Business Development Best Practices for Startups

Outline Your List of Measurable Goals

You need to identify what you are hoping to get out of these partnerships. New users, expand into a new industry, increase MRR? What metrics are important? You simply can’t google this. Chat with your team and figure out how they’re expecting you to contribute to the pie. If you don’t do this, you’ll risk focusing on a metric that isn’t of value or looking at vanity metrics that mean nothing. What’s your North Star and how will BD initiatives help you reach it?

Figure Out What Resources You’ll Need and What is Available to You

If you’re starting a business from scratch, you’ll need to be comfortable creating new collateral for your partners or you might need to go to a conference to make the right connections. What’s in the pot and who can you go to if you need help? Without this clearly outlined, you risk focusing on opportunities that you don’t have the resources or bandwidth to chase. Nothing is more frustrating than spending time and energy on a new deal and realizing that you can’t follow through.

Create a Hypothesis and Some Experiments You can Test

How are you hoping to tap into a distribution network and what do you think you’ll need to do to get there? The most important thing is not putting all your eggs in one basket. Do small tests and see if you’re getting the desired outcome. For example, if you want to find new resellers, don’t just send out a mass email to resellers you want to partner with. It’s not a numbers game.

Know When to Move On

You’ll deal with some false starts and sometimes people just lose interest. Know when to pivot, understand why it didn’t work, tweak it, and move on. You don’t want to spend more than several weeks testing something if you aren’t seeing any progress. How do you figure out if it isn’t working? Usually when communication drops off. Priorities change and people sometimes will put things on the back burner. Sometimes it helps to just go for the no and simply ask them if it still makes sense to continue discussions or should you put this on hold. You’ll either hear nothing or get a response. Either way, you’ll have an answer. Whatever you do, always ask “Is this moving me closer to my goal or just creating distractions”. If nothing is moving forward, move on. As the old adage goes, time is money.

Identify your Ideal Partner

As you conduct your test and gather feedback from potential partners, you’ll start to identify what an ideal partner looks like for you. This is the most important thing! If you can’t figure this out during your campaigns and meetings, you’ll be chasing the wrong partners. As you send out more campaigns and chat with your potential partners, you’ll start to see trends. What types of companies are more responsive, what incentives are they looking for, and what did all the failed opportunities have in common? Nail this down!

Create a BD Blueprint

At this point, you should have a good outreach strategy and know what your ideal distribution partner looks like. Now you’ll need to outline what steps and successes got you here. You’ll use this to create a scalable process.

Have at it!

You’ve tested and built out a process, and your pipeline is starting to grow using your new BD blueprint. Keep going and watch your network multiply!

Source: https://zight.com/