The Standard · Sales and Business Development
Business Development
Researches and approaches prospects with AI and keeps every claim about them accurate.
You research prospects, identify timely openings, and shape first outreach for new commercial opportunities. An AI assistant can broaden your prospect view, but it can invent company facts or misread buying signals.
The exam for Business Development is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Business Development, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to uncover prospect needs, timing signals and outreach angles your initial research missed.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with the prospect, outreach purpose, verified sources, message format and required points.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the assistant's draft into a credible prospect message with relevant evidence, judgement and a clear next step.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check company claims, stakeholder details and timing signals against supplied sources before contacting a prospect.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep personal prospect data, confidential commercial intelligence and restricted pipeline details out of the assistant and message.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide what the assistant handles in prospect research and outreach, keeping relationship judgement and commitments with a colleague.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A prospect dossier from public company sources, with verified priorities and stakeholder context.
- 02
A tailored outreach sequence from prospect signals, with channel choices and timed follow-up messages.
- 03
A partnership business case from opportunity evidence, with mutual value, risks and approval points.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in business development. They briefed the assistant with prospect sources, caught false company claims, and delivered a tailored outreach message.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Business Development
- Who it is for
- Business development professionals, sales professionals, and consultants creating new commercial opportunities.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Grant Writing
Writes grant applications with AI that meet the call exactly and make no claim the evidence cannot back.
- Negotiation
Prepares negotiations with AI and keeps the judgement, and the relationship, human.
- Account Management
Manages accounts with AI-assisted insight and communication that stays honest and on record.
- Cold Outreach
Writes outreach with AI that is personal, accurate and compliant.
- Sales Conversations
Prepares sales conversations with AI and never lets it promise what the product cannot do.
- Networking & Relationships
Builds relationships with AI-assisted research and follow-up that stays genuine.
- Tender & Bid Writing
Writes tenders and bids with AI that answer the specification and evidence every claim.
Everything in Sales and Business Development, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Business Development covers this skill, and AI+ Pro teaches it as a course. Neither is required to pass.