VP of Business Development is one of the most inconsistently defined titles in B2B. At some companies, it means strategic partnerships and channel development. At others, it means outbound sales and pipeline generation. At a few, it means something close to a CRO. The ambiguity creates hiring mistakes.
The Traditional VP Business Development Role
In its original form, the VP of Business Development owns strategic growth beyond the core sales motion. That means partnerships, alliances, channel relationships, new market entry, strategic accounts, M&A evaluation, and other growth vectors that don’t fit neatly into the sales team’s quota. They’re focused on creating new revenue streams and opening new markets rather than optimizing the existing sales engine.
This is a valuable role, and it’s genuinely different from what a CRO does. The VP BD opens doors. The CRO builds the machine that walks through them.
The Scope Gap
A VP of Business Development typically doesn’t own the sales team’s performance, the forecast, the pipeline architecture, the qualification methodology, or the operating cadence. They don’t manage reps. They don’t design compensation plans or territory models. They don’t own the cross-functional alignment between marketing and sales.
A CRO owns all of this, plus whatever strategic growth work the VP BD would do. The CRO’s mandate is total revenue – all sources, all channels, all functions. The VP BD’s mandate is new revenue streams and strategic relationships.
The Hiring Mistake
Companies that need a CRO but hire a VP of Business Development get a strategic relationship builder when they needed an operating system architect. The partnerships are interesting. The channel deals look promising. But nobody is fixing the broken pipeline, the inaccurate forecast, or the methodology that stopped working two years ago.
If the core revenue engine is broken, fix that first. Strategic growth initiatives built on top of a broken core revenue function produce disappointing results because the system can’t convert the opportunities those initiatives create.
When You Need Each
You need a CRO when the core revenue function – pipeline, sales process, forecast, team capability – needs strategic leadership and systematic redesign. You need a VP BD when the core is working and you want to open adjacent growth vectors through partnerships, channels, or new markets.
At Series B/C stage, the core is usually the problem. The strategic partnerships can wait until the machine converts what’s already in front of it.
I help B2B companies fix the revenue systems that legacy methodologies broke. If something in this post made you uncomfortable, it was probably the part that's true. Stop the bleeding.