Rely on vision, planning and leadership

A proactive business development organization revolvesaround vision, plans, leaders and teamwork. Senior executivesmust have a vision for the company: where theywant to go, how they plan to get there and how longthey have to accomplish it. The strategic vision must always be documentedand rolled into a strategic plan. But even after the plan is documentedand communicated, active and passive resisters will abound.Typically, business units will be satisfiedwith their revenue growth and the statusquo. A control issue develops here aboutwhere the strategic businessdevelopers shouldbe located.Lack of understandingabout strategic businessdevelopment islikely the reason for theconflict, or possibly afear of loss of influenceand control. This resistance should beexpected and must be managed.The human element is always the mostcritical component in creating a businessdevelopment organization. The best plansand processes cannot make up for a lack ofskilled professionals. Conversely, educatedand capable business development professionalsmight compensate for a lack ofplans and process.The individual responsible for puttingtogether the organization must be a leader? not merely a manager ? and have thefull support of senior management. Theline organization will defer to a leader butnot to a manager. The leader must be ableto execute business development on astrategic level and lead by example inaddition to being able to select, mentor,coach and develop other individuals.Three types of leaders are successful inestablishing a business development operation:the turnaround integrator, the builderand the maintainer. An outstanding leadercan often perform two of those roles successfully,but it's rare to find someone whocan handle all three effectively.Staffing the business development teamis a significant challenge, and identifyingtalent from outside the organization is difficult.The ability to distinguish fact from fictionis a skill most business developmentmanagers don't possess, preferring insteadto take the candidate being interviewed atface value. Because they are looking forsomeone who can immediately influencetheir short-term revenue numbers, mostmanagers are desperate to believe almostanything they hear in an interview for abusiness development position.So how do you get the right people onboard?First of all, look inside the organizationfor talent. Some of the most successfulbusiness development professionals havenever held a business development title.Undoubtedly there are individuals in thecompany who have regular contact withclients and are consistently successful inidentifying issues and positioning themselveswith influencers. Those individualsare probably capable of transitioningsmoothly from an operational role to abusiness development role.The secret to discovering business developmenttalent, wherever it might originate,is to seek individuals who possess theinherent thinking of a problem-solver. Theyare people-oriented, demonstrate businessthinking and have developed the ability tofocus externally ? that is, on the client andthe market ? rather than on themselvesand their needs.Integrating a strategic businessdevelopment functioninto an organization and identifyingleaders and internaltalent requires a change inthinking ? in other words, achange in culture. The culture,thinking and behavior thathave carried an organizationto where it is today will seldom take itwhere it needs to go tomorrow. Establishinga strategic business development organizationis an ongoing process, not a onetimeevent.