What are the best ways for assessing the talent of a business development manager candidate for an IT company, during the preliminary interviews stage?

business development manager must have some features such as :-

1- know the market of the business that he will work on it.

2- amount of relation that will help him in his work.

3- no of projects that he build up it.

4- knowing how to promote the business & his proceeding to achieve targets. 

When it come to assessing the talent of a business development manager candidate, since the other person is not know it is very much important to check,

a) Previous achievement in the related industry

b) Knowledge of the market (financially)

c) Knowledge of customers (IT field)

d) His ideas over your companies goals

e) Language proficiency.

f) Total number of experience

g) Educational background (management courses would be advantage)

I feel you should check the above during the interview stage and you should be able to judge where does the candidate stand and accordingly you can take a decision.

Give him a brief about a fake company which has a situation like you had or you still have and see how he/she handle it. Discuss the brief and take out the conclusions about his personality, attitude, ideas and so on and compare with your requirements and wishes. It's better to see a business development manager "in action" instead of read his resume and his achievements and so on. I am sure you will discover more about him when you follow and analyse his decisions. 

Gaining the right qualifications that employers are looking for in a business development manager is vital for your CV. Employers love an ambitious candidate, especially one who shows initiative to develop their skills independently

I think the CV will never be a real assessment to a business development manager, the interview will be the first glance at what he can offer.

• You should look for his personal treats when doing the first interview, offer a situation and assess his actions towards it.
• his knowledge with his previous experiences and achievements.
• How fast he can learn about the business and how he will deal with it.
• How did he promote a business before.
• What hardships he faced in both business and real life.
• Does doing business motivates him or not.
• Does he have the business mindset.

A Business Development Manager must possess the following qualities.

§  Good communication skills, business knowledge, and Negotiation skills

§  Creativity

§  A good grasp of numbers and the ability to write documents in a professional style

§  A hunger to stay up to date with economic matters

§  The ability to remain flexible and seek alternative options to problems

The above qualities are to be judged through competency based interview i.e. asking questions like when he/she had the opportunity to show his/her negotiations/creativity/others skills, how he/she had managed, what was the outcome, what were the challenges and whether he/she should act differently in similar future endeavor?

I agree with MR TARIG BABIKER

shandy Nagy has given a good answer above

Thanks ,

Agree with Colleagues Shay Nagi and Tariq Alamin

How Does a Candidate Assess Opportunities: As a Business development manager, you're presented with numerous deals to go after and you need to ensure you hire someone who will go after the *right* deals for your company.

• What companies should we target for partnerships and why?
• Tell me about a deal you walked away from at your last company and why.
• How would you assess what deals we should spend other company resources on, if any?

How Does a Candidate Form a Process: A BD person can have hundreds of deals in play at one time. You need to understand how they stay organized with heavy dealflow at various stages.

• Tell me what you would do in your first 30 days at our company.
• Once a deal is signed, what happens? What would you like to happen?
• How do you ensure that existing partners stick with you as our company grows?

How Convincing is a Candidate: BD is all about relationships - from forming them at early stages to nurturing them as they grow.

• How have you convinced an unwilling partner to work with you in the past?
• What tools do you think we should have to better enable partnerships?
• Let's say I'm (X big potential partner). You're our latest BD hire. Convince me to work with you.

Thanks for the invitation 

first business development in any technical field must have the enough technical knowledge in the specific field and second, he must have business skills and creativity to combine both for the benefit of the company.

for this position, I prefer the candidate to be from a technical background with a business knowledge.