Why the Way You Think About Business Development is All Wrong

As a designer and developer at heart, “business development” used to intimidate the hell out of me. In retrospect, I realize that it was because I had a fixed mindset when it came to sales. I was much more comfortable defining “ABC” as “Always Be Coding,” not “Always Be Closing” — the watchwords of the slimy salesman embodied by Alec Baldwin’s Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Today, after nearly two decades as the head of a successful digital consultancy, I now know you don’t need a vat of hair gel, a thousand-dollar suit, and a pushy attitude to make it rain.

All it takes is a mindset shift and a better definition of business development.

Cash isn’t a 4-letter word

The goal of business development is to, well, do more business and make more money. That work isn’t reserved for the suits. Even the scrappiest entrepreneur or most artsy creative may frame what they do as chasing a dream, but what they’re really doing is trying to develop business by getting someone else — an investor, a client, a lender, and so on — to say yes.

No artist wants to starve, so I encourage creative professionals to get comfortable with the idea that cash is not only a good thing, it’s also the lifeblood of every business.

“How’s our cash flow doing?”

“When is our Zero Day?”

“What’s our burn rate looking like?”

“How are margins this quarter?”

You don’t have to walk past the boardroom or finance department of a startup or Fortune 100 business to hear these types of questions.

The world runs on currency, and I’d argue profit isn’t a goal; it is a result.

So if cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, then your customers are the heart of what keeps things pumping so your business can survive and thrive.

This is where the pivot on defining business development comes in.

It’s all about creating value, not sales