Don’t Let the BD Team Drink Your Milkshake
Business development teams can be fuel to your growth fire or the match that burns it all down. The difference between value addition and subtraction is small -- let’s talk about how to better set it up for success.
A poorly managed BD team is like Daniel Plainview from Their Will be Blood. They’ll take their straws and drink the resources from the rest of the company. A particularly insidious example is that of a product integration partnership I experienced first hand.
Early in my career, we pursued a Business Development deal that was a disaster. We were evaluating outsourcing our data acquisition to a third party. On the surface it made sense -- we could run faster developing the core product, outsource this laborious task, and abstract away what was likely to be a messy process. Surely a win-win.
We signed the deal.
The yellow flags started appearing almost immediately. The platform was buggy, way buggier than we had believed. It was billed as a combination of both modern and legacy approaches, but as we discovered errors it was clear that we were dealing only with the legacy bits. Basic UI elements were missing, the documentation was sparse, and the underlying security infrastructure was porous.
It was a mess and most painfully, it was a self-inflicted mess.
How Can You Avoid This?
First, in the above example, it is crucial to recognize that this is a failure of leadership. Fullstop. Each team is doing its best in the context of their roles, but leadership allowed this to spiral. With that out of the way, there are a few simple things we implemented after to ensure we got better outcomes
Outcome orientation — We needed to be crystal clear internally what we were hoping to accomplish with partnerships. If you are not clear, it allows for sloppy thinking, and you get to justify decisions as you go and end up with a selection and deal criteria that won’t be tied to superior results. By orienting on outcomes, you can create a clear north star for you to deal chase. In the above case, the outcome orientation should have been defined along the lines of ease of use and security -- we want the easiest to use and safest solution out there.
Deal memos and deal reviews — With the outcome orientation, it’s important to drive the business development process like a traditional sales process. There needs to be a proposal made of the potential solution that includes why it works for both parties, the diligence process, the expected outcomes, the risks, the risk mitigation efforts, and the like. Depending on the deal, this memo could be a few pages to many pages with deep appendixes. Writing this down and creating a memo forces the business team to think through both the “why” of the deal and the “how.” How are we going to make it successful? How are we going to get the results that are promised in the “why” section?
Be skeptical of any external allies — Their motivations might appear to be aligned, and their execution might seem up to par, but by partnering, you’re giving away a measure of control. Don’t trust completely, and remember to rely on small indicators to point to larger truths.
Is it perfect? No, but adding the appropriate rigor here helped our entire team shift mentality. It moved partnerships from a liability to an asset and one that could move the needle for the business.