When someone asks a business development specialist what, exactly, business development is, they often claim that it’s related to sales. That’s a rather vague response, but it’s not a lie. The thing is, business development works on many other aspects, one of them being sales.

It’s critical to understand that business development does not equate to sales. Let’s check in detail what sales mean for business development. 

Sales Vs. Business Development 

In general, business development is a process that aims to help a company develop and maintain relationships with prospects, learn more about its target audience, increase brand awareness among consumers, and spot new opportunities to encourage growth and optimization.

Increasing sales generate revenue for a company, but this process has little to do with building a long-term development strategy. An average sales team is selling a product or service to consumers. One of the team’s tasks is to convert leads into clients. However, the business development team aims to simplify the sales team’s task.

For instance, the business development team helps the company to learn more about its target audience. As a result, the sales team can easily convert leads to clients since they cater to the target audience. 

So, a development team takes care of the long-term business strategy. It analyzes the business and spots the weaknesses and strengths of the company. Helping increase sales is only one of the many tasks of a business development team.