You wouldn’t hire an excavator to dig a hole for a single fence post. It would be a waste of money and resources. The better move would be to dig the hole yourself using a shovel.

In the business world, this is like using your business development team to find new, one-time projects. Business Development is certainly capable of hunting down projects, but it’s an inefficient use of money and resources. The sales team is the better tool to use to find projects — ideally, within the existing customer base.

It’s all about choosing the right tool for the job. Business development is the best tool for finding clients.

Projects vs Clients

One thing hasn’t changed since the pandemic: many businesses still struggle to understand the role of business development.

Where does business development provide an organization with the most value? We can refer to the strategy grid we’ve used in previous posts for a clearer picture. The business development team is most effective in the lower-right-hand quadrant, the client-driven strategy.

The confusion comes when owners think business development is designed to uncover PROJECTS. The trouble is, anyone can find projects. Entry-level data miners and lead generation tools can find you projects if that’s what you’re looking for.

It’s like using an excavator when a shovel will do. The business development role is to find more CLIENTS. Clients have many projects.

Sales will extract the projects from the ongoing client relationship.

Know Your Flow

If you’re looking for more PROJECTS, the business flow moves something like this:

Marketing >>> Lead Qualification >>> Sales

(Notice, business development is absent from this model.)

If your goal is more CLIENTS, the flow changes:

Marketing >>> Business Development >>> Sales

As you can see, projects and clients both fall under the marketing umbrella.

(Note that marketing has a key role in both models.)

If you want projects, stick with sales. You may have to start over each time, but if that’s your business model, there’s nothing wrong with it. If you want clients that will result in repeat business over a longer period of time, you need to employ business development to constantly cultivate potential relationships.

Putting It All Together

Take another look at the strategy grid at the top.

• In the top left quadrant of the grid (project-based), there’s no real role for business development. It’s too expensive to have a business development team targeting one-time projects in this quadrant.
• In the bottom right quadrant (client-based), you use the business development team to get more clients. The sales team will seek out new projects/jobs from the existing customer base.

You have to be able to choose the right tool for the job at hand. Successful gardeners don’t rent excavators every spring. If you want to find projects, that’s great — just make sure you don’t break out your heavy duty business development team when all you need is sales.