4 ms·

I fully understand and agree with Steve's point against hiring sales people before finding the product/market fit. However, at least in my mind, in a bit large

by markkum 15y ago

I fully understand and agree with Steve's point against hiring sales people before finding the product/market fit. However, at least in my mind, in a bit larger organization it is the Business Development people who continues to do the customer development work while Sales is focused on 'exploiting' the first found fit (which might or might not be a big one).

michaeldhopkins 15y ago
To use Blank's framework I suppose business development carries on the customer development role assuming a feedback channel to product development is in place. This is especially true for enterprise business development where a sale can be a 2-12 month, detailed discussion about needs. However, I note you don't really mention customer development as something you did in your original post. It sounds like you basically did sales, which though a huge job is in Blank-land something that doesn't take the customer's feedback and use it to iterate the product itself. So, maybe you need to rephase what you did if you did what Blank calls customer development.
- markkum 15y ago
  I did work very closely with the product development, however actually my question was why the title Business Development seems to give negative vibes for people? And is this the case all over the world? The job I was denied btw was a sales job and the feedback was that my Business Development experience was not sales enough.
  - michaeldhopkins 15y ago
    Probably it's just that business development is too loosely defined. I've seen it applied to everything from heavy enterprise sales to college students hired to pass out flyers. No different than any other generic title in that respect. Probably, sales at this company meant something more pressured and your range of sales experience and more relationship-managed approach wasn't what they wanted. That, or the interviewer wasn't listening to you and had a simplistic, title-based view of the world.

by markkum 15y ago

michaeldhopkins 15y ago

To use Blank's framework I suppose business development carries on the customer development role assuming a feedback channel to product development is in place. This is especially true for enterprise business development where a sale can be a 2-12 month, detailed discussion about needs. However, I note you don't really mention customer development as something you did in your original post. It sounds like you basically did sales, which though a huge job is in Blank-land something that doesn't take the customer's feedback and use it to iterate the product itself. So, maybe you need to rephase what you did if you did what Blank calls customer development.

markkum 15y ago
I did work very closely with the product development, however actually my question was why the title Business Development seems to give negative vibes for people? And is this the case all over the world? The job I was denied btw was a sales job and the feedback was that my Business Development experience was not sales enough.
- michaeldhopkins 15y ago
  Probably it's just that business development is too loosely defined. I've seen it applied to everything from heavy enterprise sales to college students hired to pass out flyers. No different than any other generic title in that respect. Probably, sales at this company meant something more pressured and your range of sales experience and more relationship-managed approach wasn't what they wanted. That, or the interviewer wasn't listening to you and had a simplistic, title-based view of the world.