Austria     Belgium     Brazil     Canada     Denmark     Finland     France     Germany     Hungary     Iceland     Ireland     Italy     Luxembourg     The Netherlands     Norway     Poland     Spain     Sweden     Switzerland     UK     USA     

The Business Developer Friend: The transformation of business development as a result of COVID-19 (Episode 6)

Tokyo will probably enter sports history as the most memorable Olympic Games ever. From a mental point of view, it meant the greatest challenge for both the athletes and the experts preparing them. Therefore, it is not by accident that they sought out new, unique tools and systems for success to achieve results. Of those, one of the most effective was the use of mentors, which I could track personally.

Business Developers in Sports

Many were taken aback even just a few years ago when hearing about business development experts providing services in other fields. Many have attempted to cross-apply the recipes that succeeded in sport to business life, since it is easy for businesspeople to accept team-building exercises if that same methodology was used by a coach to win a world championship or the Olympics, then it surely cannot hurt when supporting the management of a team that is already successful on the market. However, almost without exception, users realised afterwards that the solutions lifted over from sports did not offer any real value, at most served as a novelty in the short term. Or the extra motivation worked, which businesspeople received from the fact that company management was being taught by some famous athlete. The other way around, this didn’t really work, the reason for which, according to successful mentors, is that in contrast to the above, for an athlete, traditional businesspeople, who often don’t even look like they know anything about sports, are not credible sources for supporting their sports successes. Therefore, since there is no reciprocal ideal, the extra motivation is also not present, and the result of the process is just ineffective methodology that has nothing to do with getting to the top. However, if it is possible to get the most out of a group of people in connection with teambuilding and team motivation, then there is an intersection between the two fields, since humans, who need only to be understood and moved towards goals, can be found everywhere. This means that businesspeople had to become idols in the eyes of athletes since this would open their ears to true professional knowledge. In this process, business life, in general, made significant progress in the past decade since presence in sports and a history of playing sports has received a larger emphasis in business life as well, as well as the view that one must be healthy and full of energy if they want to achieve long-term success. For example, it is embarrassing today if a serious businessperson is seen anywhere with a cigarette in hand, even though this used to be the norm in the past. Therefore, business developers received more and more opportunities to adventure into the field of sports and apply their skills there, too.

Speed and Dynamism

Regardless, there are natural differences between sports and business if we are talking about development. Among these, experts mostly highlight speed. In business, even if an owner or management is mostly characterised by aggression, the temporal requirements towards development can never surpass those experienced in the world of sports. Furthermore, the difference is especially significant in the evaluation of professional knowledge if it is proved to be correct. In business life, a team can be built calmly and the motivation of management work is understood mostly in the long term, which will be surely tested by someone sometime in the future. Or not. On the contrary, in the field of sports, results are received fast, whether positive or negative; therefore, if someone is good at what they do, they can quickly become successful, but if they are not, then they will soon acquire a bad reputation. This is why businesspeople stay away from sports even if they have the opportunity to work in this field. Many stay with the calmer and definitely safer business life. This is another reason why business development solutions in sports can achieve huge results: they put unique and special powers in the hands of their users.


Prev part:

The Business Developer Friend: The transformation of business development as a result of COVID-19 (Episode 5)