I distinctly remember a meeting when our sales and marketing teams brainstormed how to grow the business:

• “We need more leads,” echoed the sales team.
• “No, we don’t. We need to learn to close better,” said the CMO.
• “Wait, what’s the actual plan?” said the confused voice in my head.

Everyone was brewing with ideas and opinions. Yet, nobody had a clear strategy (including me). That’s when we all realized that growth isn’t just about chasing more leads or closing more deals. It requires a concrete roadmap in the form of a business development plan to connect the dots and unveil the path.

From that moment of realization, our team was determined to put a plan and approach things systematically. We went through much trial and error (and more research than we would like to admit). Alas, we’ve cracked the code on what makes a business development plan work, and I’m excited to share it with you.

In this guide, I’ll take you through everything I’ve learned from my experience and others’ about crafting a holistic and effective business development plan.

Table of Contents

• How to Develop a Business Development Strategy
• Business Development Planning
• Business Development Strategy Example

Business Development Planning

Business development planning is the process of creating a roadmap for your company’s growth and success.

I like to think of it as a GPS that helps me navigate the business world to reach my desired destination of long-term profitability. I’ve learned that a well-rounded business development plan encompasses several aspects, such as:

• Performing market analysis. Researching the industry, competitors, and target audience to uncover opportunities and potential challenges.
• Setting goals. Defining measurable goals, as the individual department members can’t see where to go without a big, red “X” on the map.
• Developing a strategy. Creating a game plan for reaching the goals, including tactics for marketing, sales, and partnerships.
• Allocating resources. Ensuring you have the team, budget, and tools to make your journey successful.
• Tracking performance. Checking your compass (metrics and KPIs) to ensure you’re headed in the right direction.

Let me take you through the steps to develop one, covering all the above aspects.

1. Define your business objectives.

While you might want to settle with “make more money than last year,” I’ll stress that it’s essential to be more specific when building your business development strategy. To achieve what you want, you need to define clear goals.

I’ll recommend going SMART, i.e., setting goals that have all the five characteristics below:

• Specific.
• Measurable.
• Attainable.
• Relevant.
• Time-Bound.

For instance, let’s say you own an ecommerce company looking to increase revenue. A SMART business objective would look like this: “Increase average order value by 15% in the next six months by implementing a personalized product recommendation system and offering bundled deals.”

Here’s a little hack: One of the easiest ways to go SMART is to use HubSpot’s free template for SMART goal setting. I find using it incredibly helpful!

2. Conduct market research.

No matter how long you’ve been in the game, never assume you know your market inside out. Assumptions can be dangerous, and the way to overcome them is through thorough market research.

David Janovic, founder of RJ Living, shared this golden piece of advice: “When entering a new market, it’s definitely crucial to be putting the time and effort into conducting thorough market research — which will help you understand the local landscape, customer preferences, and potential competitors.”

To date, I take this advice seriously and ensure I see what’s happening beneath the surface. Some things I recommend you look into are:

• What customers want.
• How much potential the target market has?
• What are competitors up to?

To get these answers, you can begin by digging into industry reports, government statistics, and online databases. Here are some of my recommended resources:

• Industry reports. Check out industry research from Gartner, McKinsey & Company, and Forrester.
• Government statistics. If you manage an American business, I recommend the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Federal Reserve Economic Data for their incredible breadth of insights. Outside the U.S., you can try out location-specific sources, like Eurostat, or global sources, such as World Bank Open Data.
• Online databases. While there are too many online databases to make sense of, I typically look for statistics from our annual reports, like HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, since our researchers take due care in collecting data. Other than that, I also like eMarketer, Pew Research Center, and Statista.

Pro tip: While secondary sources provide most of the required data, I tend to combine secondary research with the old-fashioned method of talking to people using surveys or interviews. I’d say focus on discovering what makes them tick, what keeps them up at night, and what they need.

3. Identify your target customers.

Next, it’s time to zero in on your ideal customers. After all, you can’t please everyone, right? To do this in a structured manner, I swear by creating buyer personas.

Quick recap: Buyer personas are fictional yet realistic representations of your ideal customers based on data.

If you have existing buyer personas, you can update them based on the insights you’ve gathered from the market research. Once your personas are ready and up to date, evaluate each one’s market size, growth potential, and opportunity. See which buyer personas align with your business objectives and prioritize them accordingly.

Pro tip: If you don’t have any buyer personas or need to develop another one for a new audience segment, check out HubSpot’s handy buyer persona generator.

4. Evaluate your current position.

With your groundwork done, the next step is to take a long, hard look in the mirror to assess exactly where you stand compared to the competition — from a bird’ s-eye view and even up close.

Amy Kauffman, Chief Marketing Officer at CMO Room, says, “Competitive analysis should play a central role in developing the business strategy. It’s critical to have a deep understanding of the competitive landscape — not just who the players are but their strengths, weaknesses, positioning, and likely moves.”

To put Kauffman’s advice into practice, I align with the SWOT analysis framework, which helps me assess my standing broadly. Here’s the template I use(and you can use it too!

Quick recap on SWOT: It is a strategic planning technique for identifying a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It helps determine precisely where you are compared to competitors and is excellent for getting a broader perspective.

Once you gather the data, here’s how you can fill out the SWOT analysis template:

• Strengths. Note down whatever the brand excels at (i.e., your competitive advantage).

  For instance, a strong brand reputation and a loyal customer base.

• Weaknesses. Next, highlight the areas of struggle or failure.

  For instance, limited integration capabilities

• Opportunities. Look at the market trends, audience segments, and emerging technologies the brand can leverage.

  For instance, there is a rising trend of remote work.

• Threats. Lastly, check out competitors, markets, and regulations to identify threats that could derail success.

  For instance, an economic downturn, leading to reduced spending.

Pro tip: Remember, SWOT analysis isn’t a one-and-done deal. Even if you’ve conducted it during the startup stage, repeat it while developing a business development strategy. After all, businesses evolve, markets shift, and customer preferences change over time.

To go granular, you can dive deep into the sales funnel, marketing mix, and customer experience to unearth essential business details. In particular, I’ve found it helpful to look for clogs in the sales pipeline where potential customers are getting stuck. Another useful way to go deeper is reviewing marketing efforts and seeing what’s working and what can be improved. Finally, I also suggest asking customers directly to identify unmet needs.

5. Develop strategies.

Next, it’s time to don your strategy hat and craft effective strategies for each department to drive real business growth. While the exact strategy depends on your business and its objectives, here’s what I’ve found it should look like for different departments:

Sales

The sales plan should outline your target audience and potential obstacles. It needs to provide a “game plan” for sales reps, outline responsibilities for team members, and define market conditions. If you’ve already established one, unify it with your business development efforts.

If you haven’t created a sales plan, check out this free template.

Marketing

The marketing plan is supercritical since 96% of leads do their homework before talking to a sales rep. Ensure your marketing strategy:

• Resonates with the target audience. To this end, identify appropriate channels, customize messaging, and personalize content to develop a marketing mix that aligns with the target customers’ preferences and behaviors.
• Educates the audience. Don’t assume everyone will immediately “get” it. Instead, use marketing to attract, engage, and explain what you offer.
• Increases brand visibility. Up to 71% of prospects prefer doing research independently without talking to a sales professional. Leverage search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing to build a trustworthy brand.

Customer Success

Data shows 72% of a company’s revenue comes from existing customers. In short, you can get more business from your existing customers since you’ve already earned their trust.

For this, you need to work on establishing a personal connection instead of relying on coupons, discounts, or free perks. For instance, I tend to focus on listening to customer’s feedback and improving products to win them over to our side.

Source

Paul L. Gunn Jr., founder of the KUOG Corporation, agrees that the “heartfelt action to go beyond the transactional to deliver a solution that speaks to the intangibles anchors them to often support a long-term relationship and make significant tangible impact.”

6. Define tactics and action plans.

With the strategies established, it’s time to lay out tactics and specific actions to pursue them. I recommend identifying key initiatives and projects and mapping them with clear action plans. Ensure the action plans include information on the following:

• Tasks. Team members must know their responsibilities, who the lead is, and what’s required.
• Timeline. Set realistic milestones and deadlines for each initiative to keep everyone on track and accountable.
• Budgets. Allocate your resources judiciously. Instead of blowing your entire budget on a flashy marketing campaign, put money into initiatives that will genuinely move the needle.

7. Set metrics and KPIs.

You cannot know if your business development plan works if you can’t track your progress. Therefore, set clear metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) as a scoreboard for your business development efforts.

To do this, identify the specific metrics that align with your business objectives and strategies. I personally find the following metrics incredibly insightful:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC). CAC summarizes how much you’re spending to attract new customers. By optimizing your marketing and sales, you can lower your CAC.
• Conversion rate. Conversion rate measures the effectiveness of different marketing and sales processes, such as how many customers took a desired action.
• Win rate. Unlike conversion rate, win rate deals only with sales opportunities. It’s a percentage of how many sales opportunities your sales team successfully closed, providing insights into your sales progress.
• Net promoter score (NPS). NPS measures customer satisfaction with your brand or their likelihood of recommending it to others.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV).CLV, also called LTV, helps companies understand the total revenue they can expect from a single customer.

Gauri Manglik, CEO of Instrumentl, especially recommends tracking LTV to SaaS companies: “The key is that LTV captures both revenue and engagement over time, not just a snapshot. So rather than looking at new sales in isolation, I always encourage SaaS companies to make LTV their north star metric for business development.”

Pro tip: After identifying the relevant metrics or KPIs, you can also set SMART goals for each to make tracking easier. Plus, you can create dashboards to visualize the progress against the KPIs. I’ve found this makes it easy for team members to see how they’re doing and what they need to improve.

8. Allocate resources.

While I’ve already mentioned resource allocation during action plans, I suggest revisiting resource management in a big-picture mode for seamless plan execution.

Prioritize the initiatives based on their potential impact and alignment with your business objectives. In other words, focus your resources on the areas that give you the most bang for your buck. Beyond that, make it a point to examine your current resources. If you have any skills, expertise, or technology gaps, fill them up by hiring new talent, investing in training, or purchasing a new tool.

For example, 63% of sales leaders share that AI makes competing with other businesses easier. You can also improve your sales metrics by adopting an AI-powered sales solution.

While you do this, remember that resource allocation isn’t a one-and-done deal (like other things on this list). So, keep a close eye on the ROI of different initiatives outlined in your business development plan and shift your resources as required. If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to try a different approach.

9. Implement and monitor.

With a solid plan, a team of do-ers, and enough resources to execute, it’s time to put all the strategizing and planning into action and watch the magic unfold.

Make sure your plans reach the shop floor — everyone knows their role and has the tools to crush it. Don’t forget to keep the communication lines open. Situations can arise, and you need clear comms channels to be on top of your game and fix the issue immediately.

Once things have started, keep your fingers on the pulse and track your progress against your established metrics and KPIs. This is what’ll help you stay on course. While you do this, celebrate your wins along the way — whatever size they might be. This will keep you and the team motivated and engaged for the long haul.

10. Continuously review and update.

Since markets evolve, customer trends change, and competitors improve, a business development strategy will always be a work in progress. Therefore, keep reviewing and updating your plan to generate new business for your brand.

To review:

• Conduct regular check-ins and assess your current strategies regularly. Are you hitting your targets? Are there any areas that require improvement? Instead of sitting idly, ask tough questions and adjust if necessary.
• Collect market intelligence. Instead of relying only on internal feedback, stay up-to-date with market trends, customer needs, and competitor activities. Use that knowledge to update your strategies and tactics.
• Ask customers for feedback. Customers should be the center of your attention as they provide specific insights, relevant ideas, and word-of-mouth referrals.

Business Development Strategy Example

While navigating all the moving parts of a business development strategy might appear confusing, here’s an example of one I’ve put together.

It’s for an ecommerce store, “GreenThreads,” which sells eco-friendly clothing and accessories.

Business Objectives Example

As you can see, their business goal is SMART: Increase online sales revenue by 25% within the next 12 months by expanding the product range and implementing targeted marketing campaigns.

Market Research Example

• The global sustainable fashion market is pegged to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 22.9%.
• Products marketed as sustainable are expected to grow 5.6 times faster than their counterparts.
• The ethical fashion market was dominated by Asia-Pacific in 2023, followed by Western Europe.

Target Customer Persona Example

Meet “Eco-Conscious Sam,” a 24-year-old urban professional who values sustainability and ethical consumption. She‘s always looking for fashionable clothing and accessories that align with her values and is willing to pay more for high-quality, eco-friendly products. Sam is active on social media and loves to share her favorite sustainable brands with her followers.

SWOT Analysis Example

• Strengths. GreenThreads is like the superhero of sustainable fashion, fighting fast fashion with its eco-friendly powers and ethical production processes. Its user-friendly online platform makes it easier for customers to shop with a clear conscience.
• Weaknesses. GreenThreads’ prices may be higher than its fast-fashion competitors, and the limited product range might limit customers’ options.
• Opportunities. With sustainable fashion becoming the talk of the town, GreenThreads has the chance to win over eco-conscious consumers. Partnering with influencers and expanding globally to high-growth regions like Asia Pacific and Western Europe could broaden GreenThreads’ horizons.
• Threats. GreenThreads faces fierce competition from other eco-friendly brands. The volatile economic environment also forces many customers to prioritize penny-pinching over planet-saving.

Action Plans Example

• Product expansion. GreenThreads will develop a line of eco-friendly accessories to complement clothing offerings.
• Geographical expansion: GreenThreads will explore expansion into Asia Pacific and Western Europe as ripe markets.
• Marketing. GreenThreads will use user-generated content and eco-friendly influencer partnerships to launch targeted social media campaigns.

Metrics and KPIs Example

GreenThreads will measure:

• Sales revenue.
• Product performance.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC).

If GreenThreads hits the 25% sales revenue, they can pat themselves on the back. Product performance and CAC will also tell GreenThreads how effectively they expanded the product range and their marketing efforts.

Budget Allocation Example

• Marketing. $50,000.
• Influencer partnerships. $20,000.
• Product expansion. $115,000.

Ready to craft a strategic business development plan?

A strategic business development plan is necessary if you want to grow. After much trial and error, I’ve learned that without it, you‘re just throwing darts blindfolded.

Think about it: You’re investing your precious resources, time, and hard-earned money into initiatives. Don’t you want them to knock the socks off your short-term and long-term goals? If your answer is yes, sit down with your team, break out the snacks, and start brainstorming your master plan. You’ll be way closer to setting your business up for long-term success. Happy planning!

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.