What are the differences between the Business Developer and the Sales Manager?

Many people want to join a startup or a digital company. All the Business Developers Out of Akimbo Bootcamp went through that.

And that's understandable: they're growing 5x faster, which creates great career opportunities. Occupy a position of Digital Business Developer or in a traditional industry, it means pursuing the same objective: to develop the commercial activity of a company. In practice, however, daily life, the skills required and the tools used can be significantly different. Here is a (not exhaustive) range of these differences:

The difference in the product sold

Developing sales for a digital solution with a sales cycle of several months is different from selling advertising space, a professional vehicle rental service or energy-saving work. It is a process that is often more complex, with long sales cycles that involve a greater number of actors: at the customer as well as at the service provider, with for example the participation of a pre-sales engineer. Thus, there are an average of 6.8 interlocutors during a B2B sale in new technologies.

So many different issues to understand and interests that must be managed to align. It is also more difficult and therefore interesting to illustrate the value proposition from a technological solution than from a conventional product.

Likewise, the technological solutions sold by startups and digital companies are constantly improving without updates because they are stored in the”Cloud”: all it takes is a server update to update the solution. This means working with a product that is constantly evolving, sometimes perfect, and being able to Selling a vision to the customer.

Finally, the business model of a digital solution is often different from that of a traditional service: it is more and more SaaS sales, by subscription. In SaaS, the customer retention is absolutely essential because the company conquers customers by paying acquisition costs (CAC) that it tries to control as best as possible. The Churn, the loss of customers, is the #1 enemy of SaaS startups. If a new customer leaves after a few months and the acquisition cost has not been paid for by the revenue generated (CLTV < CAC), then the company will have lost money.

CLTV: Customer Life Time Value (in € or $ for example)

CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost

It makes the sales approach much more transparent and Consultative : creating a lasting relationship with your customer is becoming imperative. Especially since 79% of buyers say that it is vital or very important that their Business Developer be a trusted advisor for them.

The difference in impact on the customer

As a buyer, the expected impact that results from the purchase of an innovative solution such as a software is much stronger than when buying a more traditional one.

The innovative tech solutions marketed by Business Developers allow their customers to conquer new markets, to optimize their organization, their communication, and sometimes to reduce their costs. It's the essence of technology: improving the state of affairs. Of course, you should not be naive and ignore certain negative externalities (e.g. the blockchain, which represents 1% of global electricity consumption, or the problem of the extraction of rare minerals).

Most of the time, as a Business Developer you will have a decisive impact at your customer. It puts you on a pedestal.

The differences in missions:

In a traditional industry as in Digital, the range of missions of a Business Developer depends largely on the sales team structure. The missions will be different if the Business Developers control their entire sales funnel or if they are compartmentalized according to the model of Sales Assembly Line :

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To the graph above and to obtain a classic sales organization in Tech, we will add a team of Business Developers hunters specialized on”The outbound”.

If the team you are going to join follows this model, you will be more specialized in a particular action: qualification (for SDRs roles) or closing (for Sales Managers) for example. In this case, make sure that your employer plans a “path” that will allow you to master all the stages of the sales funnel in 1 to 2 years. This course will allow you to excel at all stages of the tunnel.

Another point to consider in Digital, you will be encouraged to use latest digital tools at your disposal and to keep an eye on them. Your colleagues will encourage you to test new tools and show them to the team. There are many bridges between Sales and Marketing in the Digital world. You must learn to go beyond your role, for example by using tools to Growth Hacking, a discipline that was initially more marketing oriented than Sales.

Finally, a Digital Business Developer, especially for complex sales, will have a preparatory work more important to establish a relationship of trust with your interlocutor. This is in line with the need for the Business Developer to become a trusted intermediary for his interlocutor. The work of defining customer needs will be more intense.

What skills in startup vs in a traditional business?

Listening, resilience, curiosity, energy... These qualities are shared by all Business Developers. With the difference that a Digital Business Developer must be passionate about new technologies and seek to understand the tech environment that surrounds it: know what an API is, a micro-service architecture, a framework, how a database works, know the main programming languages as well as the stack of your own solution. Being able to have a precise and interested conversation on many topics related to Digital: artificial intelligence, blockchain, GDPR, etc. Its performance will depend directly on its ability to stay informed and to test new tools in the long term.

A Digital Business Developer will place an even stronger emphasis on Data, the analytical reasoning, the KPIs, the measurement of one's own actions and their impact. Because it is at the very heart of how businesses in the new economy operate: everything that is done in the digital world is measurable, measured, analyzed, improved. An example of ultimate competence of a Business Developer in startup? Know how to explain to the Business Intelligence (BI) team of your startup your needs for a report and be able to produce a business analysis based on raw data. This is why 73% of sales teams say that collaboration between teams in their company is vital or very important for their sales process.

Environmental differences:

A distinction must be made between two levels:

Internally, the teams are younger, as shown below. The study takes 20,000 companies into account. The average age at Facebook is thus 28 years old, at Linkedin or Salesforce it is 29 years old. With the advantages and the disadvantages of this youth.

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The work environment is also significantly different and, let's face it, more conducive to the development of millennials. Having known both worlds, he often reigns one more pronounced effervescence than elsewhere in startup offices. It is also easier to adhere to the vision of founders of a small team than in a large group. The other side of the coin is that startups are by definition younger than other businesses and are more likely to default. Job security is not their first asset; you must be ready to change projects when the horizon darkens and take into account the “financial health” parameter of the startup when joining it. Beware of unpleasant surprises and broken promises!

Les hierarchies In the Digital sector, being more horizontal, a Business Developer will also have an easier time exchanging with managers, proposing new initiatives and having an impact on operations than elsewhere. Notice to Do-ers.

From an external point of view, joining Digital means working in a very competitive environment. With customers, partners and suppliers often in the same urgency as you. A study published by Ovum asked e-marketers the following question: what is the perceived intensity of the competitive landscape in your industry? 60% of them rated it at a level greater than or equal to 8 out of 10. While digital marketing is one of the most competitive industries, we find this pressure in other digital sectors.

In addition, your contacts and customers will have a education level often higher, with better access to information. Decision makers are also younger: around 30% of digital millennials say they have decision-making power for deals worth 10,000 dollars and more, compared to 23% for baby boomers and 27% for Generation X.

Finally, customers of technological solutions also often have a pioneer spirit ; they want to take a risk to find a comparative advantage that will allow them to outperform the competition. So they are more open to uncertainty. Because the potential impact of a digital solution on the customer is also stronger (as are expectations). They buy a vision more than other buyers.

The tools used in startups:

As explained above, a Digital Business Developer must keep up to date with the latest tools that will improve their efficiency. Today, the competitiveness of a startup depends greatly on the”Sales Machine” and the”Sales Stack” that she sets up. Digital companies are therefore struggling to discover the best tools and it is also the role of Business Developers to participate in this effort.

A Digital Business Developer will therefore be able to have more tools available on a daily basis, whether to generate prospects (Lemlist, Lusha, PhantomBuster, Dropcontact, Prospectin...), improve exchanges with its customers (Calendly, Zoom...), retain them (Hubspot...), or work more efficiently (Zapier, Trello...). Where subscribing to a new service in a large group can be an obstacle course, it often only takes a few hours in a small agile team to decide to try a new tool.

Pay differences:

A study conducted in the United States reveals that Digital Business Developers have salaries 54% higher to those of their colleagues working in traditional industries. Why such a discrepancy? Because the skills required are more advanced; but also because your product is likely to create a stronger comparative advantage for your customer and that is what they buy. Remuneration also varies directly from your ability to do well. Negotiate your business developer salary.

What career development can you expect in Digital? It is difficult to gather figures on the subject. At the risk of kicking in an open door, we can assume that the mobility is stronger in the digital world. Because tech companies iterate and evolve more quickly, they're creating career opportunities. For example, a Head of Sales working at Humind School started as the first employee of his startup 3 years ago and now manages around twenty employees as Head of Sales. Under the age of 30.

Finally, keep in mind that we are waiting for a involvement undoubtedly more important to you in the Digital world: because your impact is stronger and you work in a more uncertain environment. The job is more intense, the wins and the losses. It is also a bet on the future: more than half of B2B sales of new technologies will come from Digital in 2020. So one last question: are you ready to take up this challenge?

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