Active vs Passive Marketing

Active vs Passive Marketing

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 11 of the Business Development Podcast. On this week's episode, we are gonna talk about active versus passive marketing. I think you're gonna like this one. 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. 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.

Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 11 of the Business Development Podcast. Thank you so much for your continued listening and support. This has been such an awesome two weeks. We have made so much progress in the podcast over the past couple weeks.

We are sitting right now at over 800 downloads little over a month in, in service to you in in production, and it's, it's amazing. The feedback that I've gotten from all of you over the past couple weeks has been awesome. Thank you so much to everybody who's shot me a message on LinkedIn or left me a review on the website or on Apple Podcast or Spotify.

Guys, I can't, I have no words. I have no words. You guys are amazing. All my, all my business development and entrepreneur, crew, I love you all. Thank you so much for your continued support and for allowing me to be able to come back here week after week to help you grow your businesses right alongside you.

And it's a pleasure and an honor. And I just wanna say thank you so much for trusting me to continue to stand by your side and relying on the advice I'm providing to help you grow. And I really hope that I'm just continuing to make progress with you and help you really build that business and take it to the next level from some of the feedback that I've gotten over the last week.

guys I've had a couple companies reach out and just say, thank you so much. The information that you're providing is really allowing me to take my company to the next level. And guys, that's what I'm doing this for. I, I can't tell you how thrilled I am to get that kind of feedback. And if, if anything that I'm doing for you, any of the the value that I'm providing to you is is helping you grow your business, please reach out.

I'd love to hear from you guys. It makes my day. It truly does. It's one of the greatest things and it truly, Puts the biggest smile on my face and it's, this is why I'm doing this. And it's, I it's awesome. I have no words. And just the feedback from the last couple of interviews for Mckinley Hyland and Deanna Kean.

You guys really like those. Really, really happy about that. We've had massive downloads of both the both the interview with Deanna Kean and the interview with Mckinley Hyland and sounds like people got a lot of value outta that as well. So if you have not had a chance to go back and listen to those episodes, please do.

It's episode eight in episode 10, respectively. And just to just to kind of do a quick shout out to Deanna Kean. Thank you Deanna. Deanna is a client. She's also the president and CEO of Solace Safety. I've had the pleasure of working with Solace Safety for the last year and it's been just such an awesome experience to watch that company really get legs and just truly take it to the next level.

They're they're going national this year in Canada, which is amazing. I can't even believe how much traction we've gotten with them over the past six months. Deanna, it truly is your ambition and dedication to providing quality service that is allowing you to take this to the next level.

And I just wanna congratulate you and pat you on the back for doing such a great job with Solace and just wanna do a quick shout out to anybody who is looking for safety services in Canada. Give give Deanna Kean at Solace Safety Solutions a call. They're amazing. They have a great group of people to pull from and they work local and national. So please feel free to give her a shout and you can listen to her episode on episode 10. It was our previous episode. On today's episode, we are going to do a subject that I have been excited. You guys know I have a passion for it. Active versus passive marketing. Yes. Yes.

I've talked about this in a couple of episodes now, and I think for the ones that have stuck with me and have listened from episodes one through 10, you know where I stand on this. Today we're gonna break it down a little bit because there is a place for both. One is more effective than the other, there's no question.

However, there is a place for both in your business and we are definitely going to talk about that today and see if we can't. Shed a little light around active and passive marketing, and maybe you can take a look at it as it reflects to your current thing your current marketing strategy with your companies.

I do have a feeling that if your current marketing strategy is relying a lot more on the passive side, just to give you a heads up, I got a, I got a message today from, or not today I guess, but this week from a gentleman who owns a company who reached out to me and had just kind of said, Hey, My company, we did this, we dumped, you know, a ton of money, 15, $20,000 into a passive marketing strategy, and he wasn't getting any return from it.

And so I had a good conversation with him and kind of got him online and I do hope that the advice that I gave him will allow him to turn his company around and, and allow him to be able to reat attract those, those customers. There's definitely a place for passive marketing, but it is not to acquire new customers.

It is to acquire brand recognition. And we will get into that later on in today's episode. So let's talk a little bit about active marketing. What is active marketing? Active marketing is meeting customers and vendors in person. It's physical brochure drops, it's phone calls, emails slash digital introductions on certain levels you know, trade show attendance, whether you're exhibiting or attending it's cold calls.

It's action taken on behalf of the business to make connection. It's great for business to business and relationship based selling. It will build your business. Okay. Active marketing is what Capital business development primarily relies on. We are very much an active marketing company. Why? Well, because I like being effective.

That's the simple truth of it. Active marketing is truly just effective. If you are consistent with active marketing, you're consistent with your strategy. Whether that be your introductions, your phone calls, your cold calls, your follow ups, you will get meeting. Let me repeat that. If you follow an active marketing strategy, you will get meetings.

It is just consistency. It's just following up week after week, and I rely on it heavily because it is so bloody effective. I don't like fishing. That's not true. I love fishing. I love real fishing. For fish. I don't like fishing and relying on hopes and dreams and for my lovely customers to call me. You know what?

Lovely customers, I love you. You know I do. I love you. But you, you don't want, you don't wanna have to call me. You do want somebody to reach out to you and say, Hey, I have this solution for you. I have this solution that can help you. ABC company, grow your revenue, grow your business. Would you like to hear more about it?

You are too busy to be out there looking at ads and thinking, oh yeah, yeah, I need to, I need to click this ad. I need to check this website. I. Do go through all this, all these hoops to send, to send an inquiry message to a company so that hopefully they'll reach out to you. And then what? Sell you a service.

Come on, come on. Just think about this from a customer standpoint for a second, guys, just for two seconds. And you're a customer. Yeah, sure you got a problem, but you're also busy. You're running your own company. You got other things going on. You don't wanna have to search for, for, for your next person to essentially market your company.

You don't. You don't really want that. You want somebody to reach out to you, and that is why active marketing is just so bloody effective. It truly is. You going out and saying, Hey, Mr. Customer, I'm John from a b c company. We provide these services and I think that I can provide you a great value, is just a much better option.

It truly is because while, yes, it is great and we all use passive marketing strategies in some capacity. We have to because we live in a digital age. And in the digital age, there are some passive marketing strategies that are just truly important. Like I talk about it all the time, creating a website. A website is a passive marketing strategy.

Yes. But it is also a branding strategy, and it's the face of your company in the modern digital age, but. . However, you do not necessarily sell from your website. A website is like this great place that you can go to to learn about a company and then hopefully somebody from that company will reach out to you and say, Hey, I'm with ABC Company.

You've probably seen us. We have this awesome website. We have provide these awesome services that I think can provide a great value to your business. Would you like to hear more about it? Would you like to have a meeting and chat about it? That's what you really want. You don't wanna have to go fishing for, for something and then, and then go fishing to talk to a salesman.

We all know we don't want that. Okay. And passive marketing kind of relies on that strategy. It's kind of like, hey, they're hoping they get somebody on their worst day where they truly need a service so badly they're willing to go hunting. Guys, that is not the standard. That is not the standard. It is pretty rare to have somebody who's hurting so poorly that they are going to click your clickbait ad and say, I can't wait to buy this product.

It's just not happening. And as much as you want to tell yourself that that is, that is true. While it could be true on certain circumstances, like I said, incredibly bad circumstance. Somebody's in a real bind. It is not going to be true for the person who's not hard up. Is it not gonna be true for the person who maybe needs your product but truly has 50 other products that they can choose from, and maybe that that competing company calls them and catches them and says, Hey, you know what, we have this great product.

Well, guess what? Now they are above you. They're above you. Why? Because they physically reached out for that target customer, okay? They physically reached out for that Target customer said I want to work with you. I have a great product, it'll meet your needs. Do you wanna talk about it? And the answer is yes.

They do wanna talk about it and they didn't have to go searching for it. And guys, that is, that is the critical part about active marketing. That's what makes it truly so effective, is that you can get people that aren't necessarily actively searching either because you're getting people where they're at, not, not making them come to you for a service they may or may not need.

Or if you catch them on their worst day and they truly. Yeah, it's just, it's like 10 to one guys. It's like 10 to one, you know? I don't know the real statistic. I'm just, I'm blurting words here, but it, I really feel like that's what it is, because I know for a fact that active marketing, if I consistently make the, make the LinkedIn introductions, I move them into the weekly contact stage.

I follow them up and I move them to a meeting stage. My odds if I get them into a meeting stage, my odds of making a customer are incredibly high. They may not be a customer today, but it's very likely a customer in the future. Why? Because they know who I am. They know what my service is, and when they need it, they know where to go.

And I worked, I worked that, that deal to make that connection, to build that trust, that reputation, to have a great, whether it's a lunch with somebody, whether it's a, a teams meeting, but to make a face-to-face introduction with someone. It's truly hard to beat. You're just not going to beat that on a digital on a passive marketing strategy.

Okay. So I'm just gonna go over briefly, what is passive marketing? Just to kind of give you an idea. Like I said before, I call it fishing. Passive marketing is fishing. You're hoping to get people when they're hungry, when they really want your product, and maybe they do really want your product, however, You gotta get 'em on the right day and they have to jump through some hoops to talk to you.

It's tough, guys. It's tough. I know. I want it to work. I do. I fell for it too. I did. I, you know, I said it before, I'll say it again. When I started Capital Business Development, even though I knew better, even though the whole point of capital business development was active marketing was to provide a marketing strategy that is just incredibly effective for my clients.

In my little mind, I was think. Well, hey, I can put out some passive marketing and just kind of just kind of get it out there and see maybe somebody will bite. Guys, I probably spent like five grand on passive marketing when I started this company. I don't think I got one phone call, not one. But you know what?

When I started to kind of send, send my introductions and do it the way that I bloody knew how, that I knew, I knew better when I started doing it the way that I knew better. It was night and day. It was night and day, guys. It works. So, flipping well, active marketing is no question the way to get new customers.

Okay. But let's, sorry, I got, I got, I got a little sidetracked there. Let me, let me get back on this. Okay. . So passive marketing is things such as, So your social media advertising, your website your Google AdWords, you know, billboards, you know, when you're driving down the road to see a billboard.

Passive marketing. It is anticipatory of a customer doing the work to make connection. It is great for business to customer advertising. So if your customer is an individual yeah, passive marketing actually works pretty well. I, there is a place for it and it truly is business to customer where there's truly no reputation or no relationship to build.

They just need a t-shirt or they want a new hat, or they just seeing these sweet workout gear and they want that workout gear and they're gonna buy it on Facebook ads. They're gonna buy it on whatever Instagram. That that shit works. It works incredibly well. So if you have a, if you have a business that is b2c, there's no question you 100% need to participate in a ton of passive marketing strategies such as social media, such as billboards, such as, you know, tv, whatever.

You need to kind of look at that as an option because it truly is b2c. If someone can pull out a credit card and buy your product in a heartbeat, and it's like a reasonable price, Yeah, it works. Awesome. A hundred percent. You should definitely be spending on digital ads if your customer, on the other hand, is a business who's buying your product or service, and they're gonna be buying it on a repeated repeated basis for different things.

Whether that be like distribution or you know, you have self construction company or you sell manpower services or whatever. You 100% need to rely on an active marketing strategy, and you need to utilize passive marketing for brand awareness. Let me repeat that. Passive marketing in business to business is for brand awareness.

If you, if you have a business and all you do is sell to other businesses and it's relationship based, or you know you're selling services, No question. You need active mar. You need active marketing for acquiring new customers, and you need passive marketing for brand awareness at capital. That is, that is the strategy that we utilize.

We utilize it with all of our customers to great effect guys, to great effect because you need to utilize passive marketing to create a brand awareness. How do we do that? Passive marketing. Let's say you're on LinkedIn and you have ads for your company or you have like whatever posts you're doing weekly social media posts, great.

That social media post should be like an infographic, maybe like a sweet quote or just something that's like interesting cuz you remember. Remember we are a visually appealing generation. Okay? So that's the other thing. If you got passive marketing and that's on your mind, you're making social media adss and stuff, visual appeal is critical.

I talk about this when I talk about designing a website. When you're designing a website or any type of advertising material, visual appeal is like, it's, it's almost more important than the content on the material. I truly, truly mean that. And I'm just gonna talk to it a little bit because you are primarily marketing to millennials now.

Okay. You know, our boomer, our boomer parents, they're retiring or are retired and you are primary. Marketing to millennials. We are, we are, you know, the, the generation up to, I think around 45 right now, from about 30 to 45. You're talking millennials. These are your managers, your senior managers, your presidents.

They are the high level. They are the people who are reading your material. So what do we like? Well, you know, we grew up in the, we grew up in the MTV generation, right? We are MTV ers. We love visual appeal. We love sweet sounds. We. We love things that, that steal our attention away guys. And this isn't getting any different, this isn't getting any different, you know, the next generation is gonna be even worse.

They're gonna love, they're gonna have less attention spans and they're gonna want more visual appeal and, and you're gonna have less of an opportunity to get them if your, if your material is boring, right? So, You guys gotta really look at your advertising material and that, whether that's, whether that's your website, whether that's your marketing material, your brochures, your cut sheets, whatever, or whether that's your social media post, guys, okay?

Visual appeal is critical. You need to have something in there that's going to draw their eye, that's going to gain their attention. That's not too long, that's not like a ridiculous amount of words. And you gotta think about it from the standpoint is you probably got about three seconds. You probably got about three seconds, and that might even be two seconds.

Too many and I truly mean that. And you need to be able to catch their eyes rather quickly. So when I kind of, you know, I did, I did talk about targeting or marketing materials and I would recommend that if you haven't listened to that episode, it would be worth going back and just having a quick listen to it, cuz I kind of get into depth about maybe what your marketing materials should look like.

But I'll go over it again, just really briefly here. If you're creating like brochures, you really want it to be minimal. You want that cover art to be like really, really eye-catching. You want somebody to look at your brochure and be like, that looks interesting. I'm gonna open that. Because if they look at your brochure and they say, well, that's lame, or That doesn't look all that interesting, guys, it's probably going in the garbage.

Okay, it's probably going in the garbage and you paid way too much money for the development of that brochure for it to end up in a garbage. Okay, so please, when you were developing your brochures, when you're developing your website, spend some time, look at it, have your kids look at it, have other people look at it.

Younger people, okay? If, if you're a little bit older, please have Have it checked. Have it checked by one of your employees, and just say, Is this kind of neat, like do you, do you, do you find this visually appealing? If the answer's yes, you're probably on the right track. If the answer's like, well, , sure, well, you might wanna reevaluate.

Okay. Hiring somebody to do this professionally for you is critical. I am truly hoping that very soon I can get a guest on the show. I , I'm hinting to it a little bit potentially. We may have an upcoming guest that can talk a lot more to the design of graphics and I can't wait to have that conversation because it is so critical to the marketing of your products and services.

You truly need something that is going to be visually appealing. And I think that if I can get the guest I'm hoping for, they're gonna provide a ton of value to you. So stay tuned. Okay, so kind of chatted about, about like active marketing, about brochures and like the quality of that content being so critical.

So let's chat a little bit to, to active marketing in the case of capital. So we primarily. Do active marketing. Okay? We are, we are truly out there. We're creating target lists. Remember we talked about this, we created high quality target lists by industry and location to make sure that we are, we are working with relevant companies that can actually buy your product or service.

Right? Very critical that we are pre-qualifying, that we have identified what pro, what companies and industries can buy our product and service. You don't have time to waste, especially if you are a new entrepreneur and you are actually doing the work and you are still trying to do all this marketing as well on the side.

You 100% don't have time to waste. I feel for you. I understand because I am you. I am you. I totally understand it. So we need to truly make sure that we are, we are searching and we are trying to track down the best quality leads that we can. How do we do that? We figure out where our product and service is needed, and we only market there.

You know, I mean, you can try shit later, , right? But, but when you're getting started, you need to figure out where you're needed and you need to focus your time where you're gonna be the most effective. Okay? Industry and location. Location. What's the best location for you to start at? It's where you're at, guys.

Where you're at. You were never more competitive than your home base. So if you were close to Calgary, You need to be marketing Calgary. If you're close to Edmonton, you need to be Marketing Edmonton. You know, I get it. We're in Alberta. We can market kind of across the province. It's not gigantic, but the reality is you're still more effective where you're at.

You still have access to the best resources, the employees where you are at. Okay. Sorry, I'm just gonna take a quick drink of water. Okay. Okay. Oh man, I told you guys I am not a podcaster. I am a business development rep and business owner, and I'm winging it. I'm doing the best I can here to provide value to you.

So, sorry if it's like from time to time I gotta take a drink of water or whatever. I I'm doing the best I can here and thank you. Thank you so much for bearing with me. Okay. So you also need to find the appropriate contacts for your product or service. This is critical, guys. We talked about this plenty of times.

When I was talking about targets, you know, I think I have literally two episodes on it, so I'm not gonna get real crazy deep into this, but you know, this. You need to track down the right person because most of the time we're trying to hit up supply chain. We're trying to hit up presidents or whatever.

These people don't buy your product or service. Who's buying your product or service? It's probably the guy in the field. It's probably probably the project manager. It's probably the plant manager of of a, of a fabrication facility, your manufacturing facility, right? We, we need to find the right people.

So you need to do some target research upfront. Find the right people so that when you do start doing your active marketing or passive marketing, right, because you can definitely select your demographics that you are getting to the right people. Because if you are targeting the wrong people, you're spinning your tires.

You might go through 20 people till you get to the right one. And my God, you were gonna be banging your head off your desk wishing that you would've done it differently. So. Figure out who you need to talk to. Narrow that down. You know, if you're not sure, call, call the office. Call, call a friend, call somebody else in the industry and just say, Hey, when you guys are marketing, do you know like who you're talking to?

And most people are pretty good at just saying, yeah, yeah, we're talking to the quality manager. We're talking to the safety manager, or we're talking to the plant manager. Most people will, will help you out. Or the ops manager in a lot of cases as well, right. Make sure that we are narrowing it down so that you aren't spinning your tires and that you are targeting the right people.

You need to be making your soft introductions. Okay, soft introductions, very important. The, the, your first introduction should always be soft. How, what is a soft introduction? It's, it's, it can be an informal email. It can be a LinkedIn message or a message on social media. It can be an InMail if you got LinkedIn.

Just a soft contact to say, Hey, I'm John with ABC Company. Thank you so much for taking the time to look at this. We do this, I think you might be interested in it. I've attached a quick brochure for you to take a look at. Always make sure when you're doing soft introductions, you are attaching some form of advertising.

So whether that be your digital brochure, whether that just be a link to your website, figure it out, figure out what you want to go with. And just make sure that you are dropping some piece of valuable information for them to follow up on. And you know what you can tell, like nowadays, if you're on LinkedIn, you can literally tell if somebody's read it.

I don't think you can tell if they've read your InMail, but if you've sent them a, a friend invite, which you should have if you can, if you can connect with them, you always should. And you can tell if they've read it, which is great. They don't have to respond. And remember that we are always coming at this from a standpoint of we're trying to inform people and we're trying to do it in the kindest, sweetest way possible. Okay? We never get upset. We never get angry that they didn't get back to us. We never get worked up if we didn't get a phone call that we wanted. Or if we didn't, you know, if we called them five times and they haven't answered, we never get worked up about it.

It's always Hello, Mr. Customer, thank you so much for your time today. My name's Kelly. I'm working with ABC Company. I have a product and service I think you might be interested in. We do this. We'd love to chat with you. We'd love to send you an introduction email or formal email or potentially line up an introduction meeting.

You can get me back. Your phone number, it was absolutely great to leave this message for you today. Have a great day. Take care. That's it. Just always, always come at it from this like sweet, kind place. Never get worked up, never get upset, and just have that consistency. Have that steadfastness in yourself, the resilience to be able to just do it again.

Do it again. And you will find that if, if you work up that resilience and you work up that fortitude to just keep, keep at it, keep consistent, make that call on a weekly basis and you know what you're gonna. One of these times they're gonna answer. And you know what the answer sometimes is? I've literally had this call, Kelly, you are the nicest, most persistent person that I have ever met with.

I literally felt bad not calling you back. Literally had that call, had that call, had that, had that said to me when we finally set up the meeting and just had a great laugh cuz it, it's hilarious because like people, they, even if they don't necessarily want to reject you. They may not have a need for your service at the time, and they literally are like, man, like I can't call this person back.

He's being so flipping nice. If you come at it from that standpoint, guys, you are gonna be so, so effective and I truly hope that you, you just keep that. If there's one thing that you kind of take from this particular episode today, I want it to be that if you can keep consistent in your kindness. You know, regardless of what type of marketing you're doing, do it from a place of kindness and sweetness, and you will be 100% more effective than somebody who is not kind and sweet because you are just not very likely to call somebody back if they kind of come across as abrasive or selly or pushy on the phone.

You wanna talk to the guy who's bubbly, who's sweet, who's like you know, thanks so much. I'm sorry I missed you today. Really looking forward to hearing back from you. That's the person that you want to call back, and I want you to just to think about it from that standpoint. Ask yourself when you're leaving messages, is that somebody that I would want to call back?

If the answer is, I'm not sure or no, you need to improve your, the way that you leave your messages. You need to improve your headspace when you're making phone calls, and that can definitely be done by taking maybe just some time for yourself. Maybe do a little walk if you're upset. Don't make calls in that moment.

If you're having a bad day, maybe don't make calls that day. Find, wait until you're in a head space where you are clear and you're feeling good about it and you will be way, way, way more effective. Okay. So you wanna obviously follow up weekly and ask for your meetings. Right. So that's the key. Kind of just talked about this.

Weekly follow up is critical. You don't wanna do more than a week, because if you're consistently calling this person day in, day out, you are gonna become the most annoying, pushy, salesy guy, and you ain't, you ain't getting a call back. And even if you got them on the phone, they're not gonna be happy to talk to you.

So once a week, guys, just once a week and you will be effective. Remember when you get to the meetings. Okay? So when, when you are following up with these calls, remember the goal of all these calls, they're not just to introduce your product. Okay? Like, that's great. That's all fine and dandy. Hopefully we've introduced your product in the soft touch.

When we've kind of done that LinkedIn introduction, you've sent your brochure, potentially you've sent. A formal email where you've attached a brochure, and now when we're calling, what's the next steps? After they have your formal information, it's always to get to that meeting, right? Our goal here is to consistently get to a meeting.

So the secret to getting to a meeting, I'm gonna tell you it's a real, real hard one. Listen close. You have to ask. You have to ask, okay? Nobody is giving you a meeting if you don't ask for it. Guys, this is the problem most salespeople. We struggle with this, and I don't know why. You know what? Even I struggled with it.

So I'm, I'm not even gonna, like, I'm not even gonna sit here and say that I'm the best at this. I used to struggle with this where I would like, I would make this great connection with somebody and I'd be like, yeah, we have this great service. And then the, it would come to this end and it would just be like, okay, well, we'll call you when we need it.

Bye . And I was just sitting there like, oh crap, I blew it. And yeah, I did blow it. And you know what? You might be blowing it too. And. It's just because you have to ask. So just remember, whenever we're having these meetings, please remember to ask. Make it like put it, put it in front of you, put it on your computer screen.

Big sticky note. Ask for meeting and do it in every single direct phone call. When you get that direct phone call, just say, Hey John, it's Kelly with ABC Company. I'd really love to chat with you. Can we potentially line up just a quick introduction meeting? You know, it can be in person. We can go grab a lunch.

Or maybe if you're really busy, we can we can either have a teams or have it at your office, but I would just love to meet you, maybe go over my, go over our product and just see if there may be some fit for it. You have some availability in the next week. And then just be quiet and they'll tell you, well, you know, you know what I actually do.

I have some time. Maybe you can swing by my office next Tuesday. We can have a quick chat or, yeah, I can get you for teams next Tuesday and great. Guess what? You got the meeting. And you can't sell without the meeting guys. It's just, it's critical. The meeting is critical because you need to be able to build a rapport with that customer.

You have to be able to build some trust and rapport with your customer to be effective, to be, to build enough interest in your product for them to even wanna try it, right? So just remember that whenever you are making these direct phone calls, you've sent the formal emails, you're at that next stage where you're doing the weekly follow up.

The weekly follow up stage is about meetings. We're working to get the meeting, so ask. Ask the big takeaway today, just ask for the meeting. Okay? Need to to ask your customer for the next steps. Okay? So when we're in a meeting, it's always important that we are moving towards the next steps. Well, you've gotten the meeting.

What's the next step? Next step is you need to get on the vendor list or get an RFP or RFQ or something to take you to the next stage. Okay? So same thing. Same thing as before when you had to ask for the meeting. You also have to. For, to get on the vendor list, you have to ask for your RFP or rfq. You have to ask them because most people aren't willing to give you anything if you're not willing to ask for it.

It's kind of like a confidence game, right? You know, the confident person wins. The confident person wins in most situations in life, whether that be asking that beautiful girl or boy out to a date, or asking your beautiful husband or wife to marry you. Heck, literally just anything you want in life, you pretty much have to go for it or ask for it, right?

Takes a little bit of confidence. Guess what? Takes confidence to get your RFPs and RFQ as well. Okay, so let's say you've had this really great face-to-face meeting. You've had a lot of conversation. You're kind of talking, you're shooting the shit, and the meeting's wrapping up, and now it's time to kind of talk Next steps.

Just ask next steps is a great way to bring it out. Hey customer ABC had a really great meeting with you today. Thanks so much for taking the time to meet. What are the next steps here? You know, we've had this great meeting, I have this product you might need. Do you have maybe like a vendor list that we can, we can fill out for you, we can do like an a vendor list application, or maybe you have some upcoming RFPs or RFQ that you can get us on that bid list for what are the next steps?

And just wait. They'll tell you what the next steps are. So secret, once again, ask for the meeting, ask for next steps in the meeting, and get on that vendor list. Get on that rfq, and then depending on your company size or whatever you're working with, hand it off. Hand it off to an account. Account manager.

Account rep for monthly follow up after that to get to get your contracts. But it's just asking guys, it's just consistency in asking and you will be incredibly effective at at moving things to the next level. So let's let's kinda go over this. Obviously we've been talking a lot about active marketing strategy.

Why? Because, because I want you guys to win, okay? I want my listeners to be the best. I want you guys to implement this stuff in your new businesses, old businesses, or just ongoing businesses, and I want you to improve your business strategy, okay? And if right now we are relying on a passive strategy to maintain your business, if that's all you're relying on, you're gonna struggle.

And I hate to say it, I hate to say it. But you are going to struggle if you are relying solely on a passive marketing strategy. Okay? It needs to be a mixed. Consistent active marketing will lead to better overall results for your business. Okay? It will, it will just trust me on this. Implement it in your business and see, see things change.

Get yourself a good business development rep. Get him out there physically marketing your product. Phys like, you know, redesigning your brochures, redesigning your website, getting you up to par, and then marketing that stuff out there. My gosh, you were going to see a night and day difference. If you have been relying on a passive marketing strategy, only you are going to see a night and day difference.

Trust me, it's, it's, it's great, but it's great for what it's great for. Okay. And what passive marketing is great for is brand awareness. It's about getting people to know who you are. It's about kind of getting John in Stony Plain to know who Dan and Edmonton is, which is real great. Once again, you still gotta call Dan in Edmonton, or you still gotta call John in Stony Plain in order to get that meeting.

It takes active marketing to be, to be moving forward. In my, in my experience, in my experience, active marketing is what gains you that new customer. It's what gains you ground. While passive marketing gains you knowing it, it lets people know who you are. So having a consistent strategy that implements a little bit of both.

A considerable more amount on the active marketing strategy. Maybe like, maybe like a 80% active marketing, 20% passive marketing strategy is probably a good, a good way to look at it like a, a, a good allocation of marketing strategy in order to get really, really, really good results. So consistent active marketing will lead to better overall re results for your business.

An approach of active marketing to gain new customers and passive marketing for brand awareness is the best path of action for your business. Work to generate mutually beneficial relationships with your customers and you both will thrive. Okay. That's it. That's it for episode 11. Thank you so much for sticking with me.

You have been listening to the Business Development Podcast, and if you've enjoyed the content today, please head over to Spotify or Apple Podcast. Leave us a rating, leave us a review, like subscribe, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hopefully, like I said, coming up soon, hoping to have an episode on on marketing materials with somebody who is an expert.

And we'll see what happens. But thank you so much for listening. Take care.

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.