Course details
Business development can be the innovation hub of your organization, and an exciting career for visionary and strategic professionals. It can be a source of disruptive strategies and partnerships that help companies to leapfrog their competitors. And yet, the term “business development” is thrown around by many executives who don’t fully understand its power to transform.
Business development teams identify areas of opportunity: new products, new markets, new partnerships, and new distribution channels. It’s critical to start with clear objectives. Are you using business development (BD) as a marketing tool, a sales channel, a source of innovation, or a corporate development hub? Management consultant Robbie Kellman Baxter shows you how the best BD professionals identify and build momentum for new initiatives. She also gives you the insight you need to launch a BD function in your organization, explains how to manage a BD team, and shares how to scale the BD function as your opportunities grow.
Instructor
Robbie Kellman Baxter is the founder of Peninsula Strategies LLC, a management consulting firm.
Robbie is also the author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction and Build Recurring Revenue, a book that has been named a top-five Marketing Book of the Year on Inc.com. She coined the popular business term “Membership Economy,” which is now used by organizations and journalists around the country and beyond.
Her clients have included large organizations like Netflix and the National Restaurant Association, as well as dozens of fast-growing, venture-backed companies. Over the course of her career, Robbie has consulted clients or worked in more than twenty industries. Before starting Peninsula Strategies LLC in 2001, Robbie served as a New York City Urban Fellow, a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, and a Silicon Valley product marketer. She has an AB from Harvard College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Robbie has been quoted or interviewed by major media outlets, including CNN, Consumer Reports, and NPR.
Welcome
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– What do you do if a business opportunity pops up that feels right for your organization, but doesn’t fit neatly into business as usual? Something really strategic and with long-term potential where you see the hazy outline of possibility but the road map isn’t clear. In general, sales sells specific products and services to customers. Marketing determines which customer segments to target. And product management develops offerings for those segments, so that sales has something to sell. But when the owner and opportunity aren’t clear, and it feels like there’s huge potential, if only someone can figure it out, that’s when business development steps in. Business development is the functional area of a company responsible for identifying and flushing out new areas of business. These new opportunities often require a combination of new products and new markets and new distribution channels. Generally partnerships are involved and these partnerships are unlike any other relationship the…