Director of Business Development

Career Area: Sales

Occupation Group: Sales Managers

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Director of Business Development earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $105,440

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $109,269

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Highly specialized Business Development Manager. Plans and directs sale of products or services to customers. Coordinates sales distribution. Establishes sales territories, quotas and/or goals for staff, and provides training for sales representatives. Analyzes sales data to monitor customer preferences and develops strategies for increasing sales.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Director of Business Development is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Building Effective Relationships: Building relationships is about your ability to identify and initiate working relationships and to develop and maintain them in a way that is of mutual benefit to both yourself and the other party. Good relationships are the key to getting things done and are essential when your success is dependent on others.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Presentation Skills: Presentation skills are the skills you need in delivering effective and engaging presentations to a variety of audiences. These skills cover a variety of areas such as the structure of your presentation, the design of your slides, the tone of your voice and the body language you convey.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Sales: Experience selling products or services to consumers.
• Business Development: Business development entails tasks and processes to develop and implement growth opportunities within and between organizations.
• Account Management: Account management is the management of sales and relationships with particular customers of a company.
• Sales Goals: Working experience of Sales Goals. Sales goals or targets are a specified amount of sales that a management sets for achieving or exceeding within a specified timeframe. Sales goals are apportioned among different sales units such as salespersons, franchisees, distributors, agents, etc.
• Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Director of Business Development that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Strategic Sales: Working experience of Strategic Sales. Sales strategy is an approach to selling that allows the sales force to position the company and its product(s) to target customers in a meaningful, differentiated way.
• Sales Cycle: The sales cycle is the process that companies undergo when selling a product to a customer. It encompasses all activities associated with closing sale.
• Complex Sales: Complex sales, also known as Enterprise sales, can refer to a method of trading sometimes used by organizations when procuring large contracts for goods and/or services where the customer takes control of the selling process by issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) and requiring a proposal response from previously identified or interested suppliers.
• Marketing Development: Market development is a growth strategy that identifies and develops new market segments for current products. A market development strategy targets non-buying customers in currently targeted segments. It also targets new customers in new segments.
• Market Strategy: Marketing strategy includes all basic, short-term, and long-term activities in the field of marketing that deal with the analysis of the strategic initial situation of a company and the formulation, evaluation and selection of market-oriented strategies that contribute to the goals of the company and its marketing objectives.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

• Enterprise Software: Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Regional Business Director
• Sales Director - Business Owner
• Director Of Sales
• Client Development Director
• Sales Director

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Director of Sales
• Business Development Manager