Business Development

Working in Business Development is about building relationships with clients and partners.

The core responsibility of business development is growing and improving the business. Business development isn’t just about short-term gains. It aims for sustainable growth and success over the long haul. This means assessing risks, considering scalability, and ensuring that growth is manageable and consistent.

Jersey is a destination of choice for a wide range of financial and professional services organisations including banks, corporate services firms, fintech’s, fund/trust administrators, investment managers to name the few. Each will have a business development team/department responsible for growth of these organisations.

As a result, there is a wide variety of business development career opportunities. Roles can include:

• Business Development Executive/Manager
• Sales Executive
• Marketing and Business Development Officer
• Portfolio Manager

Because the industry is so diverse, there are a wide range of professional qualifications that can be gained depending on which career path you choose. These may include:

• A relevant degree
• The Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM)
• The Institute of Sales Management (ISM)
• The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)

Your soft skills will be important to succeeding in a career in business development. We asked finance firms in Jersey what skills they are most looking for when hiring business development professionals and they responded:

• Building, managing, and leveraging relationships that are based on trust, respect, and a mutual appreciation of each other’s value is fundamental to enabling the flow of value for the long-term
• Emotional intelligence has been identified as one of the key traits in business development. Emotions, particularly, play a crucial role in how we communicate, collaborate, and make decisions
• Breaking down goals/objectives into actionable steps is critical
• In a constantly changing business environment, resilience aligns with your goals of growth, innovation, and continuous evolution when it comes to business development
• Time Management
• The ability to sell products and services
• The ability to use your initiative
• Excellent networking skills
• The ability to think strategically
• Negotiation and persuasion skills