Business Development relative position

The reason for establishing the Business Development Association Holland was the already mentioned ‘newness’ of the field and the often still undefined position of the practitioner thereof. There is however yet another, more strategic reason to pay attention to the relative position of Business Development as a discipline: the weak presence of this field in the board room! Too often also, BD is submerged into sales; a tempting yet deceiving practice, as we have demonstrated in our white paper on positioning of Business Development.

Business Development usually does not receive the attention of MT’s it deserves, the attention an organization should require for itself and its survival.

To cite Prof. Leeflang of the RUG: “More attention in the Boardroom, … the re-emergence of the Marketeer”. With this provoking statement - which in our view also holds for Business Development – he tries on the one hand to challenge Marketeers to be more accountable and commit more to tangible results, while on the other hand he tries to stimulate executives to have more attention for the strategic long term. >> Read the article by Leeflang (in Dutch).