Professional Business Development (BD) has become increasingly relevant for entrepreneurs and the business community at large. Playing an essential part in building revenues and strengthening customer relationships, it is intended to maintain the competitiveness of a company in the long term.

Although there is not just one single way to define it across sectors and industries, Business Development is generally understood as a process to identify, nurture, and acquire new clients and business opportunities to drive growth and profitability. According to Forbes Magazine, Business Development is “the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, and relationships”. However, this simplistic definition undercuts the broad and diverse range of activities and responsibilities that are closely linked to the term business development.

Business development is often confused with sales, which is not surprising, since the title “Business Developer” is frequently (mis)used by individuals whose roles would more accurately fall under the sales headline. BD is not sales, but when done right, it helps improving sales. It is rather an umbrella term for targeted strategies and activities facilitating the development of all departments in a company. It aids in making the business stronger, in terms of creating new jobs, increasing revenues and profitability, building strategic partnerships, and making strategic business decisions.

Part of this working concept are an open mindset, thinking outside the box and readiness to champion and accommodate changes. Thus BD executives need to have strong leadership skills, vision, and a willingness to work in close cooperation with a variety of people to achieve a common goal. More importantly, Business Developers need to monitor current trends in their target markets, including new market opportunities and identify expansion opportunities and closely follow competitors’ activities. They need to come up with novel creative ideas, be flexible and embrace change, and try to seek out and incorporate constructive criticism.

Furthermore, certain soft skills such as interpersonal relationship building and negotiating also come in handy, since they are often crucial for successful market penetration and striking deals.

Keep it simple

In Business Development, it is common to combine different strategies and approaches. For example, networking and referrals are frequently used together to attract new customers. This also makes sense, as the respective strengths and weaknesses of a company can compensate quite well for possible weaknesses in another when implementing several strategies at the same time. However, combining too many different strategies can be somewhat challenging and also carries the risk of losing focus. Therefore, it can sometimes be more effective to deliberately limit oneself to a couple of simple strategies to implement thoroughly, rather than getting lost in an excess of complexity.

Not all Business Development is of equal impact. Namely, Strategic Business Development (SBD), as a consistent alignment of business development processes with the company’s strategic business goals, aims to acquire ideal clients using the brand identity to suggest value that can be delivered upon as part of the customer service.

In this regard, TRIK challenges the traditional industry of legal and communication consulting, providing high-quality, fact-based, and analytically diligent consultancy services to its clients. We pride ourselves in our solution-oriented, customer-focused approach, going beyond purely legal and tax advice to cover all aspects of our clients’ business activities.

In terms of SBD, TRIK is providing full-service offers as deal counsels and investment facilitators, assisting investors with their business development activities, facilitating contacts with potential partners and distributors. Furthermore we assist in the establishment and structuring of partnerships, connecting project developers with investors, and support economic and business linkages.

In this way, our clients benefit from high-quality partnerships and our diverse network of proven connections in various industries and sectors, which make a decisive difference to the success of business projects.

We are thriving to improve the businesses to the renowned industrial conglomerates, banks, construction firms, energy providers, oil and gas companies, financial investors, healthcare institutions, infrastructure operators, publishing houses, business consultants, and associations.

Regardless of the partnership’s goals, TRIK’s strategic approach in finding the most attractive companies for negotiations encompasses:

• a deep understanding of our clients’ product/service
• determining the potential for cooperation with targeted companies
• narrowing the pool of potential partners down to a prioritized shortlist gauging their fit across multiple variables, and defining the timeline of activities
• establishing relations with high-level representatives of the targeted companies and conducting negotiations to work out the details of their potential collaboration until the final signing of an agreement.
• Success with tried and tested strategies

TRIK also connects local companies or investors with international strategic partners in different industries. Our primary focus lies on our clients’ individual needs, which involves discussing possible strategies and – where needed and desired – fine-tuning them in a collaborative process where our team injects local knowledge and experience.

As next implementation step we will work side by side with clients on strategic planning, expansion to new markets, and organizational transformations to create meaningful changes in their business. We are offering the field-tested strategies and experience, gained across a host of countries and industries.

When contentious issues arise, TRIK’s experience in international investment and commercial law as well as in mediation helps us ensure optimal planning of the proceedings when representing our clients, be it in negotiating amicable solutions or litigating in national and international judicial and arbitration proceedings.

Especially investment protection services require conscientious preparation and strategic planning, starting from identifying possibilities for investments and providing full support in greenfield and brownfield investments.

Finally, in order to earn trust and loyalty of clients and strategic partners, it is especially important for TRIK to ensure the highest standards of Business Development ethics are applied throughout the BD process and in all BD activities.

This commitment means not only determining what is right or wrong: it also ensures a consistent moral attitude as well as the implementation of appropriate and fair practices regarding issues such as corporate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility, and fiduciary responsibilities.