Guide · 13 July 2026 · 4 min read
What the board actually asks about BD
Five questions recur in every boardroom. A BD function earns credibility by answering them from records, not recollection.
Board interest in business development is remarkably consistent: how much future work exists, how solid the number is, what changed since last time, what is at risk, and whether the firm is getting better at winning. Most BD reporting answers none of these directly, which is why it gets rebuilt in a spreadsheet the night before.
The five questions
- How much: open and weighted pipeline, stated with the same definitions every month
- How solid: what moved between committed, likely and speculative, and why
- What changed: new, advanced, won, lost and stalled since the last pack
- What is at risk: named pursuits with the reason flagged, not a red dot
- Are we improving: win rate and bid cost trend, by sector, honestly
Same records, rolled up
Credibility comes from provenance. When the board pack assembles itself from the same live records the teams work in, any number can be opened to the pursuits behind it, and the awkward questions become drill-downs rather than actions to take away. The alternative, a hand-built deck, is a monthly invitation to argue about whose figure is right.
The quiet benefit is behavioural: when partners know the board sees the live system, the live system gets kept current. Reporting stops being a tax and starts being the reason the underlying discipline holds.