• Helping you to see the potential future of your company

    and showing you the way forward…

Business Development

C and CR Consulting help businesses of all sizes and sectors achieve their aims and aspirations with open and honest Business Development advice and guidance.

Are you a business owner or manager, with a passion and desire to grow and develop your business? C and CR Consulting‘s Business Development team can help you take your business forward to success. We can provide expert coaching and mentoring so that you and your business can perform to its true potential…

Business coaching and mentoring programme allows you to share your business goals and dilemmas with someone who has the expertise to help crystallise your issues, formulate solutions, and implement success strategies.  The outcome for the business is growth, profitability and success – and for you, reassurance, advice and support, together with personal coaching, mentoring and advice.

What is Business Development?

In the simplest terms, business development can be summarised as the ideas, initiatives and activities aimed towards making a business better. This includes increasing revenues, growth in terms of business expansion, increasing profitability by building strategic partnerships, and making strategic business decisions.

But it’s challenging to boil down the definition of business development. First, let’s look at the underlying concept, and how it connects to the overall objectives of a business.

C and CR Consulting can help be the catalyst to enable you and your business to:

  • Identify and focus on the aspirations and needs for the business
  • To identify issues and explore options through creativity and innovation
  • To identify a organisational development process and implement people management strategy
  • Identify resources, business networks and other support services for the business
  • Identify methods of motivation for individuals and to unlock potential
  • Identify key priorities for your business, core marketing and growth aspirations
  • Identify key market drivers for the business and map the market variables and market penetration
  • To have a solid plan to deliver growth aspirations
  • Have a clear strategy for future marketing and positioning, including differentials and USP
  • To have a clear structured organisational and management strategy
  • Assistance in Implementation and action of plans
  • Implementation of systems to cover all aspects of the business, especially people and finance
  • Monitoring of business and marketing plan implementation
  • Identification of what works, what does not work, leading to adjustments in plan
  • Better understanding of the business, the market and company objectives
  • Clients are expected to spend some time, prior to each session, to contemplate and prepare for the discussion.
  • Clients are guaranteed absolute confidentiality, and non-disclosure of information.
  • A rigorous code of ethics in line with the code developed by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)

Business Development Across Departments

Business development activities should extend across different departments, including sales, marketing, project management, product management and vendor management. Networking, negotiations, partnerships, and cost-savings efforts are also involved. All these different departments and activities are driven by and aligned to the business development goals.

For instance, a business has a product/service which is successful in one region. The business development team assesses further expansion potential. After all due diligence, research and studies, it finds that the product/service can be expanded to a new region.

Let’s understand how this business development goal can be tied to the various functions and departments:

Sales personnel focus on a particular market or a particular (set of) client(s), often for a targeted revenue number. In this case, business development assesses the markets and concludes an expected sales worth can be achieved in three years. With such set goals, the sales department targets the customer base in the new market with their sales strategies.

Marketing involves promotion and advertising aimed towards the successful sale of products to the end-customers. Marketing plays a complementary role in achieving the sales targets. Business development initiatives may allocate an estimated marketing budget. Higher budgets allow aggressive marketing strategies like cold-calling, personal visits, road shows, and free sample distribution. Lower budgets tend to result in passive marketing strategies, such as limited print and media ads, and billboards.

To enter a new market, will it be worth going solo by clearing all required formalities, or will it be more pragmatic to strategically partner with local firms already operating in the region? Assisted by legal and finance teams, the business development team weighs all the pros and cons of the available options, and selects which one best serves the business.

Does the business expansion requires a new facility in the new market, or will all the products be manufactured in the base country and then imported into the targeted market? Will the latter option require an additional facility in the base country? Such decisions are finalised by the business development team based on their cost-, time- and related assessments. Then project management/implementation team swings into action to work towards the desired goal.

Regulatory standards and market requirements vary across countries. A medicine of a certain composition may be allowed in India but not in the U.K., for example. Does the new market requires any customised (or altogether new) version of the product? These requirements drive the work of product management and manufacturing departments, as decided by the business strategy. Cost consideration, legal approvals and regulatory adherence are all assessed as a part of a business development plan.

Will the new business need external vendors? For example, will shipping of product need a dedicated courier service? Or will the firm partner with any established retail chain for retail sales? What are the costs associated with these engagements? The business development team works through these questions.

Business development is not just about increasing sales, products and market reach. Strategic decisions are also needed to improve the bottom line, which include cost-cutting measures. An internal assessment revealing high spending on travel, for instance, may lead to travel policy changes, such as hosting video conference calls instead of on-site meetings, or opting for less expensive transportation modes. Similar cost-saving initiatives can be implemented by outsourcing non-core work like billing and accounting, financials, IT operations and customer service. Strategic partnerships needed for these initiatives are a part of business development.

These are just a guide to help start to think of the bigger picture and how Business Development can touch all Departments and shouldn’t just sit alone; obviously not all of the above will be applicable to all Companies.

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