Corporate development executives are incredibly vital professionals at a corporation who tend to be responsible for taking strategic decisions focuses on business growth and restructuring. According to Steven Rindner, the main focus of these professionals usually is on establishing strategic partnerships and achieving organizational excellence. Steven is a business and corporate development executive with a broad background in business development across a number of industries including media, technology, real estate services, and healthcare. His vast experience in the domain has provided him with a good insight into the role of corporate development executives.
The purpose of corporate development is to create opportunities for the firm with the help of diverse actions like divestitures, mergers and acquisitions, as well as deals that leverage the value of the business platform of the company. Steven Rindner points out that corporate development is largely needed by a firm to create and execute innovative strategies that shall help them harness its competitive advantage and ultimately improve their financial and operating performance. The corporate development executives of any organization must put emphasis on fostering long-term relationships with new as well as existing stake holders, while trying to improve profitability through strategic planning and forecasting.
To carry out their tasks dutifully, corporate development executives need to have certain important skills and qualities. Here are some of them as underlined by Steven Rindner:
- Communication skills: One of the key responsibilities of corporate development executives involves having the capability to communicate clearly and efficiently with discerning stakeholders. These professionals must try to develop a rapport with their diverse stakeholders across a company to make sure of the smooth operations and maximum profitability of the firm. In addition to speaking, communication skills also involve listening, understanding, and asking questions to provide appropriate solutions.
- Negotiation skills: A great aspect of corporate development involves convincing the stakeholders about the ideal strategic steps to take for the progress of the company and identifying the best investment opportunities for them. Corporate development executives should be tactful when dealing with all parties, especially the investors. They must try to be as diplomatic, yet convincing as possible during their interactions, thereby ensuring the solution swings their way
- Project management: Corporate development executives have to undertake and manage a number of vital projects, each of them having their distinctive goals, targets, costs, budgets, deadlines, and teams working to complete it. These professionals hence must have the capability to both manage and monitor these tasks, to get the most efficient results possible.
- Analytical and problem-solving skills: Not all business projects sail smoothly, in fact, many of the major ones tend to be wrought with challenges. Corporate development executives should competently foresee and identify any problems that a project may encounter, and go on to analyzing the problem from different perspectives and provide the best possible solution.
The skills underlined above can go a long way in helping corporate development executives to succeed.