Business development reps have a large impact on a company's bottom line. Individuals in this role must maintain their motivation and zeal for prospecting, building relationships, qualifying leads, and setting appointments.
These factors are directly related to the efforts of the business development team leader. The best leaders in business development play the roles of sales expert, advocate, pipeline builder, and, most importantly, mentor.
These managers are the underrated heroes in sales, so let's recognize a few of the best business development leaders from around the U.S.
How to Be a Great Business Development Leader
Great business development leaders aren't born – they're made. Here are seven ways you can become the best business development leader for your organization.
Inspire Your Team.
As a business development leader, you should do your best to inspire your team. This means you should create a cycle of progression and continuous improvement for your team.
Your business development reps should be inspired to operate at a level 10, as often as they can. You can constantly fine-tune the meaning of a 10 as your team is inspired, grows, and hits goals by setting new objectives.
Provide Playbooks for Your Business Development Reps.
Your sales reps can’t be successful without the right tools, and as a leader, your goal should be to ensure their success. Provide them with playbooks that outline their roles and responsibilities, expectations, and performance metrics.
You’ll also want to include content on your sales processes, buyer personas, market, and messaging. Make sure the playbooks are easy to understand so that everyone can be on the same page.
Define the Right Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
KPIs help your business development reps to stay on track and remain productive. The KPIs you define for them should help them to pay attention to the right processes.
Keep Your Team’s Momentum and Energy High.
Momentum is difficult to keep for business development reps because their tasks can be repetitive. Get to know what motivates your team, then tend to these needs.
For instance, if your team is motivated by incentives and recognition, then focus on finding ways to incorporate this into your leadership strategy.
Be the Voice for Your Team.
As a sales leader, your team members may feel more comfortable approaching you with questions or issues with the organization.
Listen, offer them advice, and then speak on the issues that matter. You’ll gain respect from your team members when you champion their cause.
Focus on Efforts That Offer the Best Chance For Success.
Don’t spend your time or energy focusing on menial things that don’t make a difference to your team’s success. Find the things that make success possible, and focus on that to increase your chance of winning.
This helps to align you with your team because they will see the benefits of what you do directly from the results.
Leverage Your Resources.
People and technology are your most readily available resources. Great business development leaders know how to delegate tasks to their team members so they can get more done for prospects and clients.
Use technology such as sales automation tools to reduce the time you spend doing repetitive tasks throughout the day. You can also use technology such as social media to connect with your clients and prospects to strengthen your relationship with them.
The 24 Best Business Development Leaders for 2024 and Beyond
No matter what industry they are in, the director of business development drives incredible growth for their companies and inspires their teams while doing so.
Here is our list of the 24 best business development leaders to watch in 2024 and a few of their unique accomplishments.
1. Sam Nelson
LinkedIn: Sam Nelson
Twitter: @realSamNelson
Company: SDRLeader, Agoge Sales
Sam Nelson was an SDR leader at Outreach where he managed SDR teams and advised clients on SDR and outbound strategies until he branched out and created SDR Leader. He uses various unique tactics to motivate his team. He even dyed his hair blue once, as promised, when his team met their sales goal. In 2024, he'll be launching Agoge Sales Prospecting School to help organizations' SDR teams train with top talent.
2. Becc Holland
LinkedIn: Becc Holland
Company: Flip the Script
Becc Holland is the CEO and founder of Flip the Script, "sales training, with a twist!". She often has workshops and records YouTube videos to educate and inspire SDRs.
3. Will Polliard
LinkedIn: William Polliard
Company: Bluleadz
As the director of sales, Will Polliard also acts as the business development leader for our in-house business development team at Bluleadz. He leads our team using the most up-to-date sales technology to target leads and conduct effective outreach.
With a strong focus on sales strategy, Will has been able to drive team performance so they bypass gatekeepers to reach decision-makers fast. The result? More appointments and demos for account executives to close.
4. Steven Broudy
LinkedIn: Steven Broudy
Twitter: @stevenbroudy
Company: Instawork
Steven Broudy is a Vice President of Sales at Instawork. He helps to inspire BDR team members to be leaders and to exhibit A+ performance.
Steven's commitment to excellence and growth fuels his passion for leading salespeople.
5. Eric Gonzalez
LinkedIn: Eric Gonzalez
Company: Altium
Eric Gonzalez is a senior account executive at Altium. He is an accomplished sales leader who focuses on sales development strategies and operations
6. John Barrows
LinkedIn: John Barrows
Twitter: @johnmbarrows
Company: JB Sales
John Barrows is the CEO of his own company, JB Sales, and author of I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up. He offers formal academic sales training for motivated sales professionals and corporations completely online. He believes that salespeople need to continue educating themselves to advance their careers.
7. Jeb Blount
LinkedIn: Jeb Blount
Twitter: @salesgravy
Company: SalesGravy
Jeb Blount is an author, keynote speaker, and the CEO of SalesGravy. His company helps businesses to build better sales teams through sales training and enablement for the modern learner.
8. Richard Harris
LinkedIn: Richard Harris
Twitter: @rharris415
Company: The Harris Consulting Group
Richard Harris is a seasoned sales professional with over 20+ years of experience helping startups build their sales teams and sales infrastructure. He is the founder of The Harris Consulting Group that provides training courses, webinars, and podcasts to sales reps so they can qualify leads better and forecast sales accurately.
9. Morgan J. Ingram
LinkedIn: Morgan J. Ingram
Twitter: @morganjingram
Company: Amp
Morgan Ingram is a LinkedIn top sales voice. He is a motivational sales leader that helps sales professionals unlock their potential, while teaching them valuable sales tactics.
10. Max Altschuler
LinkedIn: Max Altschuler
Twitter: @HackitMax
Company: GTMfund
Max is a sales superstar and sales author with three books and investments in several sales companies. He founded Sales Hacker, the popular online publication and media company in 2013, and is now a Founder and General Partner with GTMfund.
11. Kevin Dorsey
LinkedIn: Kevin "KD" Dorsey
Company: Benched Accounting
Kevin Dorsey is a sales leader that focuses on the “person” in salesperson. He looks at what drives behavior and motivation in order to achieve long term success.
Kevin scales sales teams, speaks at conferences across the country, and mentors salespeople.
12. Ian Moyse
LinkedIn: Ian Moyes
Twitter: @imoyse
Company: ChAI
Ian Moyse is a sales leader in the cloud industry with experience as a keynote speaker on social selling and the cloud. He works with the team at ChAI to improve sales baselines and processes to drive more effective and efficient selling.
13. Crystal Stephens
LinkedIn: Crystal Stephens
Company: Atlas
Crystal Stephens is a sales leader who specialties in the B2B space for financial institutions and SaaS companies. She focuses on growing sales leaders and enhancing productivity to create some of the best business development and sales teams around.
14. Trish Bertuzzi
LinkedIn: Trish Bertuzzi
Twitter: @bridgegroupinc
Company: The Bridge Group
Trish Bertruzzi, the author of The Sales Development Playbook, is the CEO and founder of The Bridge Group that helps B2B tech companies to grow the best inside sales teams using key business development tactics.
15. Ralph Barsi
LinkedIn: Ralph Barsi
Twitter: @rbarsi
Company: Kahua
Ralph Barsi is the VP of Global Inside Sales at Kahua, and he is also a Partner at GMTfund. He has over 18 years of experience managing and leading sales teams for global companies.
16. Kristina McMillan
LinkedIn: Kristina McMillan
Twitter: @lifeiterated
Company: Argyle Earth
Kristina McMillan is the former VP of Research at the analyst firm TOPO. She is also the co-founder of Argyle Earth, and works as a GTM advisor for Scale Venture Partners, where she focuses on topics such as B2B GTM trends, sales development, innovative pipeline strategies, sales and marketing technology, and lead generation.
17. Lori Richardson
LinkedIn: Lori Richardson
Twitter: @scoremoresales
Company: Score More Sales
Lori Richardson teaches companies how to solve problems with their sales teams and how to hire top sales talent so they can transform their sales through data and other best practices.
18. Kyle Vamvouris
LinkedIn: Kyle Vamvouris
Twitter: @kylevamvouris
Company: Vouris
Kyle is the author of Amazon bestseller Cold to Committed. He is the CEO of Vouris, a company that trains B2B sales and business development teams so they can schedule more sales meetings.
19. Ben Sardella
LinkedIn: Ben Sardella
Twitter: @bensardella
Company: Adobe
Ben Sardella is the co-founder of Datanyze and OutboundWorks. He helped several popular cloud-based software companies become successful by pioneering the development of a SaaS model for software sales.
He has successfully worked with SaaS companies to help them grow their businesses with inside and outside sales teams domestically and internationally. He now serves as Global Director, Digital Media & GenAI at Adobe!
20. Jill Konrath
LinkedIn: Jill Konrath
Twitter: @jillkonrath
Company: Jill Konrath, What's Really Possible
Jill Konrath is the bestselling author of four sales books and a keynote speaker. She challenges sellers to rethink how they work so she can teach them how to increase sales to drive millions in revenue.
Recently, she started What's Really Possible, a place to get ideas, insights, inspiration, and resources to create a better future as Chief Activator, and is excited to see where it will lead other organizations to grow effectively.
21. Katherine Andruha
LinkedIn: Katherine Andruha
Company: Scale Venture Partners
Katherine is a seasoned Revenue Professional with a proven ability to generate revenue with a higher level of operational excellence. She has held several SDR leadership positions and provides companies with operational excellence that helps them to exceed their sales quotas.
22. Amir Arbabi
LinkedIn: Amir Arbabi
Company: SoundHound
Amir is the Senior Vice President of Business Development at SoundHound, Inc. His experience includes Automotive, IoT, devices, media, consumer, mobile and enterprise. Other areas of expertise include fundraising, investor relations, operations, and legal.
23. Kevin Wagner
LinkedIn: Kevin Wagner
Company: People.ai
Over the course of his career, Kevin has held executive leadership roles in corporate development, business development, product & and technology, sales, and marketing.
Through this broad experience, he's built a strong reputation as a solutions-oriented executive leader with an innate capacity to seamlessly bridge technical, product, business, and strategic domains.
24. Steven Meyers
LinkedIn: Steven Meyers
Company: Babbel
Steven has built and managed diverse teams ranging from two to 50 team members across various marketing functions including organic and paid acquisition (SEM, SEO, Paid Social, Affiliate), Offline Marketing (TV, Radio, Podcast, Direct Mail, OOH), Partnerships, CRM, Brand, Creative, Growth Product, MarTech and Data/Analytics.
As SVP of Growth at Babbel, he continues to lead a major language learning behemoth when it comes to business development management. He also has experience leading teams at WeWork, Starry, and Candid.
Leading with purpose and intention helps all leaders to be successful. Enhance your skills and communication to start boosting your leadership potential.
Read and watch some of the content produced by the leaders on our list to get some inspiration and start accelerating your revenue growth.
Kathryn Bouchard
Kathryn is a Content Marketer at Bluleadz. She graduated from James Madison University with a Master's degree in Political Science and is currently living in Castellon, Spain. From Arlington, VA, she loves to read, run, swim, and study all things legal.