Community Questions: May 2023

Community Questions: May 2023

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 29 of the Business Development Podcast. And on today's episode, we are introducing a brand new segment listener questions. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And broadcasting to the world, you'll get. Expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca .

Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast, and on today's episode, episode 29, we have an interesting one for you. I have decided that moving forward as we start to get more and more listener questions in every few episodes or so, I'm going to do a listener questions episode.

I think that that's a great way to connect with you, my lovely listeners who I would love to work with and, and hopefully be able to help you down your entrepreneurial BD journeys. And also just, I think if the questions are coming in, if you have a question regarding business development or entrepreneurship or any type of sales or marketing, probably a thousand other people also have that question.

So I think that addressing these questions, they don't just help the one person who shot me the message, but they're gonna help hundreds, if not thousands of people over time that have the same questions or maybe you're facing the same challenges. I also just wanna say, starting this episode today, If you do have questions that you would like to send to me to be read on air, for you to be addressed on air and hopefully to be answered for you please send them to podcast at capital bd ca.

Once again, that's podcast at capital bd ca. I'll keep a tracking running record of them and once we have enough questions, I will do a q and a episode. Okay, once again, thank you so much. You're listening to the Business Development Podcast coming you today from very, very smoky Alberta, Canada. My gosh, I.

My heart goes out to everybody who's been evacuated here in Alberta. Thank goodness. We're in the we're in the Spruce Grove, Edmonton area. But much of our province here in Canada is on fire, and the smoke is unbelievable. I, I can't remember the last time that I saw smoke like this, so, To the thousands of people who have been evacuated from your homes I do wish the best for you.

You're, you're, you are in my prayers a hundred percent. I cannot believe the level of fires that we're dealing with up here in in Alberta, Canada right now, not just Alberta, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, a lot of Western Canada's on fire at the moment. And Yeah, hearts and prayers teach in every one of you.

And may God bless you all. I'm, I'm very sorry for your situation if you are evacuated. Just wanted to address that before we got started today. It's it's a tough spot here in Canada at the moment. We're dealing with a lot of forest fires and it's it's pretty unbelievable the, the fog and it's, it's a thick fog of smoke, it just hanging in the air and the fires are still quite a ways away from us.

I think the closest fires from Spruce Grove right now are probably about a hundred kilometers. So, It's it's pretty unbelievable. Anyways, just wanted to get that outta the way. If you are listening to this and you're dealing with that, my heart goes out to you. I'm very sorry for your situation, and I hope that they're able to put out those fires and that your home is is okay.

All right. I also wanted to start this episode today by giving a big thank you to Tash Jefferies. My gosh, my Sunday, my last Sunday's show. Tash is awesome. It was such an amazing episode. We had, it was Think like a Scientist. If you haven't had a chance to listen to it, you gotta go check it out. Tash Jefferies has mentored, I think she said somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 plus entrepreneurs.

She's a total rockstar. She's entrepreneur. She's mentored entrepreneurs around the world. She's been been part of founders, been part of startups, all sorts of fun stuff. And she she also operates tashjefferies.com. If you guys are a startup or a founder looking for a little bit of help, definitely check out Tash Jefferies and we intend to have her back for a mental health episode.

She's also a mental health expert, so very mental health and wellness, I should say. And very excited to have her back and very thankful to have her on the show. Thanks again, Tash, for listening to this. That was, that was an amazing show and I really appreciate it. Also really cool thing that happened this week too.

We got another reachback from Faheem Khan. I'm not sure if you guys checked out that episode. It was The Robots are Coming. He he is the president of Aro Robotic Systems and he reached out to us letting us know that after he did his show here, he got an absolute ton of interest in Aro Robotics.

He's been receiving lots of interest from you guys, so thank you very much. He Faheem is making some really amazing robots right here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and really, really excited. And if you haven't had a chance to listen to that show, it's very exciting. He makes a lot of cool predictions regarding robotics and ai.

So once again, that one's The Robots are Coming with Faheem Khan. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, please go back. Check on that episode. I just wanna thank the thank the listeners again, once again for your support. We've had lots of people reaching out and just letting us know that they're happy with the podcast.

They're really, really enjoying it. It's helping them. And guys, it means a ton to me. You know, the whole, the whole point of doing a podcast like this, like The Business Development Podcast is to connect with my listeners is to hopefully help you guys in your entrepreneurial journeys or in your business development journeys.

And whenever you reach out to us, drop us a line on LinkedIn or, or leave us a rating or review or, or follow us. It, it means the world. It truly is the way that this podcast grows and it truly is what keeps me motivated to continue to keep coming back. So thank you so much for all you do. Thank you for reaching out and let us move into today's show.

So today we actually got a whole bunch of questions. However, they really came from Martin Blessing. So Martin has really reached out. He had a wide range of questions regarding our LinkedIn episode. We we went pretty in depth with the LinkedIn episode as to kind of the ways to utilize LinkedIn, how to use it like a professional on how to get the most of it.

I'm gonna just go into briefly. Once again, kind of my recommendations for how to use LinkedIn, why we want to use certain things, or why we wanna take advantage of certain limits. And then I'm gonna move into his questions and I'm gonna do my absolute best to address them because I think that if Martin had all these questions, I think a lot of you might have these questions as well.

So we will get into questions. Not sure if this this episode's gonna be super long. Like I said, there's about eight questions for us to kind of rip through. I'll do my best to get through it, but Yeah, let's get started and do the first q and a. And from there I hope to have many, many, many more. So let's start off with LinkedIn.

Okay. What are some things that you should do with LinkedIn? So LinkedIn. It's amazing. It really is for business development, for entrepreneurship, marketing, connecting with your fellow business networks. There's nothing better. LinkedIn is, is the bar. Bar none. There's nothing that comes close. So my first recommendation, anybody listening, is that if you are not currently active on LinkedIn, if you don't have a really well set up LinkedIn profile, once again, I chatted about this in the LinkedIn episode, but what I, what I always say regarding LinkedIn profiles, right?

Is it, it is your personal skyscraper. If your website is your business' skyscraper in the 21st century, LinkedIn is your personal skyscraper in the 21st century, and it has to be done correctly to reflect you as an entrepreneur, as a business person, as a, as a business development rep. The picture needs to be excellent.

Your content needs to be completed in full and, and be relevant and show your work history and and your various education and whatever you can do on your LinkedIn, make sure that it is filled up and that you look professional. You look like a rockstar because people are looking at your LinkedIn, they are finding you there, and they are judging you on there.

And I know that we shouldn't judge other people, but the reality is, In business, that's what's happening. People are trying to figure out who you are. So make sure that you are presenting the best version of yourself, the absolute best business, or whatever it is, version of you you wanna present on LinkedIn.

Make sure that we are presenting the absolute best version of us on LinkedIn to start with, so that means a completely completed profile. All of our relevant work history, all of our education, maybe any awards, certificates that you've won, make sure that it's all on there so that people can look and say, oh yeah, that guy, we're gonna reach out to him or we're gonna accept his request.

Cuz he looks like a rockstar because most people, when you send a invite, the first thing they do before they even add you is they check your LinkedIn profile. Okay. So we want a rockstar LinkedIn presence. Let's assume that we have that. Okay. What's the next thing we want? We want a hundred percent want LinkedIn Premium.

If you do not have a LinkedIn premium account, you are limited to the amount of people that you can reach. The amount of people that you can search. You know, I don't get too much into the InMails and stuff, you know that I'm not a huge fan of them. I, they go to basically LinkedIn junk mail, right? So, you know, my stance on LinkedIn in mails, but, You do need premium in order to search for the right people to see who's searching you so that you can maybe connect with some relevant people who have searched you up or find you interesting.

And we always, we need that. Why do we need that? Because if we're doing business development entrepreneurship, there's probably a demographic of people we're trying to connect with. We, we figure out who our customers are, right? What are their, what are their positions in a company? Are they ops managers or whatever else?

Right? And so what we want to do is we wanna be able to search quite a few of them because we need to send 100 invites a week. You guys know I hammer This LinkedIn on a weekly basis allows you to send 100 invites a week, okay? If you do not take advantage of these 100 invites a week, you, you lose them.

They don't roll over. You don't get to next week to, to, to send 200. You only get 100 a week and it resets every week. And if you don't use it, you lose it. Right? And so if we're doing business development or we're doing some type of marketing and we need to connect with, with people, We need to make sure that we are taking full advantage of that 100 a week.

And so what we need to do is we need to hop in, send a hundred invites to relevant contacts and you know, relevant to your industry. Whatever it is you're trying to connect with. Make sure that we're sending out a hundred. And then that way, once they're adding you, you know, let's say you send out a hundred invites and 50 connect, great the next week.

Now that's stage one in your C R M, right? Stage one in your C R M is always LinkedIn digital contact. Because that's where we're making our soft touch. That's where we're making our very first introduction. Okay. And we'll get into this later on cuz some of Martin's questions did, did go into this specifically.

And then what's the other thing? So we always wanna keep LinkedIn introductions, short and sweet. Really like we're talking like four or five lines. Just a brief introduction of you. Why you're reaching out and always attach a brochure regarding what you're marketing, right? Just give them something to work with.

Give them something to take a look at, generate some interest. Your job in business development, marketing, entrepreneurship, if you're selling some type of product, is you need to generate interest. So find a way to, very quickly, very briefly introduce yourself, introduce the product. And attach a brochure and say, Hey, I'd love to follow up with you later.

Remember, we're not selling anything on LinkedIn. We are generating interest on LinkedIn. We're gonna follow up with these people later over the phone and we'll get into this later on in the show. And then remember to be somewhat selective. Okay? We don't wanna just add any Joe Blow who, who sends you an invite on LinkedIn, right?

Sure. We want to, we definitely wanna connect with our people if there are people that can maybe help us or, or connects, that sort of thing. But remember, LinkedIn, even though it's got an incredibly high limit and most people probably won't ever hit it. If you're in sales or business development, there's a solid chance that you will hit it because it's 30,000 people, right?

Like it's, I know it sounds like an astronomical amount, but if you're in BD for four or five years, I think that there's a solid chance if you're doing it properly, if you're making the a hundred connections a week and you're kind of doing this thing, That you are going to hit a limit, you're going to probably hit that limit eventually.

And so what we wanna make sure is, is that if we are going to hit that limit, if that's going to happen, you're gonna hit that limit with relevant people with, with high level contacts, with contacts that can actually buy your product or, or help you. Get to where you want to go depending on how you're using LinkedIn.

Once again, you know, like obviously I'm using LinkedIn from very much a marketing and business development and and connection standpoint. I wanna meet lots of people. I wanna connect with lots of people because I think that there's lots of synchronicities, lots of synergies going on. So we wanna make sure that we're utilizing LinkedIn effectively.

So I guess what I'm saying is try and keep your LinkedIn contacts relevant. Try to weed out just people trying to connect with you to connect with you because they're wasting a spot for somebody who could actually help you. Okay. All right. So that's the brief rundown of LinkedIn. Okay. I think I've done a great job there of just kind of giving you guys a quick rundown of where I stand on LinkedIn.

Yeah, there's a lot more to it. If you want more information, go back to my LinkedIn episode. Yeah. And we go way more into depth about it and, and kind of how to do that properly. Okay. So this is from Martin Blessing. Martin, thank you so much for reaching out. It's an absolute pleasure. Martin reached out to me on LinkedIn and and gave me some very kind words regarding the podcast.

Let me know that he had some questions regarding the LinkedIn episode and sent me a nice list of questions. So I'm gonna read them out to you and I'm going to do my best in real time here to answer them. Once again, if I don't know, I will tell you. If I don't have a good answer, I will tell you, but I will do my best always to, to answer these questions to the best of my ability, and I hope that they help you and a thousand other listeners.

All right, so dear Kelly, Should one, consider benefiting from LinkedIn Premium and write a short first message when requesting a contact? Or do you think a simple contact request is more elegant if you choose to send a short message? What would you recommend writing? My opinion on this is you just send the, the contact invite, Martin, because you're gonna send him a short introduction message after anyway, right?

We just need to make sure that we're connecting with the right person. You know, like I said, you're gonna probably send out a hundred invites. If you send out a hundred invites, the odds are you're probably gonna get 40 to 50 of them. It's just, that's the way it works, right? And, and, and way more down the line, cuz what ends up happening is you send an invite.

And not everybody uses LinkedIn every day, right? So I find that, like I have, you know, in my backlog, I have thousands, thousands of, of, of unanswered invites. But the reality is they slowly trickle in. So like some weeks I'll just get, I'll send a hundred invites and yeah, maybe I'll get 70 or 80 that week because a whole bunch of past ones.

Caught up what? Logged into their LinkedIn and, and accepted the request. So remember, you're kind of creating a backlog of LinkedIn invites, right? So over time it'll get higher. But yeah, first expect probably about 40% to, to connect with you. Okay? But yes just answer that question specifically. I would, I would send the introduction.

I would not bother with those intro messages. Why? Because just like InMails guys, It's really salesy. It's really advertising. What we're trying to do is build a, a connection. We're trying to build a human to human connection, right? We want to avoid things that bots do well. What do bots do? Bots send auto messages and auto messages drive us all crazy, right?

So if you wanna stand out like a person, just send a, just send a regular invite. They're gonna check your profile out. If it looks like something they're interested in, they're gonna add you. Once they add you, that's when you send that introduction message. That's when you say, Hey, I'm John with ABC Company.

We do this. I think it's something you might find interesting. I've attached a brochure and would love to chat with you further. That's it. Just send it over. Give 'em your contact details. And yeah, maybe they reach out, if not, either way, you add them to that LinkedIn digital contact space and we, we detective to figure out how to get ahold of them down the line.

Okay. All right. Question number two. Could you provide more advice as to whom to address? For example, I am currently conducting market research and would like to speak with lab experts in companies. Should I address a senior expert or the head of r and d? I know my target group, but I'm wondering where in the hierarchy I should start.

So, okay, that one is a little bit tougher, Martin, in my opinion, if you know the company you're trying to contact, right? If we know the company that we're trying to get in this r and d. Dude, do whatever it takes to, to get to where you need to go. I, in my opinion, you don't know which one's going to accept your invites, so why don't you add both of them?

I, I know that it can't hurt, like the reality is they are both still in your industry sector. They are still potentially people that, that will move up in the industry. I think it wouldn't hurt in this case to actually reach out to the lab tech and, and the head of r and d. Why not? If you get one, if you get, you can send the same introduction to both people, right?

Like, you don't have to necessarily change up your introduction pitch. So yeah, my opinion would be, Add them both. And then if they both accept, great. Send your Introduction me message to both and then add them both to your, your stage one of your crm. Or add, add, add. Say the higher or the higher guy to your stage one of crm, if that's gonna be the head of r and d.

And then just make sure that in your contacts when you're adding contacts to your crm, you just add the other person. That way you have two people at that company. If the one you're getting stonewalled at, you can always get ahold of and reach out to the other, right? So yeah, I like in my case, When I'm, when I'm marketing for, say, a maintenance firm, what I'll typically do is I might reach out to the operations manager and I might reach out to the terminal manager or the distribution manager and I'll, I'll actually reach out to both of them and just see which one hits.

So you know how it is. With any type of, with, with any type of marketing or business development, we have to, we have to just do our detective work. And sometimes that might mean we gotta talk to five people, but as long as there are five relevant people in the organization, you're gonna get to where you want to go.

So I think you're on the right path. My opinion in this case would be, I would send it to both. I would actually send it to both because you don't know which one's going to accept. And then once one does or both do, send your introduction, try and get ahold of them and let them tell you where to go next.

Okay. Number three. You mentioned the importance of being specific about the people that we connect with and consider whether they add value to our network or goals. Should I always address several people within a company or r and d department or just one person? If I approach multiple people who potentially work together, what factors should I consider?

For instance, if I'm rejected by one person, can I still approach their coworkers with my request? Of course you can. Of course you can. The reality is too, in a lot of organizations, they work in different areas. So you might have like one company and say, we'll, we'll talk Canada, one company in Edmonton, one company in Vancouver, one company in Toronto, and one company in, I don't know, Calgary.

Right? There's no guarantee that those, that those departments work together, and actually in most cases they, they tend to run independently. So, Yeah, I guess what I would do is I would say, if you know that this company can service you and they have multiple locations, don't feel bad if one location shuts you down.

And yeah, keep going after the other ones, because the reality is they te they probably make independent buying decisions. They probably do. And if you can make a connection at one. It's very likely that once you have a connection at one and whatever your product or service is, is maybe working or they're interested, that they can then help you to get into the other locations.

So yeah, once again, I would say that if it's part of the same group, if, if you know that you're in the right area, you know that these are probably people that, that you should reach out to. Yeah. Don't, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Shoot out a wide net. Right. Shoot out a wide net, and you can always remove people later.

Like that's just the truth. The reality is the limit that I talk about is 30,000 people. The odds of you getting there, if you're not in business development or marketing directly, it's gonna be pretty much slim to none. So I think in your case, It might not be a big deal. It might not be a big deal to send out a hundred, a hundred invites to people within one organization if you think that it can benefit you, Martin, if you think that that's the way that that it, that's gonna work for you to get to the people that you need to get to go for it.

Obviously, what I'm trying to advocate for is we want to try to do this and as little amount of people as possible, so sure. If you reach out to the head of r and d, you're reaching out to somebody a little bit higher up. Gonna give you a little bit more leverage. Might be one less person to talk to to get to where you want to go, but if you're getting stonewalled or you're just not able to find that person, yeah, absolutely connect to someone else and ask for help.

You would be surprised how many times if you just say, Hey I'm with A B C company. We're selling this service, and I just, I have no idea who to reach out to. I'm getting stonewalled here. Can you help me? I think you'd find a lot of times. People may not be willing to give you an email or, or like a phone number, but very likely, like a lot of the time, I would say in my case, 80 to 90% of the time you can get a name and if you can get a name in this modern day and age, a little bit of Googling, a little bit of LinkedIn searching, I think you can find who you're looking for.

Okay. Question number four, regarding response time. When someone replies to my contact request and I have mentioned my interests or have made a request for a chat slash interview, should I kindly remind them if they haven't replied? If so, when would be an appropriate time to do so? So, okay, Martin, so we talk about in the previous LinkedIn episode, we chat about using the C R M and I have an entire other episode on C R M, right?

Remember, LinkedIn isn't for selling or scheduling your meetings, it's just for making that introduction. We have to make our soft introduction to, to move forward, right? Like it's just, we have to make the intro, the soft introduction. That's all LinkedIn is for. It's to make them aware of who you are so that when you do phone them or send a direct email, it's not directly cold.

It's not completely cold. They, they've likely seen your message, they've likely looked at your brochure, and they're not completely in the dark about who you are. So just to address this specifically, no, we don't want to keep bugging them on LinkedIn. We just want to use that LinkedIn to make that initial introduction.

After that part. Martin, we want to be trying to figure out how to get ahold of them. So what I would be doing is I would look on LinkedIn, figure out okay, where are they located? What is the likely location they work at? Do some Googling. Try and find the phone number for that location. Reach out directly.

If you have their name, it's really easy. Most of these auto attendants are literally, do you know the name? Punch three numbers. And we'll put you in touch. So if you know their name and you can figure out hopefully what home base they're working at, just call the main line and try to get to their answering machine.

If you can get to their answering machine, you're, you're on point, move them into contact made and then follow up once per week. Okay? Once per week. That means one message, one email. If you get them on the phone and have a conversation, just let that be the conversation for the week and follow up the next time.

Okay? We, the secret with bd, good BD is you do not want to get annoying. If you get to the point where like you're calling them, say, every second day, every third day. You start to become annoying, and if, and if somebody deems you annoying, my gosh, man, they're never gonna buy from you. They're, you're not gonna get what you want.

Okay? So the secret is to be courteous and we be courteous by being consistent, but being consistent at a once per week basis. Okay? One contact per week. If you get 'em, if you leave a message, if you send an email and then wait for them to hit the ball back over the net, it's like, it's like tennis, right?

We wanna hit the ball over to them and let them hit the ball back, right? That's, that's how a good conversation works. Send, send an introduction, leave a message. Wait for them to get back to you. If they don't get back to you, wait an entire week and hit the ball again. And then you can make a call into how many times you're gonna do that before you start to dig a different hole or look a different direction.

But in my experience, you probably want to give them at least 10 times. You wanna reach out at least 10 touches 10 times before you give up on them and move to someone else because yeah, it's it's definitely gonna take longer than you think. You know, if you're only doing it three or four times, it's very likely it's not enough.

If you're into that like 14, 15, 20 range, it might be time to to try to find a different contact. Okay. Okay. Question number five. When making introductions, who should I address the contact by their first or last name? How do you address your friends, Martin? How do you address your friends? You address your friends by their first name, right?

The only situation where I would think that you may not address them by their first name is in the case of a doctor, I think it's more appropriate to call a doctor, Dr. John or Dr. Abel. They've worked very hard to earn that label. I think it's a good sign of respect to, to give a doctor and allow and address them as a doctor.

But yeah, if it's just like John Smith at ABC company, Hey John, how you doing today? Address them like you would address your friend. Why? Because that's the relationship level we're trying to create, right? We're trying to create friendly relationships with, with our customers, with these people. And if you start to address them by their last name, it just comes across really businessy, really gimmicky.

I think most of us like to be addressed by our first name, and I think that you will do well to do the same. Just address them by their first name. Number six, what are the possible uses for my contacts from what I understood in your episode? You can use them to reach out by posting on your LinkedIn account, but you can also contact them directly to ask for help or inquire if they might be interested in a product.

In my case, I would like to interview these people. Yeah, man. They're your contacts. What's really cool, at least with the podcast and with Capital Business Development and you know, I mean, I do, I use my LinkedIn on behalf of even my clients, right? It's just a great network of people. My gosh. The support that I've found from my clients on the business development podcast or on capital business development, just using my LinkedIn, just letting 'em know, Hey, this is kind of what I did this week.

We got this great episode coming up. You should check it out. And it's, so, it's really cool because I have like a great group of people now that reach out on LinkedIn and like my posts and comment on my posts and start conversations and send me messages and support. Lots of support and Yeah, you can use your LinkedIn kind of however you want really, once, once you have these contacts, by all means, if you got surveys, if you got ways to do it.

However, my recommendation would definitely be to reach out to them directly, right? If you do want them to fill out a survey, if you do want to interview them make a personal connection, reach out to them via message. Introduce yourself. Be like, Hey, this is, maybe, I think you're amazing. I would love to learn more about you.

I, I have this great survey. Or I, I would, I have this interview that I would really like to have you on and just make it personable, you know, type a really nice message for them and make it personable. Try not to sound like a robot when you're doing it right. Try to sound like, try to sound like yourself, because that's who people want.

People want Martin, right? But yes, 100% use your, use your network. As, as it goes forward, if you're starting to get lots of people, like it sounds like you're in science of some type research and development, that sort of thing, yeah, you're gonna grow this amazing network of r and d people, of scientists, of whatever else that you're working with.

So yeah, absolutely. You should definitely use your LinkedIn network. Ask them for help. Ask them for anything, I think you'd find that most people are willing to help you. So yeah, there's, there's lots of uses for your LinkedIn network. You know, I mean, obviously my uses might be different than your uses.

So me just saying what I, what I would do with them doesn't necessarily help you or the listeners, but the reality is it's, yeah, you can definitely leverage your LinkedIn network. And I would say that frankly, I don't think that we would've been nominated for the Quill Podcast Award had I not asked my LinkedIn network for help had I not asked all of you for help.

And It's your networks that make or break you. So a hundred percent. Just be kind about it, right? Always be humble, always be thankful, and don't expect people to do anything for you because nobody really has to. It's, it's all out of the goodwill of their hearts. Okay. Number seven, if I choose to do so, how should I approach it?

Should I include it? Should I include my request with my introduction? Should I send reminders? What can I re realistically expect in terms of response rate? How many responses per week should I anticipate? Okay, so he's asking this in, in relation to the previous question where he's saying that he would like to interview some people on his network.

Yeah, so I hope, I hope that I addressed that in my previous answer, Martin, where I just said, I think you should approach it directly. I think you should, you should reach out to them all individually through a LinkedIn message, or, heck, here's this. Let's say that you've been doing your BD and you've actually got these people's phone numbers in direct contact info if you have their phone numbers and direct contact info.

You should 100% be reaching out to them with a phone call explaining to them, Hey, I would love to interview you. I think you'd be really great for this research, for this, this show that I'm doing. If you're, if you're interested, do you mind if I send you an email on it? That would be a direct approach like that if you can get them on the phone.

Is always gonna be more effective. Heck, maybe another cool way to do it would be through a video message. You know, we all have cell phones now, smartphones. Now if you're gonna be asking them for help, why don't you just shoot them a quick video message, introduce yourself. Let them big smile on your face.

Let them know why you'd love to interview them, and just. See what kinda responses you get. But I think that if you're using a personable approach, a direct approach, whether that be a video, a phone call where they can hear your voice, where they can hear, they can hear how you're feeling and they can, they can hear your smile.

I really say, I really believe that you can hear a smile. That's gonna be the best way to go about doing it. Martin. Try to contact them directly. Don't use like a blanket. Don't use like a blanket response don't necessarily just post on LinkedIn that you're doing interviews. I guess you could. You could, but I think you'll get much better response rates if you just ask directly.

Okay. And lastly, do you have any additional tips to expedite the target identification process on LinkedIn? 100%. This is a great question, Martin, and a great question to leave off today's episode with, okay. So let's, I'm assuming here that you've done your research and, you know, in an organization, let's say in your case, you're looking for Head of R and D, so we'll just call it like a Lead R and D.

Let's just call it lead. R and d would be the position that you're looking for. Hop onto the LinkedIn search bar. Put in quotations, Lead R and D. Hit enter. You're gonna see a list. Populate up, dude, you can search this. Like right down to the location you want to find Lead R and 'Ds in. I use this regularly and this is how I, this is how I'll search out people that if I know that I'm looking for a terminal manager, I'll just put in quotations, terminal manager, I'm looking in Alberta, give me all my second and third connections.

Cause those are, those are the people that I'm not connected to. And then you can just rip through. You can say, yep, that company, that company, that company, you guys can add like a hundred people in like, I don't know, 30 minutes. Like if you do it this way, this is a really effective blanket way to find a whole bunch of people with the right title that you might be able to effectively market your product to.

Okay. That's it for that's it for Martin's messages and and questions. And Martin, thank you so much. I really appreciate this. This is definitely going to be a regular segment on the show but it's going to require your questions. So. If you have enjoyed this segment, it's been very much on LinkedIn, but shoot me your questions on anything business development, entrepreneurship related.

If I have an answer, if I know I will do my best to address it in a Q and A episode such as this one. I wanna give some shout outs here. We had some amazing people reach out over the last week and just send questions, send thank yous, send. We really appreciate your work and I just want to address them all.

So Louise McCarthy, Martin Blessing. Tatsiana Zametalina . Faheem Khan and Tash Jefferies all reached out, gave me awesome feedback. Let me know how they were doing, let me know how everything's going. And guys, you make my day every single time you guys send me lovely messages like that. It makes my day. If you've enjoyed this show today, please follow us on Apple Podcast and Spotify give us a rating.

And if you can leave us a review. They're amazing. They help us grow our audience. And until next time. 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.