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Business development director skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025

6 min read

Quoted experts

Jonathan Byers,

Adegoke Oke Ph.D.

Business development director example skills

Below we've compiled a list of the most critical business development director skills. We ranked the top skills for business development directors based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 8.8% of business development director resumes contained healthcare as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a business development director needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 business development director skills for your resume and career

1. Healthcare

Healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of a person's health by the diagnosis and treatment of a person's injury, illness, or any other disease. Healthcare is a basic necessity of human life and is the responsibility of the country's government to ensure that each person gets healthcare. Providing healthcare is the job of certified health professionals that includes doctors, surgeons, nurses, and other physicians. Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, dentistry, therapy, and health training all come under healthcare. Healthcare plays a vital role in the country's economy and its development.

Here's how business development directors use healthcare:

Key channel contracts won include: HP Global HealthCare division & Eagle.
Identified ancillary service opportunities, including joint ventures and medical directorships in order to increase referral volume to Community Healthcare Systems.

2. CRM

CRM stands for Customer relationship management and it is a complete process through which a business or organization monitors and administers its interactions with the customers. A process in which large amounts of data are collected through marketing via a company's website, polls, surveys, and other social media applications. The basic goal of CRM is to target the right audience for their product, and then fulfill their needs, to increase the sales and revenue of the company.

Here's how business development directors use crm:

Managed network services, e-ticketing and packaging solutions, CRM solutions, message management, and e-provisioning/identity management/security solutions.
Established, implemented and maintained Microsoft Dynamics CRM for project/client tracking, detailed monthly reporting and task oriented responsibilities.

3. Patients

Here's how business development directors use patients:

Led centralized, electronic referral center coordinating post-acute service needs of patients discharging from multiple acute facilities in Arizona region.
Restructured solutions with new marketing strategy and elements, highlighting competitive advantages and value proposition for collaborators and patients.

4. Customer Relationships

Customer relationships are the interactions and efforts made by a company to improve its customer service. Customer relationships cover not just all of the essential roles performed by customer support, but also the initiatives made before and after the interaction with a customer.

Here's how business development directors use customer relationships:

Build key customer relationships; identify business opportunities and new partnerships for four office locations, supporting five different divisions.
Strengthen customer relationships and create strategic business alliances to improve image, recognition and promote optimal growth and development.

5. Account Management

The process of strengthening the relationship between a company and client is called account management. Effective account management has two key objectives, one is to retain loyal customers and the second one is to help the company grow by creating connections with new customers.

Here's how business development directors use account management:

Reported directly to founders with responsibility for business and product development, account management, sales/marketing and liaison relations.
Directed the hiring, training and performance evaluations for implementation and account management staff and supervised their daily activities.

6. Project Management

Here's how business development directors use project management:

Launched multiple websites including a novel project management system consolidating all request for quotes, company-wide correspondences, and cost/labor tracking.
Managed corporate accounts and improved performance for clients in the project management, business analysis and leadership development space.

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7. Client Relationships

Here's how business development directors use client relationships:

Assisted with writing proposals, preparing qualification packages, preparing client presentations, and developed strong internal and external client relationships.
Developed and grew new client relationships and provided key recommended course of action support for numerous go-to- market strategy consulting engagements.

8. Sales Process

Here's how business development directors use sales process:

Improved sales process by following an effective demonstration of sales process/methodology: identify buying criteria, eliminate objections and develop solutions.
Transformed business by introducing formal sales processes and customer relationship management practices improving customer retention rate to by 18%.

9. Customer Service

Customer service is the process of offering assistance to all the current and potential customers -- answering questions, fixing problems, and providing excellent service. The main goal of customer service is to build a strong relationship with the customers so that they keep coming back for more business.

Here's how business development directors use customer service:

Developed winning proposal to help a client organization raise customer service in a key operational area via innovative new patient programs.
Elevated customer service sales department into a business development team that proactively identified growth opportunities worth $1.2MM in incremental revenue.

10. Business Relationships

Here's how business development directors use business relationships:

Developed meaningful business relationships at client sites with C-level executives, senior management, and key physicians by delivering on expectations.
Develop and maintain ongoing C-Suite and leadership business relationships with current and new customers while identifying and facilitating future sales opportunities.

11. Lead Generation

Here's how business development directors use lead generation:

Contribute to lead generation and referral development through in-service presentations, compelling promotional campaigns and sponsorship in community events.
Managed all strategic relationships both domestically and internationally and created new lead generation processes by identifying affiliate marketing relationships.

12. Market Trends

Here's how business development directors use market trends:

Identified and understood the strategic market trends and regulatory directives for security services, and solutions for securing critical infrastructures.
Monitored financial market trends to ensure that Business Development plans are effective and to identify any necessary updates.

13. Revenue Growth

Here's how business development directors use revenue growth:

Developed and implemented plans for strategic accounts that exceeded expectations in revenue growth, account profitability, and customer satisfaction.
Achieved 18% revenue growth by combining principles of account penetration and newly-developed price models to support organizational pricing initiatives.

14. Salesforce

Salesforce is an American cloud-based software company based in San Francisco, California. This company provides customer relationship management services that enable the customers to be closer to the company. It gives the company detailed information about each customer, including marketing, sales, commerce, and services. Salesforce also helps market a product to attract more buyers, and helps win more customers by targeting the right audience.

Here's how business development directors use salesforce:

Improved sales performance and identified strategic opportunities through the evaluation of standardized SalesForce pipeline review across regions and business segments.
Implemented sales automation infrastructure (SalesForce.com).

15. Business Development

Business development is the ideas or initiatives that work to make business work better. Selling, advertising, product development, supply chain management, and vendor management are only a few of the divisions involved with it. There is still a lot of networking, negotiating, forming alliances, and trying to save money. The goals set for business development guide and coordinate with all of these various operations and sectors.

Here's how business development directors use business development:

Supported formation and implementation of decentralized business development organization.
Managed Services-focused business development responsibilities.

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What skills help Business Development Directors find jobs?

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What skills stand out on business development director resumes?

Jonathan Byers

Assistant Director, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

- Professional skills related to career development competencies such as strong oral & written communication, teamwork & collaboration, leadership, problem-solving ability & creativity, and professional integrity, but we recommend that applicants do not just list these skills. They should provide evidence of how they have used them in their work experience, volunteer experience, academic experience, etc.
-The ability to use technology effectively to solve problems or improve collaboration; this could relate to social media management, computer hardware or software skills, proficiency with general programs like Microsoft Office Suite (also being able to demonstrate the use of these skills in various experiences).
-With diversity, equity, and inclusion becoming more important in 2020, the ability to appreciate different points of view, accept and appreciate different cultural backgrounds & types of identities, and increased awareness of one's own cultural biases and assumptions can also be important to market on a resume.

What soft skills should all business development directors possess?

Adegoke Oke Ph.D.

Professor of Supply Chain Management, Arizona State University

In general, people skills: leadership, effective communication and negotiation skills, the ability to work effectively with people in different cultures and in a team environment.

What hard/technical skills are most important for business development directors?

Adegoke Oke Ph.D.

Professor of Supply Chain Management, Arizona State University

Data analytics skills are currently in high demand, so is understanding the impact of emerging technologies and digitization on business

What business development director skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Kaustav Misra Ph.D.

Associate Dean, Central Connecticut State University

This pandemic taught us many things and one important thing that we have an efficiency gap.

The way of doing business will be much more technology orientated. Hence graduates should be ready to unskill and upskill their credentials. This time it is necessary to forget the old way of doing business and learn new skills to get a job or stay in a current job. Soft skills have become much more important than before, but a different soft skill set would be essential to interact with future market participants. Thus, a gap year should be utilized to unskill-upskill and enhance relevant credentials by getting into short-long term programs, training, and workshops would be highly recommended.

What type of skills will young business development directors need?

Michael Mikitka

Executive Vice President, MHI – Material Handling Industry

Courses and internships are essential. While the required depth of knowledge may vary from one position to another, employers are generally looking for candidates with strong "people-related" skills, those who are willing to continue to learn, and those with the ability to be flexible and adapt.

By "people-related" skills, I mean the abilities associated with effective communication (listen and express ideas and direction) and the skills related to working independently and a team.

As for the interest to continually learn... from a technology, data, and equipment perspective, today's supply chain looks very different than it did 10-years ago. The willingness and ability to continually learn are essential for anyone in a leadership role.

As for flexibility and adapting...supply chain/logistics is as much about responding to disruption and demand as it is planning for it. There is a predictable demand (i.e., seasonal...everyone knows when back-to-school shopping begins). Then there is the unpredictable demand (i.e., power-outages, wildfires, pandemic) that impact market and the ability to operate. Candidates that express flexibility and problem-solving skills will be much sought-after.

What technical skills for a business development director stand out to employers?

Todd Lee Goen

Instructor & Internship Director, Christopher Newport University

Technical skills are often industry and/or position specific. Applicants should highlight any technical skills related to the position advertisement and those that add value to the position/organization. Most importantly, requirements for technical skills change with time and technological advances. This means employers value workers capable of adapting to change and continually improving and acquiring new technical skills. Thus, it's usually more important to demonstrate you are capable of learning and developing technical skills than it is to have a specific skill set upon hire (although this is not true for some positions/industries).
That said, technical skills related to online presentations, virtual meetings, virtual networking, remote working and the like are hot commodities right now. While most organizations were in the process of adopting many of these technologies and ways of doing business pre-pandemic, the pandemic accelerated the process. Organizations are making it work, but they often don't know best practices or the most efficient means of working in the largely virtual, pandemic environment. Post-pandemic, many of the remote/virtual changes the pandemic brought will stay in some form. Technical skills that support this type of workplace will make applicants stand out to many employers because they need/want to do virtual/remote business better.

Do you want to know more?

List of business development director skills to add to your resume

The most important skills for a business development director resume and required skills for a business development director to have include:

Healthcare
CRM
Patients
Customer Relationships
Account Management
Project Management
Client Relationships
Sales Process
Customer Service
Business Relationships
Lead Generation
Market Trends
Revenue Growth
Salesforce
Business Development
Sales Strategies

Strategic Partnerships
Value Proposition
Direct Sales
Excellent Interpersonal
Digital Marketing
Business Plan
Market Research
RFP
Market Analysis
Sales Pipeline
Client Facing
Pharmaceutical Industry
Excellent Organizational
Strong Analytical
Customer Satisfaction
Product Line

HR
Trade Shows
C-Suite
Strategic Plan
Telemarketing
Due Diligence
C-Level
Sales Efforts
Facebook
Product Development
Real Estate
Saas
Lead Qualification
Proposal Development
DOD
OEM

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

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