By I am a vice president of business development and marketing at Kona Outdoor. I work with our business development team to assist agencies with their marketing campaigns. We work to build awareness for our clients by creating programs and print materials that promote their programs or businesses.
I have to run to the fridge to grab a coffee or an energy drink, but I’ve been known to enjoy the occasional beer.
I was on a plane when I was talking to the flight attendant and she asked, “Are you okay?” and I said, “I’m fine.” And she said, “I have had a lot worse.” And I said, “You’re kidding me.” And she said, “No I’ve had lots worse,” and I said, “You don’t say.
The plane attendant was on a flight where I was in the seat next to her. That was her second time seeing me on a plane, and the first time I was on a plane where she was in the seat next to me. For her, I was always fine. For me, I was always fine. If we were on a commercial flight, I was fine. If we were on an all-business flight, I was fine.
The same holds true for a lot of the people who work in business development too. I was speaking with a recruiter today who said that this guy whose job it is to help people get hired has had a lot of jobs that he didnt like. This wasn’t a one-on-one conversation, but the hiring manager said, and I paraphrase, that many of the people he had a hard time hiring were people he had a hard time hiring because he had a hard time hiring them.
People who like what they do because they like what they do tend to have a hard time finding jobs they like. There are lots of exceptions to this rule, but the point is that there are people who are perfectly happy with their jobs and would not change them if they could. The job description for a business executive could be “person who is able to make a difference in sales and business development”.
In this case, it’s Vice President of Business Development, and you don’t want to be the VP of Business Development. It’s not because no one’s told you that you have to be a VP of Business Development. It’s because they don’t want you to be a VP of Business Development.
Its because you dont work in a company where the VP of Business Development actually can make a difference in sales and business development. If they could, they would. This is why it’s not a good idea to have a VP of Business Development. This job description is the epitome of a job where you are someone who makes a difference in sales and business development. But because these people arent VP’s of sales, they can’t make a difference in sales and business development.
In fact, what we are seeing is that these people are the ones who are running the store, not the people who actually sell. They are a little behind in sales and business development, so they dont have to worry about sales so much. The fact is, most companies dont have a VP of Business Development. They just have the VP of HR, or the VP of Finance, or the VP of Sales.
The VP of Business Development isn’t really a position at all. It’s more of a title that is bestowed on someone who’s been around for several years. But it’s important because these people can have a major influence on the company’s business, since they’re the ones who’ve been in the business for a while. They are the people who can actually make business decisions.
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