What is a Business Development Representative

Business Development vs Sales

When people think of sales, they often imagine that overly stereotyped version that’s usually presented in Hollywood movies. I have to admit, that version is funny and quite entertaining, but is also nothing like the real world version of sales – especially when it comes to IT.

In the real world, where our goal is to create really advanced technological solutions for clients, the sales process revolves around understanding our clients’ needs and the needs of their businesses. It all revolves around the fact that many businesses in the world are not reaching their full potential. They have problems they may or may not be aware of, and needs that they have no idea how to fulfil. They need help to develop their business. That’s why this type of sales is called business development.

To explain what business development is and what Business Development Representatives do, I’ll focus on the way we structured it at Bornfight, as that will most clearly show what’s the core of Business Development. Before we dive into the specifics of it, let me start with this – the goal of business development in Bornfight is to help our clients and partners detect their problems, to define their needs and to fulfil them with the solutions we can offer. In the long run, selling to them basically means they are paying to have their business further improved and upgraded – be it in the sense of return on revenue, increased profits or decreased costs.

Technology can help businesses prosper, and that’s where we come in, so the task of Business Development Representatives at Bornfight is to recognise those businesses and help them understand their pain points.

Business Development Representative in a nutshell

At Bornfight, we’re guided by a philosophy of constant growth and Business Development Representatives have a crucial role that helps us achieve just that. They detect markets and clients with potential, they start the conversation with potential clients and partners, and they focus on providing them with digital solutions that can elevate their businesses. There are a few regular assignments they do, which are basically standard in every outbound sales team.

Prospecting and segmentation

Business Development Representatives define markets with potential, ideal clients and buyer personas. By using all kinds of tools (from Google to Sales Navigator), they map out the market and find contacts of key personas within targeted organisations – all with the goal of creating a pool of potential clients and partners that we at Bornfight could work with.

Networking

Even in today’s age of technology and different communication tools, nothing can substitute that old-fashioned face-to-face contact and the relationship that it can create. That’s why it is important that Business Development Representatives constantly go to different events, conferences and gatherings in order to broaden their network of contacts and seek out those who might be our future clients and partners. The goal is to find people who see the benefit of technology for their business and are ready to move things forward.

Cold contacts

When your market is defined and potential clients and partners are identified, the next step is to achieve contact with them and start the conversation. Sometimes you can’t use your network to achieve that contact or you don’t have contact data of a decision maker within the targeted organisation. By using email automation tools, Business Development Representatives can broaden their outreach and easily come closer to those they want to start the conversation with. Obviously, the goal is to reach as many people as possible who want to work with Bornfight.

Warming up leads

The ultimate goal of a Business Development Representative is to have a predictable funnel of prospective clients that ultimately gives the organisation the possibility to precisely plan out future growth.

What we see as sales that Business Development Representatives should do is actually detecting problems and defining needs with the client, defining the scope and the brief of the project, defining deadlines and exploring budget possibilities. When that is defined, we have a lead which is then transferred to the members of the Strategic Partnerships team who iron out all the details with the client and carry on to build a long-term relationship with the client.

Cooperation with other teams

At Bornfight, Business Development Representatives are focused on outbound sales and establishing conversations with decision makers. To be efficient with that, they can count on Marketing and Strategic Partnership teams to help them in the following areas:

• Definition of buyer personas
• Sales enablement
• Lead qualification

Definition of buyer personas

Together with Marketing and Strategic Partnerships teams, Business Development Representatives are in charge of defining buyer personas and ideal clients for Bornfight. The insight that Marketing team and Strategic Partnerships team already have in this area will be the main support in further decision-making in regards to contacting potential clients.

Sales enablement

In this area, Business Development Representatives receive the most support from the Marketing team. In practice, that means that Marketing team is at their disposal when it’s necessary to create new marketing materials that include case studies or other presentational materials.

Lead qualification

The flow of outbound sales in Bornfight is quite standard. Business Development Representatives prospect and get in touch with potential clients. After the nurturing process and all necessary data is collected, potential client becomes a lead. At that point Business Development Representative involves a Strategic Partnerships Executive in the process and their goal is to close the deal and take care of building a relationship with the client. Strategic Partnerships Executive will take the lead only when he decides that the lead is qualified. Having a qualified lead means that Business Development Representative is in touch with a decision maker, has defined the scope of the project, budget range and timeline constraints. Cooperation and constant communication between a Business Development Representative and a Strategic Partnerships Executive is quite important for continuous improvement of the lead take-over process, as well as increasing the quality of leads.

What are the benefits of working in a position like this?

Besides working in a renowned company with the amazing culture and work atmosphere, there are a few specific benefits of this position.

International experience

More than two thirds of Bornfight’s current clients and partners are from North America and Western Europe. As a Business Development Representative, you have the opportunity to communicate with decision makers of different companies and organisations from all across the world and use that to broaden your global network and be recognised as someone who can always bring a lot of value to the table.

Innovation and new technology

Bornfight as a company operates in one of the currently most exciting industries – tech industry. Being in the middle of the constant change and innovation gives you the opportunity to continuously learn and stay on top of things. Just listening to people in the office is enough, however, we have regular education sessions which can give you tons of knowledge that will be useful on this position and any other future position you might hold within Bornfight.

Support from top industry experts

As one of the top employers on the Croatian market, we have some of the best experts and specialists when it comes to design and development, and we want to utilise them on the global market. In order to make the work of Business Development Representatives easier, they are all ready to provide assistance and knowledge regarding their area of expertise. And in addition to that, Business Development Representatives can always count on support from Strategic Partnerships and Marketing teams.

Travel

Not only should Business Development Representatives communicate with companies from all across the world, they also have the opportunity to travel for business from time to time. Through your work process, you might define an interesting target market and arrange yourself several meetings there. And as we all know, clients value face-to-face contact, and so do we.

It’s new

Although we conducted outbound sales at Bornfight, we never had a team of people solely focused on that. This is a great opportunity for everyone who’d like to develop things and be responsible for the results of their actions. This also means that nothing is set in stone and that you have the opportunity to create new processes and ways things will work. Such experience can be very useful in developing your own skills where “learning by doing” is conducted in practice everyday. You will have the opportunity to try out new processes, tools and even make mistakes – all with the goal of learning from them and making progress.

We are hiring

If you like working in a fast-paced environment, have a passion for problem solving and defining needs, and you like technology and believe that it can help businesses grow – we have the opportunity for you.

Check out our careers page and send us na open application!