15 Characteristics of High Level Business Development

15 Characteristics of High Level Business Development

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 39 of the Business Development Podcast, and on today's episode, I'm gonna list out 15 characteristics that all high level business development personnel should have. Stay tuned.

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. In broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca . Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 39 of the Business Development Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in with us this week. Just wanted to give a big thank you to all of our listeners before we start out this show today.

It's it's sometimes hard to believe as we're trucking along that we're getting closer and closer to our 50th episode, which blows my mind a little bit. When I started the business development podcast, I was not, Picturing episode 50 coming up so quickly, like we're a little over a month from episode 50 dropping on this show.

And to be honest, guys, I'm still, I'm still very much in surprise, in shock and awe that you guys keep coming back week over week to to check out our business development show. And I, I just want to. Thank you. I want to thank all of our listeners. Whether this is your first episode or you've been listening for 39 episodes so far, I just want to thank you so much for tuning in week over week for telling your friends and family, for telling your colleagues.

This show is growing week, over week, over week, and we could not do it without your support. We could not do it without your reviews and your shares, and frankly, your listenership. So if you were listening to this show, if this is your first time, thank you for tuning in with us. If this is your. 39th time.

Thank you so much for coming back week over week, and I hope that we can continue to drive value for you and help you grow your business in one way or another. I would like to start this episode out today by giving a big thank you to Jesse Schewchuk CEO of Modern Muse Media. She came in last week and taught us about doing our own video production, which was such an amazing episode.

Jesse, thank you so much for coming on Tell, telling your story, and inspiring a ton of entrepreneurs, business owners and business development people to do their own video, and I think for sure. Some, we've definitely sent a few people to modern News Media cuz Jesse is a rockstar at what she does.

She's incredibly active on LinkedIn and if you want to hear her episode, it was episode 38. Lights. Camera, Action! With Jesse Schewchuk jessie, you're amazing. Thank you so much for coming on our show and thank you for dropping so much value in last week's episode. This episode is a bit of a fun one I thought today.

That we would put together some characteristics, and when I got down to it, there were 15 characteristics that I came up with that all high level business development personnel should have. Anybody who is looking to be tippy top in the business development world needs to embody at least most of these characteristics, and so I feel like today I'm really speaking to people that are either hiring for business development positions or I'm speaking to my business development people who are looking to up their game.

Maybe today you can sit back and you can hear out what I have to say and maybe see how you stack up and where you might be able to work on or improve to get a little better at your craft, which I'm sure you were already doing amazing at. For my entrepreneurs, my people looking. To do their own business development.

Maybe there's also some stuff in here that you can take a look at and compare and see where you might want to take some steps or where you might be able to implement a few improvements. And if you are hiring for business development, these are definitely some characteristics that you should take a look at when you are qualifying your next business development reps.

Okay, so let's just kick right into it. Let's get started. Number one. Number one is number one, because it is frankly one of the most important characteristics of any business development or salesperson, period when we're hiring a capital business development. It is the number one thing that I look for before all else.

Number one is likability. Likability is something that is not teachable, and I don't care how many people will try to conflict me on this. Likability is a personal characteristic. It's a personality trait. It's how you present yourself to the world. All of the best business development reps are incredibly likable people, and my argument would be they were probably incredibly likable long before they got into business development or sales or whatever, whatever whatever area they ended up in.

Okay. Likability is something that is truly critical in business development. Why? Because we are constantly creating rapport with our clients, right? We're, we're constantly trying to build a reputation to build trust. You build trust by being kind, by being likable, and by being honest. And by being trustworthy, right?

But a lot of that can be communicated by your likability and likability. And I hate to say it, some people are just not likable people, and it doesn't mean that they're not great people. It just means that on an outward face, when they're trying to make new connections, that is not their skillset. That is not their strong point.

Most expert business development people have mastered the art of likability. They, they have the ability to create a rapport, to create a connection very, very, very quickly. And I can tell probably within my first. Five minutes of an interview whether or not this candidate is going to be good at business development or not, and you can also tell this, and so it's something that you should be very critical, whether you're a business development person or whether you are hiring for a business development position.

You really need to make sure that your likability is on point and that you need to be looking for it. Is this candidate likable? Are they going to be able to create a rapport with my customer rather quickly? Are they gonna be able to create a rapport on the phone? Are they coming across kind? You can tell these things very, very quickly in the initial part of an interview.

So number one is likability, number two. We touched on this in the last episode. Very critical. Very critical to marketing and selling. Any, anything? Anything yourself, any product, any service. Confidence. Okay. Confidence is a huge, huge, huge one for business development people. You know, I I nail it into my employees that, Confidence is almost more important than the product and service that you're selling.

Why? Because you could have an amazing product or service. You could have the best product and service on the planet if you are not confident in your ability to articulate and stand behind that product or service to your customer. You're not gonna be able to sell that product. You really are not.

Confidence is absolutely key in any business development or sales position. You need to be able to have confidence in your product, confidence in your service, and overall over everything else. Confidence in yourself. You have to be confident. You have to be able to stand up in front of somebody and say, I believe in this product or service.

I know it can help you. Give it a try. Give it a try. I'm confident that this is going to be the product or service that you need. Confidence is something that is learned. Okay. This is a learnable skill, and in my opinion, you need to be working on this from point go. Business development people don't start out confident in their product or service.

They get confident with repetition. They get confident with picking up that phone and making that call a hundred times. They get confident with every single meeting that they have. They learn something new and they get just a little bit better at pitching that product. Once again, confidence is also something internal.

It's something that you. May not be able to generate, and I never really talked about this in the last episode. However, if you do not believe in the product or service that you are selling, if you think it's a sham or maybe it is a sham, or maybe you don't think that it is the right thing for this customer, you're not going to be able to sell it well and you're definitely not gonna be able to sell it and feel good, which is the other side of it.

You know, there is a point in this where you have to love what you sell and. If you love what you sell and you're confident in what you sell, my gosh, it makes it very easy to sell something cuz you are sold. You have to be able to sell yourself. Confidence is a lot about selling yourself, right? And so confidence.

In your product is critical. If you do not believe in what you're selling, you need to sell something else. That is my opinion. If you were in a business right now where you're a business development rep, or you're a salesperson and you were selling a product or service that you just are not behind, you don't believe that it is for the better good of your customer, you don't believe in it.

You don't. You think there's better stuff out there. My opinion is go work for the company that's got better stuff. I really truly believe that if there's another company that's got better stuff, go work for them. Why? You're gonna be a thousand percent better at your job. Why? Because you can stand behind that product confidently.

And so confidence is my number two on my, on my list. Okay. Number three organization. You guys know I hammer this right? Organization means we're keeping our crm. We have a great flow to our crm. Our notes are accurate. They're updated all the time. Maybe we're keeping a top 10 list in a notepad by my desk.

You guys know if you're listening to the show a lot. I always have a notepad by my desk. I'm constantly writing notes. I always have a top 10 things to do today. I do that first thing in the morning and I list out my client that I'm working for and what are the top 10 things that I need to do, and I list the harder things first, right?

Typically, number one on my top 10 list is gonna be either, it's either my digital introductions, which I don't wanna do, or it's my follow-up calls, which I also don't want to do, just like all the rest of you. But the reality is I know. What are the things that are gonna be the most value for my customer?

I know what things are going to make their phone ring and line us up. The the critical meetings that, you know, we're all working towards, right? So, Staying organized is a huge, huge part of that. And in the beginning when I first got into business development many, many years ago, I was not the most organized person.

It was a skill that I learned over time. But let me tell you what, all of the best business development p people, they're keeping great notes, they're CRMs are up to date, they're listing out the things they need to do today, and they're doing the shitty hard things first. Why? Because they know. Those are the things that are gonna benefit their, either their company the most, or you know the business they work for, their employer the most, or their clients the most.

It's typically the things that you do not want to do that are going to benefit you the most. And so organization plays a big part of that. Keeping organized notes, having everything where you need to have it, that is going to help you moving forward. So organization is number three on my list. Right behind organization.

You guys knew it was coming. Structure. Okay? Having a process, having a system or a flow that works for you and your organization is critical and all great business development people. Are structured people, they know what they're doing at each time in the day. They know, here's the things that I do to do.

I'm, I'm doing my LinkedIn digital introductions, then I'm doing my follow-up calls, and then I'm doing my CRM entries and I'm running them through to meetings. It's having a flow, having a process flow and not, it's not just enough to have the things I need to do today. You also have to have the ability to follow your own structure.

Okay. Being structured is one of the things that in business development, made me incredibly successful. Not allowing myself to sit back and not make those calls, not allowing myself, even though it'd be easier to not do my digital introductions, or to not update my CRM properly and cheat and maybe enter crap data or enter, you know, not enough data that anyone would know what the heck is going on.

Structure is something within yourself, right? Having the ability to do the hard things, to do it the hard way or the long way for the benefit. For the long term benefit. Okay. Having the ability to say, you know what? I don't wanna make 15 phone calls today, but I'm gonna make my 15 phone calls today. Why?

Because I know that if I make my 15 phone calls every day of the week, I'm going to be successful. That's just, that is structure and every great business development person. Has developed structure within themselves to hold themselves to a higher standard, to hold themselves accountable. Okay.

Accountability and structure, I, I consider very similar, but you need to hold yourself accountable and all the best business development people do this. They hold themselves accountable, they hold themselves to a structure, and they get the work done even when it's hard, even when they don't want to. It's that consistency, the structure and consistency that make them incredibly, incredibly effective.

Okay. Number four, reliability. Okay guys, none of this matters if we don't show up to work, right? Reliability is critical. My gosh, you know, I would say in the last five years of work, I have probably missed at most, and I mean this guys at most, two weeks. Two weeks sick in the last five years would probably be a pretty accurate measure of the amount of sick time that I've taken.

And I'm not going to criticize you guys if you guys are genuinely sick. If you guys are truly sick and you need a sick day, by all means, by all means take it. Okay? I am not, I'm not saying don't take a sick day. What I'm saying is, Don't cheat yourself and your employer, and really yourself. Don't cheat yourself.

Okay. Hold yourself. Like I said, it's, you have to actually show up and do the work to be successful, right? Most of the best business development people, I guarantee you, they love what they do. You know, they're, they're at work because they love, they love what they do. And if you love what you do, you make a lot less excuses to not show up to work.

I think that's genuinely true. I, you know, I used to take a lot of sick days when I had a job. I hated, okay, like the reality is, Business development is flipping amazing. And if this is your career or if you're, if you're an entrepreneur and you're just getting into it and recognizing I'm gonna have to do business development for my business, or you are an experienced business development person, or, heck, you're just getting into it.

It's a flippin, amazing job. It's one of the best jobs in any company. Bar none. There is, you know what? I would say in some cases, on some days, it's even better than being the president or ceo. Cause guess what? He's gotta deal with a lot of crap. I know. Cause I am one. But when you're in business development, your job is just to consistently introduce this company to new companies and provide opportunity for the business.

It's really great. You get to meet a ton of new people, you get to do a lot of lunches. You get to have, you know, in some cases you're doing account management maybe, and you get to have like a lot of fun outings with clients. Like, business development is an amazing job. Stop skipping work. Why are you skipping work?

You have a great job, okay? If you don't like it, if you don't like business development, there's a thousand other things to do, but trust me, If you commit to business development, you will learn to love it. It's truly an amazing, an amazing position. And yeah, at first it's kind of hard. I get it. I get it. I struggled with stage frightened anxiety too.

Okay. I did. I still at sometimes at some meetings I'm like, oh my gosh, like oof, I get, I get a little antsy or I get anxious. You know, that's normal though. I want you to understand that's normal. And I talk about it and I normalize it. I actually have an episode of You go back on stage, Sprite and Anxiety.

I have an episode on it. It happens to almost all of us, and it doesn't ever necessarily stop. There's still going to be scenarios. You just get better and better and better at dealing with it. But understand that if that's the thing that's holding you back now, or you're afraid of the cold calls, cuz yeah, they're hard at first.

I get it. You're gonna get better at it and eventually you'll get so good at it, it won't phase you anymore, but just trust me, you know, like. You need to show up to work to be effective. Okay? And all of the best business development people, they're going to be reliable. They're going to show up to work and they're gonna do their job.

And if they're doing their job, they're gonna be effective at their job. And if they're effective at their job, they're gonna love their job. And that is what I want for each and every one of you. So before you call in sick next time, two things. Think about whether or not business development is the job for you.

Maybe it's just not. Maybe that's not your personality type. And you have to think about that. But on the flip side, if you can be at work, if you can learn to love your job, you're gonna have a lot less sick days, and you're gonna be very reliable. And the best business development people, they, they show up, they show up every day.

They show up whenever possible, unless they're dying in bed, puking, they show up to work. Okay. Number five, trustworthiness. Okay. Trustworthiness. Trustworthiness is critical in almost every job, right? But business development, you have access to a lot of things in a company that not everybody has access to, right?

Typically, you know, pricing, you know, accounts, you know customers, you know, customers like you know them cuz they're your customers for the most part. Or you made those introductions. You hold a lot of power as a business development representative or as a business development person. And it is very critical that you are trustworthy with that power, that you don't wield that power dangerously, that you don't threaten the organization that you work for or that you don't threaten, you know, the companies that you're not taking bribes is another one.

And you know, I think we will definitely have a. A episode on ethics at some point, because there's definitely some ethical considerations for business development people that don't necessarily fall into other sides of the business. There are definitely things along that front, but you know, you're trusted with money, you're trusted with accounts, you're trusted with relationships, very critical relationships, and it is up to you to uphold.

Uphold yourself, uphold your company. And trust trustworthiness is something that is very critical to business development. And I think, you know, we all have to decide about what, what type of people we're gonna be, right? But I genuinely believe that on the moral high ground, to stay trustworthy, to do the right thing, whenever those opportunities are presented your way are critical.

And most business development people, most high level business development people, They are very trustworthy people. You know, they're honest people and they care about what they do, and they care about what they represent. And so trustworthiness is my number five. Number six. They love what they do. You guys know I harp on this.

Business development is amazing. It's an amazing job. I love business development. You guys know, I love business development. I wouldn't do a podcast on business development if I didn't love it to death. I am incredibly fortunate to have ended up in the business development world. I love now having my own business development firm, capital business development.

I love doing this podcast and I just love the opportunities. You know, like I. I look at my life now and I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I really couldn't. And I love the companies that I work for. You know, their products are high quality, they're great. You know, I really believe in them and I think if any good business development person, they really do love what they do.

They really do. And yeah, maybe it's something learned in time, but. It really is just one of the greatest positions in any company, and I'm so proud of anybody listening to this who's doing their own business development. You know? Good for you. Like it's an amazing career choice. It's amazing. I know you probably didn't expect to end up in it.

None of us do. I always say, Business Development chooses you. Nobody went out and was like, I can't wait to go to school to be in business development. At least not yet. I haven't come across that person yet. I'm sure maybe one guy is out there, one gal is out there who, that was their choice. They went to school knowing business development, but I had no idea what it was when I was in college.

And yeah, it wasn't until much later that I realized my calling was business development. And I, I'm so proud to be in it, and I think that it is a critical thing. I really do believe that all high, high. Quality business development, high-end business development people. One of their characteristics is they truly do love what they do.

So that is my number six. Number seven, they are consistent. Okay, we talked about this earlier. Consistent and structure kind of somewhat goes hand in hand. However, they are a little bit different. Structure is more of like a process. Consistency is holding yourself to that process. Day in, day out, day in, day out.

That is what makes great business development people. Even greater. They hold themselves to a structure and then they actually do it day in and day out, even when it's shitty. And yeah, it has its shitty days. Okay. Don't get me wrong, BD is great. It has its moments, though. We all know this. We all know there's days we don't wanna make the phone calls.

We all know there's days we don't wanna do the digital introductions, or we don't wanna follow up, or we don't want to enter data into crm. And we definitely don't wanna do the reports. I get it. I get it. But, Being consistent and being able to do that week in, week out, week in, week out. My gosh, it's like a superpower, but if you do it, If you do the right things every week, even the things you don't want to do, you are gonna get results like you've never seen before.

You really are. Ironically, you know, I have a business because so many people don't do the right things week, over week, over week. It really is the fact that at Capital we are so consistent at what we do and we're so structured and we have a great system. And if we follow that system week in and week out, we get results.

There's just no question we get. We get exponential results for our customers. And so consistency is a huge factor in that, okay? Consistency is critical and hold, if you have a structure, you need to hold yourself to it. And if you hold yourself to it on a consistent basis, you are going to be successful.

And it is a characteristic of all high quality business development people. They hold themselves to a structure and they're consistent with it. And because of that, they are successful. And that is my number seven. Okay. Number eight, growth oriented. Okay. Growth oriented. We are constantly holding ourselves to a higher standard.

Like, you know, we, we don't wake up today and say, yep, I'm an expert and I don't need to learn anything more. I don't need to learn anything more. I'm, you know, they're always constantly trying to find a better way to do something. And this is gonna trail into my next one. My next one is actually always learning, but they are kind of hand in hand, but they're a little bit different.

Growth oriented is more towards, open to new, open to like a new idea or, or you know, in some ways constantly learning. Cause the reality is you're learning all the time. And you know what, I may actually just pair these two together. I really might. So we'll just call this one, eight and nine growth oriented and always learning.

Okay. So growth orientation is really towards being open to new ideas, being open to new systems and processes. And always learning is just being. Open in general, reading books, learning, you know, learning things, learning about ai, learning about the new technologies or the things that are gonna make you a little bit better.

Okay? We have to be open to, to better things, to better ideas, to new processes, to new systems. And if I, I feel like any expert, I don't care who you are, whether you're an expert in business development, whether you're an expert in whatever field you're in. You were only an expert until yesterday, right?

Or till today. We can even call it today. But let's get real Tomorrow. There's something new. There's something new you don't know, and you have to be willing to accept that there are always going to be things and better ways coming up that you don't know about, that you learn about as long as you are open to it.

Being in business development, we have a really great opportunity to learn. And, and that opportunity is, we spend a lot of time on the road, right? You know, my entrepreneurs and business owners that do a lot of sales meetings, we're constantly driving places. You know, like heck in Alberta, Canada, where I live the nearest large city is three little over three hours away.

Like, that means that a round trip for meetings in Calgary, Alberta, for me, is a six hour round trip. So I might drive all the way to Calgary. Have a lunch and drive all the way back, and that's my day. But so you had, you had a one hour or an hour and a half workday for that meeting in Calgary and now you have, you know, six hours of driving.

Well, you have options, right? You can sit and listen to music for that six hours of driving, or you can put on an audiobook and you can listen to a whole bloody audiobook in that time. And you have to make that choice in most good business development people. Guess what? They're learning. They're learning, you know, and yeah, I get it.

Like sometimes. Sometimes self-help books. I totally get it. You can get self-help out. I have plenty of times, but. If you put yourself in a situation where, okay, like, yeah, today I'm going to learn a new book, or I'm gonna learn a new skill, or I'm gonna, I'm gonna just learn something new. There's so many great books.

There's so many great books, especially on self-help, on discipline, on sales and marketing. There's always things you guys can be learning to stay ahead. And if you guys are gonna be spending six hours on the road, you really should be looking at improving yourself, right? And so, Use those things. You know, don't stop learning.

Don't stop learning. You're only an expert until today, right? Tomorrow. You need to be ahead and you get ahead by keeping up. By keeping up, and you keep up by learning. Okay? And so I would highly recommend if you're spending a lot of time on the road, use that to your advantage. Use it to your advantage.

Read a self-help book, you know, learn a new skill, figure it out, because as long as you're constantly improving yourself and open to new ideas. It is only going to benefit you over time. Okay? It's only gonna benefit you over time. Alright, so that was, that was eight and nine together. Eight was growth oriented, nine was always learning.

Okay, now we're on 10. They work well in a team, okay? BD, most of the time. Business development, you're not typically by yourself. I get it. In smaller companies, you can be by yourself. It can go either way. However, even if you're in business development and you are working alone, you know for a fact you're working close with operations manager, you might be working close with the marketing and sales team.

You might be working close with the president. Okay? We have to be able to not just work great on our own, but also articulate what we're doing to our team. We need to be able to provide great reports. A big one. We need to show up for the for the business development meetings and kind of explain, okay, here's the opportunities, here's where we're at, get feedback.

We have to be able to work well as a team, and it doesn't matter whether you do business development for yourself or whether you do business development as part of a business development team or sales team. Being able to work well as a team is truly a superpower. It truly in business development can give you exponential strength, would be a good way of putting it.

It allows you to leverage a team. It allows you to spitball ideas off other people. It allows you to share connections, right? In the case of Capital, we, we share connections with all of our, with all of our employees. Why? Because what helps one helps all right? And so, If you can work well as a team, it's only going to make you even better.

You could be the best business development person. You could be absolutely amazing at it, but you would be that much better if you could just do it with a team. If you could help a team, if you could spit all ideas with a team, it's going to make you more effective. So all good business development people, all the best ones are also able to work well in a team.

Okay, so that was number 10, number 11, meeting focused. Okay. We are meeting focused, we are able to head take things to a meeting that is very, very, very critical. We have to be able to take things to a meeting. That's the goal of all of these. All of these, all the work. All the work we do, right? It's always to take it to a meeting.

So if we look at it from that standpoint, it doesn't matter how many calls we make, it doesn't matter how many LinkedIn digital introductions we make, it doesn't matter. How many emails we sent, what really matters is how many face-to-face did we get? How many people were really interested? How many actual sales opportunities did we create?

Those are the critical parts of, of any business development team is to take it to the meeting. So we are always driving to a meeting focus. Okay.

Okay. Sorry everybody. I realize now going through my list, I had to literally break for a second and just take a quick peek, but I realized that going through my list, I messed up the numbers. I know, I'm sorry. I'm just gonna run it through real quick just so I can correct myself because I definitely made a little bit of a mistake there in the numbering.

So our number one was likability. Number two was confidence. Number three, organized. Number four, structured. Number five is reliability. Number six is trustworthiness. Number seven is love What Love what you do. Number eight is consistency and structure. Number nine, growth orientation. Number 10, always learning.

Number 11 was work well as a team, and number 12 is meeting focused. Okay, now number 13 is not afraid to pick up the phone. Okay. I know, I know. This is a huge one. So many business development people nowadays and so much marketing, and this isn't even necessarily your guys' fault, especially if you're new to the business development world. You know, the world has pushed so hard that passive marketing is the way to go. You just need to put up LinkedIn ads. You just need a better website. And don't get me wrong, you guys know where I stand on websites. Websites are critical, but they don't, they don't necessarily sell anything for you.

Okay? So we have to stay active marketing focused. You guys know at Capital, I pitch this all the time, we need to be 80% active, 20% passive. You need to get the word out there, but you can't. Just wait for your customers to come find you because they're just not going to, that's not the way that the world works, okay?

You can't make your customers jump through too many hoops because modern day, they won't. They just won't. It's not reasonable to ask them to find you. It's, and even a lot of these, like contact forms, the way that they work, there's almost too many steps before you can reach out to them. So by the time you get them, you know their, they're lukewarm at best, or you gotta get them on their worst possible day.

They need to be actively looking for what you're selling. Guys, you need. You need to be an active marketing person, right? You have to take that initiative to bridge that gap between you and your customer, and so the best business development people these days. Are are going to be focused on active marketing.

They are going to find the customer before they need your product. They're gonna make those introductions before the purchase is required. Why? Because if your customer already knows who you are, you've made a connection with them, and then they need your product, guess what? They're not calling anybody else.

Or if they are, they're calling one other person and you've already built that relationship connection with them. So you are going to be the better option. And so, Active marketing, the best business development people, the top qualities of high level BD. The top characteristic is they're not afraid to pick up the phone.

They're not afraid. Yeah. Maybe they hate it. Maybe, you know, they get nervous. We all do. But they make those cold calls. They do. They make the cold calls. They make the contact. They track down the phone number to this person, or they email and they make a direct connection. They do the right things, and as long as they're constantly doing those direct connections, they're pushing towards real face-to-face meeting interactions.

They are going to be successful, they're going to be more successful than everybody else in that passive marketing stage because they are actually actively making that connection before the customer needs what they, what they're, what they're selling. And if they do that, they always have a constant list of people phoning them too.

You, you're not really thinking about it from that standpoint is that I've had situations where I made connections and two years later that person called me and said, Hey, Kelly, now I need what you're selling. You got any of this available? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. Thanks for calling. Oh, by the way, we had your brochure and information on our desk for the last year and a half, and now we need it.

That's how it works. If you guys go out and actively market and make those connections ahead of time, you are actually preparing yourself for the future. You're getting few future opportunities from that effort, right? So the secret is you need to stay active. You need to stay active into the future to be more successful over time.

Okay. All right, number number 14, active on socials. Right? Active on socials. Okay, so what do I mean by this? You know, the best people. They are doing digital introductions on LinkedIn. They are, they have a really clean LinkedIn profile page. And I'm speaking to you guys if you sell on, on Instagram and stuff as well.

I don't, but maybe you do. Maybe you, maybe your product or service is sellable on, on, on Instagram. Although I do think for most business to business, that really just isn't the case. But I'm really speaking to my business, to business, business development people today and my entrepreneurs who are selling their products or services.

Okay. You need to have a really clean social. And you know, I talked briefly about the website too. You know, I go, if you go back to my previous episodes, I talk about websites and I, I talk about how your website, a website, a really well done website is a company's sky skyscraper. You know, in the 21st century, it's your eighties skyscraper.

It really is. It like showcases your company. It's, this is what our amazing company does. Look at how sweet our website is. That truly is like your skyscraper in the 21st century, but, Your LinkedIn is like your personal skyscraper in the 21st century, right? We need it to be fully filled out. We need it to be tidy.

We need it to reflect who we are. We need to have a great image. We need to have up-to-date information, right? It's critical. It's really critical because people are searching you and they're searching you on LinkedIn and so. Having a, a really great social presence. You know, whether that's you, you doing posts on behalf of your company, whether that's you having great posts and obviously, you know, keeping it, keeping it clean, keeping it pertinent, keeping it in interesting and informative.

Right. But having a great social presence is a, is something that most of the great business development people, the, the, the business development experts are doing these days. Okay. And I do think it's critical, and I don't think it has to take a lot of work. What it has to have is that you've put a lot of thought into everything that is on your LinkedIn profile.

You put a lot of thought into the posts that you're posting. You know, don't just post anything. Post things that are important, that are critical, that are informative, that will create a conversation. Okay? There are socials are becoming more and more important, and it will be one of the top characteristics of all business development experts moving forward.

Okay? And finally number 15, self-motivation. Okay. Self-motivation is critical, and I know we kind of touched on this a little bit in in organization structure reliability, but. Being self-motivated and truly wanting to win, I think is a characteristic of many, many high level business development people.

We hate losing. We really do, and I, I especially, I really, really hate losing and, and. Being self-motivated to perform and do well has been something that has served me incredibly well in my business development career and still consi, like it continues to serve me because what it does is it motivates me to work hard even when I'm not feeling motivated to work hard.

You know, self motivation. It's truly critical. And, and it really, it, it's intrinsic. It comes from within. It comes from within. So my, my advice to you is find something to motivate yourself. You know, for me, you know, I have a family, I have responsibility, I have, you know, hobbies and stuff that I love to do.

I have a home. There's a lot of self-motivation to do well, right. Find yours. Find the things that inspire you to do well in your life. Find the things that you're passionate about and use them to self-motivate you to do better at your job. To do better at business development, to do better as an entrepreneur.

Find the things. Find the thing within yourself to make you perform, and you will outperform everyone else. So my number 15, find something to self-motivate you and stay self-motivated because all of the top. High level business development people are self-motivated. Okay? All right. Shout outs this week to Marc from Germany.

I didn't have any more than that. That was the notes that he gave me. So Mark from Germany. Thank you so much. Ben Simeon. Jesse Schewchuk thank you guys so much for reaching out and letting me know what you think of the podcast. Really appreciate it. We started to get some questions in as well. Just wanted to say if you guys are interested in business development, you have some questions, maybe more pertinent to your company or to your situation.

Send them to podcast@capitalbd.ca. That's podcast@capitalbd.ca . Subject line, community questions and I will make sure that we do a community questions episode answering your questions once I get to eight questions. I think right now I'm at like two, so if you guys want, if you're listening to this episode and you have some questions for me, please shoot them over.

Once again, if you're enjoying this show, please follow, like, subscribe on your platform of choice. We're on all of them. And until next time, thank you so much for listening. And 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.