Business development is the key to increasing an organization’s long-term revenue and value for its customers. Implementing effective business development strategies will help you grow and stand out from your competitors.

Conversely, making mistakes in any stage of business development can have a negative impact on your company’s success. Here, the members of Forbes Business Development Council share 14 common mistakes companies make in their biz dev strategies, and what you should be doing instead.

1. Excluding Teams From The Strategic Planning Process

When leadership fails to include their teams in the process of building a business development strategy, it weakens their ability to drive teams to execute against the plan. When voices feel heard and employees feel that they have had a direct impact on the creation of a strategy, they're more motivated to deliver against it. In other words, stop telling people what to do. Collaboration equals motivation. - Jessica McDowell, SYNNEX Corporation

2. Trying To Take Networking Shortcuts

Many think they can create a targeted contact list, send an email and magically get results. But there is no fast path to network-building. We buy from people we trust, so invest in developing relationships with company alumni, former clients, coworkers, the local business community, contract and service partners—and keep engaging with them. Building trusted relationships won’t happen overnight! - Maryann Gallivan, Tunnell Consulting

3. Ignoring The Data

A common mistake is not using data to guide the strategy but this is essential to transforming organizational culture! Data is central to any business and organizations have to build a strong data-management function in order to achieve it. Organizations that have invested in data people need to focus on data strategy because data has value and can be used for reporting/analytics, leading to better decision making. - Soner Baburoglu, SmartOpt

4. Not Giving Sales Reps A Specific Focus

Many fail to realize that certain sales representatives should only be focused on high income-producing aspects, whereas newer lower-level sales reps should be focused on prospecting, qualifying and follow up. This structure leads to more predictable revenue and less burnout from sales reps. This tiered strategy is how many business development departments are able to scale quickly. - Karlton Dennis, Karla Dennis and Associates

Business development is the key to increasing an organization’s long-term revenue and value for its customers. Implementing effective business development strategies will help you grow and stand out from your competitors.

Conversely, making mistakes in any stage of business development can have a negative impact on your company’s success. Here, the members of Forbes Business Development Council share 14 common mistakes companies make in their biz dev strategies, and what you should be doing instead.

When leadership fails to include their teams in the process of building a business development strategy, it weakens their ability to drive teams to execute against the plan. When voices feel heard and employees feel that they have had a direct impact on the creation of a strategy, they're more motivated to deliver against it. In other words, stop telling people what to do. Collaboration equals motivation. - Jessica McDowell, SYNNEX Corporation

5. Underestimating The Time Business Propositions Will Take

The No. 1 mistake in my opinion is to underestimate the time that designing and implementing a business proposition may take. It's a recipe for blowing up budgets, demotivating teams, losing track of the goals and in a small company, running out of money. - Olivier Jarry, DarioHealth Corp.

6. Not Developing A Customer Success Framework

Setting up a sales team without having a deep-rooted customer success framework is the biggest set up for failure. Business growth strategy depends on the entire company's ability to empathize, curate and deliver a value-driven partnership. Getting quick sales wins and getting locked in the illusion of success it can bring is the foundation of being obsolete. - Ali Zaman, Confiz

7. Not Listening To The Market

Understanding why you win or lose deals is paramount to shaping your go-to-market strategy and all things that support it down to the priority of product development. Why you think you won or lost may not be the reason. Ask, evaluate and adjust if need be. - Joe Hipsky, iraLogix

8. Trying To Pitch Straight To The Top

A lot of companies try to shoot to the top person in charge right away. There is absolutely nothing wrong with working your way through the organization. Most of the time, the executives are able to make the best choices by leaning on their employees and trusting their judgments. Don’t skip over the pennies to get right to the dime. Develop the business. - Jeremy Snell, Capital Sand Proppants 

9. Only Focusing On The Latest And Greatest

A common mistake when developing business development strategies is to focus on the latest and greatest, expecting that clients will respond how you would. Instead, take the time to work with your existing clients to find out what strategies work best for them and then develop your business development strategy from there. - Jan Dubauskas, Healthinsurance.com 

10. Adding Tons Of Sales Reps At Once

More is not always best. I see many organizations try to grow revenue via massive sales rep additions. Adding headcount doesn't always generate revenue as planned and may lead to efficiency struggles. The incremental revenue increases don't come close to new hire investments. To assure better productivity (output/input), leverage the commercial ratio of revenue growth/sales and marketing investment. - Tom Pisello, Mediafly

11. Skipping Steps In The Process

Speeding up the process or skipping one or many steps is a mistake. Planning looks great on paper, but when implementation starts, we tend to want results very quickly. This makes management interfere with the workstreams process and influence by pushing for quicker results. My suggestion is to have checkpoints and objectives per workstream and map out the prerequisites on each stage. - David Mahbub, Field Agent

12. Implementing 'One And Done' Training

Companies need to remember that change is a process, not an event. Effective sales training is essential to business development, but too often companies implement “one and done” sales training. Use reinforcement and coaching to make sure the enthusiasm and excitement doesn’t fade after the sales training session and that the investment pays off in terms of productivity and sales success. - Julie Thomas, ValueSelling Associates

13. Taking Too Long To Demonstrate The Value

The business model has to be simple and the value has to be crystal-clear for all involved parties. Otherwise, when it scales, it won't get the buy-in of additional stakeholders who take part. If it takes too many slides to explain and relies on too many assumptions, it probably won't crank smoothly. It has to click instantly for the audience that hears about it for the first time. - Claudio Yamashita, SS&C Intralinks

14. Overcomplicating Your Operations

Businesses overcomplicate matters by onboarding five different CMS/CRM platforms or developing incredibly detailed biz dev plans and quotas before a sale is made. When you're just starting out, keep it simple. Identify and call on your niche market en masse. You can evolve into more complex solutions when and if your situation calls for it. - Jacob Dearstyne, Optizmo.com