A Business Developer is paid to bring in customers who do not buy from you yet. An Account Manager is paid to make the customers you already have buy more, stay longer and resist the competitor knocking on their door. Everything else follows from that: the day-to-day work, the KPIs, the profile, the pay structure and the order in which you hire them. This article is written for the managing director or sales director who is torn between the two job titles, or who suspects the team has blurred them. Once your portfolio includes strategic customers, the question becomes one of Key Account Manager recruitment, which we come back to below.
- The Business Developer opens new accounts (hunting); the Account Manager grows and protects existing ones (farming).
- In Belgian SMEs, both titles often cover hybrid roles. What matters is the share of revenue expected from new and existing business, written down in black and white.
- The KPIs differ: qualified meetings and new accounts on one side, retention, portfolio growth and margin on the other.
- So does variable pay: one is rewarded for acquisition, the other for loyalty and account growth. Get it wrong and each starts doing the other’s job.
- In Belgium, a field Business Developer may fall under the sales representative contract, with a possible clientele (eviction) indemnity if they brought in customers.
The difference comes down to one question: where will the revenue come from?
Take next year’s sales budget and split it into two columns. The first holds the revenue you expect from customers who do not know you yet. The second holds what you expect from existing customers: renewals, repeat orders, new product lines sold to buyers who already trust you. The first column belongs to the Business Developer. The second belongs to the Account Manager.
Sales jargon calls them hunters and farmers. The image is handy, as long as nobody concludes that the Account Manager is a passive salesperson. A portfolio that is merely maintained erodes every year: buyers change jobs, competitors approach your customers, contracts come up for renewal. Account Managers conquer too, only inside accounts that are already open. We explain how to choose between the two approaches according to the length of your sales cycle in Hunting vs Farming: Recruiting Effectively According to Your Sales Cycle.
| Criterion | Business Developer | Account Manager |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | A market, segment or territory where the company sells little or nothing | A portfolio of existing customers, often inherited |
| Mission | Identify, approach, convince and sign new customers | Retain, renew and sell more to current customers |
| Main activity | Prospecting, qualifying, first meetings, proposals | Regular follow-up, account reviews, upselling, issue handling |
| Relationship with failure | Most contacts go nowhere, and that is normal | Every lost customer weighs heavily on results |
| Main KPIs | Qualified meetings, pipeline created, new accounts signed | Retention rate, revenue growth per account, margin |
| Typical variable pay | Linked to acquisition, sometimes with a bonus per new account | Linked to portfolio growth and loyalty |
| Personal driver | Winning, novelty, quick victories | Long-term relationships, service, building something |
| Common hiring mistake | Hiring a reassuring relationship manager who never picks up the phone | Hiring a hunter who gets bored once the account is signed |
Why the job title is not enough in the Belgian market
The definitions above are clear-cut. Job descriptions rarely are. In the vacancies we publish for our clients, a field Account Manager in Hainaut is also expected to prospect new customers in the region, and a Business Developer in Wallonia runs the full cycle, from prospecting to order follow-up. In a market the size of Belgium, many SMEs cannot afford two people on the same territory. They give opening and managing accounts to the same salesperson and pick whichever title sounds more attractive.
A hybrid role is perfectly defensible. The costly part is leaving the split unspoken. An “Account Manager” who actually spends half the week cold prospecting was not hired for that job, and finds out too late. One sentence in the job description fixes it: “60% of expected revenue from the existing portfolio, 40% from new accounts in the territory.” It shapes sourcing, interviews and variable pay.
The Business Developer title itself covers several jobs, from pure prospecting to launching a new activity end to end. We compare these variants in our article on the differences between a Business Developer and a sales representative.
Expert view
We’re specialists: Sales, Marketing, Management. Not generalists. When a generalist agency recruits a Sales Director, they read the CV. We know the actual job: the real trade-offs between prospecting and farming, what it means to lead a distributed trilingual team across the Benelux, how to build a commercial strategy that holds in complex B2B. That field-level understanding is what separates a placement that lasts from one that breaks at 18 months.
Responsibilities: what each one’s week looks like
The difference shows up more clearly in a diary than in a definition.
A Business Developer’s week
It starts with a list: target companies, contacts to reach, follow-ups to make. A large part of the week goes into calls, messages and visits to secure first meetings. The rest goes into qualification (does this prospect have a need, a budget, a timeline?), preparing proposals and negotiating first contracts. The Business Developer also reports back to management on what the market is saying: objections, incumbent competitors, prevailing prices. On a new segment, that intelligence is worth almost as much as the first contracts.
An Account Manager’s week
It starts with the portfolio. Priority goes to customers whose orders are slipping, those whose contract is up for renewal and those who buy only part of your range. The Account Manager prepares account reviews, sorts out a delivery problem with customer service or logistics, negotiates a price renewal and proposes a range the customer has not tried yet. Their value often lies in what does not happen: the customer who stays, the price increase that goes through without a tender. When a handful of accounts in that portfolio weigh very heavily in your revenue, you are in Key Account Manager territory, a more senior role whose boundaries we set out in Account Manager or Key Account Manager: What’s the Difference for Your Sales Strategy?
Which KPIs for an Account Manager and for a Business Developer?
The most common mistake is to measure both against the same number: quarterly revenue. For an Account Manager, that is almost right, provided you correct for the inherited portfolio. For a Business Developer, it is unfair in the early months: depending on your sales cycle, the first signatures come after months of work that does not show in the figures. So track leading indicators (what they do today) and lagging indicators (what it brings in later) for each role.
| Type of indicator | Business Developer | Account Manager |
|---|---|---|
| Activity | Contacts engaged, first meetings secured | Account reviews held, customers visited in the period |
| Leading | Pipeline created, in value and number of qualified deals | Renewals secured ahead of time, opportunities opened with existing customers |
| Result | New accounts signed, revenue from new accounts | Customer and revenue retention, growth per account |
| Quality | Meeting conversion rate, average size of first contract | Portfolio margin, number of product lines bought per customer |
| Warning sign | A pipeline that hangs on two or three deals | An unexplained drop in orders from a major customer |
Three or four indicators per role are enough, stated in the job description and reviewed every quarter. A Business Developer who hits the activity targets but signs nothing after two full cycles has a qualification or messaging problem. An Account Manager with good retention but no account growth is running the portfolio without developing it.
The profile: what sets them apart in an interview
On paper, the CVs look alike: same degrees, same sectors, sometimes the same employers. The difference lies in what drives them. A good Business Developer handles a high volume of rejection without losing pace, enjoys novelty and needs regular wins. They wear out when months go by without a signature. A good Account Manager finds satisfaction in a lasting relationship, a customer problem solved, an account that grows year after year. They wear out in a role that keeps sending them back to cold prospecting.
In the interview, ask for facts rather than qualities. To the Business Developer candidate: how many new accounts did you open in your last two roles, starting from what, with which prospecting method? To the Account Manager candidate: which accounts did you grow, which did you lose, and why? The second answer quickly shows whether the candidate developed their accounts or simply looked after them. Role-plays and a personality test complete the picture: the KOAN model we have used for 30 years for sales profiles distinguishes, for example, perseverance from customer orientation, two dimensions that do not carry the same weight in each role.
When the role moves towards managing strategic accounts, the competency grid changes again. We cover it in our article on the essential skills of a Key Account Manager.
Pay: you are not paying for the same thing
Fixed salary, variable pay, fringe benefits and often a company car for a field role: the Belgian package looks similar from one job to the other. The structure of the variable is what has to reflect the difference.
For a Business Developer, variable pay rewards acquisition: revenue from new accounts, a bonus per account opened above a minimum size, sometimes an activity target during the ramp-up. Build that start-up period into the plan: a variable that is out of reach for the first six months drives away the best people, who have other offers. For an Account Manager, variable pay rewards portfolio growth and loyalty: revenue growth per account, margin, renewals. Based on total revenue alone, it also pays for orders that would have come in anyway.
Two traps come up in the plans we see. Paid on new accounts, the Account Manager neglects existing customers, your most reliable source of revenue. Paid on the total revenue of a portfolio, the Business Developer looks after the customers they signed instead of finding new ones. Also set the handover rule: at what point does an account opened by the Business Developer move to the Account Manager, and who earns the variable during the transition? Salary levels on the account management side are covered in our article on Account Manager salary in Belgium.
The legal point specific to Belgium
According to the Federal Public Service Employment (page in French), an employed salesperson whose main and constant activity is to prospect and visit customers in order to negotiate or close deals, under the employer’s authority, falls under the sales representative contract. The most tangible consequence arises when the contract ends. Article 101 of the Act of 3 July 1978 on employment contracts provides for an eviction indemnity for a representative who has brought in a clientele, when the employer ends the contract without serious cause or the representative terminates it for serious cause. It is due after one year of employment and equals three months’ pay for one to five years of service, plus one month for each further five-year period, unless the employer proves the termination causes no loss. Bringing in a clientele is exactly what a Business Developer does. Have your social secretariat qualify the contract before signing, and factor that exit cost into your calculation.
Organising the team: who to hire first, and when to split the roles
Go back to the two budget columns. If growth over the next three years must come mainly from customers you do not have, your first hire is a Business Developer. If your portfolio is solid but under-exploited (customers buying a single range, dependence on a few accounts, departures nobody saw coming), start with an Account Manager. A good Account Manager can pay back faster, because they work with customers who already know you.
Splitting the roles makes sense when three signals appear together: your hybrid salespeople have stopped prospecting because their customers fill the diary, accounts are lost for lack of follow-up while the team is hunting, and the flow of new customers is large enough to feed a separate portfolio. Below that threshold, one well-described hybrid role beats two half-filled ones. Once the roles are split, account handover becomes the team’s first source of friction. We set out the rules that defuse it in Key Account Manager or Business Developer: who does what?
In companies that sell solutions, a third title joins the picture: the Account Executive, who closes deals qualified by others. How it relates to the strategic account manager is discussed in Account Executive or Key Account Manager: who do you need?
The hiring mistakes that cost the most
The first is advertising for someone who is “both hunter and farmer, autonomous and relationship-driven” without putting a number on each part. That ad mainly attracts candidates who recognise themselves in both and excel at neither. The second is promoting your best Account Manager into a new-business role because they “know the product well”: what they really know is customers who like them, and they meet cold rejection unprepared. The third comes from the package: hiring a Business Developer on an account manager’s variable, or the reverse, and then being surprised they do what they are paid for.
All three are decided before the first ad goes out, at the briefing stage. That is why we spend the first call of every assignment challenging the role and writing the scorecard, before looking for a single candidate.
Frequently asked questions about Account Managers and Business Developers
What is the difference between an Account Manager and a Business Developer?
The Business Developer wins new customers: prospecting, qualifying, first contracts. The Account Manager grows and retains existing customers: renewals, upselling, follow-up. They are measured and paid differently, even when an SME gives both missions to the same person.
Does an Account Manager do prospecting?
Often, in Belgium, especially in a regional field role. Prospecting is then not their main activity. Write the share of revenue expected from new accounts into the job description, or the candidate will discover the reality after joining.
Hunter or farmer: which should you hire first?
The one that matches the source of your growth. If it must come from new customers, hire a Business Developer. If your existing portfolio is under-exploited or too exposed to the loss of a few customers, start with an Account Manager.
How should you pay a Business Developer and an Account Manager?
With a fixed salary, fringe benefits and a variable built on a different base: new-account acquisition for the Business Developer, with a ramp-up period, and portfolio growth and loyalty for the Account Manager. Also set the rule for handing accounts over between the two.
Can a Business Developer become an Account Manager?
Yes, but the move is not automatic. A hunter used to quick wins can get bored in a job where results build up over months. Assessing their drivers before the change avoids losing a good salesperson while trying to reward them.
Telling an Account Manager from a Business Developer means deciding where your revenue will come from, then writing that decision into the role, the KPIs and the variable pay. We do this work with you on the first call, whether the assignment concerns Account Manager recruitment, Business Developer recruitment or, for your most strategic customers, recruiting an experienced Key Account Manager. For 33 years, this is the stage where most of a successful sales hire has been decided.
