Business Development — Growing Your For-Profit or Nonprofit
Organization

Whether your organization is a for-profit or nonprofit, you
have to address certain considerations and make certain decisions
if you set out to intentionally expand — or grow — your organization,
products and/or services. You can grow your organization, products
and/or services just by managing them well, for example, by having
very good products and services that are sold with strong sales
and customer service. However, this topic in the Library is for
those with an explicit goal to intentionally grow the organization,
product or service.

Notes About Terms:

The phrase business development is so common and broad
in nature that it means many different things to many different
people. In this Library topic, the phrase means growing — or
expanding — an organization, product and/or service, including
by starting a new product or service, if necessary.
The phrase “business development” traditionally
does not refer to starting a new organization. For information
relevant to that activity, see Entrepreneurs — Are You Really Ready to Start
a New Venture?, Starting
a Business or Starting a Nonprofit.
The term “development” could mean strengthening,
rather than expanding, the organization, products or services.
However, business development traditionally has not meant primarily
the process of strengthening; rather, it’s meant growth or expansion.
Certainly, many people would agree that it’s more important
to be sustainable than to grow (although growth could be done,
but sustainably). For those people, see the topic Organizational Sustainability.
Although the guidelines in this section apply to growing
an organization, product or service, the term “organization”
is used to apply to either of these three — this is to avoid
tedious duplication of terms throughout this topic.

Sections of This Topic Include

Understanding Life Cycles of Organizations,
Products and Services
Deciding Whether to Grow or Not
Evaluate Your Organization — What Are
You Starting From? What Do You Need to Fix First?
Growing Your Organization — Are You Personally
Ready?
Typical Challenges in Growing
General Advice to Grow Your Organization
Getting Professional Help
Planned Growth — Strategic and Business
Planning
Planned Growth — Organizational Change
and Development (Managing Change)
Ways to Grow — Organizational Alliances
Ways to Grow — Buying a Franchise
Ways to Grow — Buying a Business
Ways to Grow a Product and/or Market Development
You May Need to Increase Staff
Leading and Supervising Staff, and Managing
Resources
Financing Growth

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Understanding Life Cycles of Organizations, Products and Services

Organizations go through certain life cycles just like other
systems, including people, plants and animals. When setting out
to intentional grow, it really helps organizational leaders to
understand the nature of each of these cycles and the challenges
in moving from one cycle to another. When reading the following
articles, think about what life cycle your organization, product
or service is in.
Find Your Business Life Cycle
Basic
Overview of Life Cycles of Organizations
Founder’s
Syndrome — How Organizations Suffer — and Can Recover

Deciding Whether to Grow or Not

There are certain considerations that must be made when deciding
whether to grow or not — you don’t have to grow it if you don’t
want to.
To Grow or Not to Grow

How to Expand Without Losing Your Indie Culture
Are
You Ready to Grow Your Business?

Evaluate Your Organization — What Are You Starting From?
What Do You Need to Fix First?

Before you start major activities to grow your organization,
you should first get a realistic impression of how your organization
is doing now. There are a variety of tools that you can use to
get a quick impression.
Organizational
Assessments (For-Profit)
Organizational
Assessments (Nonprofit)

Growing Your Organization — Are You Personally Ready?

There are certain considerations about yourself that also must be made when
deciding whether to grow your organization or not — again, you don’t have to
grow it if you don’t want to.
Are
You Personally Ready to Start a New Venture?
Taking Risks: Your Attitude Toward Business Growth
33 Small Ways to Expand Your Comfort Zone

Typical Challenges in Growing

Organizations often face the same types of challenges when growing. Organizational
leaders often face the same types of challenges, as well.
Founder’s Syndrome (founders
sometimes struggle to change themselves)
Getting Over Growing Pains
The Perils of Expansion
Busting
Down the Obstacles to Growth

General Advice to Grow Your Organization

Keep in mind that the following general advice can apply to
nonprofits, as well as for-profits.
3 Ways to Grow Your Business
Alternatives to Hiring Employees
10 Steps to Grow Your Business in a Difficult Economy
How to Scale Up Your Service Business
Don’t Take the Sales Order
10 Tips on How to Get More Clients
Getting that Sales Growth!
Got Structure? Need it?
Marketing’s the Engine of a Growing Company
Are you an Innovator, an Entrepreneur, or a Manager?
The Data-Backed Secret to Sales Growth
Gain Insight – Get a Board

Getting Professional Help

There are many sources of help, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.
Many of these sources are the same as those for helping you to start a business.
This link is to many free sources of help.
Free
Help to Start a Business

If you hire a consultant, the following link may be useful.
All About Consulting
– Types, Skills and Approaches

Lastly, you might need an account and lawyer, for example, to review contracts.
Getting
an Accountant
Getting
a Lawyer

Planned Growth — Strategic and Business Planning

One of the best ways to carefully think through how you want
to grow your organization, product or service is through the use
of business planning — many people might refer to this as business
development planning to produce a Business Development Plan. Business
planning applies to for-profits and nonprofits (in the case of
nonprofits, business planning is sometimes associated with Social
Enterprise.) (Many people believe that strategic planning
should focused on the entire organization, while business planning
should be focused on a particular product or service — thus,
business planning is repeated in the section, below, about growing
a product or service.)
All About Strategic
Planning
All About Business
Planning
New Business Models in Emerging Markets
Finding the Hidden Gems in Your Business Model

Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents

Significantly developing an organization involves significant organizational
change. Organizations are changing today like never before. Over the last ten
years or so, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of literature
about accomplishing long-lasting successful organizational change.
Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents

Ways to Grow — Organizational Alliances

Another way to grow your organization is to merge with another
organization or form a joint venture.
Organizational
Alliances (collaborations, joint ventures, acquisitions, mergers)

Ways to Grow — Buying a Franchise

In some cases, you may be better off to buy a franchise, that
is, a business strategy and structure that has been proven to
work in other markets and your challenge is to set up your franchise
in your locale. Many people might assert that this is not a form
of business development; rather, it’s entrepreneurship in starting
a new organization.
All
About Franchising

Ways to Grow — Buying a Business

You can also grow your organization by buying another organization,
or one or more of its product lines. Note that a nonprofit typically
cannot be “bought,” as it is owned by the public, not
by individuals or stockholders. Similar to buying a franchise,
many people might assert that this is not a form of business development;
rather, it’s entrepreneurship in starting a new organization.

Buying
a Business

Ways to Grow — Product and/or Market Development

Quite often, the best way to grow an organization is to grow
your markets. For example, organizations can generate revenue
from understanding the Product/Market Grid:

Selling more of the current products to more of the current
customers (customer maximization)
Selling more of the current products to new customers (customer
development)
Selling new products to current customers (product development)
And/to selling new products to new customers (diversification).

Product and
Service Development

You May Need to Increase Staff

The following link is to a collection of well-organized articles
in regard to staffing planning, recruiting, screening applicants,
hiring applicants, training them and managing their performance.
Staffing

Leading and Supervising Staff,
and Managing Resources

Development won’t be successful unless the people in the organization
are successfully led and supervised, and the organization’s resources
are successfully managed.
Leadership
Management
Supervision

Financing Growth

It’s very likely that you’ll need some form of financial assistance from investors
or funders to help fund the growth. Many of the sources of funding to start
a business are those that might fund expansion of a business.
How
to Get Money to Start a Business
Financing and Managing Growth
Fundraising
in For-Profits
Fundraising
in Nonprofits

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Business Development

In addition to the links on this current page, also see the following blogs
that have posts related to Business Development — Building a Business. Scan
down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent
Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near
the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related
resources.

Library’s
Business Planning Blog
Library’s
Building a Business Blog
Library’s
Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
Library’s
Strategic Planning Blog

Business Development — Growing Your For-Profit or Nonprofit Organization