Sales development, also called business development, is a position that often gets confused with sales even to the point that many founders and CEOs believe it’s interchangeable. The answer?
They’re not. Although they support each other sometimes, they are quite different. In other words, they have different goals. As a founder or CEO, you should know what exactly is what they do to hire the one that fits the most with your business strategy.
Let’s begin by giving a clear answer to the questions “What is business development?” and “What is sales?”. Then, we’ll go further into their differences, how they support each other, and which function needs to be your focus based on the stage your company is at today.
What is Business Development?
The definition of business development is generating qualified new leads (both inbound and outbound). The purpose is to research prospects, identify opportunities, and create a pipeline of targeted potential customers. Then, once the qualified leads are found, set appointments for the freelance sales agents to raise and close the sale.
The business development reps don’t focus on closing business: They focus on the pipeline and keeping it filled.
How? The activities of a business development rep vary from:
- Making phone calls
- Exchanging emails
- Leaving voicemails
- Making social media touches.
All of this focuses mainly on conversion. If you want to know more about the sales development representatives and what is necessary to be successful in that area, we recommend you to read our previous article “What Makes a Successful Sales Development Representative?”, and then come back here to keep learning more about the sales position!
And What Is Sales?
If the definition of business development is generating leads, sales on the other hand focus on generating transactions. Freelance Sales Representatives work alongside the development team (or any other team that generates leads) and focus on closing and the activities that lead to it. Which are:
- Building relationships.
- Help prospects uncover needs
- Give the right solutions
- Make presentations
- Demonstrate products
- Handle objections
- Draft contracts
- And finally, close deals.
When a business has both the sales development and sales professionals, the salespeople spend little or no time prospecting, qualifying, or cold-calling, and focus all their efforts on bringing in revenue to the business.
What’s The Difference Between Them?
The main differences between them are the order and the focus.
The difference in the order is because business development comes first. Is the act of searching and generating qualified leads that will then be managed by the sales team.
When you refer to business development you are always focusing on generating leads, and the job titles that are most often associated with business development are roles like Business Development Rep (BDR) or Sales Development Rep (SDR).
Then comes sales, which focus on transactions. It’s all about closing a winning deal with the qualified prospects that the BDR will send you. Regarding job titles, they are widely spread but can typically be associated with phrases like Sales Representative, Account Manager, or Account Executive.
Which One Does Your Business Need?
When you are starting your business and it comes time to build a sales team from scratch, it can be difficult to decide which one of these roles you should focus on first.
There’s no golden rule that can tell you which one is the best for you at the moment, because, in reality, it highly depends on your business situation. For example:
> If you are consistently closing a high proportion of the prospects you speak with, but what’s missing is a higher volume of leads to continue flowing through your pipeline, then your highest priority should be hiring a BDR and focusing on how to prospect for the right leads.
> On the other hand, if you have more qualified leads to the point that you can’t deal with nor follow up with all of them, then you should focus on hiring more freelance sales reps so you can close more sales.
Right now we made it sound a bit easy, but in reality, it can take a while to reach one of these stages.
It’s natural for founders and other members of the team to take responsibility for both roles while the business keeps growing. Honestly, as long as everything is going well with your team, having these 2 positions on one person should be okay.
But over time, when your business grows enough, the separation of the two roles should become more pronounced, and that’s when you have to decide to invest in the positions.
At Freelance Latin America, we promote continuous growth, and continuous improvement within our Freelancers. Because, as our Freelancers keep improving so will our customers’ businesses, and so will your business.
We want to take part in helping you overcome your challenges, we want to help you grow. That’s why the solutions we offer are both SDR positions and SR positions! When your business needs to generate more leads or close more sales be sure to contact us!
See more articles by Ender Cárdenas.
