Business development in this new era of Internet and mobile marketing has changed dramatically since the 90s and even early 2000s. In those really “old” days, companies looking to expand built Alliance divisions and signed distribution agreements with 3rd party partners. These 3rd party partners provided much needed support to the host companies in a variety of ways: geographic reach, consulting services, technical support, and distribution logistics.
The 3rd party services provided a lot of value to the host companies. They allowed the host companies to reduce their costs, while increasing their sales, marketing and business development capacity.
However, back in “the day”, in order to have a successful partner program, the host company needed to spend a lot of time on “set up”. Business development involved a lot of “heavy lifting” in the form of recruitment, training, sales tools, technical support and oftentimes co-selling!
My experience in early day business development came from high tech software and hardware companies. The products that we sold were physical products of software applications, servers, peripherals and other related products.
Fast forward to the digital economy … the value chain of manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing, support and training has been significantly compressed or dis-intermediated. The Internet, broadband speeds and global sourcing, among other things, have created huge opportunities for business development in practically every industry imaginable.
For example, let’s examine the high tech software industry. In the 90s software was an “on premise” solution. This means that people paid LOTs of money to install a company’s software on their premise, i.e. at their office. The whole company was involved from the sales organization to the consulting group to the support team, etc. Sometimes, a partner was involved to augment the services of the host company.
Today, that same software application is not an on premise solution but now managed at some other facility. The host company’s sales person may have sold you the solution or perhaps a partner telemarketer out of India or the Philippines. And, the support could be coming from yet another third party organization.
Business development then logically evolves into a different kind of animal. Instead of building a huge organization to drive new products and services, companies can source and diversify their team across geography, industry and even niches.
New terms have also evolved to describe the actions and responsibilities of the new online business development frontier. For example, what was once known as a reseller in the offline market is now called an “affiliate”. When an affiliate advertises your product online, it’s often called PPC or Pay per Click campaign. In the old days, it was simply called advertising.
Whatever terms you want to use, the online business development model is the digital wave of TODAY and it is accelerating across all industries. If you’re stuck in web 1.0 and static web pages, be prepared to be “leap-frogged” by the new nimble, fleet-footed Online Marketers.
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