Train to Improve Your Management and Development Skills

A corporate development manager must possess a number of skills in order to achieve success. It is recommended that corporate development managers receive corporate management training in addition to corporate development training to develop a well-rounded perspective on managing and growing a business. Basic management skills necessary for this role include the ability to plan, organize, direct and coordinate a team. In addition to these skills, managers should also undergo corporate development training, which involves learning to plan and execute multiple strategies to achieve both short- and long-term goals.

As a leader, one of the key fundamentals to developing and maintaining a strong team is the ability to plan and prioritize tasks. Corporate management training uses the 7 P's to emphasize the importance of planning, which stands for: Prior Proper Planning Prevents Painfully Poor Production. For example, if the goal is to increase sales, the manager should project the number of new prospects they would need to reach each day based on how many sales they need to generate from the outreach they have been conducting. Basing tasks on goals and planning to successfully reach milestones is key. Being organized is also essential, given that managers are responsible for overseeing the progress of team projects. After planning and organizing, a manager must understand how to help their team prioritize and stay on track to complete tasks and work toward achieving goals. Each team member should be assigned a number of prospects to reach out to and the number of sales to generate within a specific timeframe. By setting both long- and short-term goals and tasks, everyone on the team will know what their responsibilities are and can become a greater contributor overall.

Corporate development managers are specialists hired to ensure that organizational objectives and initiatives are achieved through project management. In order to see these projects to fruition, managers must define and coordinate his or her team's roles and responsibilities. It is also important to create and manage timelines to ensure that tasks are completed before specific deadlines. For example, a manager might be asked whether a specific market would be profitable for a company to pursue. The manager would therefore be responsible for delegating tasks to his or her team to research whether this would be a good opportunity for the organization. Depending on the results, managers will then need to establish strategic relationships with business partners.

A different scenario might involve identifying and acquiring companies. The manager would once again ask his team to collect information. Once this is done, she or he would list the best candidates and possibly be asked to secure funding for acquisition purposes. Regardless of the business ventures at play, strategic business partners remain of the utmost importance.

There are a multitude of scenarios and situations that the average corporate development manager may be involved in including: recruitment of a new management team, plans for phasing in or out of certain markets or products, establishing relationships with strategic business partners, identifying and acquiring companies, securing financing, divesting of assets or divisions, increasing intellectual property assets, etc. Therefore, it is important to always be prepared to adapt and learn as much as possible about the wide spectrum of business responsibilities that may come into play.

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David Shoemaker is Vice President of Learning Solutions and Innovation at eCornell. For more information on corporate development training, corporate management training, or eCornell, please visit http://www.eCornell.com

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