Business development is the foundation of sales; without it, there are no contacts to convince to buy your products. The importance of business development to those in sales roles is why there is an insatiable demand for business development tips. Following are four simple business development tips designed to help you reach your targets.

Think of Business Development as a Strategy, Not the End Game

Business development is not a sales goal in and of itself. Successful business development has its core in strategy: Strategy to reach the most leads possible, strategy to cultivate trust, and strategy to move new contacts through business development into the sales funnel. Changing your mindset on what business development is can help you improve your business development skills. Recognizing that it is a strategy and not a direct sales task can help you avoid hard selling new contacts before they are ready to hear your sales message, and gives you the right strategic direction for utilizing further business development tips.

Give Non-Traditional Lead Sources a Second Look

Personal connections are business currency, and the advice to network through social media to make these connections is one of the best business development tips for 2013. The cascade effect of new business connections leading to further potential business connections can add hundreds of leads to your prospect database. There are many social media sites that can be used for this purpose, but those focused on business and professional connections are best. A few to try:

• LinkedIn. This site allows you to request introductions to new contacts through your existing connections, just one of many features that places LinkedIn among recommended social media sites mentioned in business development tips.
• Fast Pitch by Pro Skore. Fast Pitch is a network of nearly a quarter-million business professionals who use the service to develop new business from other members.
• Xing. Xing is dedicated to business networking. Its industry news tool is a great feature to keep sales people in the know on emerging business development tips, and its event tool can also help sales people connect with others in their area.

Talk to Multiple Contacts at an Organization

As a sales person you will rarely encounter the deal that is closed with only one decision-maker. In most cases, there are multiple decision makers and decision influencers directing the choice to try or buy your company’s offering. So why do so many sales people work with only one contact when trying to move a deal forward? Even if the first or primary contact is a decision maker, talking to all of those with pull on the buying decision increases your opportunities to develop new business and follow through with newly learned business development tips.

• Research to find out who other decision makers might be
• Be forthright about making multiple contacts, so that none of your prospects feel overlooked
• Make the number of contacts you access at each organization a performance measurement to track your success

Work on Client Retention

Cultivating client loyalty is one of the standby business development tips that sales people are likely to hear time and again because it works. Although a sales person will never reach top seller status solely by relying on repeat business, repeat business is one of the keys to selling success. Strong client retention can help you earn referrals to new business leads from satisfied customers, increase orders based on a past history of deliverables, and access cross selling opportunities as new products and services become available.

Sales people do not need to commit to week-long seminars and other time consuming improvement projects to get the most out of business development tips; many of the best tips to improve are based on logic. At its heart, successful deployment of business development tips is based on commitment to sales improvement, something those who are searching for business development tips are sure to have.