A business developer is a person with multidisciplinary activities and knowledge (ie, Financial Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Leadership, Design, Construction, Global and Local Environment, etc.) with the ability and common sense to identify and form teams with key elements to successfully carry out new investment projects.
The successful business developer actively participates in different projects from the search and generation of prospects, planning and execution of work proposals to the completion of the project.
There is confusion in the professional environment between two main scenarios of business developers.
On the one hand, the business developer focused mainly on investment businesses and on the other, the business developer focused on the sale of services of his company.
Here we will define the investment business developer as one whose main mission is to promote a comprehensive project and the business developer of service companies as one whose essential mission is to promote the services of your company.
The investment business developer often goes hand in hand with real estate developers where the main activities among others are finding sites for new projects, acquiring land and properties, carrying out build-to-suit projects, the commercialization of properties, the negotiation and renewal of contracts, etc.
On the other hand; business development activities are well identified within companies dedicated to the sale of services in order to promote them. From the point of view of these companies, sales personnel are called in some of these companies business developers.
In this specific case, the business developer within the service company is a seller with the global vision of the business where the services of his company are applied.
As an illustrative example in the specific case of a construction management company, the business developer within it must have the vision of his client's business. That is, in a certain project, in order to offer the best solution, the business developer must understand the business needs of his client.
In the same way, the investment business developer must understand the needs of his clients, users, service companies, owners to achieve the success of the project in question.
It is worth mentioning that the business development process for the two scenarios, both the investment and the service company scenarios, is the same with some peculiarities specific to each industry, however, as we have seen, the mission of each is different.
