TL;DR: WTF is biz dev and be more specific than sales? I’ve been googling around for a while and every place says, that business development is about sales. Well, what does that exactly mean at top tech companies? Are they phone monkeys, or do they handle everything related to revenue growth from a more strategic viewpoint? Let’s take Amazon as a concrete example; if biz dev is only about being a phone monkey, then what are they selling? I understand B2B sales at AWS, but what about retail? If biz dev is about improving revenue, then is their job about looking for new markets, in order to grow the business? TC: 🥜
Biz dev team is customer facing, and what's frustrating is that they work in parallel with the field, and only converge when there is a sale (it's not them it's the model). The biz dev people i worked with here, are capable of having an in depth engineering conversation, as well as a financial one, they are what I would hope AEs, SSPs would look like. But they are unicorns. High IQ and EQ people.
This. Some people think of BD and sales as the same, but I think of the activities as different. In sales, you are selling “to” the customer In BD, you are doing a “deal” “with” the customer. This “deal” could be as simple as a go to market or it could be more complex and include IP licensing, JV, investment, acquisition, etc. At MS, our customer sales team is mostly sales. The recent ATT announcement had some BD in it as well. Our partner teams, especially ISV and OEM, are a hybrid of sales and BD. They do a lot of go to market, co-marketing, etc but they also have a sales quota. Our BD team focuses on bigger and/or more complex deals than basic go to market. It’s not uncommon for the BD and sales teams to work together on a deal. Adobe is a good example and ATT is a likely example (I don’t know for sure).
ATT had definitely BDMs involved.
Very interesting
YouTube Jared Dunn Silicon Valley. You are welcome.
Explanations above are terrible. Biz dev difers from Sales in 2 main ways: -it creates strategic partnership and deals (sales usually doesn't). For example: Microsoft just made a deal for Ninja (fortnite main streamer) to move from twitch to Mixer. -it opens the way to prove monetization/first sales of a new unproven business. Once revenue starts flowing then sales people hop in as it matures.
An analogy is if sales is the SWE, biz dev is the pm. Biz dev on a strategic level "develops" the market and coordinates with marketing and sales. Sales does the actual sales execution and takes over after it has developed. This may or may not be taken over by an account manager to maintain the account. In small companies these roles could all be the same person, hence the confusion.
It is not sales. Biz dev is any strategic action and planning that sets up a business or project for long term success. Sales is a tactic. Biz Dev is strategy.
In two words: BD = Create value, Sales = Sell value
Very interesting thread. If anyone is still active I would love to get career tips. Have been doing BD via partnership development after presales and would love to know if BD is a good career path and roles at FAANG that would help develop me more in that direction.
If I give you a nerd who can only code an app, the business developer's job is to turn that into money
This. There is a large difference between building exciting tech and making money from a viable product. Biz dev bridges the gap by determining the correct strategic vision for the company, and working with ExCo and PMs to execute on that vision. There might be biz dev functions in some companies which are just glorious sales departments - not sure.
Interesting, how does it separate from a PM? Biz dev guys are more interested in the money-making side vs. actual product development? What are some of the red flags before interviewing, to determine whether your job would essentially be in a glorified sales department?