Creativity in Business Development | Let’s Talk BD Podcast Ep. 1
How to use creativity in business development? Learn how Martina used the dating app Bumble to find new business opportunities and a lot more in the first episode of Let’s Talk BD Podcast.
Episode 1: Creative BD Minds
In business development, creativity is a must-have! We have to get creative to find new growth opportunities. It helps us stay motivated and get more results.
Therefore, the first episode of our official podcast, Let’s Talk BD, is all about creativity. For the first episode, we invited one of our former students, Martina.
She is a business developer in the tech field and comes from Italy. Martina works with companies that project and develop digital products.
Her daily tasks are finding new leads and prospects and coming up with creative problem-solving.
In the official podcast of The BD School, Let’s talk BD, we interview experienced BD professionals working in the field as well as startup founders.
They always share useful tips, insights, and best practices, to help you become a better Business Development Professional. And that’s exactly what Martina did!
Our host Lucia is the founder of The BD School, the first educational platform entirely dedicated to business development.
With 13 years in business development, she experienced first-hand the pain and gains of working in this field.
That’s exactly the reason why she decided to build The BD School. To shed a light on business development and help professionals be more effective in their jobs.
Episode 1: Creative BD Minds
In the first episode, we talked about creativity in business development. Our goal is to inspire other BDs to use creativity in their work. That way they will like it more and will get more results.
This period is very challenging because of the pandemic. Companies are not able to invest as much as they used to. Therefore, Martina has to come up with creative solutions to occurring problems.
When Martina first started to work as a business developer she didn’t really know what that role was all about. However, she liked it because she was able to do a lot of different things while working with different teams.
She has learned a lot from marketing, product development, sales, and other departments. That gave her the chance to discover what is happening inside the company.
After she finished the course, she finally understood what being a business developer really means.
But most importantly, she was able to define different methods that she can use for the needs of the company she’s working for. And all thanks to creativity!
She has two experiences in the startup world. Her first startup job was abroad in Paris and she was responsible for finding new clients and customers for the new marketplace.
Martina’s second experience in a startup was 5 years ago and a bit different. She was responsible for an e-commerce project for subscription boxes.
Back then this kind of business model wasn’t really known in Italy. Her monthly target was to find at least 5 brands who were willing to give their products for subscription boxes.
That was very challenging because it’s not easy to find new partners in a small community.
The main challenge was to persuade other companies that they will benefit from the partnership.
Challenges in the digital world
As business developers very often we find ourselves in a position of being too early for the market. Because our job is to find opportunities, but sometimes people are not ready for them yet.
That’s why Martina spends a lot of time trying to help companies to understand what innovation really is. Here you see the importance of creativity in business development.
A huge part of our job as business developers is to help to reduce the cultural digital gap between tech leaders and small and medium enterprises.
Therefore, Martina’s role is to help smaller companies to innovate through technology.
The digital world gives a lot of opportunities. The problem is always cultural. For example, in the last few years in Italy, a lot of shops began to understand how many opportunities they could have through online channels.
However, they don’t realize how challenging and difficult is to start an e-commerce. They think it’s only putting your product online, but don’t know it’s a lot more work.
Martina’s biggest challenge is to find a way to talk with the companies. She is struggling to understand how to get their attention.
Due to the pandemic, many companies are not in a great situation at the moment. So offering a technological innovation that could help their businesses is really challenging.
It’s especially challenging because Martina is selling an R&D project. She finds it very difficult to start a conversation with the companies and after that to set up the project.
So when it’s time to invest to push the innovation it’s a real challenge.
How to boost creativity in business development
Luckily every time when there is a big challenge there is another positive element which is creativity.
We can get the most creative when we put ourselves in very uncomfortable situations. And Martina proved that!
She always tries to find new ways for testing and validation.
The most creative thing she did recently is testing the new digital app tool, Bumble, for business purposes.
It’s a dating app but also has a biz option. Martina used it for networking and it worked.
She started a few very interesting conversations. However, since the app is not very used in Italy, she didn’t have too many choices.
Since she works with a software development house and is always in touch with many different products, she talks to a lot of product developers.
In her previous company, Martina was both a business developer and project manager and that’s when she created a strong connection with developers.
At first, it took her a few months to become comfortable to start a conversation with them. But then she realized that you just have to be confident with them and understand their personal interests.
Once you build a good connection with them the working relationship becomes better.
More takeaways
Listen to the podcast to learn more about:
- Martina’s project with her local family business and launching their own brand and e-commerce
- Business development in Italy
- Martinas’s experience with her mentees and how is it to be a mentor
If you would like to increase your value as a business development pro, this is the time to become a certified BD Pro.
How to use creativity in business development? Learn how Martina used the dating app Bumble to find new business opportunities and a lot more in the first episode of Let’s Talk BD Podcast.
Episode 1: Creative BD Minds
In business development, creativity is a must-have! We have to get creative to find new growth opportunities. It helps us stay motivated and get more results.
Therefore, the first episode of our official podcast, Let’s Talk BD, is all about creativity. For the first episode, we invited one of our former students, Martina.
She is a business developer in the tech field and comes from Italy. Martina works with companies that project and develop digital products.
Her daily tasks are finding new leads and prospects and coming up with creative problem-solving.
In the official podcast of The BD School, Let’s talk BD, we interview experienced BD professionals working in the field as well as startup founders.
They always share useful tips, insights, and best practices, to help you become a better Business Development Professional. And that’s exactly what Martina did!
Our host Lucia is the founder of The BD School, the first educational platform entirely dedicated to business development.
With 13 years in business development, she experienced first-hand the pain and gains of working in this field.
That’s exactly the reason why she decided to build The BD School. To shed a light on business development and help professionals be more effective in their jobs.
Episode 1: Creative BD Minds
In the first episode, we talked about creativity in business development. Our goal is to inspire other BDs to use creativity in their work. That way they will like it more and will get more results.
This period is very challenging because of the pandemic. Companies are not able to invest as much as they used to. Therefore, Martina has to come up with creative solutions to occurring problems.
When Martina first started to work as a business developer she didn’t really know what that role was all about. However, she liked it because she was able to do a lot of different things while working with different teams.
She has learned a lot from marketing, product development, sales, and other departments. That gave her the chance to discover what is happening inside the company.
After she finished the course, she finally understood what being a business developer really means.
But most importantly, she was able to define different methods that she can use for the needs of the company she’s working for. And all thanks to creativity!
She has two experiences in the startup world. Her first startup job was abroad in Paris and she was responsible for finding new clients and customers for the new marketplace.
Martina’s second experience in a startup was 5 years ago and a bit different. She was responsible for an e-commerce project for subscription boxes.
Back then this kind of business model wasn’t really known in Italy. Her monthly target was to find at least 5 brands who were willing to give their products for subscription boxes.
That was very challenging because it’s not easy to find new partners in a small community.
The main challenge was to persuade other companies that they will benefit from the partnership.
Challenges in the digital world
As business developers very often we find ourselves in a position of being too early for the market. Because our job is to find opportunities, but sometimes people are not ready for them yet.
That’s why Martina spends a lot of time trying to help companies to understand what innovation really is. Here you see the importance of creativity in business development.
A huge part of our job as business developers is to help to reduce the cultural digital gap between tech leaders and small and medium enterprises.
Therefore, Martina’s role is to help smaller companies to innovate through technology.
The digital world gives a lot of opportunities. The problem is always cultural. For example, in the last few years in Italy, a lot of shops began to understand how many opportunities they could have through online channels.
However, they don’t realize how challenging and difficult is to start an e-commerce. They think it’s only putting your product online, but don’t know it’s a lot more work.
Martina’s biggest challenge is to find a way to talk with the companies. She is struggling to understand how to get their attention.
Due to the pandemic, many companies are not in a great situation at the moment. So offering a technological innovation that could help their businesses is really challenging.
It’s especially challenging because Martina is selling an R&D project. She finds it very difficult to start a conversation with the companies and after that to set up the project.
So when it’s time to invest to push the innovation it’s a real challenge.
How to boost creativity in business development
Luckily every time when there is a big challenge there is another positive element which is creativity.
We can get the most creative when we put ourselves in very uncomfortable situations. And Martina proved that!
She always tries to find new ways for testing and validation.
The most creative thing she did recently is testing the new digital app tool, Bumble, for business purposes.
It’s a dating app but also has a biz option. Martina used it for networking and it worked.
She started a few very interesting conversations. However, since the app is not very used in Italy, she didn’t have too many choices.
Since she works with a software development house and is always in touch with many different products, she talks to a lot of product developers.
In her previous company, Martina was both a business developer and project manager and that’s when she created a strong connection with developers.
At first, it took her a few months to become comfortable to start a conversation with them. But then she realized that you just have to be confident with them and understand their personal interests.
Once you build a good connection with them the working relationship becomes better.
More takeaways
Listen to the podcast to learn more about:
- Martina’s project with her local family business and launching their own brand and e-commerce
- Business development in Italy
- Martinas’s experience with her mentees and how is it to be a mentor
If you would like to increase your value as a business development pro, this is the time to become a certified BD Pro.
Author
Silvija Kozlek
Content marketer at The BD School
We are The BD School, the first educational platform for business development. Check our course to learn in a structured way and get results!
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