Community Questions: March 2024

Community Questions: March 2024

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 119 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, we're talking community questions, March, 2024. It's that time again. One of my favorites. Stay tuned. You're not going to want to miss 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 119 of the business development podcast. It's an absolute honor to be on with you guys today. Today, we're getting into one of my favorite types of episodes. It is community questions. That's right.

We are answering. Your questions, listener questions. And honestly, this is one of my favorite things about this entire show. When I first made this show, the whole goal with it was to help you guys, was to help you guys do better in business, do better in business development, and be able to help answer some of these really challenging business development questions.

And so I always love being able to come back and do these episodes. And we do try to do one every single month. And I know we have some real shy listeners. 'cause we don't get a ton of questions, but when I get enough I always like to do a business development community questions episode. And so today's the day.

And before we get into today's show, I wanted to just give some show updates and I wanted to just thank. Our listeners from the bottom of my heart, whether this is your hundred and 19th episode, or whether you've been with us from the very beginning, the business development podcast community, our rockstar community, you guys know, that's what I call you guys.

You're my rockstars. You guys are absolutely, absolutely amazing. And I could not do this show without your support. I could not do it without the kind, the kind messages, the kind comments. All of the stories you guys send me about how this show is helping you and how some of you are new and this has just been a really great resource for you.

It really melts my heart, guys. It really does. This show would not exist without you, our listenership. We could not grow without you telling your friends, your family, your co workers, and sharing this thing far and wide. And really, I owe it all to you. And so, before we start today's show, This show is for you.

Community questions is for you. And I appreciate you guys immensely. And if you like this show, there are lots of ways for you guys to submit community questions to us for the show that we have coming up in April. So you have not missed the boat. I want to do this every single month. I want to do community questions every single month.

And so if you were hearing the show and you're like, you know what, I got a question. I want to hear it. And you guys can leave us questions either on the website via voicemail. Like you're going to hear there's actual voicemail options, or you can send us questions to podcast@capitalbd.ca. And that we'll definitely address it that way as well for you.

And once again, just as we head into the 14th month of the business development podcast, it is truly. Hard to believe sometimes how much we've grown in such a short period of time. It's so funny to look back and realize that, you know, this time last year, I think we only had something around like maybe 1500 to 2000 downloads total.

And now we're sitting pretty close to 145, 000 as of the release of this episode. And so once again, just thank you so much. Thanks for sharing this show. I I'm thankful that we bring value. I try to drive and bring value every single week. We have some absolutely amazing guest episodes coming up.

Something really cool that we've started doing. We're recording quite a ways into the future. Now we actually have guests booked three months ahead at this point. So we are, we are a long way ahead in the grand scheme of the business development podcast. And so what we're going to start doing is we're going to start releasing guest lists a full month in advance.

So. If you want to figure out who's going to be on the business development podcast in the upcoming month, head on over to our LinkedIn page, whether that be the business development podcast or Kelly Kennedy, give our pages a follow, and you'll be able to see the guest list a full month ahead. So you can see what amazing, amazing experts that we have coming down the pipe.

So something cool, something new. We've only done this for a couple of months, but if you want to see the guest list for April, check it out. I just posted it literally two days ago. So you're welcome to come on down, check out the business development podcast. Give us a rating, give us a like, give us a follow, follow Kelly Kennedy, and you'll be able to keep up to date with everything going on at the business development podcast.

That is really where everything happens, guys. LinkedIn is our space. It really is. We don't really do much outside of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is our space. So if you want to be part of what we got going on here at the business development podcast, check out the podcast. Come check us out, come hang out with us on LinkedIn, shoot me a message, connect with me.

I always love to chat with with, with fellow listeners of the show. And I always love to know how we can do this thing better. So if you guys have ideas on show topics on maybe segments, community questions, things like that, I always love to hear from you. So feel free to come check us out. Follow me on LinkedIn.

Come connect with me on LinkedIn, follow the business development podcast, and let's grow this thing to April. April's a real cool time. We, we won last year, best business podcast, 2023 from Quill Inc. And I want to go for it again. I think we can do it twice. And if we can't do it twice, I want podcast of the year.

So let's find out. guys, I need your support. So April 8th, we're going to be putting out a post on LinkedIn just showing you how you guys can vote. You guys can vote for all your favorite podcasts of any category. So we just want to be represented in the business category. If you guys got favorite horror podcast, favorite Comedy podcast.

There's all sorts. And you know, Quill's a really cool one. It's Canadian and I love to win on Canadian things. I really do. I'm a, I'm a proud Canadian and I would love to win the Quill podcast awards again. So we will definitely need our amazing listenership. We will need your support. And so April 8th, I'll have some stuff going on on LinkedIn.

I'll definitely be mentioning it as we head into April 8th and we could really use your support. So I appreciate your support ahead of time. Okay, well, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to that spiel. I know sometimes the intros can take a minute. If you guys like to skip through them, feel free.

It's usually about five minutes. So just skip ahead five minutes. You get through the show. Now let's get through our intros, get right into the show topic. Let's just get into it. I'm gonna start this community questions with a voicemail. Guys, I love voicemails. Leave me voicemails, business development podcast.com or.ca when you get to the homepage, right hand side of the page.

Leave a voicemail. You guys can leave me reviews. You can leave me. Whatever you want, you can tell me what you want from this show. If you want, if you want me to cover a topic, leave it there. If you have a community question for the upcoming community question episode, leave it. I want to hear your voices.

If this show has made an impact in your life, I want to hear your voices. I will share it with the world because I love hearing your voices. So leave us a voicemail. Or if you really, really don't want to do that. We still take an email podcast at capital bd. ca. You can leave us questions there. Our first couple of questions today come from Rodney Lover.

He is the CEO and Principal at atWork Office Furniture. He has been a longtime supporter of both the show and. And me, and he's done it both financially and personally, and I can't thank you Rodney enough for your consistent support of the business development podcast. I know for a fact, we would not be where we are today without your early support, without your early sponsorship, and we appreciate you immensely.

And so let's get into these awesome questions you left us. Hey Kelly, it's Rodney Lover, and I just listened to the interview with Patrick from Cardly. That was a great interview, and I really appreciated Patrick's ideas on using the card service as a client follow up. Really. Because we've been using it for a few months and experiencing very good feedback.

In fact, even one great feedback from a customer this morning. So I, I had a report built, so we're doing it monthly, following up to a certain criteria. It's, it's just so, so cool. And it, You can upload a spreadsheet. I'm not sure what if Patrick mentioned that, but you can upload a spreadsheet of all the, all your customer contact information and salesperson and everything.

And it puts it all in there. It's just so great. It really varies the types of touches that we have with customers. And I really like that. Anyway, I do have a related question and that is, I know that you are very physical face to face oriented and phone calls and such. And we're in that like so many of us are doing business development, remotely prospecting remotely.

And So in turn are the mediums and cadence of contact that you suggest. I wondered if you would just really break it down for those of us that are simple, like me, that, that really, you know, would appreciate some guidance there, you know, mediums of contact, cadence of contact, really appreciate you, Kelly.

You're great. Thanks so much for your help. Thank you, Rodney. You know I appreciate you too, my friend. And those were really, really great questions. And I know that in your particular case, there's actually two different sides to this. Because since you work with atWork Office Furniture, even though it's like, More B to B, like we think about it as you're dealing to other companies, a lot of these places are actually reaching out to you.

Like you have physical storefronts, you have showrooms, you have people working these showrooms, and you have a business side that is doing that direct B to B work trying to establish those relationships. And so, In your particular case, you actually need a few different mediums. What you really, really need to be doing is a strong B2C and I know you have a gigantic B2C budget and you do this really well coming from that Google SEO background with that Google ad spend.

You know how to do that. You've been doing that for 20 years. So you've really got that part nailed. And really that is a major part of your business. You need people to be able to find you when they are looking for office furniture. I think it's kind of one of those things where it falls kind of on both sides.

It falls on that B2C cause that's somewhat what that is. But you also need that B2B side. You need to get people ahead of that need. And so, you know, that when I talk about that particularly, I am talking about direct contact. I would say that the mediums of communication that you need to be using are threefold.

You need to be using your LinkedIn to be able to do that digital introduction to people ahead of time. You need to find people that could actually buy your office furniture or buy your office layout services where you can come in and essentially do the full layout for an office and then kind of help show them what that might look like.

You need to be able to have somebody get in touch with the right people who would be in charge of any type of those office planning, layout planning. things along those lines, as well as to just let them know what services that you offer. So I really do believe that what you need to be doing is a LinkedIn strategy, which is always going to be that initial soft touch point of contact.

And then you need to be following up by good old fashioned email and phone call. It really is the best way, Rodney, because the reality is, if you're talking to big companies, let's say you're talking to Caterpillar and you want to get Caterpillar across Canada, you want to be the, The official office furniture supplier for Caterpillar that is coming from the top down that is coming from a whole bunch of direct interactions that are going to lead to face to face meetings that are going to lead to negotiations RFP RFQ to get at work office furniture into their particular organizations.

And so, you know, for me, I typically speak to the B2B side. That's really my world. B to C, there's a lot of people much smarter than me on that front. I'm learning a lot as we go along. And I know kind of how to utilize passive strategies to make that happen. Frankly, you are probably better at B to C and me and you both know that that's your world.

You've spent a lot of time there, but in the B to B front, which is where I live, that's all personal relationships. That's all relationship generations. And so I like to rely on three things. I rely on LinkedIn for my digital introductions. I rely on my good old fashioned email to make those formal introductions.

And then I rely on my good old fashioned phone to get those meetings. I really am. I'm, I'm old school Rodney. You know that I love a phone. A phone makes the world go round. And in a time when everybody's so focused on these digital ads and hoping that people will come to them, there's something to be said about picking up that phone and getting in front of the people that you actually want to work with.

Booking real face to face meetings. Teams meetings are okay as well. You know, you know that the reality is you can service across Canada. The world we live in now is very much a nationwide. You can, you can work in the U S you can work in Canada. You can sell to the U S you can sell to Canada. It's so big that any scenario where a face to face can happen, that's what should happen.

I'm a firm believer in face to face real authentic relationships. However, teams. Google meets zoom, however, you can have a face to face meeting with somebody is going to be beneficial for you. And so the mediums that I would say, you want your LinkedIn, you want your phone, you want your email, and you want to lead those things to either a face to face meeting.

Or a team's video meeting. These are also okay to establish a real relationship, really start to understand what a client's challenges and needs are, and figure out how Atwork is going to hop in there and fix that challenge. For your second question, what is my recommended cadence of contact? Well, Well, you know, I, I like to say once a week, I really do.

I think that depending on the client, and obviously this is assuming that you have not gotten in touch with them before, and they haven't given you a directive of something else. Okay. If you've gotten a hold of somebody, you've pitched your product and they've said, Rodney, you know what? I don't think we have any need for this for the next like two to three weeks or the next two to three months.

Then my opinion is don't reach out until they say, That's the next time, right? Always ask too. Like if somebody says, Hey, you know, Rodney, we don't need that service right now. It doesn't hurt for you to say, Hey, well, that's fine. I totally understand that. Could you potentially need it in six months? Would it be okay if I followed up with you in six months time?

Most people are totally okay with that. And so don't be afraid if someone gives you a no to just follow up with, Hey, you know what? That's cool. That happens. Would it be okay if I followed up with you in two months time, three months time, six months time, pick your number. And just wait and see what they say.

If they say, absolutely. You know what? We might have a need at that time. Great. Updated in your CRM, put a note to follow up with them in three to six months and go from there. But if that hasn't happened, you haven't made initial contact. I always like to say follow up once a week until you get the meeting or you disqualify this customer.

But the reality is once a week is a great cadence. It doesn't piss anybody off. It's it's reasonable. It shows. Commitment. It shows that you're persistent, but you're not too persistent. Once a week is a really great cadence for any type of follow up with a customer that you guys really, really want. Any more is too much.

Any little in my mind is too little. So once a week, it's a great rule to live by. Just follow up once a week, whether that be email or phone call or whatever, but just once hit the ball over the net. Wait for them to hit it back. If they don't hit it back, follow up again next week. But just do that until you either disqualify or get that meeting.

Thanks, Rodney. It's always a pleasure, my friend. Always great questions, and I really, really appreciate you. Our next question, Jan Hiels wrote to us all the way from Belgium, and he wrote to us, Hey Kelly, my name is Jan Hiels, and I work for a Belgian printing company. I enjoy your podcasts on business development very much, and I wanted to take you up on your invitation to reach out with a possible question.

I'm fairly new to the business development world, but I've been active for more than 20 years in the graphical business industry, in both commercial and digital. and technical management roles. But in my present role, I have the responsibility to develop new business for a company that has a long history of expertise in commercial printing, ticketing, security printing, and administrative printing.

These are all markets that have suffered from the digital transformation. Business organizations, governments, education, leisure industry are all spending less and less on tangible communication methods. We have seven salespeople on the road, but none of them are involved or believe in business development.

They only manage their existing accounts, but are very reluctant when it comes to the development of new services or products. What would your advice be from a business development perspective for a company such as us? Well, Jan, I would say that It is more important than ever. I am such a huge advocate of real tangible printed products.

I really am. I, I shout it from the rooftops. One of the first things that we do Jan, whenever we go into a new organization is I evaluate a few things. I evaluate their website, I evaluate their digital marketing materials, and I evaluate their physical marketing materials. And we usually start there because most companies need a few tweaks on their website.

They need to kind of recalculate their value proposition and almost always we have to design and get them a great brochure to work from. The reason that I really am a huge advocate of real printed things is there's something to be said about giving somebody a physical product. And so I don't think your industry is dead at all Jan I think that There's self fulfilling prophecy maybe happening here is what I kind of like to say. I see a lot of companies where unfortunately the sales people or the business development people do not believe it's possible or do not believe it's needed or mandatory. And I think that's what needs to ultimately change.

The reality is printed products are just as great, if not greater. than ever. I recently had, you know, Rodney talked about it earlier in this episode, but I had Patrick Gaskin on and Patrick Gaskin is really shaking things up with his company Cardly. And what they are really doing is they're taking a digital way to create cards and they're mailing for real cards, great real cards that look like they're really handwritten on.

And they send those out to potential prospects or to potential clients of companies. And it's really, really impactful because, you know, like Patrick said in the episode. People are probably only getting three pieces of individualized mail a year. That is huge. How many emails are they getting? 20, 000?

Like it is bonkers. And so it funny thing is, is that in 2024, I think one of the great ways to stand out is through physical products. And I've been advocating for them for years. For years, I've been using them since I got into business development. I still use them all the time. When I go to a meeting, I always have beautiful business cards.

I have a physical notepad. We're actually, we're actually working on something like that in the background here at the BDP, but I always have a notepad. I always have a pad folio. I have physical printed brochures that are beautiful. Physical products are still very, very needed. But there's some, there's a few changes that we have to kind of adapt, right?

Like the old school brochure that wasn't very visually appealing is out the door. Too much information out the door, but physical brochures are just as amazing, if not more amazing than ever. And I make sure that I hand them out every single time that I have a face to face meeting with somebody, I have a brochure, whether that be for capital business development, Whether that be for a client that I'm working with and they are visually appealing.

They're impactful. They have just the right amount of information on them. They have a really aesthetically pleasing cover, but trust me, my friend, they are not dead. Physical products are not dead. And I wanted to spend a little bit of time with this with you because I know I sent you an email follow up to this particular one cause it kind of hit me hard and it really sounded to me like.

You have account reps who don't want to do business development because they don't believe it's possible. And I've talked about this on the show a lot, but the funny thing is, is that if you don't believe it's possible, you're right. And if you believe it's possible, you're right. And so what you need to do is have some internal work with those teams and see, do they truly believe that selling these physical products is impossible?

Because if they do, they're right. And they're not going to be able to do it. And so. It might mean a little bit of a shakeup is required at your organization. Maybe it's time to to swap some people out. Maybe it's time to re evaluate who believes these things are possible because the reality is it's all possible, Jan.

It's all possible. But you have to believe it first. So much of selling anything is belief in a product. And I always say if you don't believe in a product, you should not be selling that product. You just shouldn't. If you can't find somebody who really believes in your mission and your values and your products and services, Then they're not going to do it.

You need to find somebody who will shout your product from the rooftops, who truly believes in it, heart and soul. I believe in every product that we take on at Capital Business Development. If I don't believe in it, I can't do it. I just can't. And if I don't have a team that can get behind it, we can't do it.

We have to be able to believe in the product and service that it's tangible. It has a place in the market that we can actually do it. When you have that working on your side. Anything is possible. And so I want you to change your mindset. Yes, digital products are changing the world, but that does not mean that physical products are dead.

If anything, actually, it's giving physical products a new life. It's giving them a new advantage that they didn't have before. Now you want to stand out, send a card, send a real card, hand write it if you want. But the reality is there's lots of ways to stand out now in a digital world by using a physical product.

And I would actually hearken you back to a previous episode. Like I said, it's with Patrick Gaskin. We had him on for an interview, CEO of Carly. It's an amazing, amazing episode. Go back, check that out and see how physical products still have a real place in the modern world. They are still changing the world.

And I would say, Your services are not dead. Your products are not dead. You can absolutely, absolutely do this. And Jan's follow up question to that was, what do you think that I should focus on? And I would say, Jan, focus on whatever companies, you know, that you think meet your, your ideal customer, right?

You ultimately need to focus on companies that are going to want your products and services. And I'm sure that you have an industry list of companies who have bought from you before. Take that list. Figure it out. Is it mining companies? Is it industrial service? Who are your top clients? Is it hospitals?

Is it infrastructure? Who is buying your physical products? Who's buying these things and then start to make a list of the companies you're not currently working with. And I would say from there, identify the right targets for you guys to follow up with and hit them up old school, right? We want to start with digital introductions, connect with them on LinkedIn, send a brief introduction to who you are, not your company, sell yourself first, attach a brochure for your company and what products and services you offer.

Find the phone number, follow up for meetings, right? Get in front of them, introduce your company, introduce what you do. Tell them what your value proposition is. Tell them how you can help them and start to establish these relationships with people who can actually buy your products and service. But you know what?

Direct business development is going to work very, very well for you. An active approach where you're getting ahead of the need. You're letting them know, Hey, if you guys need print products, we got you. And if you guys want to stand out, we have print products. Show them that there's an advantage here in the digital world.

Believe in your product, Jan. Believe in it. Because if you can believe in it, heart and soul, and you can get your team to believe in it, heart and soul, you are going to sell these products. Thank you so much, Jan. It's amazing to have you coming in from Belgium. I always love to hear from our international community.

And thank you so much for reaching out to me with these questions. I know that It can be really tough sometimes when you're working with people who don't believe in the product and service. And, you know, the older that I get with this, the longer I've been in business development, my opinion is that if they don't believe you probably got to swap them out.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy. If they don't believe it's not going to happen. You need your business development people. You need your salespeople to believe heart and soul in your product and service that it's helping the world. And if they can do that, They are going to be able to sell your product and service.

So much of it is emotional. So much of it is belief. And if you can believe you can do just about anything. And our next question comes from Shawn Neels. Shawn is actually a sponsor of the show, a very new sponsor of the show. And we appreciate him immensely. He is the owner of Plains Equipment Rentals in Southern Alberta, Canada.

And And Shawn, first off, thank you so much for sponsoring the business development podcast. It's because of people like Shawn that we were able to continuously create content like this, grow this show, reach far and wide. And so let me just, before I get into this particular question, send you guys over, check out Plains, Equipment, Rentals.

He rents a wide range of machinery across Western Canada. And so, yeah, if you guys need equipment for your next project, go check out Shawn Neels, Plains Equipment, Rentals, and Shawn goes. Good morning, Kelly. Thanks a ton for putting this out there. I actually have a couple of questions for you that I've been struggling with.

And my first question is, are BD primarily deals with much smaller customers than your customers as an equipment rental company and dealer? Our customers typically don't see the value in a meeting because they are so busy with their day to day operations. In consideration of this, should I continue to ask for those meetings or settle for answering the customer's needs and questions over the phone?

Well, it just depends, Shawn, on, on what it is they want. I don't think there's anything wrong with answering their questions over the phone, especially if it's a call in and they're reaching out to you and they actually have an immediate need. Okay. Shawn. That's not a bad thing, Shawn. What that's doing is there you're getting them in B2C.

You're getting them at the time of need. What we want to ultimately do though, with business development is get the companies who don't know about you yet, right? There's nothing wrong about fielding order calls at all, period. Nothing wrong with that. I would say if you're getting an order call, somebody's actually calling into you and saying, Shawn, we have, we have a need for an excavator.

We have a need for a Caterpillar or something like that. Absolutely. Handle that, Shawn, handle that, you know, in the moment, have that conversation with them, figure out when they need it, figure out what their needs are and see if you can actually meet that need. However, remember what business development is really about is getting ahead of the need, right?

And so what we want to do is we want to focus on getting in touch with all of those construction companies, civil companies, anybody who might need your product. We want to introduce it ahead of the need. Why? Because if we can get ahead of the need, you're going to get a hell of a lot more of those calls when they come in because they're going to know who you are.

They've actually maybe met you either in person, via Zoom, via Skype, whatever it is. They, they have a face to the name. They have trust. There's trust associated with you, Shawn. Business development, especially when you're getting in front of people, having those initial conversations, laughing, being a person with them, what it does is it generates a relationship.

And once you have a relationship, when they need equipment, they're going to call you first. And that's ultimately what we want to do with business development. We want to get ahead of the need. Active marketing, which is what business development really is, is about getting ahead of the need so that when that need comes, the relationship's already established.

The trust is already established and you can start from a place of advantage. You can start from a place where the negotiation can just go to, yeah, I can solve that need. Let's figure out how to do it. And they believe you. And when that happens, everything else is so much easier. It comes together so much easier for you.

And so I know what you're saying and me and you have actually had some coaching sessions back and forth on this as well. And what I think you ultimately need to do, Shawn, Is established more of a B to C strategy for some of these smaller players, right? You're right. The people that are just renting a small piece of equipment from you once a year are probably not the customers that you want to spend a lot of time with BD.

Those are great customers for a B to C strategy. And you know, you can use all sorts of digital means to do that. You obviously sponsor the show, so you're using that means to do that. But there's lots of ways digitally through Google or through LinkedIn or whatever to create ad sets and to be able to start to create a passive strategy to really reel in those smaller fish, right?

But with the bigger fish, like I've kind of pushed you forward to, which is like some of the big construction companies in Canada. If you want to get a, you know, in some of the civil construction companies, things like that, we really want to establish those relationships ahead of time. And so my, my advice to you was create a B to C strategy or a passive strategy for the smaller players who are not going to be those long time repeat business.

They might come to you once a year, maybe twice a year, but I want you to really focus on new business development with some of those larger companies that could offer you repeat business maybe every month. Things like that, they're going to buy those bigger ticket products that you sell that are going to rent the larger pieces of equipment, right?

We want the long term rental of your large pieces of equipment. It's going to take larger companies for that to happen for you, right? When we only have so much time to do business development, we need to make sure that we are focusing our business development efforts on the things that are going to bring us the most revenue.

The most amount of value, right? Not every customer is created equal. And so if we do that by a hierarchy, we prioritize, you know, the, the best possible customers, we work our way down, but you spend time trying to establish relationships. When those orders finally do start coming in, Shawn, they're going to be the orders you want.

They're going to be the orders that provide you great value that are easy customers that provide long term rentals, right? We really want to spend our time trying to get in front of larger companies. So, you know, per your question. Should you answer some of those questions over the phone? Yes, because I would say at that point, you're pretty much getting an order, right?

Like in my mind, if they're calling you on the phone, they're saying, I need this piece of equipment. I need it for this date. What does that look like? You were fielding an order. So my answer is absolutely go for it. Answer those questions over the phone. Heck, if they rent it from you, it's still a great opportunity for you to, especially if it's a larger company, still a great opportunity for you to book a meeting with them.

Introduce yourself and start to build that relationship, right? But absolutely, there's nothing wrong with fielding questions over the phone. It will help your organization. His second question was, In episode 27, account management principle, you mentioned having lunch with a client at least once every two months.

In our business with smaller customers, they typically only need one to two pieces of equipment for every one to four months seasonally. In this scale, I feel that the two month meeting might be Accessive or am I seeing this wrong? Thanks in advance. Once again, not excessive, Shawn, depending on the size of the company, right?

Sure. If they only need one to two pieces of equipment, they're renting, let's say two pieces of equipment per year from you. That may not be your ideal customer. I want you to think about it from that standpoint. You might be thinking just a little bit small here. Sure. These are great customers for you.

But if somebody comes along and they have the same product, they sell it a hair cheaper, they're probably going to go there, right? Like you're not really establishing these long term great relationships with people who are only renting two pieces of equipment from you a year. Who you do establish long term great relationships with are those big companies that are going to rent lots of pieces of equipment from you or long term rentals over the year.

So, yes, what I'm kind of suggesting to you is pick who you want to establish that long term relationship with, right? Not all customers are created equal, and if you can spend that time every two months making a great relationship with, say, a large construction firm who's going to give you long term six month plus rentals of a piece of equipment over the course of a year, over the course of a project, absolutely.

So just think about it from that standpoint. Think about where that relationship is going to be the most beneficial, and when you want to establish that relationship and keep it going and figure out how to get more repeat business from this customer, Then yes, we want to spend probably one meeting. I like to do a lunch every couple of months just to establish that relationship.

Keep that conversation going, figure out how you can help them, how you can better achieve their goals and go from there, but picture it this way, Shawn, where are the relationships going to be the most value for me? And then shoot for that. Cause those are going to be the scenarios. that help you the most.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much for these community questions. Like I said, I absolutely love doing community questions. They're probably one of my favorite segments of this whole show. And I hope long term that we get to a point where we get to do really long community question segments or multiples of them a month.

So if you enjoyed this show and you have questions for me, please like the beginning, come to our website, leave us leave us a community question, voicemail. If you come to the website, right hand side of the homepage, leave a voicemail, or you can always submit questions to me on LinkedIn or at podcast@capitalbd.ca. Shout outs this week, Emma Krebs, Ben Wise, Mather Fox, Jamie Larson, Gurwinder Singh, Shawn Kanungo, Leah Harris, Ron Tite, Jennah Dohms, Kaihan Krippendorff, Laura Gabor, Steve Campbell, Chris Taylor, Alyssa McMasters, Mike Mack, Mandy Gilbert, Michael Hyatt, Koleya Karringten, and Steve Cadigan. Thank you so much.

This has been episode 119 of The Business Development Podcast, and we 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.