How to Create an Effective Business Development Strategy

Starting a business can be both an exciting yet daunting journey. Although you may have an innovative idea and identified a gap in the market for your business to fill, growing your business into a success can be a challenging feat, especially if you don’t have comprehensive knowledge on how to do so.



The first step to take is creating a business development strategy, which an accountant can help you with.

What is a Business Development Strategy?

A business development strategy is a type of plan that lists what you need to do in order to promote business growth and meet the targets you want to achieve.

Creating a Basic Strategy

Identify Your Goals

The first step in creating a business development strategy is identifying what you want to achieve from the plan. By doing this, you can tailor the approach of your strategy to best meet your desired outcome(s).

For example, do you wish to double your profit, are you looking for more followers and engagement on your social channels or are you looking to create partnerships?

The tactics you would use to achieve each of these things differ, so in order to successfully develop the area of your business you are particularly concerned with improving, you must first clearly identify what this is.

Plan Your Actions

Once you have clearly set out your goals for the business, you will then need to assess how you will effectively and realistically meet these. Accountants can be extremely helpful here in numerous ways.

They are able to provide detailed financial reports and forecasts to show you which products or areas within your business bring in the most revenue and where others cause losses, advising you on the revenue streams you should focus your attention on for the best business growth. Once you know which areas to target, you will be able to refine your objectives and marketing strategies to nurture this profitability.

Consolidate Your Finances

It’s all well and good having solid plans in place, but, from a realistic point of view, you then need to determine whether you can afford to follow through with said plans.

Employing the help of an accountant will again be beneficial here, since the financial reports they produce will show you detailed information regarding your earnings, profits and expenditure. From this, they can advise you on whether you will be able to afford something and for how long for, whether you will be under profit and when you can expect to break even or if you will need to secure funding, amongst other things.

If you do find that you need to secure funding from investors, they will also be able to perform a business valuation and financial forecast, which you can use to express your financial position to investors and negotiate a better deal whilst offering them reassurance that their investment will be worthwhile.

At Marshall & Co, we are familiar with all types of business, allowing us to offer you tailored solutions and assist in creating an achievable business development strategy to help your business grow. Get in touch with us today to take your business to the next level.