Start with the route, not the rolodex
A business development strategy answers four questions: which accounts or partners can move revenue this year, why they would introduce or buy, who owns the relationship, and what happens every week. If those answers live in a founder’s head, you do not have a strategy. You have hope.
Build a target universe with exclusion rules
List the 50 to 150 organizations that can actually create pipeline: complementary vendors, integrators, associations, or named accounts. Score them on overlap with your ICP, access to buyers, and willingness to co-sell. Exclusion is as important as inclusion. A logo that cannot introduce a qualified buyer is theater.
Design a partner offer, not a partnership announcement
Partners need a sentence they can repeat: who it is for, what outcome you jointly create, and how they get paid or credited. Write a one-page co-sell brief, a referral path, and a first-meeting script. Then measure sourced and influenced pipeline, not memos of understanding.
Install a weekly BD operating cadence
Monday: forecast of conversations and next meetings. Midweek: advance or kill every open introduction. Friday: log what was learned and which experiments to run. Couple this with go-to-market strategy so BD is filling a chosen channel, not every channel.
Connect BD to marketing and sales
Marketing should produce enablement and search content that makes partner conversations easier. Sales should inherit qualified opportunities with context. See our business development services if you need this installed as a system.
