The difference between Business Development and Sales?

[MotorcyclesFish]

Inspired by The Salesman's Thread in this forum.
One opinion on this was put to me as "Business development is talking, Sales is closing"

Job sites seem to use the terms interchangeably.
What do you think?

[davepoth]

Business Development can be selling, but generally to new customers. They'd be handed off to regular sales people after that.

[Hackney]

The Crack Fox said:

Same shyte, different title, see also 'Account Manager'. No-one wants to be called Sales-Rep anymore, do they ?

Although Sales Rep and Account Manager are or certainly can be two different things.

[hman]

I have been all 3 (kam, sales, bdm).

Difference is that KAM is all about developing and maintaining relationships that bring big profits via NPD raised through VOC which locks the client into your company for their development.

BDM is about opening new channels to start the KAM process and also looking at new markets for the current and future products then ensuring the product is suitable and is specified by the right people.

Sales is a general term for both of the above + door kickers, double glazing closIng, and everything in between ie.'its a generalisation or it s the raw end of the process.

These are my opinions based on 19 years of product sales, system sales, project management, general manager, operations director, kam, and BDM.

Ultimately in all of these jobs.... It's the £'s reaped for the shareholders which determine if you are good or not.

[pmanson]

In our company (at least)

Sales / Business Development - Knocking down doors and signing new customers

Account Management (my role) - Delivering Year 1 (initial contract phase as sold by the Sales team), growing the account/identifying new opportunities/upsell & cross-sell etc.

I enjoy farming but can't do the hunting (i've tried it) however my experience of doing business development does allow me to identify and go after the opportunities within existing accounts.

[MotorcyclesFish]

I don't mind the odd bit of hunting, but personally I prefer the farming and, whilst I'd not heard of VOC before this thread, it's something I've enjoyed capturing without knowing the name of the process.

I must admit, reading discussions on here has thrown off my previous prejudice about getting into "sales" as I think BDM is actually quite a nice, solutions-orientated role. Especially if you can hand off to a "sales" guy and blame him if nothing ever comes to fruition