What is business development?
Business development (often shortened to biz dev, or new business in agencies) covers everything a company does to open new doors: finding prospective clients or partners, starting conversations, answering briefs, pitching, negotiating and turning a first project into a long relationship. In an agency it is the engine room of growth. In a brand it can also mean partnerships, licensing, new markets and new channels.
It sits between sales and strategy. Sales closes a defined offer. Business development decides which offers to make, to whom, and which relationships are worth years of patience before they produce anything.
Why it matters
Why business development matters
Every agency is one lost client away from a bad year. Business development is the insurance: a steady flow of conversations means the agency can choose its work instead of accepting whatever arrives. Done well, it also shapes the business. The clients you pursue decide the work you make, and the work you make decides which clients come next.
Done badly, it turns into volume. An agency that pitches for everything spends its best people on decks for clients it will never win, and the existing clients notice the attention drifting.
In practice
How business development works in practice
- 01
It starts with focus. The strongest business development picks a lane (an industry, a kind of problem, a kind of client) and becomes known in it, so that a share of new work arrives by referral before anyone goes looking. From there it is a pipeline: prospects identified, introductions made, a first meeting, a brief, a proposal or a pitch, a first project. Each stage is written down, because a pipeline that lives in someone's head is mostly imagined.
- 02
The work after the first project is the part most agencies under-invest in. Growing an existing relationship, by doing the first job exceptionally and then being useful beyond it, is cheaper and more reliable than winning a new one. That is why business development and account management are usually run by the same people in a small agency.
At RIOT
Business development at RIOT
Our business development is led by the work and by the founder. RIOT is an independent creative agency and production studio, founded by a creative director who is still in the pitch, on set and in the edit, so the person you meet in a first conversation is the person who will make the film. Our longest relationship grew that way: more than a decade with Coach, running from campaigns and sizzle reels to Coachtopia and the Cannes Lions 2026 recap film. When someone new arrives with a brief, we scope it first and come back with a plan and a number within a couple of business days.
Watch out
What people get wrong about business development
Treating it as a department separate from the work. Prospects can tell the difference between a salesperson describing an agency and a maker describing their own work, and they buy the second. The other mistake is only doing it when the pipeline is empty. Business development is a slow cycle, and the conversation that becomes a project next spring has to start this fall.
