10 Unhealthy Business Development Habits

10 Unhealthy Business Development Habits

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to Episode 101 of the Business Development Podcast. And on today's episode, we are chatting about 10 unhealthy Business Development Habits. We're going to name them, we're going to address them, and hopefully we can correct them into the future. Stick with us. This is a really informative episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said Business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

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And now your expert hohost, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 101 of the business development podcast. I don't know if you guys can tell I'm still running off that high from episode 100. My gosh, everybody. What an absolutely amazing, amazing week. Amazing experience. Amazing opportunity. I appreciate each and every one of you.

I thought today that we would just start out by giving a little show update. So where are we sittin So, as of the moment, on co host, we're actually sitting at 118, 504 total downloads. This is as of January 21st. So this is the same day, actually, that our 100th episode launched. So, we're not even at a Also, just a heads up guys, these numbers could be a little off.

We're having a bit of an issue with our co host, so I think we might actually be higher than this. But, I'm giving you the reserve numbers. We're also averaging about 2, 500 downloads a week at this point. Absolutely bonkers. Man, crazy. It's, it's absolutely nuts to see how much this show has grown simply in the past two to three months.

We've experienced, obviously, a very large uptick in listenership. We're very excited heading into self help season. We do hope that you tell your friends, your family, your co workers. Let everyone know about us so that we can really kill it here in 2024. I wanted to just start the episode by saying, you know, thank you so much to our dedicated listeners.

There's There's no way that this show could have made it as far as it has without your support. We know that we have an absolutely rockstar listenership, just amazing executives, business development specialists, presidents, founders, CEOs, and just amazing, amazing listeners from all across the gamut.

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Well, you know it, you know it. We touch on some stuff on this show that's can sometimes get a bit challenging. And I'm going to say today, I have to talk about a topic that is, it's hard. It's a hard topic to talk about. And today I wanted to chat about unhealthy habits of business development specialists.

This is one that's hard because I think every single one of us in business development. has to reflect back on our careers, especially we've been in it for any length of time and recognize that we were not always the rock stars we are today. Many of us, including myself, have participated in these unhealthy habits.

And I think what I'm really hoping to do today, more so than calling you guys out, cause you guys know it. If I'm calling you out, I'm calling me out too. I want to make you aware. Of your unhealthy habits so that we can put safeguards and we can start to recognize where we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

I think that is, that is just the best way to go about doing this and like I said, this isn't about, you know hating on any of my amazing BD people. This is not what this is about. Because at the end of the day, I am equally guilty for many of these. I feel like I couldn't even write these down. Had I not been guilty of them at some point in my past, but I do think shedding light on them, making people aware of them is what is going to be the antidote.

If we are aware of the challenges, we are aware of our unhealthy habits, we are then able to put in corrections and just make us 10 percent better every single day. Right? So let's just get right into it. And like I said. If it's hard to hear, it was hard to write, this is a very challenging topic, there's a reason that I waited till like second year basically to do it, it is not an easy topic, and but it is a very beneficial topic, it is very beneficial, it will help each and every one of you as we move forward.

Alright, so, let's just get right into it. Business development has been a very secretive business for a very long time. The lack of content available speaks to this. With the Business Development Podcast, I don't hold anything back. I tell you it how it is, and my goal with this show was to shine a big, bright spotlight on business development, try to get away from the secrecy and, and frankly, just the the protectiveness

of business development. I'm not really sure why it ended up this way, but that is definitely the way it has been for a very long time, and I think what we're doing with the Business Development Podcast is really great. We're giving people an amazing educational resource when they're hopping into this industry to be able to learn.

To be able to learn solid principles. I'm not really sure why, but there's definitely a guarding of information when it comes to business development, more so than sales or marketing or anything else that exists. Business development specifically has had a very guarded information history. And I recognized that when I launched this show, and I think that's why this show has soared to such an incredible popularity in such a short period of time, because nobody would talk about it.

Nobody would come out and say, look, here's, here's how to do this job. Here's what this job really is. Nobody's really done a great job at, at shining a light on it. And so with the business development podcast, that has always been a goal. And so I do hope that with this, we can start to take away this, this secrecy and we can really start to highlight these amazing business development people, these, these great people who just have not really had a chance to be recognized for whatever reasons.

In the beginning of my BD career, none of this was available, right? There was no business development podcast. There wasn't any books really on business development. I guess maybe there could have been, but I don't think there was. Really the information that we were getting was very much from sales, Brian Tracy, motivational people.

There wasn't really an outline of how to do it effectively. There was just business development people doing the best they could at any given time. And so, you know, I mean, in the beginning, I am guilty of probably 90 percent of, of these things because there was nobody to tell me whether it was working or not.

It's like, now we know, now we know. So we have to do better. That's basically what it is. Now we have a better idea on how to effectively do business development. And because of that, we have to improve, you know, as an industry, frankly. And so one of the things That I did want to acknowledge before I got into this today was it's the information on business development is relatively new and so don't feel bad if you're like if you're like I didn't know or you know I never really thought about that or it it's not your fault there just for whatever reason was not a lot of great information that is changing I am I'm trying to spearhead this change and I will continue to do my best to spearhead this change, you know, as we move forward on the business development podcast and whatever other ventures that we endeavor onto.

But yeah, understand there are things that will make you better. And I do hope today that if we can shine some lights on some of the things that might be holding you back. It will give you opportunity to move forward. So obviously things are changing. Business Development is changing. By the end of this decade, there will be guidelines.

There will be books. There will be all sorts of things to help you excel in business development. And I'm very, very proud of the business development community for finally stepping up and acknowledging that things need to be different. More information needs to be available for people. I struggled with many of these unhealthy habits as well, so please don't feel like I'm shouting you out, or I'm preaching to you, guys, I did pretty much 99 percent of these things, so don't feel bad, don't feel like if you're doing these that I'm singling you out, I'm not, I'm equally guilty, I've just found ways over time to get better at these things, so Don't feel like I'm calling you out.

I'd be calling me out to, right? So just understand if you recognize yourself in any of these unhealthy habits, I think every business development person has been there at some point in time. So it is an opportunity for improvement. It is not a, it is not a nail in your coffin. Okay, all right, so let's just get into it.

I specifically singled out 10 different things. So we'll just call it, we'll call it 10 unhealthy business development habits. Okay. The first unhealthy business development habit that can really, really slow us down is simply not following a process, right? We don't have a system. We don't have anything we're working from.

We are literally flying by the seat of our pants. We are we're, we're giving an over reliance on past connections. And I understand why you guys do this, because many of you, like I said, Business development shows you, you probably had other careers. You probably had other, other skill sets. Maybe you were a trades person.

Maybe, you know, you created technology and suddenly, or maybe you're a CEO or founder and suddenly you just, you've been flung into a business development role. And you're like, my gosh, like, what do I do? How do I do this? One of the things that pretty much everybody initially falls back on is Reliance on our past connections and there is nothing wrong with leveraging your connections.

Let me just start out by saying yes This is actually a benefit where it becomes not a benefit is if you don't have a process for how to meet new people Which is the grand scheme of what business development is all about. It's about creating new connections. It's about introducing and shouting a product from the rooftops to new opportunities.

It's new guys. It's new. And too many business development people get stuck on this. Okay, well, I've leveraged all my people. Now what do I do? And you see, you see it, you see it on business development specialist resumes where they're jumping from place to place to place. You're seeing they're spending a six months or a year at different organizations.

Well, what are they doing? Guys, they're leveraging their connections that what they're struggling with is making new connections. And so. When they hit the end of the people, they actually know they can no longer do business development effectively. It gets picked up eventually by the organization and they either get let go or they quit.

That is what is happening to these people that you're seeing bouncing from place to place to place in various business development roles. What they have struggled with is creating new relationships, and it's probably not their fault. Like I said, there's not a lot of great information out there on business development.

We are changing that with the business development podcast, and we will continue to strive to change that with capital business development and the business development podcast and anything else that we do in the future, but teaching people proper process and process flow, like we do on the business development podcast.

Is one of the single greatest things that any organization can implement and and heck try to start training their business development specialists in instead of just letting them fly by the seat of their pants because it's not really fair to put people in roles and not really teach them how to do it and unfortunately that's what's happened in business development for a very very long time for far far too long and so one of the things that you guys need to implement as soon as possible. Is a business development process. What is the step by step plan on how you were going to achieve new business connections, right? We talk about that on the business development podcast. You guys can go back and you can find lots of episodes on the process, on the flow, how to implement a business development process, but.

It is absolutely imperative to your success moving forward. Number two, not utilizing a CRM or very poor use of one. CRMs are absolutely critical. They are mandatory in business development in 2024 and beyond. Frankly, probably since like 2013 and beyond. Okay, CRMs have been absolutely integral to the business development role now for an incredibly long time.

Yet, I talked to many organizations who say, Yeah, I'm doing business development, but we're not using a CRM. My gosh, like we're talking big organizations. We are talking multi million dollar organizations who are still not providing their business development specialists with a CRM. If you are in this position, talk to your organizations, let them know you need a CRM to be more effective.

This will make everything easier for you. If you are still working off of notepads, Excel spreadsheets and business cards. Guys, you need a CRM. Okay. You guys know, I recommend pipe drive all the time. If you guys want, there will be a link in the show notes to this this show giving you, you know, access to, I think it's a two month free trial through, through the business development podcast, but guys, you absolutely.

Need to use a CRM and any CRM is better than none. Like I said, we have a link for pipe drive, but I've been using pipe drive for a decade long before we got a link for them. So it's a, you can use it or not, not a big deal. Just make sure that you get yourself a CRM. They are absolutely critical. And then remember, once you have a CRM, you have to keep them up to date, right?

We have multiple episodes on CRMs. I will be doing more episodes on CRMs in 2024 and beyond because they are that important. But you absolutely need to use your CRMs all the time, every day. Make it an integral part of your business development process. Make sure all of the data that you're using is accurate.

You're not using nicknames. You're using full names. You're putting in full data. You're putting in meeting results. You're putting in meeting summaries. You're giving it all of this information. Because what it starts to become is this amazing record of interactions with a client. So at any given time, even if you have to go back to it six months or a year later, You know exactly where you stood with that client before.

It is better than memory. Trust me, it is better than going back through your emails. And with technology we have today, it's, it's just becoming more powerful all the time. So make sure you absolutely need a CRM. If you are not using one, you need to start utilizing one immediately. Okay. Number three, not recording your results consistently.

Okay. You guys know, I talk about this the way that we do it at capital, we do weekly reports and I do, and I do summary reports of all the contracts we're done, right? When, when they're up, I give a full report of all the connections we made, all of the weekly contacts that we had, all the direct connections, all the digital connections, how many meetings we achieved.

From those meetings, did any close? Like we are trying to track as much information as possible. And I think for a while, business development, people were afraid to track their information because they were afraid of being called out. But the reality is guys, the tracking of the information is as much for you, my business development specialists, as it is for the businesses or organizations you work for, because yes, the organizations you work for want to know.

How effective you are. Absolutely. But you also need to know how effective you are because how else are you supposed to improve? How else are you supposed to hold yourself to a higher standard? And I know some of us maybe don't want to hold ourselves to a higher standard. But if that's you, I must ask you, is business development really the career choice for you?

Because the reality is, you're in a position to help a company grow, and you have to achieve that growth, okay? And I think a big part of the challenge, or, with business development for the past many years, is that companies were not, were not fair with their business development people. And what they ultimately did is they just said, shoot for the stars, keep working.

And we never knew if we were winning. That was a big problem with business development, at least in the beginning of my time, was that we were just endlessly striving for what. It was hard to tell if we were winning or not. It's like, you'd get a win and it would be short lived, because now you're just right back to the grind and have to do it again.

But, the reality is, is that every single company has corporate goals, and if you can, if you can tie You know, the amount of business development effort to achieving certain corporate goals, you are actually able to measure your success. And so the secret to striving and holding yourself accountable is knowing where you're going.

And so both business development specialists and organizations have to get better about what the KPIs what the expectations for business development people are. And I think as we move forward, that is going to get better. But it has been a problem for a long time. And what it leads to Is is business development specialist burnout because they're just they're striving endlessly and they have no idea where they're going and that can start to become very very draining very not rewarding and it can it can frankly just burn a business development specialist into the ground.

So I'm feeling for you guys. I'm giving you guys a little bit of an excuse here. But at the end of the day, we have to hold ourselves accountable and we have to know that we are improving and what our statistics are and how we are achieving the corporate goals. Okay. And the way that we do this is with weekly tracking.

That's the way that we've done it at capital. And that would be what I recommend to each and every one of you is start to create a weekly end of the week report for your organization and for yourself to be able to kind of start to understand. How do your efforts impact the overall goal? You know, how many meetings do you guys average?

How many calls does it take to typically get those meetings? How many digital introductions are you guys doing on a weekly basis? How many kilometers are you guys driving? Frankly, because you're driving around a lot, right? So we have to figure out all of this information to figure out how do we get more effective.

And the way that we figure that out is by tracking the data, okay? So we need to get better at recording our results. Number four, we are becoming account managers instead of business development. I get it guys. I get it. I did this for many years and I did both sides. And I also understand that a lot of organizations.

Don't differentiate between the two, but there is a massive difference between the two. And if you have business development and account managers doing the same role, mark my words, account management will take priority. It will take priority. Why? It is a much more fun. And a much easier position than new business development.

It has a lot less stress, a lot less risk. It feels better on pretty much most levels. Like the reality is they're very different. And while account management leads to new business, that's what it is. It is account management. It is managing current customers asking for repeat business. Business development is about new opportunities.

Everybody new opportunities. I talk about this all the time on the show. If, if your business development, people are not consistently bringing you in new opportunity, they are not business development people. They are probably account managers and you need to differentiate between the two and they need to be two separate positions within your organization.

Why it will both will be done more effectively. Period. That is why it's more than likely that if you have people doing business development and account management, they're primarily doing account management anyway. It's a better job in a lot of ways. Just from the standpoint of, you know, you get to go and have like consistent meetings with new clients or with, with existing clients.

Sorry. Or you get to go out for golf or you get to go out for lunch or whatever else. And while we're doing these things in business development, account management is the entire job of that. It's about building the friendship. It's about building the relationship. Account managers are relationship generators.

They're relationship creators and maintainers. Business development is about starting relationships. But if you continue to do that over and over again, you become an account manager. And then what ends up happening is, is that account management becomes the priority instead of finding new opportunity.

And if you guys are not consistently finding new opportunity, you are dying. You need new opportunities coming into your organization all the time, right? Because you can lose a customer at any time for any reason. We talk about that all the time on the show. You can lose a customer at any time for any reason.

So you need to make sure that you're consistently bringing in new opportunities. So have your business development people. Do new business development, find new business and hand those organizations off to an account manager. Once they become a customer, that is the secret. That is what you guys need to be doing.

And yeah, my BD people, if you guys are doing consistent account management, you guys know. You know, I mean, you're not bullshitting me. I know how it is. I did it. I know exactly how this works. And account management starts to become the priority because it's the easy fish. It's the easy money. It's the easy repeat business.

And you still, if that's what you're getting graded on fine, but understand that you're an account manager, not a business development person at that point. Okay. Business development is about new opportunity. And so if you need to talk to your organization and really explain that. Send them to this podcast, send them to this episode and have them listen.

But the reality is they are two separate positions and should be handled separately. Number five, over reliance on passive strategies. Okay, passive strategies would be your digital marketing, your social media marketing radio ads, TV ads, anything that makes your phone ring. Okay, I'm not saying that these are not valuable and important.

They absolutely are. But if you guys are doing business to business marketing and business development, you guys need to make sure that your passive marketing strategies are only about 20 to 30 percent. The other 70 to 80 percent need to be active marketing strategies. An over reliance on passive marketing relies on you having to catch your customer on their worst day.

They have to be actively searching for you. Right. What passive strategies are about are about building brand awareness so that when you do finally reach out to them, they've probably seen you somewhere. It's not their very first experience with your brand or with your company. And so what that does is it gives you just a little bit of credibility and trust when you make that active connection, when you reach out to them via email, via phone call for the first time.

Okay. You absolutely need, you need both. You need active and passive marketing. However, the ratios, they, they need to be completely different. They need to be like 80 percent active marketing, 20 percent passive marketing, or somewhere in that range. Because at the end of the day, active marketing is how relationships are built.

They're how you get those initial meetings. If you're relying like the opposite, it works for B2C. If you're, if you're like end user is like a customer who, you know, scrolls Facebook and buys things off of there or whatever else. But it does not do a great job at B2B because you have to catch that customer on the worst day.

They got to be Googling you or, or searching for you. It's just, it's makes it so much harder and it will be a recipe for disaster for your business. Okay. If you guys are in business to business, you know, selling and relationships, you guys need to be doing primarily active marketing services. This is phone calls, whether it be cold calls or soft introductions, digital introductions, but you need to be.

Working to get in actual contact with these people, you need to work to get actual direct contact via phone, via email with your ideal customers and and get in front of them, have that meeting and start building that relationship. Okay, we can't be focusing on those passive marketing strategies. They're just not going to be effective.

And if you are relying on these passive strategies and you're waiting for your phone to ring. My gosh, you guys are going to be waiting a long time. It's just not going to work the way you hope it will. We all wish that that was the way that it worked. It's just not that effective. It is effective in brand recognition, and it absolutely needs to exist for that reason.

And depending on how your organization works, sure, you might get the occasional phone call, and that's a great thing. Primarily, 80 percent of your marketing needs to become Active marketing. Okay. If you have an over reliance on passive strategies, it will be a recipe for disaster. Number six, not understanding your goals or what success looks like.

We talked about this really briefly earlier. Our business development specialists need to know what they're working towards. They need to understand what is the average customer value. What is our closure rate on a, on a typical meeting? What are the corporate goals for the year? Okay. Like there needs to be some real.

Some real tangible goals for our business development specialists to be working towards. Otherwise, it can start to feel like they're on an endless hamster wheel. Okay. And yes, sure, we should, we should reward them if they, if they achieve those goals. And then some absolutely. And I think organizations have been afraid of this.

I think they're afraid that if they give a number and then it's achieved, how they're going to compensate their people or what that looks like. But what you're ultimately doing is you're handcuffing your BD people. You're not giving them anything to work towards. Okay. And this is 100 percent a recipe for disaster for your business development team, for your sales team, and for your organization as a whole.

Bring in your business development team. Let them know what the annual corporate growth goals are. Let them know what an average closure rate looks like. Let them know so that then they can figure out, okay, based on that information, I think we need X number of meetings to accomplish this goal, or this is what we're aiming for.

And now they have a real target. They know exactly what they need to be working towards and how to hold. themselves accountable to a set number of meetings. You guys have to bring them in on this. They have to be aware of what the goals are. It cannot be an endless hamster wheel target. Bring them in, let them know, calculate at the beginning of the year, what that year has to look like and how you guys are going to accomplish it.

And you guys are going to be more successful. One of the biggest problems we've done in business development. Is not brought the business development team into the growth goals in a, in a real tangible way that they can understand what that looks like. Okay. We need to change that. Number seven, not taking responsibility for your success or lack thereof.

All right, guys, this is the hard one. This is the hard one. And yes, I'm putting my business development specialists or anybody who is. Responsible for business development on behalf of their company. Are you taking responsibility or are you slanging this responsibility off onto circumstance? Are you saying, you know what?

Yeah, like we're just having trouble because it's a recession or we're having trouble because there's a downturn in the market or, you know, Oh, they're really far away. So this is harder. Are you making excuses? That's really what I'm asking you right now. Are you making excuses or are you taking responsibility for your organization and the growth of your organization?

Because that really is the difference, okay? We can sit around and we can make excuses all day. Or we can take responsibility and we can find a way to success. I want you guys to ask yourselves today, am I making excuses for why I am not as effective as I should be at this job? And if you are, and we're being honest with ourselves, can we change it?

Can we stop making those excuses? Can we take responsibility for our own growth, for the growth of our organization, for the success of the work we're doing? Are we coasting, or are we gonna, are we gonna do what we need to do? Okay? And I know that that's a hard place to be. I know that that's, it's hard to look in the mirror and be like, shit.

Yeah, I could be doing better at this. I get it. I get it. I've had to do that plenty in my life. Okay? I'm asking you to be honest with yourself and ask yourself are you giving it all? Are you giving 110 percent here? Are you doing everything that you could be doing to get the meetings you need to get? Are you doing everything you could be doing to build the relationships you need to build?

Are you going to take responsibility today for your own success and the success of your organization, or are you going to leave it to circumstance? I sure hope that you choose to take responsibility. Because if you leave it to circumstance, you're going to be waiting a long time. Okay? Mark my words on this.

You can do this. There's, there's almost no circumstance that is impossible to overcome. Okay. You can do it with a can do attitude and belief in yourself and stop, you know, making excuses, right? That's really what it comes down to. We have to stop making excuses and we have to take responsibility for our own success.

But if you do this, mark my words, you will find that success. Okay. Number eight, we're afraid of phone calls and meetings. Okay. Okay. Let's now we're getting somewhere. I think a lot of us do find fear in social anxiety or social situations, me included, right? I've talked about this plenty of times performance anxiety, something that I've struggled with for an incredibly, incredibly long time.

All right, so I'm right there with you. I'm, I'm 100%. I totally understand, but we have to get over this. We chose business development. Okay. We chose this career. This is what we're doing. If you're listening to this, you're probably growing your business in one way or another. We have to stop making excuses as to why we're not making phone calls and emails and why we're not getting in front of people.

Okay. This is the number one way to close more business is to have more meetings. It is the number one way. So why aren't we doing more of it? Why aren't we prioritizing it? Why aren't we making meetings the goal of all the work we're doing? And I talk about this all the time on the show and you guys know that.

Meetings. Everything we do is to get in front of people and introduce and pitch our product and ask for an opportunity. Everything we do, the phone calls, the digital introductions, the social media ads, the passive strategies, the active strategies, it's all to get you in front of people who can buy your product or service, period.

That's the whole point. Everything we do is to do that. So why aren't we doing more of it? We're prioritizing all of the other stuff. We're saying, well, I made 30 calls this week. Or, I sent, you know, 25 digital introductions, so I'm good. Guys, that's not what we're being measured at. You really think at the end of the year, when you look back, anyone cares how many digital introductions you made, any, how, how many phone calls you made.

Yes, it's important for us to know, because we need to know what it takes to get the meetings. But, the whole point is to get the meetings, kay? The whole point is to get in front of people and close more business, period. Let's stop making excuses for why we're not making the phone calls we need to make.

Why we're not doing the emails we need to do. Why we're not getting in front of people and asking for an opportunity. Because that is what it is all about. That is going to close the business that you need to close. And you can do this. And you have to get over your social anxiety a little bit. And you know what?

Guys, I've struggled with this as well. One of the secrets I can give you Is it does typically go away. And so the secret is that if you're afraid of it or you struggle in those situations, you just need to put yourself in that situation more times. And the more that you do it, the more that anxiety goes away.

I used to struggle immensely. Like I used to struggle so poorly that I would be, I would be pouring sweat. I would be like almost unable to speak like I shit you not. This was Kelly Kennedy once. Okay. And so if this is you and I'm speaking to you right now. I've been you. I've been you. It is something you can get past.

It is something you can overcome, okay? The secret is just to do more of it, okay? Cold calls are tough, but then you hit a cold call cadence after 5 6 calls and it becomes easy. As the pitch gets better, you feel more confident in it, right? These are all things that you will improve at. But you can't improve at them if you do not practice them.

If you do not do them on a consistent basis. And so phone calls, emails, ask for meetings, and let's get in front of people and let's close more business. You can absolutely do this. Number nine, lack of consistency. Okay. This kind of goes back to the process, but ultimately you guys need to have a process, something that you follow every single day to make you successful.

Okay. Most days at capital. You know, I start my day with a to do list, and I make sure that I have, you know, the top 10 things that I need to do that day that are going to make me the most effective at my job. What are the things that I need to do? I do typically bang out the things I struggle with earlier.

Because if you can knock out the things that you're struggling with or that you're facing challenge in, Then the rest of the day is easy. So, you know, I mean, I like to bang out the phone calls at 10 a. m. I like to get my digital introductions over with and then it's done. Then the rest of the day is fairly straightforward and easy.

So just make sure that you have a process, that you have things that you do, that you have a consistent thing that you do. And you know, if you get to the point where you make 10 phone calls every day, 20 phone calls every day, make sure that you hit it. Make sure that you follow it. Make sure that you hold yourself to it consistently.

Okay, consistent process. Consistency is what makes you the most effective over time. You're going to have good weeks and bad weeks, but if you can have consistency, you're going to have more good weeks than bad weeks. They're going to average out and you are going to be overall more successful. But consistency in following your process, developing a process and holding yourself accountable.

These are the things that are going to make you the most effective in business development moving forward. And number 10, Oh man, this one's a real tough one. And this one I'm speaking to my business development veterans. Okay. I'm talking to my 20 year people. I'm talking to my 10 year people, my 15 year people.

Why the heck are we safeguarding this knowledge and skills, okay? I get it. You're afraid. You're afraid that the new people are gonna come in, and they're gonna knock you off your podium. I get it. We're all afraid of these things. But safeguarding your skills, Is not helping anybody and it is definitely not helping the next generation.

And I think that this is a huge, huge, huge problem in the business development industry. We are holding and guarding knowledge for no bloody reason other than fear other than fear that the new young people are going to come over and take our jobs. Okay, guys. It's going to happen anyway, okay? At some point, we are going to become obsolete, and I hate to say that, I mean it in the nicest way.

They're just, the technologies change, right? People change, everything changes. Do you know what's going to make you the most effective over time? Is giving back. Giving back to the next generation, helping them, teaching them the skills that will be around for a hundred years past now, okay? The reality is, relationship generation, real people to people interaction is not going anywhere.

And by holding back these skills, and not being forthcoming, working as a team, think about how effective our organizations could be if every single business development specialist worked at the same caliber. Just imagine that for a second. It's about growing the organization as a whole, and we can all contribute, but we have business development specialists who are safeguarding and protecting their, what they consider their hard learned knowledge, their hard learned process, okay?

I get it. I get it. We're afraid, but we're not helping anybody. And we're definitely not helping ourselves, and we're definitely not helping the next generation. And that's exactly why I give it all away on the Business Development Podcast. It is about helping and building the next generation, because they need help, they need support, and I know that there's hundreds of thousands of you out there.

My, my peak level business development people who are just not sharing that information. And if there's one gigantic takeaway that I hope you all take away from this today, stop safeguarding business development information. Stop, stop safeguarding your processes. Stop safeguarding it all and start teaching it.

Let's start helping the next generation instead of handcuffing them and, and trying to, you know, let them learn it the hard way, which is ultimately what we've been doing. We can do better. We can do better as an industry, and I will do my best to spearhead this charge. But I'm talking to all my other veterans out there.

Let's stop holding this information back. Let's stop handcuffing the next generation. Let's build them up. Let's make them better than we were. Let's give them the better skills. Let's teach them how to interact with people. And let's create better relationships than we have ever been able to build before.

Self reflection and understanding. We all have room to improve, and I know that it can be incredibly challenging, and I will be the first to say that I've struggled with many of these. However, working on improving these habits will provide a massive transformation on your ability to create consistent.

Success. Shoutouts this week, Cristian-George Farauanu, Justin Hammond, Mats Karlsson, Matt Gorman, Roni Patkai, Daniel Aultman Jr., Mindy Kay McRae Broadbent, Andy Baqone, Shelby Sullivan, Ahmed Mobasher, Aaron Haberman, Mercy Folayan, Derek Pinciaro, Antonio Bendicto Mejia Jr., Ben Simeon, Samuel Drauschak, Paul Coratella, Jamie Van Kasteren, Ben Martin, and Jason Dean.

It was an absolute pleasure everybody. Thank you so much. I know this was a challenging episode. Sometimes they are, but it is all designed to make us better. This has been episode 101 of the Business Development Podcast. We will catch you on. The flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development.

Your business development specialists for more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the business development podcast.

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