The BD School is the first personalized learning platform entirely dedicated to business development. Learn about our approach!
Have you ever found yourself lost in your business development job?
You’re not alone in this. In fact, many business developers still struggle to define business development and they often don’t know where to find useful information to achieve better results with their work.
This is what motivated Lucia, the founder of The BD School, to create a safe place for business developers to connect and learn.
After working as a business development professional for over 14 years she felt the exact same pain of not knowing what to do and not having support from her manager.
What started out as dissatisfaction with the lack of resources and valuable information online paved a new way for business developers to learn and connect.
We put ourselves to work to find the best way to help other business development professionals learn new skills, gain new knowledge, and grow their careers.
What’s special about The BD School is the sense of community. The BD School takes pride in supporting each other, sharing our passion for learning, and growing together. In this way, we become skilled professionals who know how to advance their careers.
Our vision is to create the next generation of business developers using the power of knowledge.
Lucia Piseddu – Founder @ The BD School
Knowledge helps us become our ideal selves. Learning helps us grow personally and professionally.
The Business Development School
Before we dive into what The BD School is, it’s worth looking at business development as a career choice. Sometimes, it seems like there are as many definitions of business development as there are business developers.
In fact, it’s a contrasting paradox, some business developers are well-versed when it comes to their tasks. However, others struggle to understand how business development works both in theory and in practice.
So what is really business development?
Business development is a set of tasks and processes meant to implement growth opportunities in a sustainable and profitable way.
In more recent years, there’s been a sharp rise in technology. Especially with the last two years of the pandemic. There’s been a continuous incline of our dependence on technology. And the way we connect and communicate with one another.
At The BD School, we don’t see this as a form of restraint. Even during the pandemic, we’ve helped current and aspiring business developers tackle their daily challenges successfully. The ever-present uncertainty that surrounds business development isn’t a reason why you shouldn’t see positive results with the work that you do.
Developing a business takes time and patience. As a business development professional, you have to know marketing, sales, partnerships, management, and social media to grow your company. Some of the skills you need for success are communication, writing, and negotiating. Others include creativity, persistence, and active listening.
Every business developer has specific strengths and weaknesses. So, it’s important to identify what you’re good at and which skills you need to work on. Business development is about providing long-term value for an organization.
To achieve this, you need to stay in touch with industry trends, new information, and tools, and learn by doing.
Learning business development
One of the gateways to success in business development is learning. Without access to the right knowledge and tools, your job becomes more difficult. At The BD School, we believe that every business developer should work on their goals and ambitions to achieve success.
That’s why our entire approach is based on personalized learning. We believe in customizing the learning experience so that each one of you can realize your full potential in your unique way.
Today, access to information has never been easier. You can watch videos, read books or articles, listen to podcasts, and so on. But, these are never about you and at best they give you small tips that don’t fully work.
Our approach is different. We take the time to understand your ambitions, interests, passions, and learning preferences and we adapt the experience to make sure you get the most out of being with us!
This is how you succeed in business development. The BD School helps you create a solid business development plan and strategy. But also, improve your tactics like cold outreach, copywriting, and leveraging the social media market as well as your own soft skills.
The BD School is perfect for:
- Business development professionals with up to 6 years of experience
- Young talent looking to create a career in business development
- Startup founders
- Professionals switching careers (for example from engineering, marketing, etc.)
You can learn in 2 ways with The BD School:
- Become a certified business development pro with or live training program
- Learn for free with our content on our blog and YouTube Channel
Read more about the 2 ways below!
Become a certified Business Development Pro
When we first started The BD School our goal was to provide practical and quality business development education to everyone around the world.
We spent our first 3 years creating a unique business development methodology that combines mindset, strategy, tactics, and skills. All of these were tested and improved with the help of our 300+ students who gave insights into their jobs and feedback on the program.
The result is a LIVE training program that aims at making you a business development pro. Our program will help you gain the knowledge and skills so you can:
- Become more confident in your business development role
- Know exactly what actions to take in your day-to-day role
- Achieve your targets
Of course, business development is different in every company, so each one of our students had different outcomes. However, these are some common results most of our students achieved:
- Generated up to 80% more opportunities on a monthly basis
- Created up to 65% more new partnerships
- Closed up to 50% more deals
- Got hired by their dream companies within 3 months of finishing the course
How does the live training program work?
The live training program is a cohort-based training that takes place every month. You will join a small group of ambitious business development professionals eager to improve themselves.
We will meet online for 2 hours a day for 5 weeks and we will teach you a brand new framework that you can apply to any company you will work for.
Of course, forget boring lectures!
The live training program is designed to make you practice what you learn using case studies, role-plays, and a lot of hands-on exercises. We strongly believe learning should be an enriching experience and to do that, we make sure the sessions are fun and engaging.
Once you finish the program you will have access to our online platform where you can continue learning with thousands of hours of video content, resources, and community.
Discover more about the program on this page and apply to make it to the next class!
Learn on your own with our free content
If you don’t like structured courses and prefer to be more flexible, you can learn business development with our free content.
We upload weekly articles on the blog and videos on our YouTube channel on many different BD topics.
Of course, don't forget to join our community to learn from your peers
How much will it cost me?
At The BD School, we strongly believe in providing access to knowledge to everyone in the world, independent of your income.
We took into account the differences in income of our community and created two different options:
- Certification Program: 1,197 €
Where is The BD School?
We are based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. However, we are a truly global community with students from 45 different countries on 5 different continents!
No matter if you’re located in Amsterdam, Bangkok, New York, or Cairo. We will always put you at the center and we will facilitate your business development learning journey and adapt the times of the training to fit your schedule.
Do you offer training to companies?
Yes, we do and we use the exact same personalized approach.
We see you as partners and to make sure we provide you with relevant training we invite you to sit down with us. The first meeting is all about you, your needs, and your business goals.
After that, we will create a program combining our training modules in a way that is optimized to help your company achieve its strategic goals.
We trained companies like OsecoElfab, Saint-Gobain, ELM Company, Trendwatching, Darwin on the Job, Makerstreet, and Equidam among many others. All of them with very different business development challenges that we solved in a unique way.
Some wanted to leverage their current customer base more effectively and needed business development soft skills training. Others wanted to explore partnerships as a way to grow. Some others needed to streamline their processes.
And of course…they all wanted to generate more revenue through business development.
That’s the beauty of business development:
The opportunities are endless, but you need to be able to see them first!
If you’re ready to transform the way you do business development and get concrete results, book a call with our team and let’s find out if we are a match!
Join us today
We are passionate and excited to help you become a better business development professional. Now it’s up to you to take your career growth to the next level!
Join the certification program today and achieve results easier and faster!
The BD School is the first personalized learning platform entirely dedicated to business development. Learn about our approach!
Have you ever found yourself lost in your business development job?
You’re not alone in this. In fact, many business developers still struggle to define business development and they often don’t know where to find useful information to achieve better results with their work.
This is what motivated Lucia, the founder of The BD School, to create a safe place for business developers to connect and learn.
After working as a business development professional for over 14 years she felt the exact same pain of not knowing what to do and not having support from her manager.
What started out as dissatisfaction with the lack of resources and valuable information online paved a new way for business developers to learn and connect.
We put ourselves to work to find the best way to help other business development professionals learn new skills, gain new knowledge, and grow their careers.
What’s special about The BD School is the sense of community. The BD School takes pride in supporting each other, sharing our passion for learning, and growing together. In this way, we become skilled professionals who know how to advance their careers.
Our vision is to create the next generation of business developers using the power of knowledge.
Lucia Piseddu – Founder @ The BD School
Knowledge helps us become our ideal selves. Learning helps us grow personally and professionally.
The Business Development School
Before we dive into what The BD School is, it’s worth looking at business development as a career choice. Sometimes, it seems like there are as many definitions of business development as there are business developers.
In fact, it’s a contrasting paradox, some business developers are well-versed when it comes to their tasks. However, others struggle to understand how business development works both in theory and in practice.
So what is really business development?
Business development is a set of tasks and processes meant to implement growth opportunities in a sustainable and profitable way.
In more recent years, there’s been a sharp rise in technology. Especially with the last two years of the pandemic. There’s been a continuous incline of our dependence on technology. And the way we connect and communicate with one another.
At The BD School, we don’t see this as a form of restraint. Even during the pandemic, we’ve helped current and aspiring business developers tackle their daily challenges successfully. The ever-present uncertainty that surrounds business development isn’t a reason why you shouldn’t see positive results with the work that you do.
Developing a business takes time and patience. As a business development professional, you have to know marketing, sales, partnerships, management, and social media to grow your company. Some of the skills you need for success are communication, writing, and negotiating. Others include creativity, persistence, and active listening.
Every business developer has specific strengths and weaknesses. So, it’s important to identify what you’re good at and which skills you need to work on. Business development is about providing long-term value for an organization.
To achieve this, you need to stay in touch with industry trends, new information, and tools, and learn by doing.
Learning business development
One of the gateways to success in business development is learning. Without access to the right knowledge and tools, your job becomes more difficult. At The BD School, we believe that every business developer should work on their goals and ambitions to achieve success.
That’s why our entire approach is based on personalized learning. We believe in customizing the learning experience so that each one of you can realize your full potential in your unique way.
Today, access to information has never been easier. You can watch videos, read books or articles, listen to podcasts, and so on. But, these are never about you and at best they give you small tips that don’t fully work.
Our approach is different. We take the time to understand your ambitions, interests, passions, and learning preferences and we adapt the experience to make sure you get the most out of being with us!
This is how you succeed in business development. The BD School helps you create a solid business development plan and strategy. But also, improve your tactics like cold outreach, copywriting, and leveraging the social media market as well as your own soft skills.
The BD School is perfect for:
- Business development professionals with up to 6 years of experience
- Young talent looking to create a career in business development
- Startup founders
- Professionals switching careers (for example from engineering, marketing, etc.)
You can learn in 2 ways with The BD School:
- Become a certified business development pro with or live training program
- Learn for free with our content on our blog and YouTube Channel
Read more about the 2 ways below!
Become a certified Business Development Pro
When we first started The BD School our goal was to provide practical and quality business development education to everyone around the world.
We spent our first 3 years creating a unique business development methodology that combines mindset, strategy, tactics, and skills. All of these were tested and improved with the help of our 300+ students who gave insights into their jobs and feedback on the program.
The result is a LIVE training program that aims at making you a business development pro. Our program will help you gain the knowledge and skills so you can:
- Become more confident in your business development role
- Know exactly what actions to take in your day-to-day role
- Achieve your targets
Of course, business development is different in every company, so each one of our students had different outcomes. However, these are some common results most of our students achieved:
- Generated up to 80% more opportunities on a monthly basis
- Created up to 65% more new partnerships
- Closed up to 50% more deals
- Got hired by their dream companies within 3 months of finishing the course
How does the live training program work?
The live training program is a cohort-based training that takes place every month. You will join a small group of ambitious business development professionals eager to improve themselves.
We will meet online for 2 hours a day for 5 weeks and we will teach you a brand new framework that you can apply to any company you will work for.
Of course, forget boring lectures!
The live training program is designed to make you practice what you learn using case studies, role-plays, and a lot of hands-on exercises. We strongly believe learning should be an enriching experience and to do that, we make sure the sessions are fun and engaging.
Once you finish the program you will have access to our online platform where you can continue learning with thousands of hours of video content, resources, and community.
Discover more about the program on this page and apply to make it to the next class!
Learn on your own with our free content
If you don’t like structured courses and prefer to be more flexible, you can learn business development with our free content.
We upload weekly articles on the blog and videos on our YouTube channel on many different BD topics.
Of course, don't forget to join our community to learn from your peers
How much will it cost me?
At The BD School, we strongly believe in providing access to knowledge to everyone in the world, independent of your income.
We took into account the differences in income of our community and created two different options:
- Certification Program: 1,197 €
Where is The BD School?
We are based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. However, we are a truly global community with students from 45 different countries on 5 different continents!
No matter if you’re located in Amsterdam, Bangkok, New York, or Cairo. We will always put you at the center and we will facilitate your business development learning journey and adapt the times of the training to fit your schedule.
Do you offer training to companies?
Yes, we do and we use the exact same personalized approach.
We see you as partners and to make sure we provide you with relevant training we invite you to sit down with us. The first meeting is all about you, your needs, and your business goals.
After that, we will create a program combining our training modules in a way that is optimized to help your company achieve its strategic goals.
We trained companies like OsecoElfab, Saint-Gobain, ELM Company, Trendwatching, Darwin on the Job, Makerstreet, and Equidam among many others. All of them with very different business development challenges that we solved in a unique way.
Some wanted to leverage their current customer base more effectively and needed business development soft skills training. Others wanted to explore partnerships as a way to grow. Some others needed to streamline their processes.
And of course…they all wanted to generate more revenue through business development.
That’s the beauty of business development:
The opportunities are endless, but you need to be able to see them first!
If you’re ready to transform the way you do business development and get concrete results, book a call with our team and let’s find out if we are a match!
Join us today
We are passionate and excited to help you become a better business development professional. Now it’s up to you to take your career growth to the next level!
Join the certification program today and achieve results easier and faster!
