4 Ways A Business Development Professional Can Help Your Business Grow

No matter what stage your business is in, opportunities for growth exist. During the first few years, it can be a rush as a business starts to gain momentum. But then, even for successful businesses, growth can stagnate.

Business development is all about identifying ways to grow your business and putting steps in place to take advantage of those opportunities. By making this a priority, you can help mitigate the risk that your business could plateau or even decline. How? By adding value to the current product, creating other sources of income, or tapping into a new market.

You live and breathe your business every day. So it’s understandably difficult to see beyond the vision you have already created to identify new opportunities.

Enter business development specialists. They use research, experience, and market knowledge to identify opportunities for growth and tend to have a penchant for outside-the-box thinking. A fresh mind and experience in growth strategies for businesses can bring an incredible return on investment. Here are four ways a business development specialist can assist in setting you up for future success.

Expand your offering

Whether you have a product or a service, there is always room to improve, refine, and/or add new offerings. Maybe it’s as simple as adding a new color to your product line or giving it an additional feature that adds value. Perhaps there is a complementary yet untapped product that your customers would also love.

When brainstorming and identifying these opportunities, an expert product developer can look at your current offering, analyze the market, and make recommendations for further opportunities that might be a good fit.
Reach your target audience
When you promote your business, are you reaching the right people? One form of business development can be to audit your marketing channels to ensure you are reaching your target audience.

An expert marketer that specializes in strategy and market development can help you get your product or service in front of the people most in need of what you have to offer, so you’re well positioned when they’re ready to make the purchase.

Utilize strategic partnerships

Tying into both product development and marketing efforts, strategic partnerships can be the spark that ignites a huge opportunity. There are probably other companies out there who have the same target market you do, but you sell completely different or complementary products. It could be a win-win to combine your campaign dollars to cross promote.

Have you ever wondered how Instagram and YouTube personalities make money? In the case of YouTube, they typically get ad revenue, but often that isn’t where the bulk of their income comes from—and Instagram doesn’t have the same ad revenue opportunity for account holders. What they’re able to leverage is a demand for their audience. Instagram and YouTube influencers can pitch, use, or review your products in exchange for payment as long as your product might be of interest to their audience.

A partnership manager can help identify businesses and influencers you may want to connect with and get the ball rolling.

Leverage the right technology

The breakneck speed with which technology is evolving can be intimidating. You’ve heard you need a website, an app, and a VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), or MR (mixed reality) experience. You’ve heard terms like blockchain technology mentioned as the way of the future. But it isn’t clear how any of this applies to you or if it would be beneficial to leverage one, all, or any of these technologies to make your product or service even better.

The answer to this is not the same for everyone. Maybe your market doesn’t care about your web presence. It might be they wouldn’t use your app even if you had one. If you sell something like toilet bowls, will a blog bring in new customers? And if it would, would the ROI be high enough? A technology consultant can audit what you’re currently doing, analyze whether or not what you’re currently doing is enough, poll your target audience, and make recommendations for your future activities based on expected ROI.

What are you waiting for? Check out Upwork’s Hiring Resources for more information about how to get started.

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