Last Updated: November 2, 2020

Business relationships are ever-changing, as companies release new products, offer new deals, and enter new partnerships. To help facilitate old business relationships – and create new ones – companies turn to market development managers.

Market development managers maintain relationships with distributors, customers, and sales team members to ensure the future success of a company. While much of their time is spent in business meetings and negotiations, they also bring strong analytical research skills to the table, making them valuable members of any business team.

What do they do?

Market development managers focus mainly on relationship management between multiple accounts. They appease partners and attend to any issues or concerns those partners have. Throughout the business negotiation process, they are backed by strong research and financial information that drives their industry.

To get this research, market development managers stay up to date on trends in their target industries. This means reading industry publications, attending industry events, and finding out which companies are doing what – and how the market development manager might do that better.

Keeping up with industry research allows market development managers to target specific niches and market segments to cater too. This in turn allows them to direct marketing teams to implement new marketing strategies. Some professionals they work to accomplish this with include:

Qualifications

Market development managers are highly skilled, and have years of business experience and market research knowledge they put to use in their positions. Most market development managers have between seven and 10 years of experience in marketing before managing their business clients.

Most market development managers earn at least bachelor’s degrees in marketing, but many go on to enter master’s in business administration programs.

Become a Market Development Manager

The average salary for a market development manager as of August 2012 is $83,000, though this salary may rise or fall depending on the company and a professional’s previous experience. Some marketing development managers have the potential to earn salaries higher than $100,000.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to develop working relationships between multiple accounts, contact schools offering degrees in marketing and business.