Advice for a New BD Rep & Entrepreneur

Advice for a New BD Rep & Entrepreneur

Kelly Kennedy: In today's episode of the Business Development Podcast, we are touching on advice for new business development people, new entrepreneurs who are looking to market their business. I've been asked about this plenty of times, today we got you. 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 to episode 23 of the Business Development Podcast. Let me just start out by saying, my apologies if I sound a little bit off today.

I am fighting and absolutely horrible, cold, but I did not want to miss a day. So here I am. I will be doing some editing up front. Try to clean this up, but yeah, if I sound a little different it's cause I'm dying inside, but I'll be okay. We're gonna be okay here. So thank you so much for your patience and my apologies for sounding a little bit off.

Today's episode, I wanted to chat a little bit about advice for a new business development rep or an entrepreneur starting to market their business. But before we kick this off, I just wanted to give a big shout out. A big thank you to Ken Gee my last sunday's guest from the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce.

He was a serial entrepreneur, provided an absolute ton of value, a ton of information on why you might want to join your local Chamber of Commerce. And Ken, it was a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks so much for for bringing on. It was truly an honor to have you. All right, let's let's kick off the topic.

So definitely wanted to touch on. Advice for a new business development rep or a new entrepreneur. I've had this question a few times cuz we, I know we have a lot of entrepreneurs listening, or a lot of newer business development people, newer salespeople who are looking for a little bit of advice or maybe they don't have a plan or a format or things that they work on.

So today, this episode is for you. Let me start out by just saying it is okay if you do not know what to do. Okay. Look, I remember, I remember starting my life as a BD rep and frankly kind of being thrown into the position like I think most of us are. And having to kind of do my best to figure it out on my own.

And I want you to know that if this is you right now and you've been, you're, you're either a new entrepreneur, you just started a business and you're not really sure what to do, or you're, you're a new BD rep, you've just been appointed to the role, understand that there is no. There's no rule book.

There's no handbook, right? There's no handbook for you. So it's okay if you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed if you're feeling like I don't quite know what to do. I just want you to know that it's okay. That's a good place to start, and most of us did start there. Let me just say time is on your side.

Okay? The secret to being good at BD is time, right? You need to spend some time. You need to overcome your fears. You need to refine your craft, and that takes time. And if you are new, let me just tell you, time is on your side. You are going to be okay. You will do it in your own way, okay? Every BD person brings themselves, right?

It's, it's you. It's you building relationships. Sure. It might be you building relationships on behalf of whatever company you're working with or for your own business. However, remember, the key ingredient is you. And you will do it in your own way and you will learn it your own way and you will have your own way of doing things that is unique to you.

And that's okay. That is encouraged because the goal of business development is to create amazing relationships. You do that by being yourself. Imposter syndrome happens to each and every one of us. Okay? I have felt imposter syndrome so many flipping times in my life. I felt imposter syndrome when I first got into business development and operations.

I felt imposter syndrome when I started my own company and I feel imposter syndrome now as a podcaster, yet I'm in twenty three episodes deep now, right? We all experience imposter syndrome, okay? So don't feel like, oh my gosh, like that you are unique and the only person feeling that you are not unique in that way.

You are very unique as an individual, but you are not unique in your experience of imposter syndrome. So I want you to understand that if you are feeling that. Understand. You are normal. You are normal. We all experience imposter syndrome in one way or another. The secret is just do it right. The reality is, is that once you get your feet wet, you do the job a few times, you go to a few meetings.

Guess what? You just start, you stop feeling like such an imposter, and you just get better at it over and over again to all my newer entrepreneurs, my newer business development people, there are two books that I would like you to read. One is called Like Switch. I can't remember the author of this one, but it's an amazing book.

I think if you just hop on Audible or you hop on Amazon and you type in the like switch, you can't miss it. It's an amazing book about how to get people to like you and how to be likable, which is also very critical. It one of the best books I've read in my business development career. Another one that you have to read is How to Win Friends and Influence people. I believe that's by Dale Carnegie. It's an old, old book. It's like, I don't know, 1930s, 1940s, whatever. It doesn't matter. The information in that book is amazing and it's as relevant today as it was then, and another book that I would highly recommend if you're just getting into the business development field or you're just a new entrepreneur, just getting started and trying to figure out how to market your own company, check those books out.

Okay. Make sure that we are utilizing a crm. If you've listened to my previous podcast episodes, you know that I harp on this. A CRM is very critical to staying organized. It's critical to having all your information about your customers, all the work you're doing in one place so that you can refer to it and you can know where you're at.

So make sure that we are utilizing a crm. I'm not going to harp on this one too much. If you want more information on how to use a crm, I believe I have a few episodes. If you just look. Back on CRMs that will explain how to use them, how to set them up, and how to be effective with them. Okay? Identify what person or what person in an organization can buy and make sure that you're targeting them directly.

Okay? So, you know what I mean? You probably have a target list if you don't. That's something else you guys need to definitely look at. Create a target list. Based on industry and location, what location is best. It's wherever you're at guys the best location for you guys to start your marketing in is always going to be whatever city, whatever town that you are local to, and then go out from there, right?

But you are always gonna be the most competitive and the most effective, right where you are. That is, that is the case 99% of the time. So we want to be looking for companies that we can work with that are local to where we are at. And then we need to identify the right people in those companies. We need to make sure that if we need to talk to the operations manager, cuz he's the right guy buying that.

When we are sending our digital introductions, when we're sending our, our digital invites, that we are inviting operations managers from relevant industries. So that we know that we can pitch to people who can actually buy our product, who are interested in meeting with us. Because if you're pitching the receptionist or you're pitching who knows, the account manager of the finance guy, he, he may or may not know who you are or what you do or why it would even be relevant.

You need to make sure that the people you're talking to understand why your service would be relevant. Okay. So, we need to make sure that our target lists include the right industry in the right location where we are at, right? And that we are also targeting the right people who can actually make decisions to take a chance on us to utilize our product or service.

Okay? We want to target them digitally first, right? I talk about this all the time. You always want to do a soft introduction. What is the soft introduction? I'll go over it quickly. A soft introduction is where we just kind of hop on and we send a LinkedIn digital introduction. We usually add them on LinkedIn.

That's the best way to go about doing it. Don't send InMails. Guys. InMails are going to junk mail. They really are. Stop wasting your time on InMails. Connect with people directly. Give it one day before you reach out to them. Don't be a robot. Don't be a robot. Don't, don't have automated messages.

Sending the moment people accept your, your friend invite. Okay. Make sure that we are sending, we are reaching out to them in a meaningful way about a day after we connect with them at least. Okay. A minimum one day, probably maximum a week. Okay. And make sure that in these introductions that we're sending that we are, we are sending like a Thank you.

Thanks for connecting with me. A really brief introduction, like I said, three to four, maybe five lines of just who you are. Why you connected and make sure that you're attaching a brochure for your product or service. Okay. That's a soft introduction. From there, we add them to our CRM into the digital introduction space, which is always our first space on our CRM.

Okay. All right. We want to create a structured process that you follow diligently on a daily basis. Okay? Structure and organization as a business development person or as a marketing person, it makes you, it's supercharges your effectiveness, okay? If you are disorganized, if you got business cards all over your desk, If you don't know what you did yesterday or what you need to be doing today, or what you're doing tomorrow, you are behind.

You guys need to organize your life. You need to have a structure. A CRM is a great way to organize our life and to utilize the structure, which is why I, I harp on them. But there's, there's consistency required in you as a person as well, right. So what you want to do is you want to always have a track of how many LinkedIn digital intros you're gonna do that day.

How many phone calls and emails are you gonna do on a consistent basis, right? Create a things to do today. Checklist, right? I harp on this a little bit. The things to do today, checklist, I love it. Have a notebook by your, by your, by your desk. And every single day before you start your day in a business development, entrepreneur, whatever you do, just write down, you know, whatever.

It's it's April 26th. Here's the things to do today and just list five to 10 critical tasks you need to do today. This might be the meetings that you have. This might be how many phone calls you're going to do today. This might be how many digital introductions you have to send, and those are always based on how many people have accepted your invites from the previous week, right?

We need to make sure that we are sending 100 LinkedIn introductions on a weekly basis. And guys, you wanna do this on Sunday? Why? Well, because it takes people time to accept the invites, and you have an entire week that you need to fill with work, right? So make sure that we are sending our, our digital introductions on Sunday.

That way you have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, to do all that work, to send those, send those digital introductions and kind of keep up to, up to pace, right? And if we're doing that on a consistent basis, you guys are gonna have opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. Right. We always wanna make sure that we are hyper populating our LinkedIn digital introduction space, right?

Because that's our funnel, that's where we're gonna pull from for the future. So the, the keys of this that I really want you to take away today is you definitely want to have structure, right? You want to have structure in the way that you are doing things, which means hold yourself to account, hold yourself to account.

If you are, if you were telling yourself you're gonna make 50 calls a week, Make 50 calls a week. If you were saying you're gonna send, you know, 50 introductions a week, make sure you're send, you're, you're adding a hundred people on Sunday, cuz guess what? Not all 100 are going to accept. It's just the way it is.

Maybe 60. Accept. But if you hold yourself to account and you hold yourself, okay, I'm gonna send 50 introductions a week. I'm gonna make 50 phone calls a week, and that's where I'm gonna do consistently. You are going to be effective. You are going to be effective because you can't, you can't, if you have a structure, even if you have a bad week.

They even out bad week, good week, bad week, good week. You might have a week where you make whatever you make. No connections. Nobody, nobody talks to you, whatever. But the next week you might talk to six people and line up six meetings. And over time you will average success. You will average success by having a consistent structure and holding yourself to account week over week.

Okay? There will be good and bad days, but consistency wins over time. That's what I'm talking about, guys. Consistency will win over time. Yeah, sure. Some weeks you might leave 50 voicemails. It is what it is. You know, I've had plenty of weeks where I've left 50 voicemails, but guess what? The next week when I called, Seven or eight of those people picked up and we had a great conversation and it led to meetings.

And so as long as you were doing that in week over week, you're holding yourself to account. You're, you're following up with your contacted list. You're calling all of them. You're, you're adding a hundred people a week. You are adding, say, 40 to 50 new LinkedIn digital introductions a week. You are going to win.

It's just a matter of time. It's when you stop holding yourself to account. When you say, ah, I don't need to make 50 calls this week. I'm only gonna make 10 calls this week. When you guys start slacking, guess what? The results start to slack too. So consistency and structure and holding yourself to account is critical in any type of business development or entrepreneurial marketing strategy.

It's on you. It's on you, and you can do it, but you have to hold yourself and you have to have some structure. Okay? Do not rely on a passive strategy. It's too many hoops for your customer, okay? You need to reach out directly to be more effective. I call it active marketing guys. You need to be following an active marketing strategy, probably 80% active with a 20% passive strategy.

What do I mean by this? Your digital, your digital ad space, okay? Whether you guys are using Facebook marketing ads, whether you're using LinkedIn ads, you're using Google AdWords, that should be about 20% of your marketing efforts, okay? The other 80% should be on physically reaching out to these people, having face-to-face meetings, having coffee.

Having heck, even teams meetings. Sure. But like they're not as effective, but they're still better than a passive strategy. Okay. Focus on talking to people on having a human to human connection 80% of the time, and you guys are going to be so much more effective because we live in a time now where everybody is trying to rely on a passive strategy.

Why? Because we don't, we're scared to talk to people. Okay, I get it. We are, it's, it's, it's uncomfortable. It's challenging. It, it brings you anxiety maybe. Right? But. Remember, as humans, we do need human to human interaction. It's part of our makeup, it's part of who we are, and it's very hard to generate the type of relationship you need to make in a business to business relationship if you are not, if you are not striving to create human to human interaction.

Okay. That's what you guys need to be doing. You need to strive to create human to human interaction, to stay effective and to stay ahead of your competition. Anxiety is normal. Do not feel bad if you get nervous. Okay? I get nervous all the time. I still get nervous. I still have nerves before big meetings.

I still have nerves before I talk to a group of people. I still have nerves sometimes before I do a, a podcast. Interview. Okay. It's just part of it. It's part of the deal. It's part of being human. And don't feel like you're crazy if you have nerves. You are not crazy if you have nerves. You are not broken.

If you have nerves, you are not broken. If you get anxiety, you are, you are normal. You are the same as everyone else. And I want you to listen to a previous episode about anxiety that if you go back, you'll find it. I did a whole episode on, on anxiety, and I want you to know that it is completely normal if you are experiencing anxiety.

Okay? You must ask for what you want and you must have the bravery to ask for the meeting. Okay? The secret to getting meetings, guys, I know it's a big one. It's a big, big, scary secret. You have to ask for it, okay? If you do not ask, you will not receive. If you do not have the bravery to ask for a meeting, most people will not, will not offer one.

Okay? So if you have a client that you're talking to and you're at that stage, you, you've made your introduction, you've had your, your emails, you've sent him your brochures, you've sent a formal email. And now you're follow up calling. If you get 'em on the line, guys, you have to ask, just ask. Just say, Hey, I think that I have a product or service that will meet, some, will meet a need that you guys have.

I would love to line up an introduction meeting with you. It's that easy guys. It's really that easy. Just line up that introduction meeting and move forward. But the secret is to ask if you ask for the meeting, I. I tell you, like 80% of the time you're going to get it. So just have the bravery. Just, just have the bravery to say, Hey, I would love to meet with you and I think you guys are going to find some great success.

Okay? Make sure that you prepare for your meetings and make sure that you're consistently 20 to 30 minutes early for proper preparation. I talked about this guy's an organization and structure, okay? When you guys are, are preparing for your meetings, you need to be early if you ask for that meeting. You need to meet early and you need to be making it as easy as possible for your customer to find you.

Especially if this is a lunch meeting or a coffee meeting, make sure that you're letting, letting them know, Hey, I'm sitting in this corner. I'm wearing a blue shirt. You can't miss me. Like, get, make it as easy for your customer as possible. Make sure that you're texting them about 15 minutes before the meeting just to let them know where you're sitting and what you'll be wearing, and make sure that you do your research on the people you're meeting with.

Okay? Check their LinkedIns, Google them. Try to know as much as you can about them before you have the meeting, because. It just makes you more effective because that way you are able to ask questions that are relevant to them, their experience, and you just look like a rockstar. So make sure that you are doing some meeting prep before every single meeting and be 20 to 30 minutes early.

Always end your meetings by asking what are the next steps, okay? There has to be next steps. The whole point of the meeting is to get somewhere, right? So even if it's an introductory meeting and you're just kinda introducing the company and you're finding synergies and you're learning about the client, At the end of the meeting, just say, Hey, this was an absolutely great meeting.

It was a pleasure meeting you. Thanks so much for taking time outta your day to come see me. What do you think are the next steps? Should we do a pre-qualification? Do you potentially have a bid opportunity coming up that we could bid on? What are the next steps? And let the customer tell you, and then make sure that you're entering that in your CRM and you are following up, because next steps are critical and they always lead somewhere.

So the key is to always keep everything moving, right? We wanna move to a successful order. We have to be asking next steps. Make that a part of your vocabulary at the end of every meeting. What are the next steps, and you are gonna find yourself to be so much more effective than you were before. Keep organized notes in your CRM and write them so that anybody can understand, okay?

Your CRM, it can't just be like crazy notes that only you get because you might have to share that information. Or you might have an employee sometime take over your pipe drive or your CRM, or you might go go on vacation and someone's gotta take coverage for you. Okay? Make sure that every time you write a note in your CRM, if somebody who doesn't understand you. They can read that and understand what is going on with that customer. Okay? So we need to keep our notes accurate and clean. Accurate and clean. And then we also need to make sure that anybody could understand them, because this is important for you too, by the way, just so you know, because some of these customers may ask you to call back in six months.

Well, if they ask you to call back in six months, you think you're going to remember. Everything. Absolutely not, you're not gonna remember. And so if you don't write it in a way that like is relevant and makes sense to, to someone coming at it six months down the line, or someone coming at it blind you guys are gonna struggle.

So make sure all notes are written in a way that you could understand even if you were coming to it six months later, or even if you had no idea what the deal was about. Okay. All right. Weekly reporting. This is something else I talked to you about my entrepreneurs. Okay. And, and, and my business development managers Make sure that your teams are providing you weekly reports if you are just in business development or you work alone, make sure that you are doing a weekly report for yourself or for your, or for your bosses. Okay? The reality is a weekly report allows you to look at, look at the work that you've done for the week, look at the opportunities. Maybe look at what you have for next week and what meetings you have.

It allows you to kind of prepare for the upcoming week. It allows the people managing you to understand. Where are the opportunities or where maybe you should focus a little more work on? And it's just good practice. It's good practice. Make sure that you are providing a weekly report, which, which provides maybe, how many LinkedIn digital introductions did you make this week?

How many people did you invite? How many how many phone calls and emails did you make? What are the meetings that you had this week? What are the meetings that you have next week? Is there anything critical? Are there any opportunities today? Just be tracking this information. Okay. That way if you do that week, by week, by week, it's going to make you more effective and you can always go back to it to try to figure out if you have something or if you missed something.

Okay. Dress for your room. I just got a, a couple quick notes here. Always dressed for the room, so. If you are meeting in downtown Calgary and you're going to sky rises. Yeah. Wear a suit. Guys. Wear a suit. You know, if you are meeting in a mechanic shop, yeah, you probably don't need to wear your fancy suit.

Okay? Dress for your room. Dress for the opportunity. Dress for your client. Okay? You know, you know, you know what is appropriate for each situation. And just make sure that you have those things, that you have a suit. If you are going to downtown Sky rises, have a dress shirt and blue jeans If you're going to a mechanic shop.

Have a, a golf polo and some nice shorts if you guys are having a golf meeting, okay? Always dress to the occasion and always make sure that you are thinking about that before you go, Stay optimistic. Okay? This is like the most important thing. It really is a business development person or, or somebody marketing for a business, an entrepreneur marketing their business.

You have to stay optimistic. You have to stay positive. Nobody wants to deal with somebody who's pessimistic, who's sad, who's depressed, and I'm, I'm not hating on you, if you struggle with depression or if you struggle with these situations. I get it. I get it. I've been there. I've been there. I struggle with anxiety.

Okay? On occasion. The reality is we all struggle with things, but if you wanna make. Connections with people, especially in the way that you need to do it with business development or with marketing. You need to try to find optimism. You need to try to stay happy, stay positive, have a smile on your face.

Be somebody that somebody would want to talk to, okay? And I know that that's easier said than done some days, but sometimes we just gotta do that. So try your best to stay optimistic, keep a positive outlook on life, and it will make you more successful. Last of all, but almost most important, take pride in what you do.

Take pride in what you do. Business development, entrepreneurship, marketing is an amazing job. It's an amazing way to give back to the world, and I have always been incredibly proud to have been in business development. I love business development. It is my calling, and I am proud of all the work that I've done in this field.

And you should be to, you should be as well. So make sure that we are taking pride in our work. All right guys. Well, thanks for bearing with me. I'm sorry. Oh my gosh, this cold is brutal. I apologize ahead of time. Thank you for sticking with me and hearing me out for this episode. And hopefully next week we'll be back in not dying so badly.

Shout outs this week. Christa Jones. Faheem Khan and Sean Dalmer. Thank you so much for the kind words you guys sent to me on LinkedIn. I always appreciate the love and appreciate the emails and the reviews and the thank you. If you've enjoyed this show today, please give us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.

Give us a five star. We'd appreciate it and if you could always follow us, that's also great. It helps us improve the algorithm. And I do read any reviews you guys leave, so please, I appreciate them. Thank you. And until next time, this has been episode 23 of the Business Development Podcast. 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 at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.