I feel, I’ve been somewhat conned. During my studies, I did a course called “New Business Development,” which was about me and a team working out a business-proposal in the form of a plan for a new business within an existing business. A spin-in, if you will, also sometimes called intrapreneurship.

But so far, 99% of business development jobs are nothing more than sales-functions disguised by a cooler name (E.g. Monster.com)! I realise that nobody really likes salespeople, they have a bad name, but come on! Sales is when you have a product or service and you’re trying to sell it to a customer (B2B sales for companies; B2C sales for individuals). Business development is when you develop a business for another company. Believe it or not, there is a big difference!

I’m not denying that changing the name from sales to business development is a great sales-tactic in itself. Just like the word “entreployees,” I recently came across. But, for people like me, looking for the right job, it makes things super-annoying. One company even said: as a business developer, we expect you to be calling people 99% of the time and spend the other 1% looking up their names in a phonebook. That is a sales-job, worse, a tele-sales job!

Incidentally, what I am currently doing for a consultancy is: leading a team of people to develop a new business opportunity for that company. And yes, my title is business developer or business development manager! That is not to say that sales isn’t an integral part of that function; I spend half my time networking with professionals and customers. The other half is spent in product- and operations-development for that business however. That is what makes it fun, that is what makes it “a business!”

Vincent

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