In the field of commerce, the specialist area of business development comprises a number of techniques and responsibilities which aim at gaining new customers and at penetrating existing markets. Techniques used include:

• assessment of marketing opportunities and target markets
• intelligence gathering on customers and competitors
• generating leads for possible sales
• advising on, drafting and enforcing sales policies and processes
• follow-up sales activity
• formal proposal or presentation management and writing
• pitch and presentation rehearsals
• business model design

Business development involves evaluating a business and then realizing its full potential, using such tools as:

• marketing
• information management (sometimes conflated with knowledge management)
• customer service

A sound organization aiming to withstand competitors never stops business developmentFact: date=January 2009, but engages in it as an ongoing process.

Successful business development often requires a multi-disciplinary approach beyond just "a sale to a customer". Some consultantsWho: date=January 2009 frequently recommend a detailed strategy for growing a business in desirable ways, which may involve financial, legal and advertising skills. Business-development practitioners cannot reduce their activities to simple templates applicable to all or even most situations faced by real-world enterprises. Creativity in meeting new and unforeseen challenges may help sustainable growth.

Business-development roles may have one of two modes:

1. sales-oriented (client-facing); or
2. an operational function to support sales.

In a sales role, business development could concentrate on developing strategic-channel relationships or on general sales. This emerges from analysis of the varied job descriptions found in job-search engines, especially in the UK. In the US, the term "capture management" appears as an alternative job or role title, typically used when describing business development as an operational function to support the selling function of a company. The Association of Proposal Management have produced the Capture Management Lifecycle that describes the process in three broad stages:

1. pre-bid phase
2. bid phase
3. post-bid phase

Small to medium-sized companies often do not establish procedures for business development, instead relying on their existing contacts. Or people in such companies may assume that because they know people in high places that this will solve any business-development problems and that somehow new financial transactions will come to them. Such thinking can have significant ramifications if one cannot exploit those relationships, which very oftenFact: date=January 2009 remain personal or weak. Such a situation may result in no new sales in the pipeline.