New eBook: The Building Blocks of Business Development

The realities of middle market investing are now such that every organization, no matter its size or structure, needs a business development strategy.

At its core, business development (BD) is relationship management. A successful BD strategy will drive awareness of your team’s objectives and help ensure that you find, connect with, and are found by the most relevant opportunities and clients.

A business development strategy answers questions like:

• What existing relationships will you be prioritizing?

• How do you intend to build new relationships with potential deal sources?
• What is your communication plan for managing those relationships?

There are more and more investment and advisory firms sprouting up each day, leading to a highly competitive market. Additional investment firms in the market means more dry powder, and this leads to sponsors becoming more flexible and creative in finding ways to put capital to work. In this environment, a BD strategy is key to success.

While many assume that a full business development strategy is only applicable to or attainable for larger investment firms, this is not the case. By combinging traditional and technology-enabled business development strategies, investment firms can bring in a higher volume of connections and track opportunities as they move through the deal funnel.

Consistency is key. The right tools and processes make it possible to employ your BD strategy and maintain your market presence even when you’re heads down on a deal. BD makes sourcing deals more cost- effective and efficient, and reduces the cost of deals that fall through.

Keep in mind that an optimized BD strategy is not a phase. To maintain a robust and qualified pipeline, business development must be an ever- present component of your business.

The Building Blocks of Business Development

Marketing refers to any activity for the purposes of building one’s brand awareness.

Outbound refers to any efforts that attract qualified leads to your firm.

Travel planning refers to the strategy behind proactive in-person outreach.

Conferences and events refers to organized institutional events for the purposes of brand-building and deal-sourcing.

Inbound refers to the management of those leads.

Pipeline management and metrics refers to the processes and tools used to manage your inbound leads.

For more on why business development is so important in today’s market, and how to build a business development strategy that sets your firm apart, download The Building Blocks of Business Development.