Business Development Resolutions

Business Development Resolutions

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 93 of the business development podcast. And it's an absolute pleasure to be on with you today. This is our last business development episode of 2023. We do have an expert guest interview coming in on New Year's Eve, but this is my last episode for the year. And if you guys have set corporate growth goals in 2024, you've set some dollar values.

Well, today is going to be a treat. I have a strategy for you on how to calculate. The number of meetings you guys are going to need stick with us. You're going to love today's episode.

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 business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 93 of the business development podcast. And today we are jumping into 2024 with business development resolutions. Man, it was an absolutely amazing Christmas. I hope you guys all had such a great holiday. And you're you're rested, you're recouped, you're full, you got all the gifts and goodies that you guys wanted.

Heck, maybe some of you even asked for a little bit of podcast equipment and got some. Yeah, I just really hope you all had an absolutely amazing, amazing Christmas season. And before we start today's episode, I just wanted to say thank you to all of the people who reached out to us. And you know, I got so many messages over the Christmas break from listeners of the show, and you guys, I appreciate you all.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write to us for wishing us the best during our holiday season. It means a lot, and I appreciate it immensely. I appreciate each and every one of you immensely. And thank you so much for sticking with us over the past year as we quickly approach our first year.

And yeah, this show couldn't happen without you. So to all the listeners and sponsors who reached out and wished us the best, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for doing that. I wanted to give a shout out to Tash Jefferies for episode 92, Accelerate Your Success. That was absolutely amazing, Tash. It was great to have you back on the show.

And Tash left us all with a little bit of a Christmas gift. And so if you're getting this feel free to go back to our last show. But Tash had said If you guys create an experimentation list, and remember a good experiment for your business takes two hours or less to implement. If you created a list and you you sent it over to Tash Jefferies, she will review it and give you her top three for free.

This is something that would normally cost you guys. So pretty great deal. So if you guys are looking for. things that you can try to to improve your business growth and your success over 2024, please feel free to take Tash up on this deal. Do up, do up a list of experiments that you guys could implement in two hours or less.

That would run for about a week at a time. Send them over to Tash. She'll evaluate them for you and she'll let you know what, what the top three best ones will be for your success. That's a pretty cool thing. Tash. That was amazing. Thank you for doing that for our listeners. And I hope that you all take her up on that.

Cause that's a pretty cool deal. And Tash is a pretty awesome person. So I appreciate you immensely Tash. There's so much going on on her front. There's definitely cool stuff coming. So looking forward to it. Thanks again, Tash. All right. So we are heading into 2024. This is my last episode. This is not the last episode of the business development podcast.

We have a new year's eve episode coming up with Ben Spangl on mindset and performance. You're not going to want to miss that. That is an. Awesome. Awesome episode. But this is my last episode where it's just lonely old me for 2023. And I just wanted to say, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on this adventure.

That is the business development podcast. I appreciate each and every one of you. It has been a heck of a journey and we have gone on it together and, you know what it is. It's always about educate and inspire. That's the whole point of this show. We always want to educate and inspire and, and teach business development and give good business development advice and bring on amazing experts.

And just to give you guys all a note, I am committed to keeping this going all through 2024. I don't plan on, on toning it down at all. I'm just going to tone it up. So we're looking for, for, you know, amazing guests for 2024. We're looking for education. We're looking for inspiration, and I hope. That we are able to deliver that to you throughout 2024, and that is definitely one of the goals.

And one of the things that I am committed to on your behalf, we are quickly approaching episode 100. So just so you guys know, we will surpass episode 100 in January of 2024. I can't remember the exact date, but we've actually already recorded the episode. It's awesome. It's so flipping cool. I have Shelby and Cole coming on.

We're having, you know, a, a little three-way conversation and, it turned out really, really awesome. So 100 is coming. It is done. It is recorded. It is awesome. And I'm really looking forward to dropping that mid January for you guys and us heading into the next phase of the business development podcast together.

And yeah, I'm really excited. I'm really excited for what 2024 will bring. And I think we're going to have an absolutely. Absolutely amazing year in 2024 on the business development podcast. All right. Well, let's just get into it. So we are heading into 2024. Everyone's making resolutions, but I want you to do something different.

I want you to make a commitment to yourself. and your business. We all set goals, but 2024 could be your year. It could be the year that you didn't just set an ambitious goal, but you meet it as well. Remember, we all set goals, but how do we meet our ambitious goals? That's the challenge, right? That's the issue with all of us resolutioners.

We pick we pick some ambitious goals and I think sometimes we do it with, with hope in our heart and good and good intentions, but without a good plan, it's hard to get there. And so with today's show you know, we're going to get to it. I'm going to teach you guys how to set some goals and not just set them, but also achieve them specifically with your business growth.

And so that was one of the things that I wanted to touch on today. So I'm going to help you figure out some math to get you there. But first we're going to chat about principles. You guys know it. We 2024 without a good conversation on business development principles. The things that we need to do the commitment to business development and, and doing things in specific orders and strategies that are going to be effective for you, right?

In the end of this episode, I am going to take you into some cool math that's going to give you guys a roadmap. It's going to give you the roadmap to set to, to accomplish your financial growth goals in 2024. And it will work, but it's going to take some commitment on your guys behalf. And I think it wouldn't be fair for me just to jump into that.

without going back to the beginning and just chatting with you guys about the principles of business development, the core values, the things that we have to do on a consistent basis to be effective, right? So let us go back to the beginning. Let's talk about process. And then we can chat about how we're going to hold ourselves accountable to the process and then get into the meat and potatoes on how we're going to reach our growth goals in 2024.

So remember, we talked about this really in the very, very beginning of the business development podcast, right? In 2024, your website is your 20 story skyscraper. Your marketing materials have to be visually appealing, right? So what do we want to do? We want to go right back to the beginning. New Year, let's re evaluate.

Let's take a look at our marketing materials. Let's take a look at our website. And maybe it's time for a refresh. When was the last time that you guys refreshed your websites or your marketing materials, your brochures? In 2024, it's never been easier to create these you know, you know, websites and marketing materials for that matter, there's, there's never been more tools available to you.

To make really, really visually appealing, super, super engaging, visually appealing websites and marketing materials. And so, heading into 2024 is a perfect time to sit down, re evaluate our marketing materials, and make sure that they are up to par, that they are reflecting who our organization is today.

You know, you guys might have gone through some changes in 2023, right? Maybe it was a big year for you guys. Maybe you shifted, maybe you, maybe you pivoted or maybe you doubled down on something, but either way, I bet you, your organization is not exactly the same as it was at the beginning of 2023. And because of that, it is probably time to reevaluate our marketing materials and make sure that we are we are expressing our organization in the way that it is.

Today. And heck, these are things that are going on even with me at Capital. There are, there are definitely changes coming in 2024. Mark my words. There's going to be some big revamps going on at Capital. Very likely with our website. Very likely with our marketing material. Because yeah, things change.

Things pivot. Things are different than they were at the beginning of 2023. And for the better. And I bet you that is the same for your organizations as well. And so it's a good time now to start thinking about, okay, if we need to make some changes in 2024, a great place to start. Is by taking a look at the way that we represent our company to the world, our website and our marketing materials.

So I want you all to start there. And then remember after that, we need to take a look at our target lists for 2024, right? New year, new targets. Yeah. The same old targets aren't going to fly. So what we need to do is we need to sit down again and we need to create. updated target lists for 2024. So has your organization changed?

Has the potential clients of your organization changed? Are there new ones or new industries that you are now targeting? Are you in a new location, a new city? Great. These are all great times now to sit down and create some updated target lists to try to find, you know, the organizations and where do we always want to start?

We always want to start where we are at. We start where we are at and we work out. So if you guys have no open opened up a new branch in a new city, start creating target lists in that city and then start to expand out from there as you create them. And add and always do them by industry and location, right?

So you You can almost always work for multiple industries. Usually there's like one big industry. Like let's say you're in Alberta, you can work for oil and gas, but there's a lot of companies that then support the oil and gas sector. This is very likely for you as well, who also need your products and services in their day to day duties.

And so it's important that we are always separating our target lists by location and then industry, and then sub industry, right? Making sure that we have all the industries covered. We got all of our customers covered and we're not leaving anything on the table. We want to make sure that we have target lists with all potential customers in all potential industries.

And yeah, I might be telling you guys to make four or five or. to 15 pages of target list. I get it, but it's a new year. So why not do it right? Why not create an amazing target list to work from? And that way you're already set and you can start making your digital introductions. Now, for those of you who've been listening to me all year and who have implemented amazing CRM systems, first off, great work.

We talk about it all the time. CRMs are absolutely critical to, to your business development efforts. They're, they're absolutely critical to your organization. And so One, if you haven't implemented a CRM, I have plenty of episodes on CRM, so if you want to learn a little bit more about them, feel free to go back and listen to some of my previous episodes on CRMs.

I will be doing updated episodes on CRMs in 2024 but we're not there yet, and so you would have to go back. But we have lots, I think I have two or three episodes that are dedicated to CRMs. Feel free to go back, but CRM implementation is absolutely critical to your success in business development, especially in 2024.

It's also important in our statistics, which we can talk about a little bit later. But yes, you'll definitely want to go back and update your CRM. However, if you have been using the CRM over the last year, congratulations, great work. Love the commitment and absolutely, I bet you, you saw a noticeable difference in your ability to close deals because you knew what was going on all the time.

And so that's really cool. But I bet you it has also gotten a bit messy. I bet you that your your digital introduction stage is getting a little full. You know, maybe your weekly contacted stage is starting to feel a little bit unmanageable. Maybe you got companies on there that you're at 15 reach outs and you still haven't made connection or 20 reach outs.

Maybe if we're talking oil and gas or some of these bigger organizations that take a while, it's time to reevaluate. So I want you guys to go into 2024 with a refreshed and cleaned up CRM. So we need to go in and take a look at our CRM. And what I want you to do is specifically go through your weekly follow up stage.

If you guys have more than 60 companies in the weekly follow up stage, and you guys are doing business development five days a week, I'm very specific with this five days a week, 60 is the max at five. I want you guys to go back and start to take a look at who you've had long term reach outs with. How many organizations are you guys at over 10 reach outs?

And then I want you to reevaluate and see if that's an actual important company for your organization to work with. If it is not I want you to remove it. I want you to move that into a back burner stage. And I want you to put in a new opportunity, a new organization that has more promise. Okay.

Remember, we only want to reach out probably on average. And remember, this is on average, and I'm giving you a caveat because you have to make a call. You need to make sure that you have the right person at the organization. If you have the person that you think is the best person at the organization and you're at say, 8 reachouts, 10 reachouts, and you still haven't made the contact that you would like to make, or you still haven't got that response, make a call.

You know, I've had contacts that I've kept, frankly, way too long, that I've kept into probably like 25 weeks of reachout. And then I got it. And so I never want to discourage you. I never want to say like, Oh, well you're at 10, that's the golden rule, just remove them forever and forget about them. I don't want to do that to you because I haven't done that to myself, and I have had success at the 20 plus reach out stage.

I have. And you might too, but you do have to make a call. And I do think that on average, if you are struggling to make connection after about 10 weeks of reach out, so 10. Reach outs. And keep in mind what I'm suggesting here is that you have the direct phone number to this person. You have the direct email and you know, it's right.

You know, it's right. Cause you've heard their voice on the answering machine, or, you know, you've gotten the bounce back from their email and it says, yeah, this is the right person. Okay, great. You need to then make a call. But, if you are at 10 reachouts, you're not sure that you have the right person, or you're not even sure if this person would be the right person at the organization per se, like you're, you're, you know, you're, you're detectiving, you're figuring it out, make a call, but remember, every single person that you keep on that list, that That you can't get to is, is a waste of a call in a week, right?

And so if we want to be really efficient, and we want to make sure that we're giving our organization the best chances possible, I would say that if we're not 100 percent certain, and, or maybe we are 100 percent certain, but now we're hitting that 15 or 20 reach outs, and we're like, okay, this person's just not getting to us, move them to Backburner, move someone new in.

I think that 10 is a good rule. It's not, it's not the forever rule. It's not the rule that I want you guys to like say, Kelly said it has to be 10. And if it's any more that I'm going to remove them. No, because I would be lying. I would be saying to you something that I have not always held myself to because I've recognized that some customers take longer than others.

But 10 reach outs on average is a good number to start evaluating and say, Hey, is this the best use of my time? Do I, am I positive I have the right person here or should I potentially sub this person out for someone better? You're right. You don't have to necessarily ditch the organization. Maybe what you can do is go back to the beginning and find a new contact at that organization.

What I'm suggesting is you may want to find a new contact after 10 reachouts. I think that's a good rule of thumb. It does take on average six to eight reachouts to make contact in the first place on average. So by the time you're at 10, you're past average anyway. I think that is a good time. I think, you know, at capital, that's what I tell my people to do.

So that's what I'm telling you guys to do. Do an evaluation at 10. If at 10, you're, you know, you're thinking, ah, I think I could maybe have someone better in here. Maybe I do need a new contact or I don't think this person's getting back to me. Then yeah, sub them out for someone better, right? But we always have to make sure that our CRM is clean.

Because otherwise we can start to get overwhelmed. We can start to surpass that 60 number. Get into 100, 110. And then you guys are pulling your hair out. It is, it is unmanageable. It gets to be to a point where it's, it's frankly stressful to look at your CRM, right? I want you guys to look at your CRM at the beginning of the week with hope and excitement.

Not with, oh my gosh, I have 120. When he calls to do this week, right? I don't want that. I want to keep you guys motivated and happy and excited. And so my recommendation to you is no more than 60 at the weekly follow up stage. And that gives you like a good cadence that you can do every day where you're not killing yourself with phone calls, but you have a good amount of phone calls and a good chance at opportunity.

Right. And heck who knows, maybe you make like 15 phone calls that week and you book 10 meetings. And suddenly you're like, Oh, well, I can take a little break. Great. Maybe take a little break. But my point is give yourself. A reasonable amount of calls to do and make sure that we are removing people as they start to get stinky in our CRMs, okay?

We don't want a smelly CRM. We want an optimistic, high value CRM. So, our weekly follow up stages, let's go through, let's clean them up, let's remove the people who we've reached out. Too many times to, or we're just not getting anywhere. And let's sub them out with new opportunity. And I do this every year with all the clients that I'm working with at the given time to make sure that we are giving them the best possible opportunities.

We move into 2024. So it's a great time to clean up the CRM. Let's do that. Let's clean up our CRMs. Okay. All right, and you guys know I talk about this all the time with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is amazing. It's like one of the best tools to ever hit business development ever, bar none, period. It's that great. But remember, there's rules.

LinkedIn has rules. If you do not have a paid LinkedIn account, you do not have unlimited searches. Unlimited searches is something you 100 percent need. You do not need the best. Premium account, honestly, basic business account, or the business account for LinkedIn is a great account. It's not that expensive and it gives you everything you need.

It gives you the unlimited searches. And it also allows you to still add your 100 contacts a week, which is what we talk about all the time on the show. You need to use LinkedIn to its full potential to get the most out of it. But a hundred contacts a week is what you need to be doing. So if you're doing business development for your organization, you know who you need to target at a various organization, yeah, search them up.

Search up that position and search up a location and start adding people because it is the best way to connect with new opportunity and new people and add new organizations to your CRMs is to just connect with the right people you need to get in touch with in the first place. Send a very brief introduction message, right?

And you guys know, I talk about this personal and brief, right? You don't need to give your whole company life story. Introduce yourself, introduce your business quickly, maybe attach a brochure and hit send, right? And then we're adding them into our digital introduction stage. And we're starting that process, right?

Where we're going to find that contact information. We're going to reach out in person. We're going to ask for meetings. But we have to be adding those 100 people every single week. And so remember, if you don't use that, you lose it. LinkedIn doesn't roll over. You don't get 100 one week and 200 the next week and 300 the next week.

That's not how it works. You get 100 from Monday to Sunday. And if you do not use the 100 in Monday to Sunday or whatever your cadence is for, for your set, your setup You lose it. And the next week it's like, Oh, tough luck. You use 20. Great. Well, now we're back to 100, but you lose all those others. So if you want to use LinkedIn to its greatest potential, you need to be adding 100 contacts every single week.

And that's what we do here at capital. We add a hundred every week and I'm either adding them for clients or I'm adding them for me, but either way I'm doing my ads. I'm connecting with a whole bunch of people so that I have opportunity coming up. And so that I can consistently add new people every single week to my digital introduction stages.

Filling my funnel and giving myself a lot of opportunity to pull from into the future. And I do this, like I said, on behalf of all my clients as well. So it's a, yeah, it's a bit of a process, but trust me, if you get into a habit of doing it, say every Sunday, and then you're ready to rock Monday morning, it puts you in a good place and you can end up a week, a week ahead.

And you'll find that once you have, you know, a few thousand invites out, what ends up happening is, is they just roll in. So basically every single week you have like a list of 40 new people who've just connected and you can send them digital introductions and start that process. So we need to make sure that we are adding our 100 LinkedIn connections every single week.

Okay. So remember too, I talked about it. If you're doing your own BD or you're doing business development on behalf of your organization, make sure, especially if you're doing it five days a week, it's your full time gig that you are connecting with your, you're having, sorry, 60 contacts to your weekly contacted stage.

And remember, we only follow up once per week. Okay. We never want to be pushy. We never want to piss off people. We just want to reach out once a week, ask for the meeting, leave them a message, get them in person. But either way, either, either get the meeting or disqualify them. But we need to be reaching out once per week.

That is the golden rule. Anything more than that is pushy. Anything less than that isn't enough. So once a week, I want you guys to get into that habit this year and start making those follow up calls once a week until you either disqualify or get the meeting. Obviously, like I said before, let's re evaluate all connections, especially in our weekly follow up stage after eight to 10 contacts, it's time to take a look at it.

And if it's starting to get stinky or you feel like, okay, I'm not getting anywhere with this, make a choice, back burner it, find a new contact or just get rid of it and add a new, add a new company. Okay. But. We need to make sure that we are evaluating our weekly contact to stage. So we are keeping it at 60 and we're not letting it get stinky and smelly because that's not going to help you.

You need good opportunities as often as possible. What do we do when we get them? OK, so what do we always do? The whole point of business development, you guys know this. I talk about this all the time. The whole point of business development is to get somebody in person. You need to get them to a meeting.

Every little bit of work you do. Everything you do in business development is to get you to a meeting where you can ask for next steps, where you can ask for an opportunity, where you can ask for a bid list, an RFQ, a vendor list. None of it matters. All this effort we do, it matters little. All the phone calls you make, all the emails you take, all this detective work you do, all the digital introductions, it's all to get you to a meeting.

Never forget your goal. Never forget the goal. You don't sell over the phone. You don't sell in an email. You sell in person. Okay, whether that be a Teams call or an in person meeting when possible. Yes, get them to the meetings. I need you guys to be brave. I remember. I remember what it was like in the beginning.

And you know, I'm speaking to you, my new business owners and my newer business development people. I know it. I know it can be scary when you got these people on the phone, but just remember. You're trying to build a relationship that turns into long term business on behalf of your organization over time.

Okay, over time. Yeah, you don't have to be best friends in the first interaction. That's fine. Remember, just generate a little bit of interest and say, Hey, I'd absolutely love to meet you. Can we set up either a digital introduction or can we get together for a lunch or coffee or just something in person where I can come and I can introduce myself and my product and learn a little bit more about each other?

Is that cool? Try to get to that. Try to get to you. An in person because one, you're going to do better in person. You're going to be able to build a better relationship in person. And very likely you're going to be able to get it to a next steps where at least you're able to send, you know, a proposal or a bid or, or get on a vendor list and get some real opportunity on behalf of your organization.

Okay. So remember all the work we're doing in business development, it's always to get us to one goal. A meeting. We need to get to the meeting. Once we get to the meeting, we can establish a relationship, we can ask for next steps, and we can start to follow up and take it further and further and further, but relationships start with that initial meeting.

So, don't forget your goal, don't forget your task, in 2024, all of this work, everything you do, take it to a meeting. From there, You will have success, but you need to get it to that meeting stage, okay? And then remember, when we get the meeting, once we've had this amazing meeting, and I've seen this a lot, where like, it's like, okay, bye, have a great day.

You don't ask for the next steps, okay? Remember, I want you guys to ingrain, what are the best next steps, or what are the next steps? I want you guys to ingrain that and I don't want you to ever leave a meeting without asking that moving forward. Okay. If you learn one thing from this entire resolutions podcast episode, I want you guys to remember the next steps.

Whenever you have a meeting with somebody before the meeting is done, say this was a great meeting. It was a pleasure meeting you. What are the next steps? What do we do next? Ask for the next steps and let them tell you because you need to take it somewhere. The meetings don't matter either if you don't ask for opportunity.

We have to ask, right? You know, you have to be brave. Nobody's going to give you anything. You have to ask for it, okay? Be brave, ask for the next steps, ask for the opportunity, ask for the RFP, ask for the bid list, but you have to ask. And I know, I know it can be scary. I know. Trust me, if you do not ask, you will not receive.

So I want you guys to ingrain into your vocabulary. What are the next steps? What are the next steps? What should we do? Is there a vendor list application? Is there something else that we can do? Is there another meeting we need to book? But what is the next steps here? And let the customer answer you and then act on it.

Okay. But yes, I think if you guys start asking, what are the next steps, you're going to have a lot more success and more of your opportunities are going to turn into. real deal customers. Okay. All right. And in the very beginning, I talked to you guys about growth goals. Okay. So most organizations sit down in the new year, you know, whatever your year end is, whatever your new year is, we're going to play it New Year's in this case.

And what they do is they say, great, you know, in 2023, we made a million dollars. And in 2024, we want to make 2 million. Great. Okay, that's great. That's amazing. But that's usually where they stop. Okay? Well, how are you supposed to know how to get to 2 million dollars? Well, lucky for you, there is a formula and there is stuff that we use at Capital in order to determine how we're going to help customers reach their growth goals.

And I'm going to share that with you today. So, what do we do? If you want to turn your growth goals into reality in 2024, there's some steps. It's six steps, okay? I want you guys first to evaluate your 2023 revenue and decide your growth goal for 2024, okay? So if you made, like I said, if you made a million dollars in 2023 and in 2024 you're ambitious, you want to double that, you want to make two million dollars.

Then what we're, what we're kind of expecting is that you will likely get repeat business from that initial million dollars. And what you really need to focus on is how do we get the next million? That's going to be through new opportunity. Okay. And so your growth goal is a million dollars. So even though your growth is say 2 million is the revenue goal, the growth you need to take on in this case is an additional million dollars.

And so that's the growth goal that we are going to work from on the new opportunities side. Okay. All right, then we need to calculate our average customer value over a one year period. So what I want you to do is I want you guys to look at all of your revenue and all your customers for 2023. And I want you to take your highest value customer and your lowest value customer.

And then what I want you to do is add them together, divide by two and take the average number. So just as an example, let's say that your high value customer on average In this particular case was 100, 000 was your highest value customer of the year. And your lowest value customer of the year was 10, 000.

So what we're going to do is we're going to add those together. A hundred thousand plus 10, 000 gives us 110, 000. And then we're going to divide that number by two, giving our average customer value for this year at 55, 000. So that's what we want to do. We need to figure out what our average customer value is in order to.

Get close when we're trying to figure out our estimates to figure out how to get our million dollar goal. Okay? The next thing that we need to figure out is what is our meeting conversion rate? This is the more challenging one. Most organizations are not great at tracking this and I, I get why it's not an easy, necessarily an easy thing to track, but it is trackable and if you guys are using CRMs, what you can do is you can look at how many meetings you had last year and then how many customers came from those meetings and you will be able to figure out what your conversion rate was.

So hopefully most of you have a conversion rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%. So out of two meetings, you tend, you, you tend to secure one new customer. You know, there are a lot of organizations I've talked to that have it much higher than that, that have been as high as 80. And there are some that I've talked to, and especially in high asset value, high value, highly competitive services, where that conversion rate can be as low as like 15 to 20%.

So, but we need to figure out what our conversion rate is in order to get an idea of how much new opportunity we have to generate to hit our growth goals. Okay. So let's just say that in this particular case we have a meeting conversion rate of 50%. Okay. We have an average customer value of 55, 000 and we have a revenue goal of a million dollars.

Okay, so in this particular case, what we're going to do is we're going to take our million dollar growth goal. We're going to divide that by our average customer value of 55, 000. So this is a perfect world. In a perfect world where you closed 100 percent of your deals, it would only take you 18 meetings to actually secure this.

But remember, we do not live in a perfect world and most of us do not have a closure rate of 100%. So in this particular example, we have a 50 percent closure rate. So we know we need 18 to succeed. So if we need 18 to succeed, we need to multiply that by two in this case, and what we actually need to secure is 36 meetings and with 36 meetings spread out over the course of a year, we should be able to hit our million dollar revenue growth goal as long as we have an average customer value of 55, 000 and if we have a closure rate of 50 percent Heck, you guys might have a really great year.

Maybe your closure rate goes up or maybe it goes down, but this gives you a great place to start and a great Avenue to work from, and it's just easy math. But now you actually have a number to work from. You have a meeting target, 36 meetings. It's going to take you 36 meetings to achieve your million dollars in new revenue over the course of the year, because yes, not all of them are going to close only half of them are going to close, and so that's what it's going to take based on your average.

Your average customer value, right? So these are numbers that you guys can use into 2024 to start to put some real numbers, not just, Hey, we're going to make a million dollars next year, but here's how we're going to make a million dollars next year, because based on the math, based on our average customer value, based on our closure rate, we're going to need 36 meetings to accomplish that goal.

But now. It's real, right? It's real. You guys know now what it takes. Then you guys got to figure out, okay, well, how many calls do I need to make? You can start to work backwards from those numbers over, you know, what months are great months for having meetings? Well, some meetings, some months you'll need this and some months you'll need different, but on average.

On average, you're going to need to accomplish probably somewhere in the neighborhood of three meetings or more a month in order to accomplish your growth goals. So it starts to give you guys some real tangible, tangible numbers to work from where you can start to really accomplish these goals, not just set them, but actually accomplish them.

Okay, and I. You know, I just want to say as well, if you guys need some help with this, these are things that capital can help with. We can help with both active and passive growth goals. We can also provide coaching and training with you and your team in order to set you guys up for success with regards to, to getting these goals and helping you guys close more deals, helping you guys get more meetings.

These are all things that we can do at capital. We have. Full processes. We use active marketing processes. We have five step systems that'll get you in the room and get you these opportunities. And so these are things that capital can help you with as well as you can help you with. But at the end of the day, there is options here.

There are ways to accomplish your growth goals in 2024. And if we can help you, we would absolutely, absolutely love to. All right, remember everybody in 2024, I want you guys to believe in yourselves, hold yourselves accountable and follow structure for success in 2024. You guys can absolutely do this.

2024 could be an amazing year. It could be your best year yet. And I sure hope it is. Thank you so much for sticking with us in 2023. And I look forward to being part of your journey into 2024. Shout outs this week, Shelby Sullivan. Lee Courtney, Tash Jefferies, Tatsiana Zametalina, Keven Desjardins, David Delvin, Colin Harms, and Jay Merchant.

Thank you guys so much for the support and the kind words. Until next time, it's been a blast everybody. We'll catch you on. The flip side.

Outro: t 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.

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