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Business Development Representative:

The Growth Engine for Your Business

Leads are the lifeblood of many companies, especially in the B2B arena. The lack of a reliable and effective way of attracting them can significantly complicate further growth and business development. Are you a business owner who is engaged in Internet marketing? Do you own a company where customers flow is generated through the Internet, mostly?

Even 1 new client can make a change in terms of business growth. And what if you could expand your customer base faster and get more clients each month? That’s why a sales team plays a very important part in every organization now. However, the sales process has become more complicated over the years.

Once your business starts growing it’s not enough just to have 2-3 sales reps (Jacks of all trades) that do all the job from cold calling to closing deals. Why? That’s because they spread their focus on too many things at once. As a result, you may lose important clients and deals to your competition. Not a thing you want to do, right?

Luckily, there is a way to do it better. That’s why many organizations and businesses are restructuring the sales process. Now it requires smooth teamwork of sales development representatives, business development representatives, and account executives.

In this article, we’ll overview the business development representative role, its description, the skills that a good business development rep should have.

Business Development Rep, Sales Dev Rep, Account Executive: What’s the Difference?

In some companies, a business developer representative does quite the same thing as a sales development representative. What’s the difference between these two roles?

A sales development rep is focused mainly on inbound leads. So this position requires less experience and skills. While a business development representative is focused on outbound strategies like cold emails and cold calling. So a business development sales representative role requires advanced sales skills.
We’d like to underline that neither business devs nor sales dev reps close deals. Demonstrating the product, sending custom quotes, and closing the deals are responsibilities of account executives that are called closers. Business development representative experts are called finders.
CRM integration is crucial for making the sales process well-oiled and smooth. CRM or customer relationship management software is a tool that helps your sales team automate many processes that are important for sales, getting new clients, onboarding new clients, client retention, etc. There are many CRM options in the market. There are free and paid CRM tools. It’s up which one to choose.

Business Developer Representative: Key Responsibilities

Some of the key responsibilities of a business development representative include:

  • finding new relevant business opportunities
  • generating leads through cold emails and called calls
  • qualifying the leads and enter the data in the CRM
  • nurturing qualified leads and develop relationships with them
  • marking sales qualified leads in CRM once they are ready for the closing part

These tasks are not that easy and require lots of focus and time. That’s why many companies are looking for full-time dedicated business developer reps to do prospecting and not let leads fall through the cracks.

For example, a business development representative can use various tools to create a cold outreach campaign, automate it, send 2-3 follow-ups to the contacts, connect with them on social media to make more touchpoints and warm up cold leads, engage with them there in a conversation, and then call the prospects.

Asking the right qualifying questions is super important for every business dev rep out there.

Development Representative:
What Skills a Good BDR Should Have?

  • Strong mental health and positive thinking. Mindset is very important in sales. Especially for a business development representative. It’s important to stay positive after many rejections. Cold emailing and cold calling are not a walk in the park.
  • A/B testing skills. A business development rep should be able to quickly A/B test email headlines, copy for the email messages, copy for the script, and adjust everything according to the response.
  • Empathetic listening. This is the highest level of listening when you listen very closely to prospects, understand their concerns, empathize with them. A senior business development representative should definitely have this skill.
  • Client-oriented. A good business dev rep should be able to deliver them value through communication. Selling and trade are good, but a sale is impossible without establishing a real connection with your prospect.
  • Dig deeper into the pain point of the prospects. The pain points of the client are always in the center of the deal. As Dan Lok says “If there is no pain, there is no sale.’’
  • This is the job of a business development representative to show the value of your products or services and position them a solution to the prospects.

Hopefully, now you know a lot about a business representative, their role, responsibilities, and skills.
If you need help from a team of professional business development reps with a proven record, contact BrightestMinds.io today!

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