Revenue is much harder to increase than spending; however both are necessary. Private businesses understand this concept all too well. When it comes to public, non-profit and government entities who are allocated budgets it is more of an afterthought to do deep dives into increasing revenue outside of mandated taxes and charity donations.
Working with many private companies through the years, increasing revenue and managing expenses is the business development management sweet spot. Working with public entities, there is a bit of a challenge understanding the importance of business development due to a bucket full of line item revenues added to the budget every year. Some because of lack of detailed knowledge of how public funds are generated and public office fundraising efforts for elections to fill the sea, the focus stays on the one vein to increasing revenue.
We have also worked with a variety of non-profit businesses where the main focus of creating the non-profit is to provide a community service using public dollars. But we often have to describe the process of actually generating public funds needed to allocate to these public service entities.
The other part is having to describe the fact that business development is not just networking and throwing gathering events. Just like consulting is not just talking and giving opinions. There is a real technical aspect of development that requires precise strategic planning, execution and actual tangible deliverables. Deliverables that increase business revenues not just attendance counts and social media interactions.
We find that oftentimes these public entity stakeholders have not clearly defined the most important part needed for effective business development of a program, project or department. That would be the value proposition. The value of not only providing the service to the community, but how the service will financially impact the economic development of the area, what resources will be needed and how it will be sustained.
Business development management is not marketing or awareness. Not to discount the important role of marketing managers as they hold a place in an organization; however, this is where many stakeholders miss the mark, assuming this is another marketing or public relations type of position. In reality it is the active technical process of building business capacity and revenues that directly impacts the top and bottom line.
Be intentional when adding a business development management manager. Rhodes Porter has associates ready to help plan for revenue grow in both public and private entities