Picture a master at revenue growth on your team who expertly identifies new business avenues, creates robust relationships, and drives your company to hit revenue goals. That’s the power a Business Development Manager brings to the team.
The question is where and how to find this perfect person?
Through our years of experience, Boulo finding this exact person has a battle tested process. Our steps guiding you through how to hire Business Development Manager will make it easier for you to kick off this hiring campaign. Here are the six main steps you should follow:
- Select priorities from common Business Development Manager job duties
- Define skills you require from a Business Development Manager
- Decide on common pay ranges for your Business Development Manager position
- Publish your role where your ideal candidate will see it
- Conduct an effective interview
- Create and finalize an offer
- FAQs on how to hire a Business Development Manager
- Bringing it all together!
Every stage is crafted to make this hiring process seamless, leading you to the ideal candidate. Let’s get into the details.
Select priorities from common Business Development Manager job duties
At the nexus of company growth and market engagement stands the Business Development Manager (BDM) who defines paths for company growth by fostering relationships with potential clients and partners. Their primary responsibilities typically cover:
- Market Analysis:
- Conduct research to identify new markets and customer needs.
- Monitor and forecast upcoming trends in the market.
- Analyze competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
- Relationship Management:
- Establish and maintain beneficial business relationships with strategic partners, vendors, and stakeholders.
- Network with industry professionals and potential clients to foster new business opportunities.
- Attend industry conferences, meetings, and events to expand the company’s network.
- Sales and Revenue Generation:
- Identify potential business opportunities and target markets.
- Develop strategies for achieving sales targets and company growth goals.
- Prepare sales contracts and negotiate terms and conditions.
- Strategy Development:
- Formulate business strategies to grow company revenue and profits.
- Implement effective business development campaigns.
- Collaborate with senior management to align the company’s internal strategy with market needs.
- Team Leadership & Management:
- Mentor and guide the business development team on best practices and the sales process.
- Set clear team goals and KPIs.
- Evaluate the performance of team members and provide constructive feedback.
- Proposal and Presentation Development:
- Create and present business proposals to potential clients.
- Coordinate with the marketing team to develop effective presentation materials.
- Participate in pitches and negotiations.
- Budget Management:
- Develop budgets for business development activities.
- Monitor expenses and ensure a high return on investment.
- Identify areas for cost reduction and optimization.
Define skills you require from a Business Development Manager
Every Business Development Manager needs a specific set of skills to excel, critical to propelling businesses into its next big thing; let’s break them down:
- A strong drive to seek out and secure new business opportunities.
- Prioritizes live communication, vital for cold calls and prospect engagement.
- Strong verbal and written communication, ensuring they can convey the company message, strategies and ideas clearly.
- Comfort with learning new software, as the role might involve using various business tools and software.
- Taking the initiative in challenging situations and able to indipendently make decisions.
- Expertise in project management, ensuring that growth projects are executed efficiently.
- Excellent organizational skills, ensuring that tasks are prioritized and executed timely.
- Strategic and analytical thinking, vital for understanding market trends and aligning business strategies.
- Adeptness in report writing, essential for internal communication and strategy evaluation.
Though there are no formal qualifications required to become a business development manager, business courses, internships, or direct work experience in a sales, customer success, or marketing role can enhance a candidate’s suitability. Depending on the industry, they might also need specific certifications like the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) card if the job involves construction sites.
Once you pick your required skills and layer in the right work experience, you’re on track to finding a Business Development Manager who will be set up to excel it, and fit into your company’s ethos.
Decide on common pay ranges for your Business Development Manager position
Having outlined the necessary skills of a Business Development Manager, it’s time to match those competencies with the right compensation. You’ll need to assign financial value to their skills, experience, and cultural impact that they’ll bring to your company. You’ll also need to provide your commission structure since the BDM role is usually more highly compensated via commission than salary. You’ll see this referenced as On Track Earnings (OTE) target. Using insights from Salary.com:
- Newly trained business development managers: Those just beginning their journey in this field can typically anticipate a salary between $30,500 – $80,000.
- Business development managers with some experience: As they garner more expertise, the compensation can range from $84,432 – $148,483.
- Senior, chartered, or master business development managers: The top-tier professionals in this area can expect earnings of $109,558 – $175,379.
It’s noteworthy that these figures can vary depending on factors like location, the hiring company, and overtime possibilities. By offering a competitive salary and commission structure aligned with industry standards, you position yourself to attract and retain the best talent in the market.
Publish your role where your ideal candidate will see it
Finding the perfect BDM starts with placing your job post where it truly matters. While there are several platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed where you could post your job, they’re often crowded with millions of other postings, making it difficult for yours to stand out. On these platforms, large, recognized brands get top visibility, leaving your role hidden. But with Boulo, things are different.
Key Points:
Boulo was built to help small to mid-sized businesses in securing top-tier talent.
- Focused Talent Pool: Boulo’s candidates are experienced women, mothers, and caregivers not commonly found on other platforms. These individuals bring an average of 10 years of experience across various sectors, such as marketing, finance, project management or software engineering. When you decide how to hire a business developer manager using Boulo Post A Job offering, you’re getting seasoned professionals with rich life experiences who will hit the ground running.
Conduct an effective interview
The interview stage is your chance to delve deeper into a candidate’s potential, understanding their skills, experience, and cultural fit.
Key Interview Questions for a Business Development Manager:
- Experience & Skills: “Can you describe a time when you identified and capitalized on a new market opportunity?”
- Problem Solving: “Tell me about a challenging deal you worked on and the strategies you used to close it.”
- Managerial Experience & Skills: “As a manager, how have you ensured that your team consistently identifies and capitalizes on new market opportunities?”
- Relationship Management: “Tell me about a situation where you had to intervene and manage a strained relationship between a team member and a client or stakeholder.”
- Analytical Leadership: “How do you ensure your team uses data effectively in their business development strategies? Can you provide a specific example?”
- Stakeholder Management: Tell me how you kept key stakeholders, like the Marketing and Finance team, informed on plans, progress and setbacks.
These questions help you measure the candidate’s professional capabilities and delve into their insights, strategic thinking, and problem-solving abilities.
Create and finalize an offer
After the interviews, when you’ve found the right fit for your business development manager role, it’s time to present your formal offer.
This step involves laying out the terms of employment, compensation package, and any other perks or benefits.
While compensation is a significant factor, candidates also weigh aspects like company culture, growth opportunities, and work-life balance. Therefore, your offer needs to be well-rounded to appeal to top candidate’s professional and personal aspirations.
FAQs on how to hire a Business Development Manager
Starting the hiring process can lead to many questions, especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Let’s shed light on 3 most common questions:
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can attract experienced Business Development Managers by emphasizing their flexible work culture, offering rapid career advancement, and presenting competitive benefits like profit sharing. Furthermore, instead of getting lost in the vast sea of listings on platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed, SMBs can utilize Boulo—designed to help smaller businesses stand out; Boulo with its emphasis on spotlighting SMBs offers flexible pricing to accommodate diverse budgets. To get started, sign up for any of their packages by visiting the Pricing page. Start by choosing a package that aligns with your business goals.
SMBs might struggle with understanding industry jargon, gauging the depth of a candidate’s experience, or assessing the relevance of their past roles. Additionally, without expertise in business development, SMBs could find it challenging to identify the practical skills and strategic thinking crucial for the role. Boulo’s Custom plan offers a solution by providing expert recruiters to guide SMBs through the evaluation process. Check out the Pricing page for more details.
For SMBs, ensuring that a Business Development Manager aligns with their specific growth strategies requires discussing expectations, growth goals, and company culture during the interview process. Boulo aids in this by deeply understanding your business needs and utilizing AI candidate matching with human oversight, ensuring that recommended candidates resonate with your strategic vision. For those wanting a more hands-on approach, Boulo’s Custom plan offers expert recruiter assistance for precise alignment.
Bringing it all together!
In the journey of understanding how to hire a business development manager, businesses face different challenges. From defining the role, determining the pay, ensuring alignment with growth strategies, to finally making that offer.
With Boulo, the path becomes clear and manageable. Boulo’s offering via expert guidance ensures that you can find the perfect candidate for your unique needs. In the cutthroat world of business development, having the right talent can make all the difference. So, tap into Boulo’s experienced candidate pool and wealth of knowledge and take a proactive step toward your business’s growth today!