Beyond Lead Generation

What Modern B2B Marketers Can Learn from Business Development

I first met Māris many years ago when we were both studying marketing and advertising. While my own path gradually evolved toward strategic marketing and B2B visibility, I watched his career take a different direction: into aviation, engineering, industrial businesses and, today, defence innovation.

Over the years, I have often noticed his ability to step into highly technical industries, build partnerships and navigate complex B2B environments where trust matters long before commercial conversations begin. I wanted to understand what business development looks like from that side, and what marketers can learn from it.

Meet Maris Tasmans, working in Defence Business Development & Strategic Partnerships XR Medical Training, Military Readiness, Defence Innovation

Māris, we actually studied marketing and advertising together, but our careers gradually moved in different directions. Looking back, was business development always the direction you wanted to take, or did it happen naturally over time?

Yes, I remember, we even sat at one desk, you were the smart one. It happened naturally. I do not remember sitting in a marketing lecture thinking, "One day I will discuss aviation fuel contracts, drone software, used cooking oil and combat medical simulation." That would have been a very specific career plan.

I started much closer to operations. Aviation taught me to make decisions when time, money, safety and several slightly stressed stakeholders were involved at the same time. Later I moved into fleet management, procurement, contracts and international operations. At some point I realised that the part I enjoyed most was not only running an existing system, but finding the next opportunity, bringing the right people together and turning an idea into something commercially real.

So business development was less a sudden career change and more a gradual discovery of what I was already doing well. I liked understanding how a business works, where value is created, why a customer would change anything, and what must happen between a promising conversation and an actual contract. The title came later. The behaviour was there much earlier.

You have worked across aviation, engineering, manufacturing, waste management, and now defence innovation. Those are very different industries, yet they all involve long sales cycles, complex stakeholders and highly technical products. How do you personally manage to step into completely new industries and become commercially effective so quickly?

I start by assuming that I know less than everyone else in the room. That is not false modesty, it is simply a safer and faster starting point. Pretending to understand a technical industry is an expensive hobby.

My first task is to understand the commercial anatomy of the market: who has the problem, who feels the consequences, who controls the budget, who can block the decision, and what evidence is needed before anyone is willing to move. The product changes, but those questions remain surprisingly consistent.

In aviation, the language was utilisation, safety, contracts and cost. In drone software, it was reliability, regulation and the customer's ability to deliver a show. At CleanR, it was logistics, compliance and whether the service worked on a Tuesday morning behind a restaurant, not only in a PowerPoint. In defence, the end user may love the technology, but you still need an operational sponsor, a procurement route, approvals, local support and often a partner ecosystem.

I become effective by connecting technical value to operational and commercial reality. I do not need to become the engineer. I need to ask the engineer the right questions and translate the answer into something the customer can evaluate, trust and buy.

Many marketers spend years learning industries before they feel confident speaking to customers. What helps you shorten that learning curve? How do you approach understanding a new market when you are suddenly responsible for growing business there?

I speak to people before I feel fully ready. Not recklessly, but early. You can spend three months reading reports and still learn more from one honest conversation with an operator who tells you, "This is not how we actually work."

I normally build my understanding from several angles: the user, the buyer, the technical team, the partner and the person responsible for implementation. They often describe the same product as five different things. That difference is where the real commercial insight sits.

I also try to learn the market's vocabulary, but I do not use terminology just to sound intelligent. Customers notice very quickly when someone has memorised acronyms without understanding the consequences behind them. I ask basic questions early, write down the answers and then test my understanding: "So the real issue is not the feature itself, it is training capacity, approval, integration or cost of adoption - correct?"

The learning curve becomes shorter when you stop trying to know everything and focus on knowing what changes the buying decision. Confidence should come from preparation and curiosity, not acting. I have no problem saying, "I do not know yet, but I will find out." The important part is actually coming back with the answer.

Today's marketing discussions often focus on lead generation. But your work seems to revolve around relationships, partnerships and long-term trust rather than simply generating leads. How do you define successful business development today?

Successful business development is the creation of qualified commercial momentum. Not activity, not a large contact list and definitely not a CRM full of people who once scanned a badge.

A real opportunity moves because the customer has a recognised problem, the right stakeholders are engaged, the value is credible, and there is a visible route toward testing, procurement or partnership. A polite meeting is not progress. Another meeting is not automatically progress either. Sometimes it is just two calendars cooperating.

I look at business development as the work of making a company easier to trust and easier to buy from. That includes identifying the right market, shaping the offer, finding partners, understanding procurement, creating proof, managing internal expectations and being disciplined enough to stop chasing weak opportunities.

Lead generation is useful, but leads are raw material. Business development turns selected opportunities into something the company can realistically win and deliver. In complex B2B, success is often not "How many leads did we generate?" but "Did we create a credible reason for this organisation to act, and did we remove enough risk for them to take the next step?"

You have worked with commercial businesses, but now you are operating in defence, where buying decisions involve governments, military organisations, medical professionals, innovation ecosystems and international partnerships. How different is business development in an environment like this?

It is different mainly because there is rarely one customer. There is an operational user, a commander or sponsor, a technical evaluator, procurement, legal, finance, security requirements, sometimes export control, and often a local industrial or integration partner. One person may urgently want the capability while another person is responsible for ensuring that nothing moves quickly. Both are doing their job.

The buying logic is also shaped by consequences. In normal B2B, a bad purchase may waste money or create operational frustration. In defence and medical readiness, poor training or an unsuitable product can affect lives. That changes the standard of proof and should change the seller's behaviour as well.

Geopolitics also matters. Priorities, budgets and urgency can change rapidly, but urgency does not remove governance. You still need to understand who owns the requirement, how the capability will be tested, what procurement path exists and whether the company can support the solution after the first demonstration.

Defence business development therefore requires patience, discretion and honesty. You cannot build credibility by overselling. Sometimes the strongest commercial answer is, "We are not ready for that requirement yet, but here is what we can prove today."

When people hear 'business development,' many imagine networking events or sales meetings. But I suspect there is much more happening behind the scenes. What actually takes up most of your time?

Follow-up. The glamorous truth is follow-up.

Meetings and events are visible, but most of the work happens before and after them: researching the organisation, mapping stakeholders, understanding previous decisions, preparing the right questions, aligning technical colleagues, writing proposals, planning demonstrations, chasing answers, updating the CRM and deciding whether an opportunity is genuinely moving.

A large part of my time is also internal business development. The customer may ask for something commercially attractive but technically difficult, legally sensitive or impossible to deliver within the expected timeline. My job is to connect sales ambition with product, engineering, operations, finance and management reality. That means translating in both directions without turning every conversation into a small civil war.

I also spend time killing opportunities, or at least lowering their probability. That is important. A large fantasy pipeline makes everyone feel successful until the forecast date arrives. I would rather have a smaller honest pipeline with a named sponsor, a real problem and a next piece of evidence than fifty friendly conversations labelled "high potential."

From your perspective, where does marketing create the biggest value for business development and where do you think marketers sometimes misunderstand what business development really needs?

Marketing creates the biggest value before I enter the room. When the customer has already seen a clear point of view, a relevant use case, credible proof and language that reflects their world, the commercial conversation starts several steps ahead. Good marketing reduces uncertainty. It helps the buyer understand why the problem matters, why our approach is different and why speaking with us is worth their time.

Marketing is also extremely valuable after the first conversation. Strong case studies, sector-specific materials, good event preparation, useful content and consistent follow-up give business development reasons to re-engage without sending another "just checking in" email - possibly the least inspiring sentence in B2B history.

The misunderstanding happens when marketing sees BD as the department that receives a bucket of leads and somehow converts them. In complex sales, we do not simply need more names. We need better context: what changed in this account, what problem is becoming urgent, which stakeholder cares, what evidence is missing and what message could move the discussion.

The best marketing and BD teams share intelligence continuously. Marketing should hear customer objections. BD should use and improve the positioning. Neither function should operate as a service desk for the other.

If you joined a B2B company tomorrow and the marketing manager asked you one question: 'How can I help business development more?' - what would your answer be?

Help me make every important customer conversation more relevant, not simply more frequent.

I would ask marketing to choose a small number of priority customer problems and become excellent at explaining them. Build content around the decision journey: what the customer is trying to change, why the current approach is insufficient, what risks they see, what proof they need and how implementation would work. Then give BD tools that are specific enough to use in a real conversation, not a beautiful twenty-page brochure that says "innovative, scalable and customer-centric" in six different ways.

I would also ask marketing to join customer calls occasionally and listen. Not to present, but to hear the language, objections and internal politics directly. The fastest route to better messaging is often one uncomfortable customer question.

Finally, help us build account-level visibility. If we are targeting a ministry, hospital group, industrial company or defence prime, I want the people around that account to repeatedly encounter useful, credible material. The goal is not to be famous. The goal is that when the need becomes real, our name already feels familiar and relevant.

Lead generation has become increasingly difficult across many B2B industries. Buyers research independently, buying committees are larger, and trust often develops long before anyone fills in a form. From your own experience, what actually opens doors today?

Specificity opens doors. A message that shows you understand the organisation, the operational context and the likely problem will still get attention. A message that says, "I noticed your impressive company and would love to explore synergies" deserves the silence it receives.

Warm introductions help, of course, but the introduction only buys the first minute. After that, you still need relevance. Events work when you know exactly who you want to meet and why. Partnerships work when the partner adds access, trust, integration or delivery capability. Thought leadership works when there is an actual thought in it.

Proof also matters more than claims. A practical pilot, a reference customer, user feedback, a credible implementation plan or even a clear explanation of what the product cannot yet do can create more trust than a perfect pitch.

I have found that doors open when the other person quickly understands three things: why you contacted them specifically, what useful perspective you bring, and what a sensible first step looks like. That first step should be easy to evaluate. Not "let us discuss cooperation" but something concrete: review a use case, validate a requirement, test a workflow or introduce the right technical person.

In industries with long buying cycles, how do you stay patient? How do you know you are making progress when results sometimes take months or even years to materialise?

I stay patient by being impatient about the next evidence.

A long sales cycle does not mean the opportunity should remain vague for eighteen months. I want to know what must become true next: a problem confirmed by the user, a sponsor identified, budget timing understood, a technical validation completed, a pilot agreed, success criteria written, procurement engaged or a partner assigned. Each step should reduce uncertainty.

I also separate relationship progress from commercial progress. A customer can genuinely like you, enjoy the meetings and still have no ability or intention to buy. That relationship may become valuable later, but it should not automatically sit in the forecast. My rule is simple: if the next event is only "another meeting", the deal has probably not moved.

Patience becomes easier when the pipeline is diversified and honestly qualified. One slow opportunity should not carry the emotional weight of the entire quarter. I review what moved, what stalled, what died and what management decision is needed. Long-cycle BD requires optimism, but it needs evidence-based optimism. Otherwise it is just hope wearing a CRM badge.

Your current role involves strategic partnerships alongside business development. How important are partnerships becoming in modern B2B growth compared to traditional sales?

They are becoming essential, especially when the product crosses industries, technologies or borders. One company rarely owns the entire customer outcome. The customer may need software, hardware, integration, local support, training, regulatory knowledge and procurement access. A good partnership combines those pieces into something the buyer can actually use.

In defence, partnerships can provide local credibility, industrial participation, integration with existing systems and long-term support. In technology, they can connect products into a stronger workflow. In international markets, they can shorten the distance between a foreign supplier and the real decision-making environment.

But I am slightly allergic to partnerships that exist only in announcements. A partnership without a target customer, a defined problem, an owner, workshare and a commercial model is often just two logos having coffee.

Traditional direct sales still matters. Someone must own the customer relationship and the commercial outcome. Partnerships are not a substitute for selling; they are a way to make the offer more complete, credible or accessible. The best partnerships do not simply generate introductions. They make a deal possible that neither party could win or deliver alone.

Relationships seem to appear repeatedly throughout your career. Have you found that the strongest business opportunities usually come from existing networks, or are you constantly building entirely new relationships?

Both. Existing relationships create trust faster, but every existing relationship was once a new one.

A good network is not a phone book you inherit, it is the accumulated result of being useful, keeping promises and staying in contact when you are not immediately asking for something. Aviation gave me relationships across operations, suppliers and international partners. Engineering and drones opened a different ecosystem. Waste management introduced restaurants, producers, logistics and recycling. Defence now connects military, medical, government, technology and innovation communities. The network grows because the industries overlap more than they first appear to.

The strongest opportunities often come through people who have seen how you work. They may not buy from you directly, but they trust you enough to make an introduction. That trust is valuable because they are lending you part of their reputation. I take that seriously.

At the same time, I am constantly building new relationships. You cannot enter a new market by speaking only to people you already know. The key is not to treat networking as collecting contacts. I try to understand what the other person is responsible for and where I can be genuinely useful, even when there is no immediate transaction.

Technology keeps changing, AI is transforming how people research suppliers, and buyers have access to more information than ever before. How do you think business development will evolve over the next five years?

Generic business development will become almost worthless. AI can already research accounts, draft outreach, summarise calls and create hundreds of apparently personalised messages before breakfast. When everyone can produce more content and more outreach, volume stops being an advantage. In fact, it may become evidence that nobody thought very hard.

The value of BD will move toward judgement: selecting the right opportunities, understanding complex stakeholder dynamics, shaping offers, building trust, negotiating trade-offs and knowing when not to pursue a deal. Technology will make preparation faster, but it will not remove the need for a person who can read the room, detect the unspoken objection and understand why an organisation is not ready to change.

Buyers will also use AI to pre-qualify suppliers. That means a company's digital footprint, proof, clarity and consistency will matter before the first human conversation. Weak positioning will be exposed quickly.

I expect the best BD people to become part strategist, part operator, part translator and part ecosystem builder. Less time will be spent manually collecting information. More time should be spent deciding what the information means and converting it into a credible commercial path.

Many marketers are considering moving closer to commercial roles or business development. What skills do you think marketers already have that translate well and what new capabilities would they need to develop?

Good marketers already have several important advantages: customer research, segmentation, positioning, storytelling, campaign thinking and an understanding of how perception is built over time. Those skills are extremely valuable in BD, particularly because many technical companies are good at explaining what they built and poor at explaining why anyone should care.

The biggest shift is commercial accountability. In BD, the conversation eventually reaches budget, risk, procurement, contract terms, implementation and internal politics. A strong message is not enough. You need to qualify whether the customer can buy, understand who really decides, manage uncomfortable objections and ask directly what must happen next.

Marketers moving into BD should learn basic finance, pricing, negotiation, CRM discipline and how contracts and procurement work. They should also become comfortable with silence. Not every customer call needs to be filled with presentation. Sometimes the best question is followed by ten seconds of discomfort and the most useful answer of the meeting.

Most importantly, they need to develop the ability to walk away. Marketing often optimises for reach and engagement. BD must decide where the company should invest limited time and where the probability, value or strategic fit is simply not strong enough.

Looking back across your career, from aviation to defence, what has been the biggest lesson you have learned about building trust in B2B?

Trust is built when your behaviour remains consistent after the impressive first meeting.

In complex B2B, customers are not only evaluating the product. They are evaluating whether you will answer when something goes wrong, whether your company understands the operational consequences, whether your promises survive contact with the technical team and whether you will still be there six months later.

The most useful things I have learned are very simple: do what you said you would do, come back when you promised, admit what you do not know, and do not hide bad news until it becomes the customer's surprise. Saying "no" or "not yet" can build more trust than agreeing to everything.

Aviation made this very clear because operations quickly expose empty promises. Defence is similar: reality has little interest in marketing language. If a capability is not ready, supported or suitable for the use case, the customer will find out.

So my biggest lesson is that trust is not created by being endlessly agreeable. It is created by being reliable, relevant and honest enough to protect the customer's outcome, even when that makes the immediate sales conversation harder.

Over the years I have watched your career constantly evolve into new industries and increasingly complex environments. What keeps pushing you toward new challenges instead of staying where you are already comfortable?

Curiosity, mostly. I like the point where I understand enough to see the opportunity but not enough to be bored. I have a fairly low tolerance for stagnation, which is useful professionally and occasionally inconvenient for anyone who prefers a very predictable Monday.

New industries force me to think again. They remove the comfort of familiar language and make me prove that my skills are transferable. Can I understand the customer? Can I build credibility? Can I connect technical capability to commercial value? Can I operate in a new regulatory or cultural environment? That challenge keeps the work interesting.

I am also attracted to sectors where the outcome matters beyond the transaction. Aviation was operationally real. Circular economy had a visible environmental and logistical impact. Defence and medical readiness are connected to resilience, preparedness and lives. The work becomes more demanding, but also more meaningful.

Comfort is not a bad thing, but too much comfort can become an invisible ceiling. I do not change direction simply for novelty. I move when I see a chance to learn faster, contribute at a higher level and work on problems that are becoming more important.

Business development is not always glamorous. There are rejected proposals, partnerships that do not happen, months of work that sometimes lead nowhere. When things do not go as planned, what helps you stay motivated?

First, I allow myself a short period of professional irritation. Usually somewhere between ten minutes and one evening, depending on how unnecessary the rejection feels. Then I try to separate the outcome from the lesson.

A lost opportunity can mean many things: wrong timing, weak qualification, no budget, a better competitor, internal politics, an unclear value proposition or simply a decision that was never realistically available to us. My job is to understand which one it was. Rejection is useful only when you are honest enough to diagnose it.

I stay motivated by keeping several meaningful opportunities moving and by measuring the quality of the process, not only the final signature. Did we reach the right stakeholders? Did we learn something important? Did the product improve? Did the relationship remain strong? Did we stop early enough when the deal was weak?

I also do not romanticise persistence. Sometimes motivation comes from killing a dead opportunity and using the time better. Business development requires resilience, but not the kind where you repeatedly run into the same wall and call it commitment. The goal is to become better, not merely more tired.

Outside work, you are also involved in supporting Ukraine through volunteer work. Has that experience changed the way you think about leadership, purpose or even business itself?

Yes. Delivering vehicles to Ukrainian units has made several things much more concrete. A pickup truck is not an abstract donation when it becomes transport, logistics support or a casualty evacuation vehicle. The distance between a practical decision and a real consequence becomes very short.

It has reinforced my view that leadership is often less about having all the answers and more about taking responsibility, coordinating people and moving despite imperfect information. Volunteer work also has very little patience for organisational theatre. Either the vehicle is ready, the money is raised and the delivery happens, or it does not.

That experience has changed my tolerance for business activity that exists mainly to look busy. It has also made purpose more important to me. Commercial discipline and purpose are not opposites. In fact, good organisation, clear ownership, reliable partners and efficient use of resources matter even more when the outcome is serious.

It reminds me that relationships and trust are not soft concepts. In difficult environments, they are infrastructure. People move faster and take responsibility because they know who will keep their word.

If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self, the student who was sitting in our marketing lectures years ago, what would it be? :)

Do not worry so much about having a perfectly logical career story. Build useful skills, take responsibility early and pay attention to the work that gives you energy. The story will become logical afterwards - especially when someone writes the LinkedIn summary.

I would also tell myself to learn more about finance, contracts, operations and negotiation sooner. Marketing teaches you how value is perceived. Business teaches you that value must also be delivered, priced, contracted, supported and occasionally defended in an Excel file.

Most importantly, I would say: invest in relationships, but do not network performatively. Be useful. Keep promises. Ask questions without worrying that they make you look inexperienced. The people who explain things to you today may become customers, partners or colleagues ten years later.

And I would probably add one practical warning: never assume the meeting is the work. The work usually starts when everyone leaves the meeting and you are the person who has to make the next step happen.

And finally... What are you most curious about learning next?

I am very curious about how European defence innovation can move more reliably from an impressive pilot to actual operational adoption. We are not short of technology, demonstrations or innovation programmes. The harder question is how to connect user need, evidence, procurement, industrial capacity and long-term support without losing years in the gaps between them.

I am also interested in how AI, XR, autonomy and simulation will change human readiness. Technology will continue to improve, but the important question is not only what it can do. It is whether organisations can integrate it into training, doctrine and daily operations in a way that produces better decisions under pressure.

Commercially, I want to keep learning how to build partnerships that scale internationally without becoming slow, vague or politically decorative. That includes better models for local industry, technology integration and shared market access.

More personally, I want to remain a beginner in something. Becoming knowledgeable is useful; becoming certain about everything is dangerous. The moment I stop asking basic questions is probably the moment I should change industries again.