For Impact

Blog

‘Bz Dev’ vs. Development or Advancement

For Impact Ideas | | Tom Suddes

I spent almost two days together last week at Eagle Creek coaching and working with someone who is, to me, the Ideal Profile of a Senior Advancement Leader at a college.

‘Joe’ has an entrepreneurial background, is passionate about the mission of his relatively new college, and is a great, great sales person. (Listens. Understands the story. Always presents the opportunity.)

Joe flew in from the West Coast, and we covered a lot of ground in 36 hours. Message. Math. Model. And More.

One of the most interesting ‘side bar’ conversations we had was around ‘titles‘.

‘Joe’ is currently the Vice President of Development. Pretty standard. The more we talked about a more appropriate title for him… the more we realized that he was really all about BZ DEV or BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. He’s developing new partnerships. He’s developing new revenue streams. He’s developing new deals that are going to have a huge impact.

It just makes so much sense for him to be positioning himself with the 33 top prospects and transformational investors as responsible for BZ DEV! (Another option is Vice President in Charge of Starting Stuff, but that ended up too crazy even for me.)

To all the great Development Teams out there: Think of yourself as BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, as opposed to ‘fundraising‘. See if it helps.