In business development, we will work together on process stages that are quite similar to those in my product development. However, the scope/effort is lower in comparison, since there is no creative work on the new product/service.

1. Evaluate your current state

• As with product development, the following applies: We are all human, whether customer, supplier, employee, boss, partner, etc. Therefore, everything begins with the people who work for the company. So the first step here is to get an overview of the skills, the willingness to perform and the drive of your employees. As far as possible, all managers are involved in order to derive a very detailed picture.
  
• The next step is the overview of your processes, workflows and production steps. This representation should later serve to show whether your process chains can be integrated into new business processes, or whether significant changes may be required.
  
• Now we come to the heart of your business, the product or service you provide. Your "catalog of services" will be examined in detail. Are there components that are still managed simply because they have always been there, although they may not mean any recognizable benefit for your operative contribution margin?
  
• We then take a close look at your customers and your customer management. As in the last point, it is important to find out whether you are consistently serving the right customers for you. Of course, this requires transparent and objective customer management. If this is still incomplete, we will start here first.
  
• The same is then carried out in relation to your markets and your competition is then also intensively examined.
  

2. Strategy development

• The second step in business development starts with positioning your company. Positioning is about specifically creating and emphasizing strengths and qualities that differentiate your product or service from others. With the positioning we develop your unique selling proposition. In short, we then use it to express what your product or service does, for whom and why. So it comes down to these three central questions:
  What do you offer?
  Who is your target audience?
  Why does a customer need to have my product/service?

• Once the positioning is fixed, we turn to your pricing. The English term pricing or simply pricing designates a management tool that acts as the strongest lever for profitability and wants to intervene in the market as a provider. Basically, as soon as the product is an integral part of the market and has established itself, the price is raised. Pricing is one of the so-called price-following strategies. There are three important prerequisites for pricing, the first of which is the price elasticity of demand. This means that the low price attracts significantly more customers. The second requirement is that the switching costs are very high, so that the initial customers are not lost when prices later increase. Furthermore, there should be sufficient financial reserves so that the market entry can be subsidized by reserves or supported by other business areas due to the initially small profit or loss.
  
• Next we look at your marketing. We check to what extent your company uses the four classic instruments of the marketing mix, the so-called "four P" (4P) - English for product, price, place, promotion (this corresponds in German to the product, price (or conditions) or contracting), sales and communication policy) or "four Cs" - English for commodity (goods), cost (costs), communication (communication), channel (channel) have already been sufficiently taken into account or there may still be a need for action here.
  
• Finally, we look at your customer management or customer relationship management (CRM for short). The aim of a CRM is to provide documented information that can be clearly assigned to a customer for sales and marketing-related activities. Here we use the findings from the first stage of the process and, based on this, will develop a communication strategy for your new positioning.
  

Once all the above steps have been completed, the operational implementation begins, i.e. the internal and external communication of positioning and pricing.