Top 10 Business Development influencers

We created a top 10 of Business Development influencers to follow in 2020. Learn from the most interesting business development pros!

Last year we surveyed a few hundred business development professionals and among others, we asked this question:

Who do you trust most for advice on Business Development?

Not surprisingly, most of us responded that the people we trust the most are colleagues and other professionals working in the field. And to my joy, only a very few mentioned the usual big names like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and co.

We decided to investigate further and see if we could put together a list of business development “influencers” we should follow to find inspiration and new ideas.

For this checklist we selected professionals who match at least one of these criteria:

• Contribute to shaping the perception of business development with their work
• Regularly post useful content on one or more social media platform
• Are mentioned in the survey as trustable business development sources

Here we are, for you, the top 10 business development influencers to follow in 2020:

1. Paul van den Brande

Paul van den Brande is the owner of the largest business development community on LinkedIn. His group Group Business Development The Missing Link Between Marketing And Sales gathers 321,230 members from all over the world.

It’s home to many business developers who like to contribute by sharing their knowledge in the field. Besides, he wrote several e-books about business development and regularly posts on his community.

To stay in the loop, join the community!

2. Whitney Kippes

Founder of BidBoss, Whitney supports business development teams with capture planning and high touch proposal management. She is very active on LinkedIn, but in my opinion, what’s really valuable is her monthly newsletter which is a concentrate of interesting articles!

Follow her on LinkedIn and subscribe to her newsletter here.

3. David Gram

David is one of the trusted people to go for advice on business development according to our survey. Former Head of Ventures at Lego, he’s now busy with his company Diplomatic Rebels which empowers companies to create radical innovation.

To stay updated, check out his website and if you happen to be in Denmark, attend one of his keynotes.

4. Gennaro Cuofano

I first run across Gennaro in Paul’s group when I read one of his articles about idea generation. He’s the founder and main author of Four Week MBA, a blog entirely focused on business and strategic tools.

You can find Gennaro on Linkedin and I definitely recommend to have a look at his blog.

5. Tito Borth

Just like David, Tito was also mentioned as one of the trusted people to go for advice on business development according to the survey. He is the CEO of the consulting firm AltiSales and regularly posts content mainly related to sales.

Check out one of his latest webinars here!

6. Martina di Pasquale

If you follow us, you’ve probably read some of the amazing content Martina writes for us. What you might not know is that she is also very active on Instagram where she hosts, among other things, the business girls club every Wednesday.

With a specific focus on sales and some content in Italian, she’s definitely one of the people you should follow on social media.

7. Jody Osman

Jody is the founder of The BD 100, the annual list that ranks the UK’s top 100 business developers. A great initiative to shine a light on the skills, the pitches, the wisdom and the techniques of the best in business development.

And guess what, one of our students, Erica, made it to the list 2 years in a row, along with Yuri one of our authors.

8. Michela Sapienza Pennisi

She is not strictly a business developer, however, on her Instagram account, she talks about many of the topics dear to us. Michela is among the emerging talent and mainly posts in Italian.

Keep an eye on her at this link!

9. Hans Eibe Sørensen

Hans is an entrepreneur and academic researching business development. He published several papers and books about business development, has worked with Copenhagen Business School and the University of Southern Denmark and runs his own consulting firm.

A resource to learn about business development from a more academic perspective.

10. Lucia Piseddu

Although I don’t consider myself an influencer, I do love business development and I try to share as much knowledge as I can. What motivated me to start The BD School was exactly the idea of making business development more accessible to everyone.

So if you like, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn!

Bonus list

In addition to our top 10 business development influencers to follow in 2020, we’ve got a bonus list of more famous influencers you can learn from. They are not strictly in business development, but still very relevant to us:

11. Max Altschuler

12. David Arnoux

13. Benjamin Dennehy

14. Gary Vaynerchuk

15. Trish Bertuzzi

16. Danny Sullivan

17. Grant Cardone

18. Aaron Ross

19. Morgan Ingram

20. Mark Roberge

21. Steli Efti

22. Lori Richardson

23. Jill Konrath

24. Jeb Blount

25. 6amsuccess

26. Natalie Franke

27. Shane Feldman

28. Melyssa Griffin

29. Justin Dry

30. Sean Ellis

31. Morgan Brown

32. Patrick Cines

33. Nilan Peiris

34. Jon Miller

35. Yam Regev

36. Brian Balfour

37. Andy Johns

38. Everette Taylor

39. Casey Armstrong

40. Jacco van der Kooij

41. Nichole Elizabeth DeMere

42. Peter Van Sabben

43. Lincoln Murphy

44. Andrew Chen

45. Karol Pokojowczyk

46. Patrick Vlaskovits

47. Tony Robbins

48. Elon Musk

49. Sam Nelson

50. Duncan Wardle

Did we miss your best source of inspiration? Let us know in our community and we will add them!

Related articles:

• Portrait of a Business Development Manager
• Top 10 books for Business Development
• Business Development Success: People before Profit