This is the first in the series of presentations that:

1. Provide fresh insights into business development with introduction of new concepts

2. Enhance your ability to embark on business development internally without external help

3. Help you create or locate suitable pathways for business development in your organization

4. Help you create and implement a workable need assessment and monitoring/evaluation systems for business development

Purpose of this presentation: 1. Introduce the concept of business development space

where various possibilities exist for you to identify, evaluate and locate your business development pathway

“Business development is the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, and relationships”. - Scott Polack Long-term value is created for the organization but achieved using customers, markets and relationships. Without markets, customers and relationships, business development becomes wishful thinking. To this end, organizational growth is reducible to sustainable values created overtime.

marketing

Illustrated from Scott Pollack’s Analyses

branding

Before you create long term value for your organization you need to evaluate and analyze scenarios in your Business Development Space (BDS)

Market Share

Bottom-line

Partnership Drive

Sales

You can transit from perplexity to the realm of clear vision in Business Dev.

BDS

Using and adopting the concept of Production Possibility Frontier in economic theory, your business development space is a combination of numerous possibilities but 6 possibility Frontiers remain key to your growth. These possibilities define your scope, and path for business development. This can be captured graphically using the production possibility curve in economic theory

1. Previous business development experience and strategies

2. Current business development capabilities, activities and strategies

3. Potential business development possibilities

Business Development Space 1. Productions and Operational

possibilities 2. Market Development/Diversification

possibilities 3. Product and Service Development

possibilities 4. Partnership and Strategic Alliances

possibilities 5. Competitive Advantage Possibilities 6. Complementary possibilities

Possibilities are combined to achieve business development goals

Poss

ibili

ty Y

Possibility X

Year 1 9% year 2

13%

year 3 19%

Year 4 26%

Year 5 33%

Business Development Goals

Product Dev.

Partnerships

Market Dev.

Business Dev. Space

Therefore, what is the Business Development Space (BDS)? BDS is the CAPACITY that you have generated over time to give your business a push forward (from Previous to current to potential). The questions:

1. What is your capacity to create complementary products or services? 2. What is you capacity to attract partnership and strategic alliances? 3. What is you r capacity for product, services and market developments? 4. What is your competitive advantage? 5. What is your capacity to increase productivity and raise operations as desired?

Your BDS contains exhaustive possibilities that you can combine for business development to happen. Some of these possibilities are peculiar to your business. For the purpose of this presentation we gave 6 possibilities however, you can add other possibilities. For example, Business Networking Possibilities can be added if business networking is crucial to achieving specific business development goals, then you will have to start to grow capacity in that area. The more the possibilities in your BDS the better and richer your business development agenda is. Refer to the presentation on Understanding Capacity for Business Development

Production and Operational Possibility

It is the combination of goods and services that you can produce at a given time and the level of your current operational capacity, given the inputs and the technical knowhow at your disposal. Evaluate the current status and the potentials of:

1. Costs production 2. Cost of product diversification if need be 3. Business cycle especially with respect to your

product and services 4. Cost of adopting new technology 5. Doing Business Country Statistics 6. Macroeconomic Forecasts etc.

Market Development Possibilities This is your present and potential market; it has a lot to do with the demands that you currently satisfy, and can potentially satisfy in future. Evaluate the current status and the potentials of:

1. Demographic and social factors 2. Your price offerings/market price 3. Level of competition 4. Your market share 5. Value offerings 6. Regulatory policies and institutions 7. External: Macroeconomic Factors and Technology 8. Transactions and deals available or created 9. Globalization and the Chinese market etc

Product/Service Development Possibilities Business development may not be complete without product/service development. In many cases, product development is a reactionary strategy by organization responding to market changes. However, when product/service development is proactive it enhances the quality of the business development process allowing for sustainable planning processes and eliminating possible errors and misjudgment and the hastiness that might be associated With the reactive product development strategies. A good grasp of the market development and trends is an important prerequisite to product and service development. Evaluate the current status and the potentials of:

1. Consumption trends 2. Income changes 3. Market development changes 4. Market influencers 5. Service Tenders 6. Product and service knowledge etc.

Partnerships and Strategic Alliances Possibilities For every business there are readily and potentially available partnerships and strategic alliances. They are part of your business space because they can have profound positive effects on your business growth and expansion depending on how you use them. Though they are external but they can help in shifting the business development possibility frontier forward from current to potential. Evaluate the current status and the potentials of:

1. Your area(s) of specialization 2. Opportunity Cost of acquiring additional specialization 3. Cost benefit analyses of partnership and strategic alliances 4. Cost of company acquisition or take over 5. Long term goals of the organization 6. Profiling and evaluating possible partners 7. Changes in your business ecosystem etc

Competitive Advantage Possibilities The understanding of the advantages that your company commands in the markets amongst competitors is crucial to future business development plans, as you can always leverage on current competitive advantages to position and reposition your company on the industrial value chain and to attract investment and partnerships. This is closely linked with market development possibilities, it is the development and use of other possibilities in the BDS as competition leverages

Complementary Possibilities This is a fallout of the cost benefit analyses of competition. Sometimes competition becomes too expensive and time consuming therefore, the need for creating complementarities in business instead of competing. This offers an escape route in a business development space where cost of competition is high and payback and breakeven periods are longer and unpredictable. Evaluate the current status and the potentials of:

1. Product/service knowledge availability 2. Cost of achieving productive efficiency for complementary products

and services 3. Entry requirement into complementary product/service industry 4. Operational efficiency when combining present products and

services with their complementary counterpart etc

A Destination Management Business is Complementary to Tourists and resort management businesses.

Imagine setting up or partnering with a destination management company where you have vibrant resort and tourist centers. The benefits of setting or partnering with a destination management company amidst tourists and resorts management companies may outweigh that of entering into competition with the existing companies, or may become your most important competitive advantage if you are part of the industry already.

Activity 1: Visualize your BDS and write down in order of strength (strongest to the weakest) all the business development possibilities and options at your disposal do not limit yourself to the possibilities in this presentation, ensure that your list is exhaustive. You can make your list simpler and easier to understand

Activity 3: Create some business development goals from the possibilities listed. Examples: 1. Achieve increase in market share by Y% in 12 months 2. Come up with a complementary service in the industry by mid 2015 3. Achieve competitive advantage in areas xyz of the industry by December 2015 4. Achieve operational overhaul to facilitate increased productivity in 12 months etc.

Activity 4: For each of the goals created, look at your list in Activity 1 and pick some set of possibilities needed to achieve the goals. List these possibilities under each goal and don’t forget to affix ratings of strength or weakness to each possibility as contained in Activity 1

Activity 5: For each weak business development possibilities already attached to particular goals, draw up another list of what needs to be done to strengthen them so as to achieve stated goals

Activity 2: For each of the possibilities in your BDS listed above, do a random rating in percentages of what you will consider as your current status. Some brief explanations may be necessary

The 5 activities you have performed is what we refer to as “random business development activities”; committing organizational resources into such random activities may be unproductive and lead to wastages. Part 2 of this presentation provides you with a transition from random to strategic business development activities where business development decisions are well informed. It provides you with the tools to bridge the gaps between CURRENT and POTENTIAL business development growth

Strategies X

Stra

tegi

es Y

Poss

ibili

ties

Y

Possibilities X

A transition from possibilities to strategies and a transition from the potentials in your BDS curve to long term value propositions for the organization

Coming up in part 2

Akinsida Anthony Stephen Business Development Analyst Dominion Research Solutions

dominionresearchsolutions@gmail.com akinsidaanthony@gmail.com LinkedIn: Anthony Stephen Akinsida g+ : Anthony Akinsida http://issuu.com/dominionsolutions/docs