, empathy, presentation and pitching abilities, the ability to build trust and rapport, and the capacity to provide feedback to product and leadership teams based on customer interactions.

What is the significance of a business development professional's role in product development?

A business development professional plays a crucial role in product development by providing feedback and insights from customer interactions, helping to shape the product to meet market needs and solve customer problems.

Outlines

00:00

📈 Understanding Business Development Roles

This paragraph introduces the video's focus on the daily life of a business development professional. Patrick Dang, the speaker, emphasizes the importance of watching the entire video for insights into whether a career in business development is suitable. He explains that the role involves prospecting, which is crucial for identifying potential business partners and arranging meetings. Prospecting占据了 the majority of a new business development professional's time, and it's essential for generating meetings with potential clients. The speaker also highlights the need for defining an ideal customer profile and being creative in identifying potential partners across various industries.

05:02

💼 Insights into Enterprise-Level Business Development

This paragraph delves into the specifics of business development at the enterprise level, using Square as an example. It describes how Square's point of sale system is used in retail settings and how the company engages in business development to expand its reach. The speaker discusses a case study involving Square, Shake Shack, and the agency Fuse, illustrating how business development can involve creating custom solutions for clients. The importance of understanding the client's needs, demonstrating the value of Square's offerings, and integrating with existing systems is highlighted. The potential for a single deal to significantly impact Square's revenue is also emphasized, showcasing the high stakes and strategic nature of enterprise business development.

10:05

🤝 The Responsibilities and Skills of a Business Development Professional

The final paragraph outlines the responsibilities and skills required for a successful career in business development. It discusses the need for business development professionals to listen to clients, create custom solutions, and demonstrate the value of their company's offerings. Presentation and pitching skills are highlighted as crucial for differentiating from competitors. The speaker also emphasizes the role of business development professionals as the primary point of contact for clients, acting as quarterbacks in aligning resources and driving deals. Additionally, they are responsible for providing feedback to product and leadership teams based on customer interactions, potentially influencing product development. The paragraph concludes by inviting viewers to engage with the content and explore more videos on the topic.

Keywords

💡Prospecting

Prospecting refers to the process of identifying potential customers or partners that a business development person might want to work with. It involves researching and reaching out to these prospects to generate meetings and appointments. In the video, Patrick Dang emphasizes that prospecting is a crucial part of a business development role, especially for those just starting out, as it involves building a list of potential clients and initiating contact through various methods such as email, LinkedIn, or cold calling.

💡Ideal Customer Profile

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a description of the type of company or customer that would gain the most value from a business's product or service. It guides business development professionals in targeting the right prospects. In the video, Patrick mentions that part of the prospecting process involves defining the ICP, which helps in identifying which companies to approach, whether they be in industries like e-commerce, real estate, or finance.

💡Outbound Meetings

Outbound meetings are appointments set up by a business development professional by actively reaching out to potential clients, rather than waiting for them to come to the company. These meetings are initiated through methods like cold emails, LinkedIn messages, or cold calls. Patrick Dang explains that outbound meetings are a core part of the initial stages of business development, where the goal is to generate as many meetings as possible with targeted prospects.

💡Inbound Leads

Inbound leads are potential customers who have shown interest in a company's product or service by reaching out to the company first, often through marketing efforts like website visits or downloadable content. In the video, Patrick differentiates between outbound efforts and inbound leads, explaining that business development professionals need to handle both types of leads by qualifying them to see if they are a good fit for the company's offerings.

💡Qualifying Prospects

Qualifying prospects involves evaluating potential customers to determine if they are a good fit for the company's products or services. This includes understanding their challenges, goals, and whether the company's solutions can help them achieve their objectives. Patrick discusses that during business development meetings, the main task is to qualify prospects by assessing their needs and seeing if there is a mutual benefit in working together.

💡Enterprise Deals

Enterprise deals are large-scale business transactions that involve big companies and often require significant customization and negotiation. These deals can have a substantial impact on the business due to their size and complexity. Patrick provides an example involving Square and Shake Shack, illustrating how enterprise deals involve detailed collaboration and tailored solutions to meet the specific needs of large clients.

💡SMB (Small and Medium Business)

SMB refers to small and medium-sized businesses that typically have fewer resources and simpler needs compared to large enterprises. Business development for SMBs often focuses on higher volumes of smaller, quicker deals. Patrick contrasts this with enterprise deals, explaining that SMB deals might involve signing up multiple small businesses, like retail shops or restaurants, to use a company's software, often with a faster sales cycle.

💡Point of Sale (POS) System

A Point of Sale (POS) system is a combination of hardware and software used by businesses to process sales transactions. It often includes features like payment processing, sales tracking, and inventory management. In the video, Patrick uses Square as an example of a POS system, explaining how it integrates with other tools to facilitate seamless transactions for businesses like Shake Shack.

💡Custom Software

Custom software is specially developed to meet the unique needs of a specific user or organization, rather than being a pre-packaged solution. Patrick highlights how business development deals, particularly in the enterprise space, may require creating custom software solutions to integrate with the client's existing systems, as seen in the example of Square working with Shake Shack and the agency Fuse.

💡Product Feedback

Product feedback is information provided by customers about their experience with a product, which can be used to make improvements. In the video, Patrick emphasizes that business development professionals play a key role in gathering and relaying this feedback to their company's product and leadership teams, helping to shape the development and enhancement of products based on customer needs and market trends.

Highlights

The day-to-day life in business development involves prospecting, which is crucial for identifying potential partners and generating meetings.

Prospecting can take up to 90% of a business development professional's day, especially for those starting in the role.

Defining an ideal customer profile is essential in business development, and it may require creative thinking and initiative.

Business development meetings are similar to sales meetings, focusing on understanding the prospect's challenges and aspirations.

The role of a business development professional includes qualifying prospects to determine if there is a good fit for collaboration.

In small to medium businesses, business development might involve high-velocity sales, signing up many clients quickly.

Enterprise-level business development deals can be complex and time-consuming, often requiring custom solutions and extensive meetings.

An example of enterprise business development is the collaboration between Square, Shake Shack, and an agency to create a self-serve ordering system.

Business development professionals must have strong presentation and pitching skills to differentiate their company from competitors.

Building trust and rapport with clients is a key responsibility of business development professionals.

Business development involves being a go-to point for clients, aligning all the right players to achieve goals.

In small and medium businesses, business development can be simpler and faster, focusing on volume and straightforward sales.

Large deals in business development, such as with major franchises, can take months or even a year to close.

Providing feedback to the product team and leadership based on customer interactions is a critical aspect of business development.

Business development professionals should be involved in product development to ensure the product meets market needs and customer feedback.

The long-term value of a business development deal can be significant, as seen in the potential for widespread adoption of a product or service.

Business development professionals must be creative and proactive, not just selling existing products but also generating new ideas based on customer needs.

Transcripts

- In this video, you're gonna learn

what the day-to-day life is like in business development.

And you wanna make sure you watch this video until the end,

because if you are considering a career

in business development,

or maybe you're just getting started,

you're gonna get an inside look on what the job actually is.

So you know, whether or not it's gonna be right for you.

what's going on everybody.

My name is Patrick Dang.

And before we get started,

do me a favor and give this video a like subscribe

and turn on notifications

if you wanna see more sales

and business development videos like this.

So with that said, let's go ahead and dive in.

Now, the first part of the day-to-day life

of someone in business development is actually prospecting.

Now, if you're doing any type of business development work,

meaning your job is to take your company

and you wanna partner up with other businesses

and close deals.

Well, the first part of this process is actually to prospect

and that means finding other people

who will be a great fit to work with you

and finding out ways to reach out to them

and generate appointments meetings

so that you can have a conversations

to see whether or not it makes sense to work together.

And in the beginning of business development,

especially if you're just starting out

and you're fresh to the role,

a majority of your day, probably 90% of your day

is going to be dedicated to prospecting.

And the reason why prospecting is so important

is because if you're not generating meetings

and appointments with potential dream customers,

well, you can't really do any type of business development,

you can't work for anybody

if nobody knows who you are.

So in the beginning all day, every day,

basically you wake up, you go to work

and your job is to find these companies,

build the list out

of people you wanna work with,

reach out to them with email, LinkedIn or cold calling,

whatever works best in your industry,

get them on the phone, book an appointment,

learn about their business

and see whether or not it's gonna make sense

to work together.

And a very important aspect of prospecting

is really defining

who is it you should be going after,

which is called an ideal customer profile.

And a lot of times for a business development person,

your manager or leadership at the company

you may be working at,

they may not always have a clear idea

of who you should be reaching out to.

So you have to come up with some creative ideas

to see who you actually want to reach out to.

Is it gonna be casino companies, e-commerce,

people in real estate, finance, cryptocurrencies,

and you have to figure out the use cases

for your services

and see how they can fit into these industries.

So even though you might be a new person

working a new business development role,

you still have to think very creatively.

You can't always be told what to do.

You have to come up with great ideas

on who exactly you can sign up and work with

to expand your business.

But as you generate more meetings

and you have an idea of who you wanna work with

the next step after the process is to fulfill

on these business development meeting.

All right, so whether you're a generating leads,

outbound meeting, you're doing cold email, LinkedIn

or cold calling, or if the company you're working at

has some type of marketing mechanism

where they're generating inbound leads

and the leads come in

and you're the one that talks

to the potential customer on the phone.

Either outbound, inbound,

it's your job as a business development person

to qualify the prospect,

to see whether or not it's a good fit to work together.

Essentially business development meetings

are very similar to sales meetings.

And generally what happens

on these business development meetings

is you want to learn more about the prospect,

see what their challenges are,

see what they're trying to do and what their aspirations are

and understand what are the things

that are blocking them

from getting them to where they want to go.

And so from a business development perspective,

your job is to identify whether or not

if they work with you, can they achieve the goals

that they already want to achieve?

And can you help them remove the blockers?

There's many different flavors of business development

from small medium business,

all the way to working with enterprise.

So let's say you're working at a tech company

and it's your job to sign up all these restaurants

and retail stores to use your software.

You might be having five to eight meetings a day

and just going down the list

and trying to get as many meetings as possible

with the ice cream store, the clothing shop

and things like that.

Because you're trying to sell into mom-and-pop shops.

You have high velocity, meaning you're trying to get through

and sign up as many people as possible.

Because you've got a lot of people

who sign up for your software

then potentially you can make a lot of money.

Now, when you're doing more enterprise deals,

you may not be doing eight meetings every single day.

You might be just doing one new meeting a day

and that's considered a lot

because when you're doing enterprise,

just closing one deal makes a significant impact

on the business.

And I'll go ahead and give you an example of that.

So let's say you were

a business the development person working at Square.

And for those of you who may not be familiar with Square,

Square is basically a point of sale system.

Meaning it's like, retail stores, clothing stores

and stuff like that.

If somebody wants to pay using a debit card, a credit card,

basically they would connect that to something

like an iPad or iPhone,

and you can swipe the card

and then basically the software

that's on the iPad which is Square

will take care of the rest

in terms of doing the transaction, getting the payment,

sending it to your bank account and all that stuff.

So basically if you wanna buy something,

you're using Square to process the payment.

And so if you live in, let's say America,

where Square's quite popular,

well, you kinda see it in like places where they sell food

or retail stores and they also have software over here.

So that Square reader,

they have the thing that prints out the receipt,

a card reader again, or it might look like this

where it's like an iPad

and then you kind of swipe the card over here.

So again, you might have seen this already.

And there are different competitors to Square

that do pretty much the same thing.

And for reasons a lot of people are using Square

because it's clean and it looks good

and the software does work.

And I remember when I was running a pop-up ice cream shop,

one point my career,

I was using Square to collect payments as well.

So it basically looks something like this.

So you can be selling flowers and stuff like that

and using Square.

So basically any type of retail store

where they need a point of sale system,

selling food, flowers, whatever the case is, Square is fit.

If you're doing it business development

on the enterprise level.

And you're working at Square and your job

is to connect with let's say, large restaurant franchises.

Well, this might be a good example.

So let's go ahead and dive into a case study

of business development example of Square

and Shake Shack and the agency Fuse.

So Shake Shack essentially sells these burgers,

chicken hamburgers and they have,

I think 200, 300 locations across the world.

And I think primarily in North America,

and it's a big franchise

where they sell a lot of hamburgers every single day

and they have hundreds of different franchises.

So with what's going on right now,

there's like social distance thing and things like that.

Shake Shack basically has a way

for people to come into the store

and they order on basically,

I'm not sure if it's iPad or some kind of tablet.

So basically what they want us to do

is create a self-serve way

for customers to order on these tablets.

And basically the order over here,

they go over here and they pick up their order.

So why is this good for Shake Shack?

Well, people can just come in

and they don't have to like wait in a long line

and wait for a cashier to ring them up

and write down their order.

Why not just let the customers do it themselves?

Because it's the same process essentially.

And then they pay

and then they go through the front,

pick up their order and it's done

and you don't have to have a lot of human contact.

You just gotta press the buttons on the iPad,

get your order and you can leave.

And for this example to make it all possible,

Shake Shack had to work with an agency

to basically make this all a reality.

And the also have to work with Square

who basically operates the software side of things

to handle the point of sale system

and integrate that payment transaction

into the rest of their software.

So why is this considered business development?

Well, if you're a Shake Shack,

even though this sounds very simple,

it's just like a place where you order.

It's actually very a complex process.

So basically there's business development people

on all sides, Shake Shack, Fuse and Square.

Every single person has business development people.

If you're a Fuse you're the agency.

You basically have to convince everybody

to say like, "Hey, we're gonna create

"this amazing experience for you.

"And you basically work with the other companies

"to make this a reality."

If you're a Square in your business development person,

it's your job to work with Fuse the agency

and work with Shake Shack to say,

"Hey, we're gonna be better than everybody else.

"You should use our software, our hardware,

"and use them in all your stores

"instead of the other guys."

And here's why, and you kinda explain

why you're better than everybody else,

how you're going to integrate

with the rest of their software,

and how you're going to make everything seamless and easy

not only for the consumers who experience this firsthand,

but you're also gonna make it easy

for all the technical people working at Square,

because you're trying to make your software

as easy as possible to work with.

And a lot of times to make this happen,

you have to create custom software to integrate

with whatever Shake Shack is using on the back end.

So it's not necessarily like you're just saying,

"Hey, I got this product here, you can buy it."

In business development, you actually have to work together

with multiple parties and to make a deal like this happen.

There's probably dozens of people

working hard on this every single day

to make this a reality.

And you're basically creating something new,

based on what you have, you're working together

to create something new

and to create a better end experience for the consumer.

And why would Square dedicate so much resources

to making this happen?

Shake Shack has about like 270 locations around the world.

So if they are successful

in creating this type of experience, self-serve experience

using Square products in one store,

well, why don't they just take that experience

and expand it to all the other stores across North America

and all of the world.

So suddenly if Shake Shack is using Square

and Square is getting a percentage

of every single sale

that goes through the point of sale system,

Square's very incentivized

to get as many of these Square systems

in every single retail source

so that they just collect more revenue.

So one deal with Shake Shack,

if they expand, let's say, if they're using Square

for all the payments in all the stores,

all 270 of them around the world.

Well, that's a huge number

and huge revenue every single year for Square.

So it's worth it

to do this kind of business development deal

because in the end,

when you talk about the longterm value of Shake Shack,

it could be a seven figure deal.

And not only that, but you're making revenue

off of one customer,

but then you can go to all the other restaurants,

all the other places

that want to create some type of self-serve

in a way for people to order their food.

And you can say, "Hey, we helped Shake Shack, do this,

"we can help you do something similar."

Then you work with another person

and then you sign them up

and then that's another seven figure deal.

So you can kind of see, like when you work with one person,

you get the job done and you find more people

who are similar to how you helped the previous person

and the ball just keeps rolling from there.

And then eventually everyone's gonna be using

some kind of self-serve mechanism.

And hopefully if you're doing a good job as a business

and your Square, well, Square's gonna be everywhere

in all these different restaurants

and retail stores and things like that.

So now that you understand what the day entails

when it comes to whether it's business development do

at the enterprise level,

well, the next step is to understand,

what is actually the responsibility

Of the business development person.

What are the skills

that they need to have in order to succeed?

So like I was saying before,

so if you're a business development person

working at Square,

it's your job to take the meetings with Shake Shack

and Fuse, beginning of the process,

it's your job to listen to what exactly they want

and to see if you can create a custom solution

to help them achieve their goals.

It's understanding their problems, having empathy

and showing that you can be as solutions to those pains

and make those pains go away.

You also have to have presentation skills, pitching skills,

because you're trying to demonstrate that

they should use Square

versus any other competitor on the market.

'Cause essentially there's a lot of other people

that do something similar,

but why should you choose one company versus another?

And it's the business development person's job

to separate themselves from the pack

and show why their company is different

and show why their company is better.

So as a business development person,

it's your job to be on the phone,

meet the client in person, build trust and rapport,

bring in any technical people

to help answer technical questions right

that you can answer yourself.

And you're basically that go-to point.

If business development was kind of like football,

a business development person would be a quarterback.

They're the ones making the play, getting the read,

and then they're aligning all the right players

to do their job.

And then they kinda throw the ball to the next person

to get the job done.

That's gonna be what it's like

for working in business development for the enterprise.

But let's say you're a business development

working in small, medium businesses.

You're selling into individual shops

or retail stores and things like that.

If you're trying to sign up people to your program,

it's a lot less complicated

in that you don't have to really build anything custom.

You kind of say like,

"Hey, do you want to sign up for a program?

"Here's why, here's why we're better."

And then they sign up or they don't sign up

and you go by volume.

So usually the larger the company, the bigger the deal,

the more intricate and complex it is

and the more effort you have to put in before deal closes.

Now, the smaller the company

and the less investment required to sign up.

Well these can typically be faster.

So like a small, medium business deal

might be one week, two weeks or one month,

a large deal like signing up a Shake Shack or a Starbucks

might literally take six months, a year

because these are big deals.

In the last part of a business development person's job

is to provide feedback for the product team

and the leadership team

at the company they are working at.

So if you're the quarterback

and you're the go-to person that the customer or client

is always talking to,

you're the one that's gonna the have the most information

and you have your hand on the pulse

of what's actually going on.

So if the customers have certain problems

or they want to do something

but there's nothing in the market that solves that problem.

It's your job as that go-to person

to go to the team and say,

"Hey guys, Shake Shack is saying this,

"this is what they want.

"There's no nothing on the market that can solve it.

"Do we want to spend our resources

"to develop this technology to solve their problem?"

A business developer person,

it's not just to sell what it is that you currently have,

it's also to come up with new ideas

based on customer feedback

on where the product should be going.

And because you're the person

that is directly talking to the customer,

you're the one that knows best.

So sometimes, a business development person

is very involved when it comes to developing a product

so that the product fits the needs

of where the market is going.

And so with that said, that's pretty much

the day-to-day life of business development.

And basically what the job entails at a high level.

If you enjoy this video,

make sure to give it a like, subscribe,

turn on notifications

if you want to see more videos like this,

and let me know in the comments

if you enjoy this type of business development video

and example, because I'll be happy to make more for you.

And if you want to see more business development videos,

make sure the check out my other videos

somewhere on this screen.

So that said, my name is Patrick Dang,

and I will see you guys in the next one.