You Can’t Hold BD Accountable for Revenue Without Investing in Relationships
I’ve lived on both sides of the table — as the BD Director fighting for time with sponsors and as the executive reviewing the pipeline, wondering why momentum feels slower than it should.
We tell BD Directors to build relationships, but we measure them only on revenue. And when those two forces collide, the wrong behaviors win.
And if we’re serious about building successful sales organizations, we have to give BD Directors and their leaders the tools, structure, and support to make that possible. Expecting results without investment isn’t leadership — it’s wishful thinking.
The Pressure Cooker
Every BD Director I know lives under constant tension.
Their calendar says “hit targets,” but their success depends on trust.
They’re chasing quarterly numbers in an industry where deal cycles can stretch months — even years. They’re asked to forecast outcomes for relationships that are barely taking shape. And they’re balancing genuine connection with the internal noise of dashboards, metrics, and meetings that don’t always reflect reality.
The result? A culture where the work that creates revenue is often invisible — until it’s too late.
The Leadership Blind Spot
This isn’t a people problem. It’s a design problem.
I’ve seen this play out firsthand.
One client had a BD Director who was intelligent, confident with customers, and genuinely hardworking. But the founder — a visionary who had never led a sales team — didn’t know how to guide him. Without a seasoned sales leader to set direction or coach through challenges, both struggled.
It became the blind leading the blind — not because of effort, but because the organization lacked the framework and leadership experience to translate potential into performance.
On the flip side, I’m also working with a client that understands the importance of investing in leadership and structure. The company’s president came up through sales himself, but he recognizes the benefit of bringing in an independent advisor to support his Head of Sales as both a strategic partner and mentor.
They’ve set ambitious growth targets for 2026, and rather than waiting for gaps to appear, they’re proactively building the systems and strategy to meet them. My role isn’t to do the work for him — it’s to help him prioritize strategic initiatives, develop an actionable sales strategy for 2026, and grow as a leader who can scale the team effectively.
It’s not a cheap fractional engagement, but they understand something many leaders don’t: you have to spend money where money is needed.
Most organizations haven’t built systems that show the progress between “new contact” and “new contract.” So leadership ends up managing from incomplete data — assuming nothing’s happening when, in reality, BD momentum is building quietly behind the scenes.
That blind spot doesn’t stop with sponsor relationships. It often shows up inside the company itself — between BD teams selling different products or services. When those teams don’t collaborate or share insight, sponsors receive fragmented messages that weaken credibility instead of building trust.
When we only measure dollars closed, we miss the story that actually predicts them — the story of relationships built, trust earned, and credibility gained.
Building Dashboards That Reflect Reality
When I led BD teams, the turning point came when we built dashboards that finally reflected the work behind the win.
Suddenly, we could see relationship velocity — not just deal value — and that changed how leadership coached, forecasted, and prioritized.
But dashboards alone don’t fix the problem.
The key is setting clear expectations early — what success looks like, what should be tracked, and how progress will be evaluated. Then the leader has to stay close to that process.
When leadership takes time to review those metrics regularly, provide feedback, and offer support where needed, BD Directors feel guided — not micromanaged. Skip that step, and you risk disenfranchising your best people. They start to feel like they’re spinning their wheels, doing all the right things, but getting nowhere.
The Challenger Truth
The best leaders I know build frameworks that measure the health of their relationships, not just the size of their deals.
Because when your dashboards reflect reality, your BD team feels trusted, accountable, and empowered.
And here’s the part too many leaders overlook:
New — and larger — deals come when the right relationships are in place. Leadership carries the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that BD is creating those relationships, nurturing them, and connecting them back to company strategy.
If we want to build a successful sales organization, we have to invest in the systems, tools, and coaching that make that possible.
We owe it to the people we’ve hired to set them up for success.
If we’re not willing to invest in this aspect of running a company — especially in the clinical research industry, where trust and credibility drive opportunity — then we have to accept the reality that our BD teams may not hit the targets we’ve created, or the commitments we’ve made to our investors.
When that alignment exists — between leadership expectations and BD enablement — growth stops feeling random and starts feeling repeatable.
What Should Be Measured (But Rarely Is)
If you want a clearer view of progress, your CRM should capture relationship momentum — not just activity. Start with metrics like:
New senior-level contacts added (Senior Director, VP, and C-suite titles)
New or reactivated accounts within target sponsor categories
Last meaningful conversation with senior decision-makers
Follow-up consistency and cadence over time
Cross-functional collaboration — where BD initiated or influenced operational engagement, or collaborated across different BD teams within the same company selling complementary products or services
New opportunities created, deals won, and revenue closed — because revenue is the outcome, not the management system
Internal collaboration is often the missing piece. When BD teams working on different lines of business share insights and coordinate outreach, sponsors start seeing a unified brand — not competing voices.
When your CRM tracks these, you finally see the inputs that lead to revenue — not just the outputs that confirm it.
Coaching Through the C.L.A.R.E.™ Lens
This is where leadership matters most.
Bold leaders use data as a conversation starter — not a weapon.
They Communicate proactively through regular reviews.
They Listen across roles to understand what’s working.
They Align on expectations so BD knows what “good” looks like.
They Respond clearly with coaching and support.
And they Execute consistently so the team feels progress, not pressure.
That’s how you turn metrics into momentum.
The truth is, business development leaders can’t drive sustainable growth if the organization doesn’t align around clear communication, shared expectations, and consistent execution. These principles form the foundation of my C.L.A.R.E.™ Framework—a practical model for leading with clarity and accountability across commercial and operational teams.
Ready to Build?
At ACG-Clinical, I help founders and commercial leaders design BD strategies and CRM frameworks that measure what actually matters — relationship momentum, not just deal math.
Because the right data doesn’t just show results; it builds confidence.
👉 Contact me here to talk about how to build a stronger, smarter BD organization for 2026 and beyond.