Account Management Principles

Account Management Principles

Kelly Kennedy: You are listening to episode 27 of the Business Development Podcast, and on today's episode we are chatting account management, and we have a lot of updates. I think you're gonna enjoy today's episode. 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, 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. We are on episode 27 today. It is absolutely amazing how far we have been able to come in such a short period of time. This is actually our three month episode. We, we have been going for three months.

If you've been with us since the beginning, you have had some consistent business development podcasts for the past three months. I really hope you're enjoying it as much as I am, cuz I'm truly enjoying this. This has been such a great endeavor and I'm, I'm proud to be here and I'm happy to be here and I'm thankful to be here and I hope that I'm providing a ton of value to you and that you guys are really enjoying the show.

I wanted to start this episode off today. By giving a big shout out to Faheem Khan. Faheem did our last Sunday's episode. The robots are coming and it was absolutely. Next level Faheem is the C E O of Aro Robotic Systems. Such a cool episode. Thank you so much Faheem, for coming on and sharing your life experience with us and what it was like for you to to essentially become the C E O of Aro Robotic Systems.

Cause it was truly an inspirational story. I think everybody was like in awe of you and just wanted to say you're incredibly inspirational. It was an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming. I also wanted to just chat a little bit today about something absolutely amazing that happened last week and it happened because of all of you.

I can't even guys, I can't even, you guys are the best. You are the best listeners ever, and I just, I'm so thankful. To have such a great audience for this show, we were so lucky to be nominated for the upcoming 2023 Quill Podcast Awards. Not in one, but in two freaking categories. You guys come on. That's so sweet.

We are nominated for Best Business Podcast 2023. And Best B2B Branded Podcast 2023. Guys, oh my gosh, I'm over the moon. I nearly fell outta my chair. I could not believe it. And that was nominations by you. And I couldn't do that without you. I couldn't do this show without you, and I just wanna say, My listeners, I'm so thankful for each and every one of you.

Thank you so much for tuning in week over week for subscribing, for leaving these amazing reviews and for frankly helping me build this show because I could not do this without you. And I am speaking to you. I'm speaking to all my, all my lovely business people, to all my lovely business development people and frankly just everybody listening to this show.

You guys are amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. And here's to winning one of those awards cuz that is just next level guys. It's next level and I'm so proud to be here and I'm so thankful to even be nominated. So either way, if we win, if we don't win, it's still a win to me.

It's a win in my heart. So thank you. I also just wanted to shout out and just give you guys an update to where we are at. You know, it's been three months. It's been three months. Guys, we started this show on February 6th. We're at May 9th, but technically this is the first show at that point. So I I, because I pre-record my Sunday shows, so in all fairness, I guess there might have been one on Sunday, but.

I pre-record my Sunday shows to make sure that they're ready for you. So I didn't get to shout out at that point, but yes, we are, we are at the three month mark, guys and co-host, I told you they would come through. I told you co-host would come through. They have gotten in touch with Spotify, updated our numbers, and my gosh, my gosh, 24,613 downloads, guys.

24,613 downloads of the Business Development Podcast in the last three months. My gosh, that is astronomical. It, it's, it's unbelievable to me that that you guys are, are listening. I think sometimes from my little podcast studio, it's really hard to believe that anybody's listening. So I really do love, I really do love the fact that those numbers come through and I know you guys are out there and I'm speaking to you today.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the show. All right, well, let's get to it. Let's get to it. Episode 27. Today I decided that I would touch on something more so because I've been asked to multiple times I've received multiple emails just kinda stating like, Hey, it would be really great if you just chat a little bit of account management with us.

I don't typically chat account management. The reason is, I want to separate it from business development. I think a lot of companies are making the mistake right now of combining the two positions and essentially making their business development people also handle account management. This is a mistake.

This is my true belief that that is a mistake and your business development people need to be working business development. They need to be specifically focused on new business, bringing new business to your door, making new connections, and then handing those off to your account reps. Once they become customers that is the way to do it.

That is my true belief. However, Obviously I've been in business development a long time. We've, we've talked this, you guys know that. And yes, I did business development and account management for a number of years. Did I do it as good as I could have if they were separated? Absolutely not. And that is why I try to kind of shy away from it.

But today we're gonna talk about it. Cause I know a lot of you out there are having to do business development and are then having to manage those accounts. So I think it's important to have that discussion, and I am an expert in that too, so we can definitely have that discussion. All right. Let's do a little definition as to what account management is okay?

Account management is the practice of providing customers with service support, improvement opportunities to increase their consumption of a product or service, and maximize retention, cross-sell, and upsell opportunities. Within the customer base. Okay. So this is very much management of your current customers.

I, I, I like to think that at the account management stage you are dealing with a customer who is purchased from you at least one time. Okay. That would be my definition. A current or a account management would happen once you have a customer who is bought at least one product or service from you. Okay.

Like I said it guys, I handled account management for many, many years. Business Development, Account Management together for probably about eight or nine years. And, and I definitely got some takeaways from that and, and we're gonna go over them today. Obviously I can't go over all of them. And if there is something that I missed or that you would like a little bit more clarification on, please feel free to shoot me an email.

We're gonna have a cool section today. I haven't done it yet, but we actually started receiving, you know, some actual questions through the podcast. So I'm gonna do a, a q and a session today where I'm going to address a couple people who sent me questions, read over their questions, and try to answer them to the best of my ability.

But we'll do that after the account management session. Okay. Okay. So account management and business development are both individual and critical tasks to an organization, and they should be handled independently. I want to, I know I've said it, I've said it again and I'm saying it again. Please. If you have the ability within your organization to have account managers and business development people, please separate those tasks.

Please separate those tasks. Trust me. I know. I know that in the dollars and cents category, you're looking at it and saying, well, that's a whole nother salary. I. Yes, it is a whole nother salary. But guess what? If your business development people are only focused on new business development, you are going to have so many more opportunities to cover that additional salary for that account management, that it will be negligible, and over time it will make sense for your business.

Your account managers will do a great job managing those accounts. Your business development people will do an amazing job handling the jobs they're supposed to do, which is bring new business and new partnerships to your organization. If you let them do that and you don't make them do two things at once, they're gonna be way more effective at the thing you really want them to do.

Okay. Account management should be tracked in a CRM monitored diligently. Okay, so I, I always say this, the last step of our CRMs, right? Current customer. Current customer needs to be managed by your account managers. They should be checking it daily. They should be seeing when was the last time they checked in with that customer.

They should be keeping a running. Note of, has it been two months? Maybe it's time to reach out. Has it been, is there opportunities coming up with that organization? That's the other thing, right? If you're in the news and you see organization, ABC just won a gigantic contract and they're a current customer of yours.

Yeah, that's a great time to reach back out again and say, Hey, just seeing you won this great contract and I think we got some services or products you guys might need. Let's let's book another meeting. Right. The job of account management is really to build a strong relationship, okay? This is truly the place where relationships are built.

Okay? Account managers should be building a friendship level relationships with your customers, right? They should be able to call up John and be like, Hey John, how are you? How's the kids? How was last week? Did you guys win the ballgame? Did you guys win that gigantic contract? We were talking about How are you feeling?

I know that your dad's in the hospital. That is the level of connection that you really wanna try to aspire for with your, as your account managers, with your customers. Because if you can build that level of rapport, if you can build that level of friendship, My gosh, guys, like it allows you to have open conversations with your customers, which are very hard to have, okay?

There's always going to be that recognition that you are selling them something, okay? And what you need to do is really break down those walls. You need to break down those barriers so that you can handle objections, right? Yeah. There's always gonna be objections. There's always gonna be a reason that they don't need your service or shouldn't buy your service in a moment, right?

But, If you know what those objections are, you're gonna be way more effective at countering them. How do you learn where the hesitancies are? How do you learn where the objections are and how do you get a little bit of an edge to be able to just say, Hey, I get you got these objections, but can we maybe move forward anyway?

You can do that if you are friends with your clients. You can do that if you have that level of relationship. And I get that it's not always easy to cultivate and it takes an active effort, trust me, it does. It ha it takes a conscious effort to build that level of, of, relationship with your customers, but guys, my customers used to invite me to their Christmas parties.

Like that's the level of relationships that I used to generate with my clients. Why? Because they were great people. I genuinely loved hanging out with my clients. You know what? Some of my clients, I would consider friends to this day, and I haven't worked with them in four years. Like the reality is, is that you generate human to human relationships with these people and, and when you have that level of relationship, when you were able to do that, When, when there are problems, which inevitably there's going to be problems, right?

Somebody's not gonna show up to work, a product or service ain't gonna show up on time, or it doesn't work as expected, or who knows, right? And instead of those people just saying, yep, your company sucks, we're not interested in working with you anymore. They're gonna call you and be like, John, hey yeah.

Like, what, what's up? Like this product or service isn't working right now. What, what can you do about it? And you can literally say, yeah, no problem. We'll handle it. What, what would you like me to do? And if you have that level of relationship, guess what? There's no harm, no foul. You fix the problem, problem goes away, and customer orders from you again.

And you do that by generating amazing relationships, guys, and you generate amazing relationships by, by working with your customers, keeping in constant touch with them and trying to build a, a friendship. If you can build a friendship with your customers, they will be customers for life. Not only will they be customers for life.

They will be customers for life and if they move to companies, they're gonna bring your company into the next company. That's exactly what happens, especially in Alberta oil and gas. You build key, key account relationships like that. They will follow you through the entire oil and gas industry, company to company, product and service to product and service.

And yeah, they will, they will champion your product for you, frankly, if they, if they really like you. Your customers will, will shout from the rooftops that they should use your company, and you trust me, you do it by generating friendships, by generating relationships, by being somebody that they actually want to hang out with and talk to and talk business with.

Okay, so how do we do this? Obviously we're talking a lot about the relationship, right? I see this happen in companies all the time where you'll be dealing with one account rep. And then you see like a month later, there's a new account rep, and then two months later there's a new account rep and they just keep swapping out account reps.

That is not the way to do it guys, guys and gals, you need to be swapping out your account reps as little as humanly possible. If you put, if you put an account rep on an account or a, and they're working with them, that account rep should stay with the account for the length of time that frankly, that that customer's a customer.

Because if you do that, it gives them, it gives them, A lot of time to allow bonds to form, right? And that's what we want. We want bonds to form. We want friendships to form with our customers. We want trust to be built. We want a rapport to be built. We do that by interacting with the same kind, lovely person, week in and week out.

And if you can do that, if you can keep your account managers the same, you put 'em on a client and you keep 'em on a client. It is going to make your life way easier. It's gonna build that relationship way easier, and frankly, it's gonna pay dividends down the line. Okay? We do not want to be swapping account managers, okay?

Customer follow up, face-to-face lunches, outings, at least every two months. Okay? So, I see this a lot too. You get an account, you get a new customer and it's like, okay, that's great. We sold you something and yeah, call us back when you're ready. And then they don't talk to that customer for six months or a year.

Well, you can't do that. Why? Because your competitors are talking to them guys. Come on. Come on. Your competitors are talking to them. Of course they are. You know, this, you know this. Just because they bought from you once does not mean they're gonna buy from you again. And I'll tell you what, if your competitor's working over time to see these people, to build those relationships in the way that I'm talking about, Yeah, they're gonna get that client, they're gonna get that customer.

Trust me, mark my words. If you don't do it, someone else will. So you better be the one doing it. You better be the account manager putting in double time. Okay? Because if you are not putting in double time and creating friendly, great relationships with your customers, somebody else will. Okay? So a little rule that I like to live by.

It is at bare minimum every two months, at bare minimum, every two months, you should be reaching out to your customers saying, Hey, you know what, it's been a couple months. We're heading into spring 2023 , 2024 . Let's let's go grab lunch. Let's catch up. And that's it. And, and I used to do it like that. I used to like seasonal.

So I would say, yeah, like it's spring 2023 or, Hey, let's go chat. I know you got some opportunities coming up. Let's chat. It's summer. We'll just call it a summer 2023 meeting, or we'll call it a fall 2023 meeting or a Christmas 2023 meeting. Right. Find your excuses, but every two months you should be booking some type of face-to-face with a client that is in a neutral, fun atmosphere, neutral, fun atmosphere.

I like to call it like a restaurant, right? Not your office. Not their office. Somewhere where you can get together and you can just sit in a relaxed atmosphere and chat life. Because that is how you're gonna build relationships, right? You're gonna, you're gonna learn about each other. You're going to build rapport by not talking business, right?

By just talking like friends. And if you do that long enough, the business always comes up. And guess who wins? You do. Okay? We always want to ask our key accounts for recommendations and reviews, right? Who, who better to get you more customers for your business than these great friends that you've created at other cus at other companies, right?

I can't tell you how many times I got business by just saying, Hey, you know what? Like, you know what we do here. Can you like recommend anybody that might need this? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jill or John from ABC company down the street. They might have an upcoming need. Do you want an introduction?

Yeah, I want an introduction. Right? It's like, that's like the best thing that can happen to BD people. Yeah. What a hundred percent. We want the introduction. We want somebody who they trust. To introduce us so that we can be trusted. Right? Yeah, that's totally how we do it. So make sure that we're asking.

I know that sometimes we can have hesitation, but when you're having those great times and, and you know that they're a great customer, it doesn't hurt to ask, just say, Hey. Like, do you know anybody who might need our product or service? And would you mind introducing us? If you do, you would be surprised guys.

They, they say, they say yes, and they'll just do it for you. Okay. We always wanna treat as friends to build lifelong blondes. So, what did I say, guys? Like the clients that I managed are genuinely friends. They truly are. I, I don't even see them. Like, I'm not, I'm, I'm not there. I don't manage their account anymore and we are still friends.

That is the truth. We truly built friendships, okay? We truly built friendships. They are great people. The clients I used to work with at Engrity are great people and I'm proud to have been their account manager. I'm proud to have done BD there, and I'm proud of the relationships and the service that we provided, and I think ultimately, If you can feel that way about your product and service and you can feel that way about the relationship, you truly generate lifelong bonds.

I I, I could still call these people guys and ask them for favors. I could still call these people and say, Hey, I'm doing this now. Is this something you'd be interested in? And they would look at whatever new product or service I'm marketing, because that's the level of trust and relationship we built.

They know that I wouldn't sell them a garbage product, and I know that they wouldn't dick me around and that's just a great place to be for any type of business development service, right? We want to keep on top of service quality and delivery every time. Okay, so I just talked about this. We don't ever wanna sell shit products.

We don't ever wanna sell. Things that are questionable or that we aren't proud of. Okay? I, I really want you to be proud of the products and services you're marketing. And if you are currently not proud of the products and services that you're marketing, you need to take a quick look at the company that you're working with and just ask yourself, is this company, is this company right for me?

Is this company or product or service that I'm selling the right one? Because the reality is, guys, if you aren't proud of it or you think it's shady, or it is shady, That's not the kind of relationship you want to be in. You don't wanna sell people stuff they don't need, right? Like the reality is we live in a world with a million things that people do need.

Why would you sell them something they don't need or, or scam them or sell them something that's crap, right? Be proud of the work you do. Be proud of being in business development. Be proud of being an entrepreneur and starting a great business and providing a great product to the world. Be proud of what you do because what you do is important.

It really is. I know sometimes on a minor scale or a small scale, it's hard to see. When we are in the, when we're in the driver's seat and we're looking around, it can be hard to see our impact in the world. But trust me, everything that you guys are doing has a time, has a place, and brings purpose to the world, brings purpose to your life, brings great things to people, okay?

And it's very important that we are proud of what we're doing, that we are proud of the products and services that we are selling, and that we recognize that we may not always see the long term effects of what we do. We might not always see the long-term effects of our impact in the world, but believe you me, you are making an impact.

This podcast is making an impact. And every day that you get up and go to work, you are making an impact. And I sure hope that you are proud of what you do because I am incredibly proud of what I do. And I feel like if you're in business development, if you're an entrepreneur, you should be incredibly proud of the impact that you were leaving on the world.

It's a great job, great career, and a great life path. Okay. We want to take ownership in problems. Okay. So I, I've seen this a lot. I've seen this a lot. I've seen companies just not take ownership whatsoever, cause a complete mess. And then, and then be like, oh yeah, like that's too bad. Like, we're not gonna give that customer a discount, or we're not, we're not gonna refund their money.

Right. Oh, come on. Right? Like you know that if that's the route you're going, the relationship is meaningless. They have no care in the world about the relationship and impact. Okay. We always want to take ownership in our problems, especially if they're our fault. We wanna apologize authentically, even if it's not our fault.

Things happen. I'm sorry that happened to you. You don't have to, you don't have to have done something to somebody to say, I'm sorry that happened to you. The reality is you can look at somebody's situation and say, man, I'm sorry that happened to you, like you didn't deserve that. The reality is we can give an authentic apology whether we did something to them or something happened, we can, we can connect with that person and say, you know what?

Yeah, we didn't do that to you, but I'm really sorry that happened to you. That shouldn't have happened to you, and I totally understand why you would be upset about that. We always want to allow the customer to participate in the repair. Okay. Right, like a great, a great way to handle a problem. Let's say, let's say that you have a service-based industry and you sell people, or someone who's supposed to show up to a job and then didn't show up or was late, okay?

And you get a customer call and that customer says, oh, Jill, this guy didn't show up to the job. And what are you gonna do about it? And you say, you know what? Oh, really? Sorry. You know what? I reali I, I did find that out. I got a call like just a minute ago. I'm really sorry that happened to you. That is definitely not a typical issue for us.

That happens once in a while, but yeah, I'm terribly sorry. How, how can we fix this for you? What would you like? Can we send another person or would you like potentially a refund on the service? That is the way to handle it, guys. That is the way to handle it because guess what? When you respond in that way, that customer, they, they may not like what happened.

But they are not going to lose respect for you as a company or as a person. They are going to say, you know what? Okay, yeah. You know what, you're right. Things do happen. And that was, that was my experience. I kid you not, 99.999% of the time that I got a call like that. And I handled it that way. The response was, you know what, Kelly, you're absolutely right.

That's not your fault. Yeah, can you please just send another person out? Or, or Yeah, I, I think we'll be good this time, but don't worry, we'll call you back and You bet They called me back. You bet. They called me back. Why? Because I was honest with them. I empathized with them and I let them know that we would handle it, that we would take care of it one way or another, in a way that they were happy with.

And if you can do that, If you can do that for your customer, you are gonna create a relationship and a rapport and a trust that is critical to great relationships. Okay. All right. Well, we're gonna move on to a new section now. We're off of account management for today, and we are heading into a questions period.

I am so thankful. First off, before I start this off, before I even answer any of these questions, I just wanna say if you have a question for the Business Development Podcast, If you have a question for me, please send it over podcast@capitalbd.ca and I will, I will more than likely feature it on the show.

I will address you in, in I will address you by name and I will do my best to answer your question. I do wanna let you guys know is I don't know everything and you're gonna learn that today we're actually gonna talk about a subject that I don't have as much experience in. I'm gonna, I'm gonna say what I would potentially try.

However, I'm not an expert in the one question that I had, and if that is the case, I will be honest about it, but I still will acknowledge the question. I still will do my best to maybe let you know how I would try to handle that situation and move on. But yeah, absolutely. Send me your questions podcast@capitalbd.ca.

I would be happy to not only thank you for sending that question, but try to address it for you on the show. I think that's a great option and I think more than one person has that question. So it's a great way to essentially help you and help a hundred other people at the same time. Okay, so question number one today was from Jessica Murphy.

Jessica, thank you so much for reaching out, and she had asked, do you have any experience in BD with the US government or the Department of Defense? I do not, I'm in Canada, first off, so but we have a Department of Defense and we have a Canadian Government. However, once again, I don't have a ton of experience in working with them up here.

Most of that work is what's called a public tender. So they public tender that, that you know, on a website, on a government website where you can go in and you can say, yeah, we're interested in bidding it. Send us a bid package and we'll put together a proposal and send it in for you. The question that she had kind of had was that, She was really struggling with creating relationships in that sector.

And I can understand it's designed to be hard, right? They intentionally make it very challenging to get to government officials. And yeah, it really is done that way. One of the things you can use, okay. With it being public tender, obviously my recommendation to you is if you are interested in working with your, your government or, or your Department of Defense respond to the public tender, that is truly the best way to start.

Okay? Yes, relationships can be developed. However, it's very hard to reach out and make a cold relationship in Government or Department of Defense. You pretty much have to have a reason. You have to have a reason to reach out to them, right? So that's what I would say. If it was me, I would reach out to that public tender and I would make, I would say, yes, we are interested in bidding, or I would do whatever the bid request is to, to essentially respond to that bid and start that process.

In that process, if you are accepted or if it's something they might need, you are gonna be introduced to other people within the Department of Defense, which then you could reach out to on a one-to-one basis at that point and start building a rapport or a relationship. Okay. You can find a lot of Government Officials and Department of Defense Officials on LinkedIn.

So you may not know that if you haven't tried searching for it. If you just hop on you and you type in Department of National Defense on LinkedIn and you search within your country, you're gonna find a lot of people. And so that might be a way that you might utilize to do that. I have utilized that in the past to make a connection on behalf of one of my clients.

So it is doable, obviously. Once again, we always want to try to make those connections in person. The digital introduction is always just the, just the first step to try to get to an active marketing stage where we can either reach out to them directly by email or phone, but it is possible. And who knows, maybe they will, maybe they will allow you to contact them or provide contact details.

You just don't know. Okay? And so my recommendation to you, Jessica, would be. Gain contacts through public tender. So respond to the public tenders until you get to a point where you were put in touch with somebody. Okay? And then build your relationships from there. Once you've, once you've had that contact or someone's put you in touch with somebody in the supply chain, Reach out to them directly, explain, Hey, you know what?

It's really hard to make connections here. Just trying to make a connection with regards to the company. Could you potentially help me out or would you like to set up a an in-person meeting? That would be the route that I think I would take. Once again, I haven't had to do that, so I'm not an expert. If there is an expert listening to the show, I just wanna say if there's an expert or somebody in here that's doing business development or entrepreneurship and has had to create relationships with either the US or Canadian Government, Or either Department of National Defense for United States or Canada, please reach, reach out to me.

I would love to have you as a guest on the show. And I would love to pick your brain because for me, that's an unexplored area where frankly, even I could learn a few things. So if you are an expert, you work with the, with the Department of National Defense in a Business Development role, or you work with the Canadian or US Government in a Business Development Role, I would love to maybe get some pointers from you and learn a little bit about how you do it.

And see if potentially we might not be able to better answer. Jessica Murphy's question. Thank you, Jessica. I really appreciate that. We have a few a few questions actually from Kelly Reading she reached out, just said she loves the show. She's been listening for two weeks and listens to it at the morning coffee.

So Kelly, absolutely. That's amazing. It's a pleasure to have you as a listener and thank you so much for submitting these questions. So she, she asked a few questions. This kind of follows a little bit back to some of the stuff we talked about today. She asked. How do you approach hard questions and pull information during a cold call?

My answer, Kelly, is that it's very hard to answer hard questions or pull information during a cold call, right? You haven't developed enough rapport yet with your customer. You haven't developed enough of a relationship to be able to essentially have the trust where they would be willing to share that information with you.

Remember the point of all of our calls, Kelly, the point of all of our business development calls is to get to a meeting. Okay. We don't sell over the phone. We sell in person. That's, that's, that's how this works. It's like the unspoken rule that's been around for a million years. We need to build relationships.

We build relationships in person. The goal of all these phone calls, Kelly, is to get them to a meeting stage. So I wouldn't, I would try maybe not to not, not to avoid those questions, but try to maybe direct the conversation to say, Hey, you know what? I would love to answer some of these questions for you.

I think we have a great product or service. I think it's something you're gonna need, but I would love to have this conversation in person. I can bring maybe a couple people from my team. You can bring a couple people from your team, and we can go over our businesses and see if there might be some synergy.

I think that's maybe a better way of handling that instead of trying to go in and sell someone over the phone. You're gonna have a tough time with that. Try to direct them to a meeting. That would be my thing. Get them to a meeting, get them in person, and then allow them to address their pain points, which goes on to your very next question was how do you get a customer to address your pain points?

You do it in person, Kelly, you need to get them in person because if you get them in person, you can build a rapport. You can build a relationship over a lunch, over a coffee. You can talk about life. And then you can say, Hey, tell me a little bit about your business. Tell me a little bit about how how we might be able to help you.

What, what are some of the challenges that you've faced? It's, it's really as easy as asking. Once you get them in person, you can genuinely just ask whatever questions you have. Tell me a little bit about some of the challenges you faced. I know that you've been working with ABC company. Have they been great to work with?

Are they are they delivering for you? Is there something potentially that we could do a little bit better? Talk to me a little bit, like are you, are you set in your ways, is this company, is A BC company, the company that you absolutely want to work with? Or is there potentially some opportunity for, for me to come in, maybe as a number two in case ABC company can't, can't can't perform for a week or whatever?

Right. The way that you want to approach any type of, any type of in-person hard questions or to kind of pull some information about pain points. You just mostly want to ask them in person. Okay. And I think what you'll find too, Kelly, is that if you have them in person and you're having a, a business to business relationship where you're, you're being, you're communicating, you're building a rapport, you're talking about life.

They're gonna bring up what their challenges are. They're gonna bring up how you might be able to help them. I've found that most of the time, if you sit down for a lunch meeting and you're, you're, you know, you know that they, or they know that you have a product or service they could use. And you know that they have a product or service that they might need to buy from you.

I think you'll find that if you just sit down and have a conversation with them nine times outta 10, they're gonna bring it up and say, Hey, yeah, you know what? Let's talk a little bit about some of your services. Here's how I think they might be able to help me. I found a lot of times they will tell you how, how you can help them instead of you having to pull it out of them. Okay.

How do you get a client to come back to your company? Okay, that's a tough one. You need to have a really good understanding, first off of why they left. Okay. And sometimes customers aren't honest and especially if, if they're afraid of hurting you or they're afraid of disrupting, maybe the meeting, they don't want to cause some stress or they don't want to cause.

They don't wanna cause problems, right? People don't wanna cause problems. We love, we love, we love, we love trying to keep things calm and cool and collected. And sometimes calling other companies out for things that happen is tough, but you can always sit down and say, Hey, you know, I know that we messed up.

I think taking ownership is always critical, taking ownership for your mistakes as a company is always critical and say, Hey, you know what? I get it. I get it. We we dropped the ball there and you went with a, you went with a competitor and we're terribly sorry about what happened and I wanna make it right.

I get that there's probably not an opportunity today, but if an opportunity does come up to work together again, I would love to be considered. I would love to be considered. And I think that's about the best that you can do. Kelly, you know, Take ownership would be my number one. Take ownership. And you know what?

This can sometimes be take ownership even if you weren't at fault. I, I know that that's kind of a tough pill to swallow for some companies, but the reality is taking ownership for something that happened and, and just saying like, you know what? It happened. We're terribly sorry. I, you know, we're gonna do better in the future.

We would love another opportunity and I would love an opportunity to make this right with you. If there is an opportunity coming up, we would love the opportunity to bid a future project or something like that. That is a great way to address it. With, once again, I'm, I'm, I'm coming to this with the idea that the management is the same.

Okay. The other way that I've seen us get back into companies that we've run into challenges with is that. Typically management stays management at a company for four or five years, and then they, then they move on, right? They move on to a new position somewhere else, or they get a raise or they get a job opportunity or they get, who knows, right?

But if you can approach a new person in the company sometimes that's been a really effective way. We had a couple companies that, you know, yeah, we run into a couple challenges with and, and when the management changed and we reached back out, the opportunity re-presented itself. So, Either try a new person in the organization or if it's still the same person and you wanna make it right before that happens.

Yeah, reach out, apologize, take ownership for what happened, and let them know that you're gonna do better in the future. And you would love to be considered for a future opportunity. And who knows, who knows? Kelly, you might get that future opportunity after all. Okay.

All right. We got a lot of shout outs this week.

My gosh, we had so many people reach out and thank us for what we're doing here at the podcast. So, no, let me, thank you. Let me thank you. Lori Bauer. Alberto Fernandez, Aliah Flint, Jess Murphy, kelly Reading Tash Jeffries and Colin Harms, sorry, Aliah. It's Aliah Flintoft. Sorry guys.

Sometimes these names are, are a bit tough when you're reading out of a podcast. When reading from notes, I, I apologize. I'm not always perfect at it, but it does happen anyways. Point is, thank you so much for reaching out. Thank you so much for your lovely mess. I appreciate each and every one of them, and I appreciate all of you, and I appreciate your support of the show.

If you are enjoying this show today, some of the ways that you can support us, the really, the best ways that you can support us right now is to hop on to Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review. Give us a five star rating. And heck, if you're really feeling optimistic, I would love it if you came over to our website and left us a review on the website as well.

That would be super cool. And all those things go into the algorithms. They help us pop up on, on other podcasts. They help us pop up on different advertising sites and stuff, and it just helps us grow the show organically. So, Really, if you're wondering how you can help this show right now, that is 100% the best way to help us.

And this has been episode 27. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much. It's been such a thrilling week. I kid you not, I nearly fell outta my chair when I realized we'd been nominated for, not won, but two awards. So cool. And yeah, until the next time, we'll 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.