One of the key departments in organizations is the business development department which main goal is to get sources of revenue. This is important for profit but also for non-profit organizations because they also need funds to develop their business and help for example communities or the environment.
When looking for new opportunities to bring revenue to the company, the members of the business development department will need from others to get that. There are a lot of ways to get funds. One of the possibilities could be to establish distributors or agents in different regions to increase the possibility of getting more revenue. If we do not have contacts in the region where we are looking for potential partners, this process will be harder than if we have some contacts in our network. If we have some contacts or if we know any potential candidate, we could reduce a lot of money than if we do not have any contact. In this case, we will need extra funds to attend trade fairs or other networking events that sometimes are really costly.
If we do not have contacts, it is really important to ask for referrals to the potential distributors or agents to reduce the possible risk of failure. Another way to meet potential partners is to contact the local or regional chamber of commerce or the trade office or embassy if we are looking for international partners. Sometimes, these options could have a lower price compared to attending trade fairs.
To create a network from scratch is really hard, mainly if we are looking for members with high quality (background and potential new contacts to bring to our network) rather than looking more for quantity. To look increase the number of people or organizations in the network could damage the quality of the network that could cause in the future a loss of time and resources. On the other hand, if we have a strategy and goal and we are looking to specific individuals or organizations, that could bring us more benefits than problems.
So, when developing business, it is important to know the existing network in order to know if there is someone that could help us for example introducing if this is the case a potential distributor or agent. If after analyzing our network, we discover that we do not have potential candidates, then we should develop or modify the strategy to how to meet the potential partner. This strategy should include the resources that we could spend for the research, the number of candidates that we need and where we need them among other factors to include in the strategy.
1 comment:
OK, but what's the network? And what question(s) would you ask to find one? And what measures would you use? Good idea, but no real use of SNA to make it help you. How about asking people what they buy and how (and how often) they buy it? Etc.
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