6 ms·

I think true sales is 'putting your head down'; cold calling is at least as manly as debugging Ruby. But I think "biz-dev" is often, well, spinning bullshit fa

I think true sales is 'putting your head down'; cold calling is at least as manly as debugging Ruby. But I think "biz-dev" is often, well, spinning bullshit fantasies, putting them into powerpoints with nice colors, and calling it work. Not always, but often. I guess that's why proven coders and proven commission salespeople (and proven accountants) can always find jobs, while "big picture" folks are left unemployed, wondering why companies can't see their brilliance. Or, if they're lucky, they sue Zuckerberg because he was able to do make an actual product which never got past the great-idea-over-beer phase for them. (Ducks...)

adw 16y ago
What you say isn't wrong here, but it's one-eyed. Specifically, it's much more true in consumer than B2B. In B2B, biz dev is building partnerships, channels, distribution, obtaining resources you need at prices you can afford, all that good stuff. It's the absolute engine of your business. If you're writing a B2C app, doesn't matter about the platform, then what biz is there to dev? In a similar sense, you need marketers, not salesmen, because your problem is getting a call-to-action out to your potential market as effectively and efficiently as possible. You can't do that door-to-door at scale. But if you're doing enterprise software, the converse is true. You need biz dev to shape your proposition, and you need a sales force to go and hammer down doors and melt the copper in the phonelines. Different problems, different solutions, different solvers, that's all.