The success or failure of your company largely depends on your business development strategies. Having a well-thought-out business development strategy and executing it correctly can help your company achieve strong relationships, increased revenues, and promising prospects. This way, you reach new levels of profitability and growth. Your business development strategies should align business processes with your long-term business goals.
On the other hand, a faulty strategy and execution can prevent growth and profitability and frustrate your most valuable talent. That’s why you need to partner with experienced general counsel to help your company establish and execute long-term business strategies and avoid unnecessary liabilities and risks to increase your chances of growth and development.
You also need to understand the strategies that would yield the best results for your business and incorporate them into your overall development plan. Here are a few business development strategies that can help you achieve optimal growth and profitability:
1. Networking
Networking is inarguably one of the widely employed business development strategies for business growth. As a business development strategy, networking focuses on building business relationships with prospective clients. One of the most effective ways to establish new relationships is via face-to-face networking. This can be networking through professional associations, community, or business events, allowing you to meet potential clients and develop new businesses.
However, you may consider employing digital marketing techniques if you don’t have the budget or time to travel for networking. Networking digitally with prospects through social media can save you time and money. Networking digitally also extends your reach, allowing you to meet more potential clients and convert them into buying customers.
2. Referrals
Closely related to networking, a referral is when you get new business through an existing client. This can be a current or past satisfied client recommending your business to another potential customer. In fact, most companies get most of their business from referrals. While most referrals occur organically, you can also encourage your existing customers to recommend your business to other prospective clients. For instance, one of the strategic ways you can use referrals is by implementing a referral program that incentivizes both the existing satisfied client and those they refer. You can also employ various digital strategies to speed up and make better referrals.
3. Sponsorships and Advertising
Sponsoring events is another effective business development strategy for achieving your business growth goals. Sponsoring events allows you the opportunity to introduce potential customers to your products and services in a bid to convert them into buying customers. It also lets you capitalize on an event’s media presence to increase your product’s visibility and reach more prospects.
You can also employ targeted digital advertising to get your products, services, and offers in front of your target audiences at a reduced cost. This can be through targeted social media ads, search engine ads, display ads, and more. This can help your company reach more potential clients and stand a chance of converting them into customers.
4. Outreach
For years, outreach has proven to be an effective way of directly targeting potential clients. This involves contacting prospective clients through phone calls, email campaigns, and direct mail. The two main outreach strategies you can employ include outbound and inbound outreach. Outbound outreach involves seeking out potential clients directly, for instance, using social media ads.
On the other hand, inbound outreach allows you to reach out to potential customers after they learn about your company’s services or products. A great example of inbound outreach is sending emails to your company’s blog subscribers. No matter the type of outreach you employ, ensure you target the right people with a relevant message to increase your chances of acquiring more customers.
Endnote
A business development strategy is crucial for any company’s growth and success and should be carefully curated and implemented to yield the best results. If you’re looking to acquire new customers and business opportunities, consider adding the above strategies to your business development plan and develop an effective execution plan.
Once you’ve successfully implemented your business development plan, ensure that you regularly measure and monitor your growth efforts. This will help you identify which strategies are working for your business and which aren’t producing results. This way, you can double down on working strategies and make corrective adjustments to ineffective ones.
