Business Development vs Sales in the software services company

As many Business Developers get called salespeople, we decided to introduce you to all the differences those two departments have.
They can seem similar cause despite everything; the aim is the same - it’s, of course, the widely understood growth of the company. However, the Sales team focuses only on making as many B2B and B2C transactions as possible. Meanwhile, Business Developers are looking for growth opportunities, including partnerships, marketing activities, and even the recruitment process, but let’s get a bit deeper into the topic.

The Goal

Sales - Acquiring a vast number of paying customers is this team’s primary focus to generate revenue.

Business Development - Establishing and maintaining valuable relationships is crucial for the company, leading to greater diversification of actions.

The Way

Sales - acquiring a customer is divided into two factions, inbound and outbound sales; an inbound client is a person (or a company) who reaches out to you with their idea of building a project. On the other hand, some outbound clients may be interested in your project idea, but you must approach them and convince them that they should pay you to build it.
Each of these selling types has its actions, which need to be executed, but let’s start with the less complex one.

1. Inbound - at this point, the sales team’s success mainly depends on the marketing team’s activities cause if the marketing is done correctly, more potential clients will appear in your mailbox. A Sales Executive’s task here is to guide the client through the process, from the first discovery call, through the offer creation, to signing the contract.

2. Outbound - the most common method of outbound sales is outreach campaigns, which can be done by cold calling or cold mailing. When scheduling a direction of such campaigns, the team often bases on already existing and success-proven company selling methods.

3. Besides the outreach method, there are also events, and the Sales team’s role is to be present at the company’s stand and encourage people to get to know their services or product a little bit better.

Business Development - when it comes to revenue-generating, it’s also either inbound or outbound; however, the difference appears between these two processes. The Business Development approach is way more strategic, beginning way earlier than the Sales part. Here comes an example:

1. Inbound - as mentioned above, most of the inbound sales success comes from marketing activities; those activities need to be planned earlier, and the person setting up their direction is a Business Developer along with the Marketing Team. It’s because the Business Developer has the right market point of view; he knows about the current trends or hot topics. Based on that, the team knows exactly what is the right starting point.

2. It is not the only example of the BD contributing to inbound sales; what also sets him apart from the Sales approach is the partnerships relations. So when he’s meeting a person and sees a value in the relationship they’re building, he’s going to develop it, even though it’s not a potential customer, cause it can always be, for example, a person who’s going to recommend them to his network, and it is also an inbound sales.

3. Outbound - let’s start with campaigns, so the case is more complex. Before even thinking about executing anything, it all begins with deep research about the direction. When the industry is chosen, the investigation continues, but this time the aim is to know the industry’s most significant issues and how our company can solve them.

4. The outbound activities also include all kinds of events where potential customers are present; it is also preceded by research with the help of the Marketing department. Then, when the research is done and the event planned, it’s time to schedule meetings with any leads that can have a positive impact on the company’s future; the last part is, of course, the event exploring, meeting new people and searching for business opportunities, that happens in the meantime of previously scheduled meetings.

After all, the differences shown above don’t exclude BD from participating in the sales activities; it’s the opposite; only a few developers do not. Most often in big-size companies when the departments are much more divided.

Summary

The differences shown above assure us that Business Development activities are much more general and strategically oriented. The Sales tasks are just a part of the whole BD cycle.
Moreover - based on all the information provided, each Business Developer could be a Salesperson, but only some Sales team members could be BD.