A Day in the Life of a Business Development Representative

Business Development Reps are the backbone of every company. They’re responsible for creating new revenue and growth opportunities that will help the business achieve its goals and allow it to thrive in the market. No pressure, right?  

 That’s why Workbooks CRM is such a valuable tool for business development. It serves as a central source of information and priorities, allowing users to spend less time toggling between tasks and invest more time into impactful activities.  

 We recently interviewed one of our Business Development Reps to learn what a typical day looks like and how Workbooks CRM plays a role. Here are our favourite takeaways from the conversation: 

Starting the Day with Workbooks CRM 

Our Business Development Rep starts every day by logging into Workbooks CRM to get an overview of his current opportunities. He has this view pinned to his Workbooks home screen for easy and fast access. 

 The overview of opportunities is in “task view” order and colour-coded to see which tasks are overdue. Those are the ones he’ll prioritise first.  

 The opportunities were created in Workbooks CRM by the marketing department, based on the grade and score of inbound and outbound leads. For example, a lead that reaches the 35 points threshold agreed between sales and marketing means that this lead has showed enough engagement and behaviour signals and can be handed over to sales for further qualification and nurturing. 

Get Rich Insights on New Accounts Quickly 

 Business Development Reps thrive on building strong relationships with prospective customers. To foster these relationships, reps need to have good, reliable information at their fingertips—and every minute spent hunting for intel is a minute not spent on revenue-driving activities.  

 “With Workbooks Enrich capabilities and its integration with Cognism, I can quickly access valuable information about a new account and the key contacts within the account. I also cross-check lead information on LinkedIn On the research side of things, Endole and Sales Navigator are very much a part of that process too.” 

View and Track Previous Engagements 

Hot prospects quickly turn cold if they start feeling like they can’t trust a company. And trust can be quickly eroded when a sales rep doesn’t seem informed about their past conversations, promises, and experiences with a lead. Leads will start feeling more like ‘a number’, and all that relationship-building will be tossed out the window.  

 When looking at an opportunity, business development reps will check the opportunity history to see how a prospect may have engaged with us in the past. We can see what resources the prospect may have downloaded from our website, as well as what emails they have opened, the webinars they have attended, and even the communications we have sent them in the past. Checking the engagement history and the topics the prospect has interacted with is a great way to start conversations or to keep conversations going if we’ve already connected with them.  

Review the Current Pipeline in Real-Time 

A successful Business Development Rep knows where they stand at all times in terms of sales, opportunities, and to-dos. Having this data at a glance is essential because it frees up time to spend actually talking with prospects.  

 The next thing the business development rep typically do each day is open the opportunity report view, which brings up his current pipeline. He also pulls up the predefined dashboards that show him a triage list, targets, and call stats to help him monitor his monthly progress. This also gives him a chance to address any outstanding leads that have come in overnight. He converts those into opportunities if they fit our ideal customer profile criteria. If they don’t, they are qualified out so that we can focus on relevant opportunities. 

Take Advantage of Time-Saving Integrations 

After reviewing the pipeline, he tends to focus on his outbound calling list, which is a list of accounts that fit our ideal customer profile and that we would like to start engaging with.  

 Being a Business Development Rep is often a numbers game. The more prospects we can speak to in a day, the more opportunities we have to move those conversations and actions forward. Every minute counts, so we take full advantage of the Workbooks CRM integrations that streamline communication and make an already powerful CRM even more valuable.  

 “My personal favourite: the RingCentral integration. It allows me and our other Business Development Reps to ring our customers with just one click. No more wasting time manually keying in a telephone number, or worse, keying it in wrong and having to try again.” 

 “If a prospect doesn’t answer, I can quickly make a note and move on to the next. Business Development Reps live on the phone during the workday, so if I can save 1-2 minutes per outreach, that really adds up each day.” 

Provide Support to Account Executives 

The entire business development process is a team effort—one that will eventually include the expertise of an Account Executive. By using Workbooks CRM, the business development rep can work closely with his associated Account Executive(s) to discuss deals that are in the pipeline and see how he can help map the account further. “I can offer this level of support throughout the sales cycle because we are able to pull from the same data and insights. We’re not retracing each other’s steps and can maximise our time to reach optimal outcomes for the team and the prospect.” 

 “I can also join Discovery Calls the Account Executive has scheduled because Workbooks CRM can naturally work them into my schedule. I can schedule my own meetings, too, in a way that doesn’t overlap with discovery calls and other key activities. Through Workbooks CRM, I can segment my meetings by only working with leads that are qualified to the BANTs level (leads that meet Budget, Authority, Needs, and Timeline criteria). This is a big deal for me since it allows me to preserve my time by speaking only to the most qualified leads.“ 

Source 

How will your day look with Workbooks CRM? Schedule a demo to learn more!