You are constantly looking for growing your business in the most cost efficient way. Your teams are technology, product or market savvy and developed strong relationships with your business partners. You want them to dedicate ideally more than 80% of their time with your customers in order to grow business with them and - for all of this -, you need them to be focused on your key customers, key markets and key geographies. 

But who goes after business opportunities in new or adjacent market segments or in new geographies?

How true is it that you and your team have at least a short-list of promising business expansion projects? How often though, are they wrapped-up into 'special growth projects' or 'developmental projects' and added to the account or sales managers' annual objectives?

But how much time can they realistically spend to develop new business? How dedicated can they be, knowing that spending less time with the core business might open up the doors to competition? How often have you seen some quick-win revenues from these efforts (the classical low-hanging fruits) but no or little significant business developing afterwards? How often have these projects been delayed or even become (agreed) second priority during a challenging quarter or year - obviously for a good reason? How often have you seen such projects fading out but at some point were considered 'worth looking into it again'? And how easy is it for you to commit hiring a full-time New Business Development Manager without knowing that he or she can develop sizeable business in a new segment or new geography?

Finally, how many of these 'projects' are not worked on with the necessary focus to become more than an opportunistic business?