Biz Dev is not Sales and Sales is not Biz Dev

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I’m in the middle of a job search right now, and one weird thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of job postings confuse business development and sales. These are different functions in a company, with different skillsets, so I’m somewhat perplexed to see stuff like this:

If you’re looking for a sales opportunity your entrepreneurial spirit is craving, we’ve got a GREAT OPPORTUNITY for YOU!

Ignore the weird capitalization. The title of the post is “Business Development/Sales Partner”. This is incoherent. They’re different functions.

Business development is a strategic function, in which employees are tasked with creating partnerships, developing new markets for the company to penetrate, and, essentially, creating a wider funnel for sales and marketing personnel to use.

Sales, on the other hand, is a tactical function, meant to increase sales of the company’s product or services.

These are not the same function, though they are, along with marketing, intertwined with, and dependent upon, each other. Done correctly, business development helps sales teams pursue customers formerly unknown to the company, and it allows marketers to target new customer segments previously untargeted by the company.

Companies frequently seem to complain that they can’t find enough qualified workers to hire. I suspect that at least one problem that certain companies have is that they don’t understand the job function for which they are trying to hire. They think they want to hire business development professionals, but they provide a job description for a sales person.

None of this makes much sense.