Day in the life of
Business Development Associate – Bryan Wattie
My educational background is in Agricultural engineering, but I moved more towards business development working with new tech and products. At my previous company I was the lead on field engineering and sales, and then moved into a Strategic Partnership management role.
With a new role I am a Business Development associate/Lead (team of 15, first biz dev, sales, marketing hire) at Lucent Biosciences for their Soileos product line.
Prior to working with early stage agtech companies, I worked as a project management consultant for contaminated land remediation.
My typical day
My day consists of a lot of conversations with Ag business professionals (farms and their service providers) to create brand awareness. Some weeks I am in the field visiting trial farms and potential retail partners.
For existing customers, I may follow-up at different times in the growing season to take note of any observations (good or bad), and their experience working with our products.
Ultimately I’m seeking to create awareness, share information, and find new customers to share our new product and technology.
Canola trial
Pros
Business development and sales is really about problem definition and providing the best solutions. At the end of the day if you’re solving a problem and helping your customers be more competitive, profitable and sustainable, while also contributing to an industry that helps feed a growing global population, then I find it pretty easy to get up in the morning and go to work every day. My background in farming and ag engineering has helped me in early startup roles that were customer and industry facing by helping communicating technical products to customers while also understand at least a little bit of what’s going on at the farm. At the end of the day, everyone is looking for a smart investment of their business’s dollars, it’s two-way street, and the most sustainable businesses are ones where everybody wins and real value is being created.
Corn trial
Cons
Sometimes when you work in business development and sales you have hard days. You have a tough prospecting call or meeting. You lose a deal. Someone dismisses you before you’ve said more than 10 seconds of your pitch. At the end of the day, there are always things you can do to improve, but the most important thing is to keep your chin up. Rejection in sales happens. In fact, it happens a lot. It also happens, especially when you’re a young company, that someone dismisses you the first time they see you, but then they see you again, and again, and again. I don’t mean you call them endlessly. You might see them at a trade show, you might do some work with an affiliated business or a competitor or a neighbor. The same people who wouldn’t give you 10 seconds one year can also change their mind. So don’t hold a grudge when it doesn’t go your way. Today was not their day.
Advice to students interested in the business development career path
My further words of advice for someone who would want to get involved in an early company’s business development / sales / marketing roles would be to try and get first-hand knowledge of the industry where you would love to solve some problems. For me, working in agtech, that meant working role like research assistant/ field tech for Agriculture Canada one summer in Saskatchewan, another summer on a mixed produce and cash crop farm in Ontario, and soil sampling with the Canadian Food Inspection agency in New Brunswick one year. Try to find a problem worth solving, and then find a company trying to solve that problem that will motivate you to come to work every day.
Another great way to get involved with start-ups is to attend local/regional innovation/incubator events and try to meet some new people.
