Which background is right for your business development hire?
August 21, 2024
August 21, 2024
How do you know where to look for your business development hire?
Should you consider an ex-banker, deal team professional, sales-person?
Start by asking yourself these key questions:
Consider the most desired attributes for BD professionals. They need strong organizational skills to manage contacts, conversations, and pipeline activities effectively. Presence and likeability, or the "airport test," are vital—business owners and intermediaries prefer engaging with someone they like and who they can trust has influence at their firm. An 'investor mindset’ or investment experience is also essential for being effective at screening opportunities as well as bringing substance to conversations with bankers and business owners. The ability for a BD person to say 'no' and save the time and effort of the deal team for opportunities that are a clear 'yes' is crucial for many firms.
Recent trends highlight the varied landscape of approaches to building BD teams. For firms prioritizing intermediary channels, investment bankers offer transaction experience and existing relationships within the banker community. Anecdotally, bankers prefer working with those BD professionals who have prior deal experience and are someone they can trust has influence at their firm.
For firms prioritizing proprietary outreach, candidates with sales backgrounds are often experienced in nurturing contacts throughout long sales cycles and are comfortable in high-volume outreach environments.
Another avenue to consider - transitioning a PE investment professional who can leverage their deal experience to take opportunities further, be a better filter, aid in conversations with contacts, and seamlessly find the right level of integration with deal team counterparts.
The emphasis on finding candidates with prior deal experience has grown, as more firms have added dedicated BD resources to organize inbound deal flow and do cold outreach to targets. A common theme that arises in our work is that bankers and business owners prefer to interact with those BD professionals that are tenured, have influence at their firm, and have relatable deal experience they can speak to.
If you're curious about the landscape of current dedicated PE BD professionals and their prior experience, see below for an overview.
Hopefully these insights will serve as a valuable tool should your firm be considering a dedicated BD hire. The right BD professional will enhance your firm’s ability to source and execute deals, driving growth and maintaining a competitive edge in a challenging market.
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