Business Development Goals and Objectives: Achieve Success
The goal of business development is to find growth opportunities and generate long-term value for your organization. Learn more below.
Business development is a crucial activity for any company that’s willing to grow and establish itself. It’s the engine that allows you to innovate and create sustainable growth.
But, there’s still a lot of confusion about it.
To help you have a more complete understanding of business development, let’s answer a burning question of business development goals and objectives:
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What’s the business development goals and objectives?
The easy answer would be “to find clients “. But that would be only a tiny part of the story and would not cover the full spectrum of what is business development.
Business development is not all about finding clients. But, it’s about developing and implementing growth opportunities sustainably and profitably.
To achieve that, you need a multitude of processes and tasks that in the long term, will generate value for your organization.
Business development goals and objectives
To become an efficient business development professional you need to understand the reasons why you do business development.
Identifying your mission will provide you with the right context and tools to identify opportunities and prioritize your work.
As a business developer, you are responsible for finding new growth opportunities and this needs to happen under 2 conditions:
- They need to generate value for your stakeholders
- These opportunities need to have a long-term effect
If you take these elements into account you have your business development mission:
The business development goals and objectives is to create long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, and relationships.
The concept of value in business development
Now you know that your goal is to generate value. But…how do you define value?
That’s a fair question and not an easy one to answer because value is a subjective concept. Moreover, it highly depends on the stage you’re currently at with your company.
The best way to look at it is by identifying what are the initiatives that would be most valuable in the present moment, but that at the same time, have some effect in the future.
For example, let’s say you work for a startup and you’re creating your product or service. You can’t really focus on generating revenue, because you simply don’t have an offer that’s ready to sell.
So what should you do as a business developer?
One of the most valuable things you can get at this stage is feedback on your offer. Therefore, your job could involve interviewing potential customers, partners, and other relevant stakeholders.
The information you will gather has both an immediate effect and a long-term effect.
On the spot, you’ll validate your assumptions and make sure you work in the right direction.
In the long term, you’ll build a strong network and a solid value proposition that will generate revenue once your offer is ready to go to market.
Types of business development goals and objectives
Any business development goals and objectives worth achieving will likely fall into one of four major categories:
- Expanding the reach of your offering
- Deepening your relationship with existing customers
- Improving your operational efficiency
- Developing new products or services
Let’s talk about the most common goals.
- Sales Goals
It is a type of business financial target that is related to the revenue activities of a business. They often focus on such objectives as the number of units sold within a given period or the average value of each sale.
If your business is new, your sales department will, most probably, stress revenue generation. However, once you have built your initial customer base and are gradually penetrating the specific market, you can shift the emphasis to boosting the value per sale.
Business development goals and objectives for sales are often expressed in the form of a percentage of some number. For instance, improve sales by attaining a sales rate that is 10 percent higher than that of the previous year. The problem which lies in such an aim is the fact it does not take into account what is going on in the market or competitors.
- Market Penetration Goals
Market penetration objectives are defined to expand your product market or service usage to the public. Companies achieve this through selling products to new clients or seeking new avenues of marketing to existing customers.
For instance, if you own a winter coat business, a market penetration objective may involve selling more of your products to college students through selling them in campus markets.
Or, if your business is offering accounting services, then a market penetration goal may be to sell more to firms, for instance, by participating in a business fair where you display your products.
- Profit Margin Goals
Profit margin means determining how much profit you want on each sale and setting prices accordingly. The business development goals and objectives are designed to increase the amount of money your business makes after expenses. It can be done by either increasing revenue or decreasing expenses (or both).
For instance, if you are aiming to have a 20% profit margin in each sale, then to be able to cover the cost of production and make a reasonable profit, you would have to offer a product at $12 when the cost of production is $10. After you have set your desired profitability levels, monitoring your progress and reviewing prices from time to time is crucial.
- Customer Acquisition Goals
Customer acquisition goals are a set of objectives designed to help a company attract more clients and customers.
The targets could be small and specific as establishing the goal of having ten new clients by the next month or large and long-term, like gaining a thousand clients within the next year. The marketing plan of the company will be aligned with these objectives.
The fundamental steps involved in the formulation of a customer acquisition strategy are the target market, lead generation, lead conversion, and customer retention.
The company also needs to be aware of how it is progressing towards achieving its objectives and targets and needs to make changes if needed.
- Brand Awareness and Loyalty Goals
Any business development process always has business development goals and objectives aimed at brand awareness and brand loyalty. The lack of a strong customer relation is something companies cannot afford; they either look forward to failing.
Brand awareness objectives are on the increase of the people who have knowledge of the existence of a company and what it offers in the market.
On the other hand, loyalty goals deal with the number of repeat customers or those customers who recommend others. Marketing and advertising can be used to reach out to potential consumers and make them familiar with the brand; on the other hand, consistent provision of high-quality services and acceptable incentives will ensure that consumers remain loyal to a particular brand.
- Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Goals
Employee commitment and motivation are valuable objectives for each company. The three ingredients of employee engagement are productivity, creativity, and commitment at the workplace. They also enjoy lower turnover and absenteeism than their traditional counterparts.
This is because happy workers can be relied on to remain with their employer and also deliver good services to other people. Human resource management gives the employees certain importance to the employer, and this makes the employees engaged and satisfied with their employers.
Engagement and satisfaction objectives focus on expanding the level of revealed interest and enthusiasm selected employees show to their work as well as the company.
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- Social Responsibility Goals
As a businessman, you are accountable to your employees, customers, and community. Social responsibility goals are a business’s actions to ensure that it does its part to improve the world.
It can include reducing environmental impact, supporting employees’ mental health, and giving back to the community.
Of course, social responsibility goals will look different for every business, depending on the company’s values and the needs of its employees and customers.
But no matter their form, you should always align social responsibility goals with your company’s overall mission and goals.
So, how can you guarantee that your business development team works towards achieving the right business development goals and objectives?
Conclusion
Achieving ambitious plans for your business is possible if you set realistic business development goals and objectives. However, it is also important to remember that things don’t always go as planned. Therefore, be prepared to make adjustments along the way. It is also important to enjoy the journey and take the time to celebrate your (and your team’s) successes along the way.
References:
https://dash.marketing/blog/business-development-how-to-set-goals-that-drive-growth/
https://www.surveycrest.com/blog/business-development-goals/
