A slowdown in business development is a signal. It invites reflection.
Yet many SME leaders respond by accelerating their initiatives: launching a new website, increasing their LinkedIn activity, joining another business network, investing in advertising, and so on.
These actions may be useful. But they rarely address the first question leaders should ask themselves:
Which growth levers, given our limited resources, are most likely to generate sustainable business development?
After all, before taking action, you need to know where to focus your efforts.
The Trap of Dispersion
When an SME wants to grow its revenue, several options are available: acquiring new clients, entering new markets, launching new services, building partnerships, or increasing customer retention.
All of these options are valid.
But they cannot all be pursued with the same intensity at the same time.
Every choice consumes valuable resources: time, money, energy, and management attention. And these resources are limited. Spreading them too thin weakens the impact of every initiative.
The first step in a business development strategy is therefore not to multiply actions. It is to identify the most relevant sources of growth and then select the levers that are best suited to support them.
Not All Levers Create the Same Value
Once growth opportunities have been identified, the next challenge is choosing the right levers.
Some produce quick results but little lasting impact. Others gradually build long-term assets. The question is not whether a lever is “good” or “bad” — they all have their place.
The real question is how they fit into your strategy.
Take a conference or trade show, for example. They can generate leads and revenue in the short term, but their impact often ends when the event is over.
By contrast, thought leadership articles, SEO, or a network of trusted referral partners take time to develop, but they continue creating value long after the initial effort.
A useful way to think about business development levers is through two dimensions: short-term impact and long-term value:
Lever | Short-term impact | Long-term impact |
Conferences | High | Low |
Trade shows | High | Low |
Networking | Moderate | Moderate |
Client Referrals | Moderate | High |
SEO | Low | High |
Thought leadership articles | Low | High |
Referral partnerships | Moderate | High |
Paid advertising | High | Low |
The purpose of this framework is not to tell you what to do.
It is to encourage you to ask a more strategic question:
Where are you investing today? And where should you invest if your goal is sustainable business development?
Assets such as SEO, content, client references, and referral networks do not always generate immediate results.
What makes them strategic is that they gradually increase the probability of future business development.
A Business Development Strategy Does Not Need to Be Certain
No one knows the future.
A strong business development strategy does not need certainty. It needs to be:
- Coherent: the selected levers reinforce one another;
- Explicit: everyone understands the priorities;
- Testable: progress can be measured and adjusted over time.
A Common Situation in B2B Service SMEs
I recently worked with the founder of a service-based SME whose expertise was widely recognized.
The company already had many strengths: strong references, an excellent reputation, a professional website, an active LinkedIn presence, and participation in several business communities.
Yet business development remained difficult to predict.
The question was no longer:
“What else should we do?”
It had become:
“Among everything we are already doing, what is truly contributing to business development? And where should we focus more of our resources?”
In other words:
Which levers genuinely support our business development strategy, and which ones are simply creating noise?
Before Levers Comes Clarity
Before discussing levers, another question often deserves attention: Is the company sufficiently clear about the value it brings to its clients?
If the positioning is unclear, no lever will solve the problem.
This is why clarity is often the first business development lever. We explored this topic in our previous article: When Expertise Is No Longer Enough: Why Some SMEs Struggle to Accelerate Their Business Development.
Conclusion
When business development slows down, the temptation is to launch yet another initiative.
Yet the SMEs that grow sustainably are not necessarily those that do the most. They are often those that know where to focus their limited resources.
The question is therefore not only: “What more can we do?”
It is also: “What will we choose to do — and not do?”
Sustainable business development does not come from doing more and more. It comes from strategic thinking, followed by coherent choices pursued consistently over time.
If these questions resonate with you, discover how our solution InsideEdge helps SMEs clarify their business development strategy, prioritize their efforts, and build the assets that drive long-term growth.