What is the difference between Business Development and Marketing?

Business Development -------------------Business development encompasses a number of techniques designed to grow an economic enterprise. Such techniques include, but are not limited to, assessments of marketing opportunities and target markets, intelligence gathering on customers and competitors, generating leads for possible sales, followup sales activity, formal proposal writing and business model design. Business development involves evaluating a business and then realizing its full potential, using such tools as marketing, sales, information management and customer service. For a sound company able to withstand competitors, business development never stops but is an ongoing process. Successful business development often requires a multi-disciplinary approach beyond just "a sale to a customer." A detailed strategy for growing the business in desirable ways is frequently necessary, which may involve financial, legal and advertising skills. Business development cannot be reduced to simple templates applicable to all or even most situations faced by real-world enterprises. Creativity in meeting new and unforeseen challenges is necessary to keep an enterprise on a path of sustainable growth. Marketing -------------------Marketing, as suggested by the American Marketing Association, is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders".[1] Another definition, perhaps simpler and more universal, is this: "Marketing is the ongoing process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow...or conform to someone else's products, services or values. Simply, if it doesn't facilitate a "sale" then it's not marketing."[2] Philip Kotler in his earlier books defines as: "Marketing is human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes". Add to Kotler's and Norris' definitions, a response from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) [3]. The association's definition

claims marketing to be the "management process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably". Thus, operative marketing involves the processes of market research, new product development, product life cycle management, pricing, channel management as well as promotion. -X0XThe role of the Business Development executive is to tie-up with shops, beauty parlors, departmental stores etc.(basicaly a new business avanue) to ensure that the product is sold through them. Apart from this he will have to make such tie ups accros the city, then the state and then the country, depending on the expansion plans. He could appoint special distributors for his products etc. The Sales Executive functions as a Client Serving Executive. Once the BD Exe has made the tie-ups, it is the sales manager who has to do the follows with the store owners regarding quantity required, he has to push them to place more quantity orders and ensure that payments are being received in time.

What is the difference between Sales and Business Development?

To be fair, there are many, many different schools of thought as to what exactly Biz Dev should cover. A broad answer is that Sales is more tactical, whereas Biz Dev is more strategic. Sales, for the most part, are simply the selling the product/service to the customer with a critical element being Client Management development & maintenance of the relationship with the client before and after the deal is executed. Having done both roles in my career, Sales is typically a subset of Business Development. Biz Dev adds such broad stroke responsibilities as strategic & long term planning, market analysis, and competitive research in order to determine a list of prospects to approach, markets to enter/exit, and new features to add to your product or new services to your portfolio. Sales is a more pure role of client management & revenue growth role. Whereas biz dev in some companies may have very few elements of client interaction at all.

There are many ideas about these overlapping terms, but generally speaking sales is considered a subset of business development with business development considered more strategically focused and sales considered more tactically focused. All sales is business development but not all business development is sales. The nature of the buyer's buying process and the company's sales process dictates whether a product or services is brought to market through sales or business development. Sales is more process driven selling pre-defined products and services or not so predefined products and services that are fairly limited in their flexibility or the boundaries of their flexibility are limited. Business Development, on the other hand, is more about deal making and creating customized products and services or products and services customized in some other aspect of their transfer like terms and conditions, delivery conditions, post sales services. Like many things, it is often most illuminating to look at examples. While these are generalizations, here are some examples products and services and whether we consider them to be products and services that would be "sold" through a sales process or a business development process:

Difference between Business Development and Marketing

Business Development is a sales activity that is expected to deliver results in the medium to long term, for example developing a channel or partner strategy. This is different from a pure Sales activity which is more short term and normally involves selling directly to end customers and/or through ready, existing channels. Marketing is a function which supports both sales and business development allowing them to target specific market verticals/channels/customers by developing material, market knowledge and sales propositions that are based on relevant 4P strategies: price, promotion, product and place. Sales and BD go and sell what marketing (normally along with product management) have put together to describe, price and position the products. In a nutshell, Marketing is getting the word out - whereas business development is to ensure that we get business from buzz!