Know-How Exchange : Other

Dear Fiatuno,

If your senior business development professional does not understand what he or she is presenting, how can he or she answer questions on it or even sell it?

In my view, a senior business development professional ought to know as much as if not more than the people he or she is supervising. This person ought to certainly know more than their client and be able to explain as much fully and clearly.

This builds confidence in the team that the boss is sharp, and it gives them a role model to keep up with.

This senior person ought to also make it their business to learn the ins and outs of the new, even if it means hitting the books and honing their skills. The day you stop learning, you stop having an edge.

Yes,"Value Additions" and "Key Differentiators" are worth focusing on. But so is everything else. The key to success lies in staying sharp, and in remaining in touch with what's current and what's new.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Sunil,
If the BD executive is seperated by a truly professional sales team, I am not certain years of domain experience are critical.
That being said, once in place the Sr. Business Development person had better immerse themselves in the industry served.

As a minimum, understand the buzzwords and the underlying need of your market. Ideally, experience the need from the other side of the fence - seeing how people do what they do, the problems they face, the opportunities they have, etc. You don't have to be an expert, just knowledgeable enough to understand what your clients are trying to accomplish and then you're in the right position to truly help them out.

Well.. it depends on cases and markets... In some markets successful sales are done on the basis of networking and while in some markets sales are done on the basis of value added differentiators and communicable brand experiences.

I have seen examples of BD personnel doing successful sales pitch based on the customer persuasion abilities rather than technical know how but sometimes they fail as if people go deeper on the product knowledge background. So it is imperative that a BD personnel needs to know the basic and some intermediate knowledge of a particular product.. For more technical and deep details a technical associate is handy.

So successful BD person comes when that person has combination of zest with innovation with product knowledge supplemented with art of persuasion and networking.