The Difference Between Sales and Business Development

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The Difference Between Sales and Business Development

Almost daily, I run into the misconception that the function of sales and business development are interchangeable, from co-workers to industry peers. This stems primarily, I believe, from the shift in titles of salespeople to business development -- which has been done in an effort to avoid the negative connotation that surrounds it.
But 140 characters just isn't enough to explain of the subtleties, so here we are.

When you think about the function of business development, it should be thought of as a marketing function. Yes, there are some soft sales skills (qualification, negotiation, etc.) that are necessary to become a good business development professional, but at the end of the day, it's a marketing function.

If you were to think about it on a sliding scale between a pure function of sales or marketing, it would wind up somewhere around here.


Source: http://andrewdumont.me/the-difference-between-sales-and-business-development/