Community Questions: February 2024

Community Questions: February 2024

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 111 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, we are doing community questions, February, 2024 today, we are answering your questions. Stick with us. You're going to love this.

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 111 of the business development podcast. And today, everyone, I am absolutely psyched to be doing another community questions episode. It is community questions. February 2024. Thank you so much. I can't wait to do this with you before we get into today's episode I just wanted to take a minute.

We're 13 months into the business development podcast And I just wanted to thank each and every one of you whether this is your first episode or your 111th episode Guys, I could not have done this without you. I cannot do this without you. And I just wanted to take a moment before we start today's show and thank all of our amazing Rockstar listeners, all of our amazing Rockstar guests who have made this show possible over the last year.

Honestly, I am absolutely thrilled and honoured to be able to do this show for you. But the reality is, it's all about you guys. And it's because of you that this show has grown to the level that it has. You know, we are honoured to be doing what we're doing here at the Business Development Podcast. I absolutely love to host this show.

I love to be the voice of motivation for you guys a couple times a week. And just wanted to say thank you. To each and every one of you who've reached out to me and sent me so many kind messages over the last year. I Honestly, it melts my heart. I'm absolutely honored and I'm grateful to be able to be in this position and just thank you so much for sticking with us.

Thank you for trusting me and I hope that we can continue to fuel your business growth here into 2024. Before we start today's show I just wanted to ask you guys for a little favor. If you would be able to go on to whatever podcast platform you guys listen to, whether it be Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening and give us a rating, Give us a follow, and heck, if you're really feeling up for it, leave us a little review.

Helps the show immensely, immensely. This show could not grow without you guys telling your friends, your family, sharing us on your various social networks. Feel free to do that. It helps us immensely, and I can't tell you how grateful I am that you guys do that for us. Also, heading into Community questions today.

I just wanted to remind each and every one of you, you can all leave us voicemails for community questions. So if you head on to www.businessdevelopmentpodcast.com or ca, it goes to the same place, and you look on the right hand side of the home screen, you're going to see a little tab that says leave us a voicemail.

Guys, it melts my heart. Leave us a voicemail, feel free to leave us feedback on the podcast, leave us episode suggestions, let us know what we're doing great, and maybe what you don't like, and we will try to make those corrections for you, or make sure that we're doing episodes based on things that would be relevant and valuable to you.

Also, you can leave us, like I said, community questions on there, or if you're still feeling a little old school, and you want to leave it to us with an email, you like to type things out, it's podcast@capitalbd.ca, but we would love to move to community questions actually sent through voice because this way we can actually add them to the community questions episodes.

We can, we can answer your questions direct to you and I think that's absolutely amazing and I want to hear from you. So if you're hearing this today, you haven't left us a voicemail, or you've been itching to leave us. Some type of feedback, some episode suggestions, or heck, a community question. I want to hear from you.

Head on over to our website, right hand side of the home screen, leave us a voicemail. They're, I think, two minutes long, but feel free to leave me multiple. We can always stitch them together if need be. So, leave us a voicemail. I want to hear from you. Also, just another heads up, we are one month away from the nomination start for the Quill Podcast Awards.

As you may or may not have known, we won Best Business Podcast 2023 from Quill Inc last year. And heck yeah, we're gunning for it again. So you guys, you know, I need, I need your support. We cannot win. Awards like this without your support. So I will keep you guys posted to when this is happening, but yeah, would love your vote when that time comes.

And I'll let you guys know where to do it. We'll make sure that it's all over our LinkedIn's so that you were easily able to access it and leave us a vote because you did it for us last year. We couldn't have done it without you and we will not be able to do it again without your support. So. We appreciate that immensely, and I will keep you posted when that comes available, but I believe it's about one month from today.

Also, just to give you guys a heads up too, we have interviews booked all the way to May 1st, everybody. To May 1st. We have a waiting list. For expert guest interviews, and I am absolutely psyched. I'm so excited. The guests we have coming up, I'm so pumped to talk with them. You guys are gonna absolutely, absolutely love these interviews.

And they're just getting bigger and bigger and bigger all the time. And so cool. We're we're working right now to hopefully get some people in in the tech industry, into the space industry. We're looking for some really cool interviews cause I know I love that stuff. And if I love that stuff, you guys are gonna love that stuff.

We are working on it. We're working on some great guests for you. We have some great guests coming up and I am very, very excited to go about doing that. Before we start today's episode, I wanted to just give an absolutely gigantic thank you to Jason Garner. What is the Business Development Bank of Canada part two.

Jason came on, chatted all about advisory services with us. It was an incredibly informative episode. We have both a part one and a part two with The Business Development Bank of Canada. And frankly, I think we really pulled back the curtain as to what the business development bank of Canada is, who it is for.

And, how to go about getting ahold of them or how to go about utilizing them. So I think we did what we needed to do. We shone a big bright light on the business development bank of Canada, and I couldn't be more proud or more thankful that they would allow us to do that for them. So if you haven't had a chance to check those out yet, what is the business development bank of Canada part one, which is episode 108 and part two, which is episode 110.

Please do you go check those out. You're going to love it. It's an amazing series. It's very informative and both Jason and Robert were amazing. So thank you. Thank you so much. And we appreciated that immensely. All right. Well, let's just get into it. We're at community questions, February, 2024. Yeah, we haven't done this for a couple of months.

Honestly, we we've been crazy busy. There's been a lot going on behind the scenes here and we didn't get as many questions as we had hoped for. So it took a little while, but. We got a few coming in and then Shelby was testing out the voicemail. So she actually left me some really frigging hard ones, of course, just to make it a little easy for us.

But we have an amazing, amazing set of questions today. And so we're just going to hop into it. And remember if you guys have questions of your own, please do send them to us. Either send it to us via email at podcast@capitalbd.ca, or leave us a voicemail on the website, right hand side of the homepage, leave a voicemail.

Super easy. It takes like. Five seconds to leave us a voicemail and I appreciate them immensely. Our first question comes from a listener, Ahmed Mobasher. Ahmed, thank you so much for leaving this for us. He goes, Ahmed here, longtime listener and a big fan of the podcast. Well, thank you so much. Right now, many sales and business development professionals, especially those working with a software as a service company are facing an issue when it comes to cold prospecting.

Companies still put a strong emphasis on going out there and finding clients, but we all know that especially in software B2B business, this is not how it works anymore. In most cases, the best prospects are those who find the company and its product organically. Hence, the need for better product marketing is more important than just trying to reach the right prospects who might not be interested.

However, companies still believe That there is no other way to do sales, but to target clients directly with cold mails, calls, and messages. That being said, do you think that cold prospecting is still possible in the B2B market? Or is it a dead art that only wastes sales and business development, time and energy?

And then he goes, what are the methods that you would follow with cold prospecting if you already know your ideal user persona? Truly appreciate your efforts and amazing work. Keep it up. Ahmed, thank you so much. Thank you so much. And yes I can see why you might feel this way. I can because I think software as a service or software in general, we are using software personally, and we're using it corporately.

My, my feedback to you, Ahmed, would be yes, I hear what you're saying, but there are actually two different I think, Customers, right? There's essentially B2C, which is I think what you're actually talking about. It kind of sounds like what you're saying is most B2C customers, an individual like you and me, who's just buying a software to help us with whatever day to day activities we're doing.

Yes, we're going to look online and we're going to look for reviews as to what is the best software to do this or whatever. Absolutely. I agree completely because being in the podcast space, I'm always looking for new software to help make my life easier because podcasting is hard, creating podcast content is hard, editing is hard, and finding good softwares to help minimize that time or just to make it a little easier to do.

We're always on the lookout for it. And so I would argue that in that case, what I'm kind of suggesting is Yes, I am a B to C in that case. And in that case, I absolutely I'm watching videos. I'm looking at reviews. I'm trying to find what is the best software. However, I also think that in business and, and when we're talking, you know, software as a service.

This can be a massive, massive sale to write like if you're selling 100 users for some type of software that could easily be 100, 000 a year or more for a business to bite off and so. A business is not going to make that choice easily, not without doing some solid research, and honestly, probably not without meeting with a company rep to be able to really walk them through the software and make sure that it is the perfect software for them.

So, To answer your question. Do I think that cold prospecting is still possible in the B2B market? Not only do I think it's possible, I actually think it's still required, especially in software as a service, especially in large scale software applications, where you're talking to a large organization who may roll out this software across a hundred different branches, right?

It's absolutely critical in that case that they pick the right software. That's going to take lots of consultation. That's going to take walkthroughs. That's going to take trust, and that's going to take a relationship. And so in my opinion, I think it depends on, on the end buyer. And I think if your end buyer is a large business, absolutely.

The relationship is still going to matter. Cold prospecting, reaching out, introducing the software. Showing them the value proposition as to why your software is the right option for their company versus the other options that they have is absolutely going to need to be done in person by a business development specialist and a product expert, probably with demo and probably with quite a bit of time invested to make sure that it is the right software for their company.

That is not going to be bought on a whim. That is not going to be bought because they found a website that is going to be bought because business. Someone reached out to them, introduced that, that that software, booked a meeting, demoed the software, had many, many, many consults with them back and forth to make sure that it's the right fit for their company, and then, not without, I imagine, even a testing phase, where they roll it out in one branch, make sure it works, and then they expand it from there.

However, If your software is going to an individual end user, such as me, right? Someone who maybe needs that software for a podcast. Yeah. But my argument would be that in a B2C situation, passive marketing strategies should be 80 to 90 percent of the work anyway. So you're absolutely right. I think if you are going to an end user, you're selling them a 30 or 50 a month subscription, but it's only going to be one or two users.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Probably doesn't make sense from a business to business marketing standpoint. However, if you are trying to market to an actual organization, a large scale organization, they're going to potentially incorporate this software across multiple branches. It may be a 50, 000, a hundred thousand, a million dollar investment on behalf of this organization, maybe on an annual basis.

This still 100 percent requires business to business relationship. Which is going to be done by a B2B specialist, such as yourself. So it depends on the end user. That's really what I'm kind of getting at here. It depends. Are you selling two subscriptions or are you potentially selling a thousand subscriptions?

And if it, if the answer is it could become a thousand subscriptions, then 100%, it needs to be done by a person. Trust needs to be established. Demos need to be established. Trial periods probably need to be established. There's going to be a long process there. That's going to take a person. It's going to take a person.

It's going to take trust. And yes, this is likely going to be done through a cold reach out, which turns into a meeting, which turns into a demo and which eventually turns into a massive sale for you. If your end user is a person like me, a single podcaster, maybe I'm buying one or two subscriptions, maybe three, yeah, that's in my mind. That's a B to C at that point. That now that now follows a different rule where B to B would have an 80 percent active marketing strategy. A B to C has an 80 percent passive marketing strategy where advertising, you know, getting website reviews, getting lots of eyes on it through you.

Yeah. through advertising and digital advertising, social campaigns you know, influencers, that's going to be a completely different line and a completely different end user customer, right? So think about it from that standpoint. If you're just selling it to one individual, two individuals, three individuals, we're talking like 20 or 30 bucks a month investment.

That's a B2C customer. That's not a B2B customer. That's not going to give you that long term repeat business from a large scale. So in my mind, it's not dead. It just, you need to maybe qualify your customer to make sure that they are on that larger scale and, and try to identify is my product is my software.

A B2B software that's going to help large scale businesses do great things? Or is this a B2C software that's going to ultimately help individuals maximize efficiency and time? Depending on that, your advertising strategy is going to have to change. And then he asked what are the methods that you would follow with cold prospecting?

If you already know your ideal user persona, once again, if you've, if you've identified that your software is a business to business application, it potentially could be scaled across a large organization could potentially be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in subscriptions per year. 100 percent treat this just like any other, you know, business product marketing.

Your reach out to them, target the company, find, you know, the right buyer in that organization, whether that be a director of operations, whether that be a supply chain manager, whether that be a president, founder, CEO, and just introduce them to the product, introduce them to yourself first, right? Soft introduction.

We always want to do that. And then just say, Hey, you know, I have this really great software. It might be able to save you guys a lot of a lot of money on efficiencies. Would you like to chat about it? Introduce it just like you would any other product or service. But remember, you have to identify who is this software for?

Who does this product best fit? Is this going to be hundreds of users or is this going to be a high dollar value purchase? If the answer is yeah, this is probably going to be a pretty high dollar value purchase for this company. You need to treat this with the same respect that you would treat any other business transaction and work to build a relationship and build trust and be able to build confidence in your software.

Ahmed, it was an absolute honor. Thank you so much for reaching out to me. I appreciate that. And I really hope that that answered your question. It was a great question, by the way. My next question is by long time listener Al Jensitsky. Al's been with us a really long time and we correspond quite a bit over LinkedIn.

And Al, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for sticking with us. Thank you thank you for always feeding us really great questions and and just always participating. I appreciate that immensely. And he goes, Hey Kelly, I've got a couple of questions for you. What kind of strategy would you recommend for conferences?

Al, this is a great question. I actually did a show called business development at conferences, but I'll go into it. If your company is exhibiting, if you are an actual participant at this conference and you have a booth, okay, I think a lot of people think I have a booth, so people are just going to come to me.

You know, all the business is just going to come to me. And guys, this just isn't true, right? This just isn't true. You tend to get people walking around, but you need to make sure that you're identifying all of the opportunity at these conferences. And guess what? The reality is the people that are out there walking around, talking to each of the people at various, you know, prospect booths that may be potential customers.

They're the ones getting the most value out of the conference. And so the strategy that I always recommend for conferences, I like to bring a big stack of my own business cards, potentially some of my brochures. I like to have some of my brochures with me as well, because if I end up finding a potential client booth at the conference, I like to just introduce myself, say, Hey, I'm Kelly.

I'm not going to bug you. I'm just with, you know, X, Y, Z company. And I think we might be of service to you. Do you by chance have the card for the supply chain manager? Or the director of operations or someone that I could follow up with. The cool thing is when you go to a conference, most of the people there have cards for people in supply chain, people in operations, because you never know who you're going to run into.

So it's a great place to get contact info for potential client targets. And so, yeah, what I'll do is I will, and you know, I don't know how deep you want me to get into this, Al. I will make sure that I put together a strategy when I walk in that I can make sure that I'll hit every single booth. And what I'll typically do is I'll just walk down one row all the way looking at, looking for potential prospect companies that we could work with.

And I will hand over my business card. I'll make an introduction. I'll ask for a card for someone in their company that I can follow up with. And I'll say, great, I'll follow up with them later. Later, guys, later. Remember, like maybe even two weeks later. And the reasoning behind this is People at conferences have a thousand things going on.

You know this. If you've exhibited at a conference, if you've worked a booth, it is exhausting. It is a lot of work. And so, they are not in any mindset to be talking any kind of real business. Honestly, if you're exhibiting at a conference, You're probably, you probably can't wait to just get this over with.

You know, people look at conference attendance. Sometimes it's like a vacation. Some companies be like, ah, it's like a break. It is not a break. And depending on the conference you're at, you might have a thousand people come by your booth in a day. Can you imagine talking to a thousand people over an eight to ten hour day?

You are wiped. You are wiped. So give them a break. Get the contact information for the people that you want to reach out to. Follow up in a week or two, but at least give them a week to To kind of come down from that, from that situation. Cause it's very exhilarating, but it's also very exhausting. So give them a little bit of time to come down and then just make an introduction.

Say, Hey, you know, it was great. I got your card at this conference and now I just want to make an introduction. Do that introduction later. Don't do business at the conference. This is a mistake that a lot of people make where they're trying to pitch their product at the conference. Guys, this is, this isn't the place they're not going to remember.

Honestly, they're going to talk to like. 800 more people, they are not going to remember your company. It's just, it's too much in that moment. So remember business at a conference is not typically done at the conference. It's done after use the conference to find contacts. And so this is my recommendation, whether you are exhibiting.

Or whether you are attending, always remember the goal of the, the goal of the conference is to find contacts for future opportunity, future opportunity, Al. You do not want to be trying to do business at these conferences. It's just not going to happen. There's too, there's too much going on. There's too many conversations.

They talk to too many people. It is much better to just reach out after. However, conferences are amazing for finding future opportunity. And not only finding that future opportunity or making introductions at companies you want to make introductions at, but getting contact information for people you can actually follow up with, book a meeting, a face to face meeting at a later date at a better time, and then have much more opportunity or a much higher rate of closing that business later.

So the key word at a conference. Find lots of contacts and get to it later. Don't do the business at the conference. Don't try to pitch them at the conference. Introduce yourself. Introduce the company. Say, hey, no worries. I get you guys are busy. We'll reach out later and have this conversation then. The exhibitors will appreciate this.

They get it. They know they're busy. They know they're tired. And you will do better for it if you just go at it later. So. That is my strategy that I would recommend for conferences. Get contacts, reach out to them later, have a nice supply of business cards, and make sure that whenever you are giving a business card, you are getting a business card back.

And then he also asked How do you find the phone numbers of people that you connect with on LinkedIn? Do you try to get it by conversation or do you source it elsewhere? My vote is always to try your best to get it the good, old fashioned, organic way, Al. What I like to do, and LinkedIn is amazing for this, LinkedIn First off, if you haven't checked the contact details of your new contact, their phone number and their email is in there a lot of the time.

If it is not, which it isn't sometimes, and that's fine. What I like to do is I look at what city they're in, what organization they're at, and I'll just call. I'll call the home office and I'll just say, Hey, can I talk to Al or can I talk to Jennifer? You know, and most of the time you'll just get patched through and then at least then what I'll do is I'll input that data, I'll input the extension, and I will use their formal phone number.

And that way too, it doesn't seem like such a shock, right? Like, yes, are there ways that you can get their phone numbers without doing this? 100%. However, nobody likes to be Called on their personal cell phones, right? And so we do try to not do that whenever possible. I like to go the full organic way, and I would argue that you would only want to use like a zoom info or something like that as a last ditch effort.

If you if you absolutely know you have the right person. You are having an impossible time getting to them the old fashioned way, trying to get their direct email address from maybe their home office location or their phone number or their office phone number at the home office location. And you're really getting stonewalled then sure.

Yeah. There's other ways to do this. You and me to both know, right. But in my mind, business development is about being detectives, right? That's what we are. We're like little detectives of the business world. And we have to try to find these things out. And you know what? You would be surprised how many times you just call their home office and ask to speak with them and they'll patch you right through, right?

We're not getting the same level of blocking that we used to get. When I first got into business development, you call a home office and ask to speak to one of the higher ups and they'd be like, what do you want? Why do you want to talk to them? They don't take calls, right? You're getting screened out.

One of the cool things that's really happened post COVID in my opinion is that I would argue that higher ups have become more available. And so when you ask to speak with, you know, a director of operations, a facility manager, supply chain director, most of the time they'll just patch you right through like the, those, those people that used to screen you.

It's becoming rarer and rarer and rarer. And so as that becomes rarer, my opinion is just do it the old fashioned way. Call the home office, try to get their number that way. Don't be afraid to like, you know, try to reach out to other people in the organization. I've done that as well where it's like, hey, I'm just trying to get a hold of this person.

I'm not really sure how to get a hold of them. Could you provide me the email? Most people will give it to you. There are lots of ways to get contact information. And I do like to try to do it the old fashioned way. Before you would try something else, there's lots of other options for that. I don't really want to get into it or really promote any of them.

I just, I don't, I'm not a huge fan of it. That's why, but. There are lots of ways to get contact information, but the best way is definitely just to try to get it organically by asking someone at the organization by calling that home office by looking if that information is in LinkedIn or heck if you can maybe find it online.

Sometimes it's right on the website. Sometimes you hop to the website. They have like a list of executives with all their contact info and emails seen that regularly as well. So Al, my recommendation is go after it old fashioned way. Try to track it down. Be an amazing detective like I know you can be.

And if you really can't get to it and there's no other options, then yeah, maybe try something else. But try it the old fashioned way first. I'm going to say 99. 9 percent of the time you're going to be able to find what you need that way. Thank you, Al. I appreciated that. Thank you so much. My next question is from Jenna Centofante.

And Jenna asked, I am in the real estate business focusing on business development. Out of curiosity, what is the best script to use to introduce yourself on LinkedIn? This is an amazing question, Jenna. And you know what? I've had this question a couple times in a different way. But this is a great question to ask.

And I think a lot of people struggle with this. So thank you so much for taking the time and sending me this message. In this particular case, what is the best pitch on LinkedIn? The best pitch on LinkedIn is no pitch. How about that? I know that's surprising. I know that's probably not what you want to hear.

But, I want you to think about it this way. You know, you are, you're an executive on LinkedIn. You probably get lots of companies and people messaging you. And my question to you is, when you know that it's a pitch, do you read it? Do you read it? How do you feel about that? How do you feel about being pitched a sale on LinkedIn?

And my opinion is, I absolutely hate it. I'm in business development, and I absolutely hate being pitched. And yet, I totally understand why they're doing it. I get it. Honestly, I barely read them. Like, barely, barely, barely ever read them. And I hate to say that, because I know there's people listening and they're like, Ah, well, how do I get a hold of you?

You get a hold of me by being a human, okay? You get a hold of me by, by reaching out saying, Hey, you know, I wanted to connect with you because, you know, you're you're an executive like me and I love what you're doing and I love your work and I checked it out and it looks really interesting and I, I look forward to meeting you.

You connect with people by being a person. And so Jenna, my best advice. On any type of LinkedIn introduction is always to just keep it personal. Introduce yourself. Who is Jenna? You know, why did you reach out to them? What did you find interesting about what they're doing? Don't be afraid to just say it, to just say, Hey, I work with this company and I connected with you because I think that we might be able to work with you in the future.

However, my name is Jenna. I've spent this much time in the industry and it's an absolute pleasure to connect with you, right? These are messages that get replies. If you just hop on and connect with somebody and then just send them this, this pitch for your product or service, 99. 999 percent it's being rejected.

They're not even reading it. If they do read it, honestly, they're, they got a bad taste in their mouth because now they don't want to talk to you as a person because you've already reached out to them as a business. So it's really hard to build that relationship as a person. When you started out with business.

And so my opinion is start by being a person, by building a human relationship, by connecting as who you are when they respond back. Then, you know, start a quick conversation saying, Hey, you know, I work with this company. I thought it might be a good fit for you guys. I've attached a brochure and I look forward to connecting you with you at another time.

And this is what we do at Capital. And the reason that we do it this way at Capital is Is that I'm not going to do any business over LinkedIn. That's just the truth. I'm not selling anything over LinkedIn. And probably neither are you. That's just the truth. LinkedIn is about connecting. It's about finding the right people.

It's about building a little bit of interest maybe in what you do. But real selling real, you know, business to business is done in person over a phone, over a formal email, setting up an actual meeting. Don't forget what the goal of this stuff is. If you were using LinkedIn to do business, what you were really using LinkedIn for is to build a connection with somebody that can lead to an opportunity down the line.

Don't try to ram that opportunity down their throat right in the beginning. If you try to ram the opportunity right down their throat in the beginning, they're going to run for the hills and you're not going to get that second chance. So start by being a human, try to build a real personable relationship first and then say, you know, like, They're also going to check you out, right?

The moment you start talking to somebody on LinkedIn, they're going to go and check out your LinkedIn page. They're going to know where you work. They're going to know what you do, right? If you show up with a business to business or a business development or an entrepreneur job title, they're going to check it out.

They're going to figure out what you do. Right. And so. Don't feel like you have to sell them in that moment. Just, just thank them for connecting. Introduce yourself, you know, say what company you're with and what you do and that you just find them interesting and you thought that you might have a product that might be a good fit for them and you look forward to chatting with them about it at some point, right?

Don't be afraid to use brochures. Let your brochures do the business talking for you. That's my opinion. Brochures are not dead. People like to think that brochures are dead. Brochures are not dead. I bring brochures to every single meeting. I use brochures and like all my business interactions, both formal and informal.

I love to use brochures because brochures can really do that sales pitch for you. They really can. Your job is to build a trusting human relationship. Let the brochure introduce the product and service. And you can always, you know, clarify things for them after, but LinkedIn. They do read it. So don't be afraid to just send a personal message to say, Hey, I've also attached a brochure.

If you want to check it out, I look forward to chatting with you down the line and let that brochure do the speaking for you. Cause I, in my experience, most people, they open and they look at the brochure. So don't be afraid to do that. But my opinion is stop trying to sell people on LinkedIn. Don't start with that advertisement.

Don't start with that marketing pitch. Start with a personal pitch for who you are. why you connected and why they might find that interesting. Thank you, Jenna. That was an absolutely amazing question. And I know a lot of people have had the same one. So thank you so much for sending that. And my last questions are actually from my fiance, Shelby Hobbs.

And she was playing with the voicemail feature on the website to show you guys that it works, but she also nailed me with some really. freaking hard questions. Of course she did not surprised at all. But I'm going to run those questions through and I will do my best to answer them here right on the show.

And if you like this way or this format, please send me voicemail questions and we'll make sure that on the next community questions that yours get addressed this way too. So let's get right into it. Hi Kelly, your fiance speaking i have two genuine questions for you. But before I get to them, let me just say, I see you, I appreciate you, I love you, I love what you've done with this community and this podcast, and I love what you've done for the business development community.

Let me get into my questions. I have two. The first question is, If a company or a business doesn't necessarily have a growth goal they have a stable team, you know, the market is stable, their product has a strong customer base, let's say, they don't particularly have a growth goal for their company, they're not looking to expand their team.

Does that company need business development, yes or no, and if so, what should that business development team be focused on doing? Wow. As usual, I'm hammered with that question. That is a really, really tough one. And I think Shelby, a lot of organizations might say, you know what? We're good. Like we have lots of customers.

They're giving us consistent work. The funny thing is, and I think the thing that every single organization has to consider is that a customer can leave at any time for any reason. And yeah, maybe you lose one customer and it's not a big deal. You can just slot another one in. But in my mind, there has to be a solid flow of opportunity.

If you are good and coasting. In my mind, that's not good enough. You have to be thinking about what's next. What if I lost my two best customers tomorrow? What if a recession hit or something hit very suddenly that impacted my two or three best customers? How would that impact my company? If the answer is that would barely impact my company at all, then maybe you don't have to worry about it so much, but I think 99 percent of organizations.

If they lost their two or three best customers, they probably just lost 50 percent or more of their annual revenue. And so that being the case, all companies, regardless of whether you are happy with your current situation or not, whether you have a growth goal or not, you need somebody in your organization doing work to bring new opportunity to your door.

Even if you can't necessarily take that opportunity tomorrow, you need to be establishing those relationships so that the opportunity comes. When it comes, the problem with business development is that it takes time, right? All good business development takes time. I talk about this all the time on the show.

It is a process, right? Relationships generated today, seeds planted today. They sprout tomorrow. They sprout down the line. They sprout six months, a year, sometimes two years, sometimes five years down the line. These seeds come through. I've actually had situations in my business development career where I had a company call me at a previous organization and say, Kelly, I've had your brochure on my desk for the last two, two and a half years.

Didn't need you until today, but today I need you. And so I'm calling. And what did this mean? This meant that a seed that I planted two years ago came to fruition, but it took two years for that need to present itself. It took two years for the organization that they loved and used regularly to. Not be available for whatever reason, whether they got kicked off site or whether, you know, they couldn't support whatever that need was at that time, it took two years for that opportunity to present itself.

But had I not marketed that company two years before in anticipation of a future opportunity, it would have never came. And so we have to be thinking like that, whether or not we have a growth goal for this year or not and. Frankly, you should have a growth goal for every year you're in business. Just saying that if you don't get one, or at least try and make up some type of idea of where you're going, because if you don't have a growth goal, you might be a little bit confused about where you're going or where you want to go.

And I think as an organization, we have to be aiming for something. We just do. We have to be aiming for something. And so in my mind, if you are an organization right now that is just coasting, you don't have a growth goal yet. Maybe just take a minute. And set yourself a growth goal. Set yourself a growth goal that you can strive towards and figure out how to accomplish.

On the other side of it, you 100 percent need some type of new business development that is looking to target new opportunity. Could you be doing this in a passive way instead of an active way? Absolutely. Maybe you're good with just creating a whole bunch of brochures and digital marketing and maybe trying to funnel people in that way.

But in my opinion, you need some type of active marketing strategy as well. You need somebody at your organization who is dedicated to tracking down, identifying new customers, making sure your marketing material is good, marketing it out to new customers, booking meetings, and introducing your company, shouting it from the rooftops.

Every organization needs somebody championing it. That would just be my opinion. If you don't currently have somebody doing this, you should definitely work to implement some type of new business development strategy. Thank you, Shelby. That was not an easy one, and I have a feeling this next one won't be either.

My second question is, Toxic Positivity , how does that or does it fit into the context of business development

within teams. I know toxic positivity is something that's, you know, been in the lexicon of our culture for a while now. I think I've just been curious. Are business development people at risk of being labeled this way? Are they at risk of actually experiencing it themselves and maybe not addressing actual issues or challenges?

If this feels like a convoluted question or like it's maybe not relevant for your audience, please feel free to ignore it. I just, it's something that I've, I've had a question about or a curiosity around. So I thought if that was something you would be interested in speaking to. I would welcome you to do so.

Okay, those are my questions. Thank you. Yep, that was harder than I thought it would be. But you know what? I do think that it is important. I think that it is important that we address this particular one. It isn't something that has come up on the podcast. And I think because honestly, mental health is just really hard to speak to.

And I think that Most people struggle when it comes to talking about mental health challenges, but I think there's a few of you and even me who had to, at one point, Google what the heck is toxic positivity. So let's just go into it. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, the ADAA, toxic positivity.

Refers to maintaining a constantly positive and at times unrealistic outlook, no matter how troubling or dire a situation is. A person engaging in toxic positivity minimizes painful emotions. and refuses to see a clearer picture of what's in front of them or what a loved one is dealing with. Toxic positivity is not the same thing as being in shock or denial over a situation and temporarily dismissing or minimizing painful emotions associated with that experience.

Toxic positivity is an intentional effort to look at a difficult situation in an unrealistic way that refuses to consider the full scope of the experience, leading a person to dismissing their feelings and the magnitude of their situation altogether. So to me, what this is saying is toxic positivity is the conscious effort to minimize something that is clearly distressing, that is clearly very, very bad.

It's basically tricking yourself, or not even tricking yourself, making a conscious choice to look at something and say, oh yeah, that's horrible, but I'm going to pretend it's not. I'm not sure that this is really relevant to business development, Shelby. It is definitely something that I could see what you're saying because we're always talking about you got to keep a positive outlook to it.

You got to find the positive in things. You got to try to stay positive because. Staying positive will just give you a better outcome than being in a negative. But I don't think it is the willful dismissal or the conscious effort at looking at something horrible and telling yourself something different.

I think that those are two very different things and need to be addressed that way. I do think that in this particular case it does not apply to business development in that way. However, I can see how what you're saying, if people are constantly staying positive it could definitely seem that way.

But I do think that even people that stay very positive, they have their moments. They do. I've had plenty of them where I'm an incredibly positive person, but something horrible happened and I was like, okay, I need a day because I can't be positive right now, and I'm not going to pretend to be positive when I'm feeling so crappy.

And I think that is really the difference. I think that People with a positive outlook still have bad days. We still have hard days. We still have challenges. We still have days where we're like, okay, I can't see the positive in this right now. I need to go take a breather. I need to take a break. I need some time off.

I need to go to counseling. I need to see my therapist, right? These are all conscious. effort ways that people that are even positive have bad days. And I think that that's the difference. I think toxic positivity is someone who consistently deludes themselves or is living in a bit of a delusion where they are willfully convincing themselves that their situation is not bad and they are not addressing it in a healthy way.

Could this be happening? Sure. But I don't think that this is necessarily a problem in business development most of the time. I just think that we have to try to keep a positive attitude. We have to stay optimistic. We got to look for the good in things because it can be really hard sometimes to have, you know, the phone slammed in your face or, or to not take things personal when it's business, right?

Like we all struggle with that. We all hate making cold calls because we hate being turned down. We hate being told no, right? It can be personal, but I think anybody who's good in business development is able to. Disassociate and recognize that business is business. It's not personal and that doesn't have to affect our attitudes and no doesn't have to wreck our day.

And so I think that's kind of the difference. I think there is a big difference between toxic positivity and just keeping a positive outlook. But yeah, it's a hard question. I totally get it. And thank you so much for asking it. You know, I didn't expect anything less, but I appreciate it, babe. Thank you very much.

All right, that takes us to the end of our February 2024 questions. Thank you so much to all the contributors. If you would like to leave us a question again, once again, come on down to the website, homepage, right hand side of the page, you'll see a little button that says leave us a voicemail. Leave me a voicemail.

I look forward to hearing from you. If you still prefer to just send an email, you can get us at podcast@capitalbd.ca. And if you guys want to join us on Sunday, we have an amazing show coming up on virtual assistance with the founder of Mango VA. It's a great episode. You're going to love it.

And if you're loving this show, and you have a company and you want to advertise with us, we are always looking for amazing sponsors. We have sponsorship advertising packages available. If this show resonates with you, if you love what we're doing here, and you want to associate your brand with us, we would love to talk with you.

Leave us a message. Send me an email at podcast@capitalbd.ca shout outs this week. Jason Garner, Jory Evans, Colin Harms, Ahmed Mobasher, Sean Mills, Stuart Randell, Jessi Toms, Kathy Le, Terry McBride, Mack Male, Natalia Bedoya, Darren Lohnes, Craig Elias, Bobbylynn Stewart, Brandon Fuchs, Sean Neels, Marcela Mandeville, and C R. Holmes. Thank you so much for the consistent support of the Business Development Podcast. We appreciate you all, and I will catch you. On the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation. And business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.