Cold calls, quotas, and closing deals, that's a biz dev, no?
When I get asked this question, I politely disagree with a single leg takedown following into a german suplex. After rolling around in agony for a while, I explain my point of view.
TL;DR: No. They do all things growth related.
Here's the long answer.
Startups vs. Big Corp
In big companies, specialisation makes sense. Sales teams need to by hyperfocused on selling, and improving conversion rates.
Marketing teams are the specialists that handle branding, outreach and lead generation.
And Partnerships teams build alliances for strategic expansion.
The business developer is at the intersection to coordinate all of these roles.
Sort of like a Product owner orchestrating the IT-backlog for business engineers, developers and that PM no one likes.
Business developers are there to create demand, position the product, bring in strategic partnerships, and close deals. They build the machine that drives growth.
Startups are a unique thing in all of this, especially until they are large enough to be a big corp. I heard a Japanese proverb once that everytime you triple your revenue you have to completely restructure your organisation. I pretty much agree with that.
That is why we start to see people talking about go to market specialists, which are business developers for early stage projects, aka, startups. There, a Biz Dev is about building the right growth tools that can scale.
And I am a startupper, so I focus on three things as the core work for a business developer
Sales → I look at the different type of sales we went through and what works for early stage startups.
Marketing → Why positioning and demand generation matter more than you think
Partnerships → How collaborations fuel scale.
I will be looking at product led growth (PLG) strategies particularly, as a lot of B2B products fall into that category.
Sales I covered extensively in my previous post, looking at fourteen frameworks and PLG sales. Go have a look here -> https://www.practical.business/post/14-sales-frameworks-for-startups
Marketing: More Than Just Lead Gen
When people think about marketing, they often picture flashy ads, content strategies, and SEO tactics. But from a business development perspective, marketing isn’t just about getting eyeballs. Marketing is about creating demand, positioning for growth, and driving scalable opportunities.
For a PLG startup, where the product does a lot of the selling, marketing isn’t about chasing leads. It is about ensuring users naturally find, try, and adopt your product. That means focusing on three key areas:
Demand Generation (Making people care)
Positioning & Storytelling (Making people understand why they need it)
Growth Loops & Expansion (Making people bring others in)
1. Demand Generation: Creating the Pull, Not the Push
Traditional sales-driven models rely on outbound prospecting, but PLG flips this. Users need to discover and engage with the product on their own terms. That’s where demand generation marketing comes in.
A biz dev would
Align marketing and sales to ensure messaging is clear and frictionless (I like marketing to follow the sales framework (e.g SNAP Selling: Simple & iNvaluable).
Create urgency by highlighting pain points (SNAP: Priority).
Find distribution channels that naturally fit the product—whether that’s SEO, community-led growth, or viral loops and so on.
Instead of pushing messages onto potential users, demand gen pulls them in by making your product the obvious solution to their problems.
2. Positioning & Storytelling: Own the Narrative
In a PLG model, the product must speak for itself. Yet, great marketing ensures that what it says is compelling.
Positioning is about shaping how customers perceive your value.
How Biz Dev Shapes Positioning
Define what makes your product a must-have vs. a nice-to-have.
Align marketing and sales messaging so there’s a clear, consistent story across the buyer journey.
Use partnerships to co-market and strengthen credibility (e.g., integrations, guest content, influencer advocacy).
Slack positioned itself as the replacement for email, that is a bold claim. But it worked for them.
-> Playing around with positioning and wording is very tricky if you are not a founder, because if you have a product oriented team, they will naturally resort to the more technical and "accurate" wording. Which is not necessarily the way your users understand the product or the words they use. Consider doing some A/B testing to show them data that certain keywords work better.
3. Growth Loops & Expansion: Marketing Beyond Acquisition
In traditional sales-driven models, a marketer's job ends when a lead is passed to sales. In Biz Dev, marketing is ongoing, it fuels product adoption, retention, and expansion. In other words, setting the foundation for partnerships and more.
Key Marketing-Driven Growth Levers
Referral & virality → Making it easy for users to invite others.
Community & advocacy → Turning power users into evangelists.
Partnership-driven growth → Tapping into larger ecosystems for distribution.
Referral works really well for some business models, especially b2c. In B2B it is more difficult, as the kickback needs to be substantial in order to justify referring something.
For a PLG startup, Biz Dev’s role in marketing is to own the narrative so your product sells itself.
Partnerships: The Growth Multiplier
If sales is about closing deals and marketing is about driving demand, then partnerships are about expanding your reach without directly selling.
In a PLG startup, where growth is driven by self-serve adoption, partnerships become a force multiplier. I love it, because it helps me tap into new audiences, distribution channels, and ecosystems without heavy sales efforts. But they take often a lot longer until you feel the effect, so that is rough on the cashflow sheet.
But not all partnerships are created equal, a good one:
Expands your reach (New customers, markets, or integrations)
Enhances your product’s value (Solves a problem or makes adoption easier)
Drives scalable, long-term growth (Not just one-time revenue boosts)
1. Distribution & Growth Partnerships (Scaling Without Ads)
For startups, especially in PLG, the biggest challenge is getting in front of the right users efficiently. A strong partnership can give you instant access to an audience that already trusts someone else.
Biz Dev’s Role
Co-marketing partnerships → Collaborate on content, webinars, or joint campaigns to reach shared audiences.
Affiliate & referral programs → Incentivize existing users or industry influencers to promote your product.
Strategic sales partnerships → Work with resellers or channel partners who can sell for you.
For instance, HubSpot grew its early customer base by partnering with marketing agencies, offering them tools to resell while expanding HubSpot’s brand presence. Pretty interesting case if you ever look into it.
2. Product & Integration Partnerships (Making Adoption Seamless)
In a PLG world, users expect your product to fit seamlessly into their existing workflows. That’s why integration partnerships are so valuable—they remove friction and create stickiness.
Identify which tools your users already rely on (CRMs, analytics, payment platforms, etc.).
Prioritize integrations that increase product adoption (not just “nice-to-have” connections).
Structure co-marketing efforts so partners also promote the integration.
If you think about it, for instance Slack’s deep integrations with Google Drive, Zoom, Salesforce and more increased a massive lock in effect. Once a customer is in that bubble it is really hard to replace one.
3. Strategic & Ecosystem Partnerships (Expanding Market Position)
Some partnerships go beyond just distribution or integrations, they shape industry positioning, credibility, and category leadership. I call them Ecosystem Partnerships.
Ecosystem Partnerships are awesome. We do this a lot, but it is brutal.
You need to
Align with thought leaders or industry players who can validate your product.
Build platform partnerships where your tool becomes part of a larger ecosystem (e.g., Shopify App Store, Salesforce AppExchange).
Explore co-investment or co-development opportunities with aligned businesses.
The difficulty to navigate is that your ecosystem partners have their own agendas and interest. The larger the clients the more time you need to navigate their departments and align campaigns and whatnot. If you are successful you can become an industry standard.
Thus, a strategic business development approach to partnerships means thinking beyond one-off deals and asking
Does this partnership drive long-term growth?
Does it make the product more valuable or more discoverable?
Does it align with our ideal users’ needs and workflows?
You don't want to merely add users, you want momentum.
Operationally, it means a lot of meetings and convincing.
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Ok that was a long one today.
Next up: Bringing it all together. how I will dig into how you can orchestrate sales, marketing, and partnerships into a cohesive GTM strategy.
Cheers
Andy
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