A Day in the Life of Business Development

A Day in the Life of Business Development

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 33 of the Business Development Podcast, and today we are bringing you into the light on what it is that business development reps are doing at your company. If you've ever wondered what your little rock stars are up to, stay tuned. We got you covered.

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.

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 The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. This is episode 33, and today we are chatting about a day in the life of a business development representative. I know for some of you it can definitely be a little bit confusing as to maybe what it is your BD person does. They just kind of look like little rock stars in the corner and they either make their calls or whatever they're doing, and next thing you know, you guys have meetings, you have partnerships, you have all this stuff coming up. They always look very busy, but what are they doing? Hopefully today I can answer some of that for you. Do keep in mind, this is a bit of a caveat.

It's different company to company. Your experience may vary. This is just a generalized idea of what a typical day could look like for your business development rep. Do you understand that the job changes regularly? There's always shifts in in resources, there's shifts in ideals or what you're going after.

So do keep in mind that while this is pretty accurate, I think that there are, there is room for, there is room for improvement. Once again, to Yeah, I don't know if you can tell, but I'm I'm feeling pretty rundown today. I I ended up catching a bit of a flu. We were at a at a kid's birthday party over the weekend at a, at a play place.

And I don't know what I got, but I feel like I got the worst thing that I could get from that place. So I'm still I'm still kind of recouping, so if I sound a little rough please bear with me. I'm just just kind of recovering still from a bit of a flu. Okay. I definitely wanna start out this episode today just by chatting a little bit about Erin Holowach.

Thank you so much. Erin Holowach of homeFree Realty for coming on as our expert guest last week. It was absolutely amazing to have her on. She is launching another commission free real estate company here within Canada, so it was really, really cool having her having her on the show and chatting about her, her experience, her and her husband Travis had launched.

ComFree real estate back in early two thousands, which at that time was a revolutionary kind of idea back then for Commission Free Realty. And they are back. They're doing it again. And Erin, I wish you the best of success in your new venture. I also just wanted to give a quick shout out. We we had a pretty cool thing happen last week.

I believe it was Sunday we hit number 75 in the Canadian Entrepreneurship Category on Apple Podcasts. So I thought that was pretty rad. Thank you to all who are listening and Definitely appreciate that listenership. And it's, we're, we're moving up. We're moving up slow and steady. We're climbing.

We're climbing to that top 50. Okay. Let's let's move into it. Let's chat a little bit about what is a business development representative or sometimes referred to as BDR.

A business development representative works to generate new opportunities for you, you, your business, business development reps.

Create long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, relationships, and partnerships. So your BD person is kind of always forward thinking. What their main goal is always is to help your company grow. We wanna provide exponential value to our costs, so we're always looking at. What are the opportunities for the business?

What are some new companies we can work with? Are there potentially partnerships to look out for? Where do we have new leads coming in? Where are the opportunities? What are the industries we want to target? So we're always forward thinking. We're typically sitting in on a lot of meetings as well.

Especially if you're a Business Development Manager in an organization, you're sitting in on a lot of meetings, kind of trying to get to the bottom of what the goals are of the company. And then our job, obviously is to help the company accomplish those goals. From a revenue standpoint, right? From a new business development standpoint, BDRs assist the sales team by finding and qualifying leads, but also provide value by establishing strategic partnerships.

If it has to do with the expansion of your business, it is on your BD's radar. So yeah, right there guys, if it has to do with expanding the business, finding new companies, finding new partners, finding ways to grow the business that is part of the BD's tasks. Okay, so key takeaways from this are long-term goals.

Exponential value over time. So sometimes people get BD and sales kind of a little bit confused, and while they can seem relatively the same, there are differences. BD is a little bit of a long-term game. So what we're doing is we're identifying new business for your company. We're finding new industries.

We're making connections at new companies, and we are as. Establishing Relationships that hopefully will provide you a ton of value over time. So what we're trying to do is the long game business development is really about the long game. You have to have both. You have to have somebody to be able to make a sale today, but you also have to have somebody who's ready to make those new connections to keep.

Keep the opportunities coming in the future, and that's really what a business development rep's job is. They're looking for opportunities to create this funnel of, of lots of opportunities for your business that hopefully in time will turn into sales and revenue for your business. Okay. Business development is an investment in long-term success, so that's the key, right?

It's really an investment. When you're looking at business development for your company, you have to look at it as, yeah, I might not get results. Next week or the next three weeks, or depending on what you're selling, maybe the next year with high ticket items, that can very much be a reality. But it is an investment in that future.

And if business development is done right, it truly pays dividends on itself. It truly is an amazing investment in your business. We truly strive to provide exponential value to our costs, especially at capital. That is one of our main goals of the business. We are looking to provide exponential value to our cost over time.

Cuz while you may only bring on capital for six months, a year, whatever you bring us on for hopefully those relationships that we establish for you pay off year, over year, over year, over the next 10 years or more for your business. So it's a long term game. Think about business development as a long-term game for your business.

So let's talk a little bit about what your rockstar BD personnel are up to. Once again, take this with a grain of salt as the job changes regularly when the schedule and business needs, right? So kind of depending on what's happening at your business, this can definitely change. But there's pretty typical things that BD people should be doing, and I, I definitely try to outline them and I think I've tried to outline them by time of day just so you have a better understanding of what your BD people tend to be doing at certain times.

Okay. So let's start with 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM. So most business development reps are starting work at around 8, 8:30, 9. Depends on the company, but typically around that 8:00 AM is when your BD reps are kind of getting to it. However most of us have actually been working since we got up. That's just the nature of the game.

So, Most of the time when we get up in the morning, we are checking our emails. We might be responding to emails. There might be critical things that have popped up just that morning or meetings we have to book immediately. And those always take priority. So sometimes your BD person is actually already working before they've even gotten to the office.

And I would say, Many, many times that is the case. Emails you tend to come late at night, so sometimes they get addressed first thing when we get up in the morning, especially if they're critical, especially if they pertain to the next day or the next couple days. And we really wanna lock in those meetings.

Yeah, we're gonna respond likely in the morning. So your bd reps day typically starts when they get up in the morning. However they typically don't get to an office if they work at an office until 8:00 AM Okay. So what do we do in the morning? We typically start by checking our emails for opportunities that came in overnight.

So like I said, you know, in my case I'm typically checking these things when I get up, but maybe in some cases your BD rep is actually doing it when they get to the office. So one of the first tasks they're probably doing is doing a quick review of their emails. We're always up to date on our emails.

That is a good business development. Just a, just a good way to work. If you're in business development. We really keep on top of our emails, so we typically don't have 50 or a hundred emails to clear out. We're typically pretty on, on point with those, and so we might have, I don't know, five, between five and 10 emails that we have to deal with in the morning.

So it is realistic to do this first thing. Okay. So we're checking emails for opportunities that came in overnight, and then we're checking voicemails, right? Because 80% of the calls that we, we make leave messages. So we're constantly leaving voicemails. Your BD people I would say eight outta 10 calls.

Go to voicemails. So we get really, really great at leaving voicemails. However, these people also tend to call us back. So if we do great jobs at leaving great voicemails what ends up happening is we end up getting calls back. So we may be checking our voicemails. So the first couple things we do, we're checking our emails, we're checking our voicemails.

Okay. Okay, we are sending our LinkedIn slash digital introduction, so this can be done either first thing in the morning or this could be done the night before. And I am a huge advocate that if you were utilizing a LinkedIn digital strategy for your company, where we're gonna connect with the right people on LinkedIn to make that soft introduction, which you guys know I pitch hard on this, on this podcast, right?

I want you guys to be making the soft introduction cause it just gives you a little bit more to work with. When we get into it, and it also gives you some leads that we can start populating into our, our first digital introduction section of our crm, right? So, so you may be doing this, although my recommendation to you is if you are adding new contacts for LinkedIn digital introduction, you should actually be adding them on Sunday if your work week starts on Monday.

You should be working to send a hundred invites on Sunday. Why? Because when Monday morning rolls around, all these people get to work and they accept your invite. And next thing you know, you have a list of say, 40 people that you can reach out to and make introductions. So and if you do that on Monday, obviously those people may or may not respond it, you end up losing a day.

So if you wanna do it right, my recommendation is that you send your introductions on Sunday night or Saturday night, depending on kind of what your, what your system is. Just send it on the weekend cuz that way Monday morning when people get in, they get right to it. Okay. And then we create a top things to do today list.

So I talked about this in organization structure, guys. I keep a top things to do today, list every day. So whenever I go to work for a client depending on what client I'm working for, I write the client name and then I write things to do today, and then I just date the page. And then I'll start to list out between say, one in 10 critical tasks that I have to do that week for that client.

And. That way I can hold myself to it as things come up or as like new meetings are booked and stuff, I'm keeping notes. I'm a huge advocate of keeping physical notes. Keep a little notebook. They don't cost anything. Keep a little notebook by your, by your, by your desk. And when you're doing business development tasks or you're doing things just take notes.

Because what ends up happening is, is that if you have the ability to look down and see what critical tasks you have, you're more likely to complete them. So if follow up calls is on your critical tasks list for the week, and you're not really great at following up with things it might be the motivation that you need to make those calls that you know you need to be making, right?

Okay. So that is your typical stuff between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM. So what are we doing between 8:00 AM 10:00 AM We're typically checking our emails, we're checking our voicemails. We're sending LinkedIn digital introductions and we're creating our top things to do today List. Why? Because it's just good to know what you have going on that day.

Okay. All right, 10:00 AM and Noon. So this is, this is like key time for business development. This is really some of the best times to start making phone calls. People are typically out of their morning meetings. Most businesses do have morning meetings, so if you can start your calls at 10:00 AM I've always found that to be a really great time.

I'd say that the sweet window is really between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM to make, to get your calls done. So my recommendation would be to kind of get it in there. Between 10:00 AM at 10:00 AM and noon, we are typically starting our calls for the day. 10:00 AM is a great time to start your calls. Like I said, most people are at their meetings, they're just getting settled down at their desks.

It's a great time to make that introduction call. We are attending the first customer meetings for the day 10:00 AM to Noon and 2:00 PM 10:00 AM, Noon, and 2:00 PM tend to be kind of the main meeting times that people like to pick. So if you have meetings scheduled, very likely you'll have meetings around 10:00 AM around Noon.

Especially if you have lunch meetings and then around 2:00 PM in the afternoon. So I'm a, I'm a huge advocate. If we're booking meetings, you should book them for 10:00 AM, Noon or 2:00 PM It just gives you the, a right amount of space in between them to be able to take notes, to learn a little bit more, and really kind of get down to what it is you want from that meeting.

Okay. We are updating the CRM with data from calls, right? So, hmm. We're making calls at this time. We're very likely also updating our CRM at, at the same time, just because that's a really great, a really great tool and, and really why we use CRMs. And so we can track all the data, right? So if you make a contact call to a client, You make connection or you leave a message or whatever it is you do.

You hop in your crm, you tell it, Hey, I called John at ABC Company. I left a message. This is what I stated. I asked for a meeting follow up in two weeks. Right? And then you're, you're setting that follow up cadence so that you're consistently getting reminders that you need to follow up the next time.

Okay. Okay, we are potentially driving to lunch meetings or dropping brochures. So this is another side of it. Business Development is a lot of introduction meetings. You guys know that. I highly recommend that you do lunches with your clients. Why? Because it's personal. You can have a one-on-one interaction, a human to human interaction, which, you know, we advocate for.

And it also gives you a neutral location. So there's not really a power struggle you know, whether you know it or not, when you're at a client. Sorry, excuse me. When you're at a client office you are at a little bit of a disadvantage. Why? Because your client has the power at their office. If the client's at your office, you have the power at your office.

So it's always best to make those initial introduction meetings when you're building a relationship to have it in a neutral space. So I always recommend you go for coffee, you find a local coffee shop, go for coffee, or you meet up for a lunch meeting and you go for lunch because this gives you a neutral location where no one's in a power struggle.

For you to make a real connection, which is ultimately what we want to do with all these meetings, right? Our goal is to create a human to human personal relationship, and we do that by meeting people in person at a neutral location, okay? Okay, now we're at noon. So what are we doing at noon? All right, well, you guys know what we're, what we're doing at noon.

A lot. Lot of lunches, right? Lunches are incredibly common for business development reps. We're constantly meeting new people. We're establishing new relationships. We're looking for opportunities. And heck, we might even be doing account management, which is where lunches really come in regularly, or just meetings in general in person to do account management and So if that is the case between 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM we are always doing lunches and travel.

Very common very common to have lunch or office meetings at this time. Okay. We're continuing phone calls, right? So probably at one o'clock between one and two, we might continue phone calls or if we're trying to reach the East Coast if we're in Canada, Western Canada, which is where I'm at. We still need to do a lot of business on the East Coast, so if we need to reach the East Coast, they're either two or three hours ahead of us, just depending on the time change for the seasons, and so we can still reach them we can still reach them at noon, so sometimes we're typically making calls, right?

If we're trying to reach East Coast, the cutoff is 2:00 PM so at basically after 2:00 PM you're not going to get anybody on the East Coast, so we might still be continuing phone calls during this time. And then we might also be planning for the 2:00 PM meeting or any office meetings that we may have, because I find a lot of teams too do tend to have office meetings with the business development managers and representatives.

Those do tend to happen. They can happen in the morning, but I, I've also seen them happen in the afternoon, so we might be having either a office meeting or we might be having an actual customer meeting at sometime between that noon and 2:00 PM stage 2:00 PM like I said, is a very common meeting time in the afternoon.

Okay. 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM What are we doing? We're finishing up our phone calls, right? So that's it. You know, finishing up phone calls if we had anything we need to do locally. We might be just finishing up our calls. We're typically doing our data entry into the crm. As you guys know, I always advocate for data entry and up to date CRMs.

We keep our data as current as you can. This can be done in a couple different ways. I actually don't update. I don't update all my data in my crm until sometimes later in the week. But I keep really good notes and that's why so sometimes, sometimes I'll update data, you know, every day, but sometimes I'll just keep notes and I'll update it at the end of the week before I do my weekly reports.

You guys know I advocate for weekly reports. If you're not doing them right now, you need to start doing them, even if it's just for you. Cuz it allows you to track your progress. It allows you to start to establish, okay, what are my standards? What am I hitting on a weekly basis? Weekly reports, we'll give that for you and, and.

You will start to hold yourself to a high, a higher standard if you start using weekly reports. Okay? Okay. So we're finishing up phone calls. We're doing our data entry into the crm. We're doing meeting scheduling, so you guys know it. We're always booking meetings, right? Lots of stuff going on. So we're, we're doing our meeting scheduling for the next week.

We might be finishing weekly reports. Like I said, if we, if it's a Friday or a Thursday, depending on when your weekends. You're probably doing a weekly report for your manager, right? Your or your, or your, your boss or whatever, or yourself if you're an entrepreneur. So we're doing our weekly reports.

We're sending our final emails of the day, and then we are planning for tomorrow. So I always advocate that at the end of your day, that you just think a little bit about tomorrow. I know that that can be a bit of a hard ask sometimes, especially if we've worked a really, really long, hard day and we're just kinda looking for a bit of an escape.

Totally get it. Totally get it. Like right now, I'll be honest, I'm looking for a bit of an escape. I've just been, I'm still fighting like a wicked, wicked cold, flu thing that's whooping my butt, but, You know, we have to plan for tomorrow, even if, even if it's not always convenient. So just maybe at the end of your days, give yourself five to 10 minutes just to think about what are the critical tasks for tomorrow.

Heck, maybe even start your things to do today, list for tomorrow. Just so that you are up to date. And when you get to the job tomorrow morning, you're not starting fresh. You already know that there's a couple critical tasks, and I think you'll find that if you start using that top things to do today list, you guys are gonna get more efficient, you're going to get more done.

You're going to have higher success rates. Why? Because you're holding yourself to a standard. And I know it seems kind of weird that writing something down on a paper can give you a standard to live up to, but it 100% does. Okay. Okay. What are some other tasks? You know, obviously we did kind of a standard day or what a typical day may look like if you're a BD rep, but like I said, these are not always typical.

We drive a lot. Okay. It is not unusual for a business development rep to drive anywhere between 20,000, 40,000 kilometers a year or more. Cuz we go to where the clients are Sometimes like, heck, if I, I, I live in Edmonton area. I do a lot of meetings in Calgary. I do a lot of meetings in, I dunno, Cold Lake or Grand Prairie.

There is a lot of driving. So you drive a lot as a business development rep and we, we will do an entire show on driving cuz I think. I think I'd like to have a show on that where I can kind of talk about how to be productive while driving, but also how to be safe while driving. Cause I think the biggest risk that we face as a business development representative for any company is our travel time.

Cuz we are on the road so often that there is a high risk to us. So I think at some point I will do a show on driving. Not there yet, but maybe going into the winter season we can we can chat driving. Cause I think that I have some tidbits of information from my many, many, many years of driving. I've probably driven a million kilometers as a business development rep.

I kid you not. I probably have driven a million kilometers so well versed in driving, well versed in ways to be productive and to to keep yourself awake, which is a big challenge. And we will chat about that at a later time. Okay. And we also establish partnerships on behalf of our organization, right? So depending on where you're working, sometimes the ask might not be to, Hey, hey, Kelly, we need, we need business over here.

Contact ABC Company and see if they're interested in working with us. Sometimes the ask is, Hey, we have a great product and ABC company also has a great product, and I think that potentially if we partnered with this company, we could provide a better product if we combined our products. That is also a question and an o and an opportunity that some business development people will seek out.

So there's we are always looking for partnerships as well. It's not just about. About new business necessarily. Remember, it's about finding ways to grow revenue for the company. Sometimes the way to grow revenue for the company is through, is through partnerships. And so your BD people can help you with that.

They can help you establish relationships. So if you were an entrepreneur and you have a BD team currently, and you might have never thought to think, to ask your BD team to maybe research some partnerships that might be beneficial to your company, that might be an ask worth, worth looking at. Okay.

Okay. So we have our BD meetings, right? If we work for an organization, we typically have a weekly BD meeting where we just go over kind of, this is why I advocate for a weekly report. It's just an easy thing. If you, if you do a weekly report and you have BD meetings at your company, you should just bring your bd, your BD report.

You can go over the BD report in the meeting, which gives the, gives your, your bosses all the information that they're after. And it also allows you to kind of show where you're going and where you're going week over week. Right? We're doing, in some cases we're doing account management, right. So although you guys know, I advocate against this heavily, I don't think business development people should be doing account management.

However, I totally understand that as business development reps, we are regularly asked to do account management. So I get it. But I think if you are a, a business owner, entrepreneur and you have an opportunity to separate your business development from your account managers, you 100% should, you will get better performance out of both of them.

You will have happier customers and you'll have more leads, and that is better for you. Believe me, that is better for you. Okay. We, we do forecasting and future planning. So sometimes we'll sit down and we will work with, we'll work with, you know, the forecasting team to say, okay, how many, what opportunities are, are coming up?

Are there any companies that seem really interesting, that have high potential? We do show up for meetings like that. So if there are, are forecasting meetings, future planning meetings on the behalf of the business, you have to involve your business development team. Why? Because they are trying to drive the growth of your company.

If you don't keep them involved in what is going on with your company for future planning you're putting them at a disadvantage. Okay. We assist with marketing material creation. So we have an eye as business development people, we have an eye for what is good marketing material. Why? Cause we see a ton of it.

We market a ton of it. Does that mean that your BD people should be creating your marketing material? No. No, it does not. However, what it does mean is they should have input in the process. So if you hire, if you hire a team, To do marketing material for your company. Make sure that your business development rep is involved in that process.

In picking the colors, in, in helping pick the pictures because we have an eye for it. We're gonna know what is gonna be, what is going to essentially sell and what is not going to sell. So make sure that you're involving your business development teams in your marketing material creation. Okay. And what do I always say, guys?

Business Development chooses you. I have yet to meet one person. And heck, if you're listening to the show and you are the BD person who says, yeah, I went to school knowing I wanted to be in bd, I want to hear from you because you are a unicorn. You are a unicorn. But I would love to chat with you about that because I feel like unless you truly understand what BD is, which I feel like a lot of people don't, It would be very hard in school to even pick it as an option, but BD is amazing.

Business development is one of the best positions in any organization. And if you are in business development or you are doing business development on behalf of your organization, you are amazing and you should be proud. It is 100% one of the most needed positions in any company. It truly drives exponential growth for your company, and you should be incredibly proud of what you do.

Good business development provides exponential value to its cost. It truly is one of the best things you can do for your business. And if you currently are not having a business development program at your company, you should definitely start working to implement one. I have lots of information on this show on how you can start to establish your own program or if you guys need help, you know, we're in Canada Capital Business Development.

We do full scope business development, anything you guys need, we can do full scope business development. So we tend to do kind of the whole thing on the back end, set up the whole system for you and, and, and operate it for say, six months or a year. But yeah, if, if you guys need help establishing business development programs on behalf of your business or you just want some help in general with business development, we are experts and we can help.

So feel free to reach out at any time. Capital Business Development capitalbd.ca . And I just wanna give a little bit of shout outs cuz we had a lot of great messages over the last week. People kind of complimenting us on hitting the top 75, which was super cool. And still getting, still getting compliments on our, on our awards.

So we won Best Business Podcast 2023 , 2 weeks ago from Quill Inc. Which was pretty cool, pretty, pretty awesome. So shout outs this week are Colin Harms Fabian Henke, Will Bunyan, Ken Gee, Mark Lavoie and that is all for this week. If you have enjoyed this show, please like, follow, subscribe on all your platforms of choice, and until next time, 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 @ www.capitalbd.ca . See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.