Most good businesses are not lacking when it comes to market opportunity at present.As they look around, there are plenty of options for selling their goods or services.
Instead, what most are struggling with, is finding the resources they need to capitalise on the opportunities that lie in front of them.
So, what should a business do when resources are constrained and they simply can’t capitalise on those prospects?
The answer for most lies in revisiting their approach to business development.
It’s a critical piece of the puzzle for making the most out of a market such as the one we currently find ourselves in.
Why? Well, at its core, business development looks at how an organisation makes decisions about allocating its resources – and best match those often limited resources to the best opportunities existing in the market.
The question is – how well is your business doing that at the moment?
As great business development is about making sure you’re allocating the resources you do have in the most commercially sensible way, it requires looking at the work you’re currently doing and/or are pursuing, and re-evaluating it from a higher perspective.
Are there other opportunities that may allow your organisation to work at a better price point and so increase margins? In other words, could you be operating in a smarter way?
This is a significant consideration.
And business development can’t be reviewed in isolation.
It needs to factor in your view of what lies ahead for your clients, your relationship with them and their loyalty to you, emerging clients you may need to consider and how well you are set up to make changes.
Businesses need to move out of the ‘doing’ for a bit and consider who is making the decisions about what the company is focusing on day-to-day and who is setting the pricing – because, if the pricing you’ve got isn’t helping the operation realise the margin it needs, that’s only going to get harder as input costs continue to rise.
Organisations need to review who they’re actually targeting, who they want to target, and who they need to talk to about the cost increases they’re facing.
All of this has many moving parts and ensuring those parts are brought together in a cohesive way is essential.
If you’re planning for 2023 already, and with no end in sight to the current resource challenges facing most organisations
