Effective Communication

Effective Communication

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Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 67 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, I'm going to tackle effective communication. I'm going to use my best experience to try to help you guys communicate better. 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. Welcome to episode 67 of the Business Development Podcast. My gosh, I know I say it all the time, but it still just blows my mind how this show grows and how we just keep on going.

I it never ceases to amaze me. You guys, my lovely listeners the business development podcast people. I love you all. Thank you so much for your continued support of the show. You know, I know that quite a few of you have been with us since the very beginning, and I've had the pleasure to chat with quite a few of you who've had taken the time to reach out on LinkedIn or through the podcast.

And I appreciate you immensely. And you know, I'm so thankful that you guys are on this journey with me. It really is a journey that we are on together. You know, I know it sometimes seems probably like I'm up here as the teacher and you guys are my students or however you want to look at it.

But the reality is, is that I'm learning from you just as much, I think, as you guys are learning from me. This has been a journey that I couldn't have anticipated, I think is an easy way to put it. I never anticipated that this would be. The place that I'm at in my life, especially not at 34. But I'm thankful to be here and I'm thankful to be on this journey with you.

And if you guys have been with us since the very beginning, I appreciate you immensely. And if you're just tuning in for the first time, I appreciate you as immensely as well. So thank you for joining us today on the business development podcast. Wanted to start this out today by giving just a gigantic thank you.

Episode 66, Colin Christensen, go and mentor somebody amazing episode. Colin has mentored over a thousand companies in his time and had the chance to kind of come on and chat with us and impart some life lessons, not just business lessons, but life lessons on us. And we always appreciate having Colin on the show.

So thank you so much for joining us, Colin. We've had a crazy. Crazy week and weekend. There's no two ways about it, whether it be capital business development, the work we're doing here, or heck the stuff going on with the show. It's, it's all growing so quickly and it's just, you know, it's really due to your support.

And I just wanted to say thank you so much to everybody who's been with us, who everyone listening I appreciate you immensely and we, we hit. The top, we were in the top 100 in Canada for like three or four days straight. I think this morning which is a Tuesday, a Tuesday, we are still at. We are still at the, in the top 100 in Canada.

We were in the top 100 in entrepreneurship in Great Britain this week as well. We've been in the top 100 in over 13 different countries at this point. We've been in the top 10 and I believe two, eight months. You know, we're not even eight months. We'll be eight months as of October 7th. And yeah, it's amazing.

The feedback that you guys have been sending in, you know, the, the success stories have blown my mind. And I am so thankful to say that just a heads up for our 70th episode, we have a success story coming to the business development podcast, chatting about. Implementing some of the techniques that we chat about and the benefits that it's had for his business.

And I'm really excited to share that one with you. So that'll be coming out next weekend. I do believe not this coming, but the one after. But yeah, we've just had some crazy, crazy success with this show recently. And I just wanted to say, thank you so much. Thank you for, for doing this, not just for me, but for the fellow listeners of this show.

It really is a community. And speaking to community as you may know, or may not know, we have brought the business development podcast to YouTube and I have a request. A simple request to ask of each and every one of you who are listening today. I would love for us to start getting some traction on YouTube and really be able to grow the audience of this show yet even further.

And so if you could take just a minute out of your day today, hop on over to the Business Development Podcast on YouTube and just... Give us a like and a follow would appreciate it immensely. I would love to start growing our, our listenership on YouTube. We're going to be posting all shows on YouTube moving forward as well.

We're up to 51 episodes. I plan to be up to date hopefully by the end of next week. So by the end of next week, we should be current with, with the business development podcast on YouTube. We have a business development podcast channel on YouTube, and we're going to put everything on there. And so if you like audiograms, if you like to kind of read along as you go, feel free to hop on over to our YouTube channel.

Forward as well. And you'll be able to you'll be able to read and and see the audiograms for our shows. As we move forward down the line, it might get more than that. Let's just kind of see where it goes, but for now I just would like to keep it an audio show. So let's try to do that and see how it goes.

But if you could, if you want to help us, if you love the business development podcast, and you're wondering how you can help, please hop YouTube channel. Give us a like a follow, maybe watch a video or two would appreciate it immensely. It'll help us to really start to reach a much broader audience. You know, YouTube has billions of listeners, so we would love to get a small portion of that interest in over to the business development podcast.

One of the other ways that potentially we can help each other the business development podcast is now accepting sponsorships. So we have multiple sponsorship packages for the show now that will also benefit your business. If you would like to advertise with us, we have everything from. 500 packages all the way up to 5, 000 packages, depending on, you know, what scope of of shows you would like to sponsor.

So please do reach out to us. Would love to start that conversation. We have a worldwide audience, primarily a North American audience. I believe it's somewhere in the 65 percent for North America, but worldwide past that. So, you know, we have we have a large amount of people listening who I'm sure would love to learn a little bit more about your product, and we would love to chat with you about potentially working alongside you.

Okay, we've chatted to it. Thank you for sticking with us this long. I appreciate it immensely. Let's get into the show today. Today's show is tough. It is. It is. Some of these topics, you know, I've talked to it multiple times on the show are just challenging. And it's so silly because today's topic is effective communication, and I communicate what I like to think is effectively regularly, but sitting down and actually talking to effective communication is a lot harder than you think.

I took a minute deciding today whether or not this was going to be the topic. And I'll be honest, I have a feeling I'm going to touch on this topic multiple, multiple times during the Scope of the Business Development podcast, just because it is such a challenging topic and to speak to all of it. Or to even understand the nuances of your communication is a challenging thing to reflect on, and you know, I, I, any one of you, sit down and write down, you know, effective communication and try to do, you know, five or six talking points on it, and you'll find, like, holy crap, like, You could write them all down and you would still miss some.

So, you know, once again, take what we chat about today, recognize it's not going to encompass all of it. There was no way that I could do one show on effective communication and encompass all of it. But I do want to just leave you with some tips today on effective communication in some different sectors, whether that be face to face meetings, whether that be your digital introductions, whether that be value proposition, let's just talk about some of the ways that we communicate as humans.

And chat about what I have found to be effective and what I have found to not be effective. And see if, like I said, we can't just leave you with a nugget or two of information on effective communication today. Like I said, I think that I'm probably going to have to do a much deeper dive into this as we move forward.

I think potentially doing individual shows on multiple types of, of communication scenarios, but let's do a more of a broader reach today and just kind of see where we go. I think either way, you'll still be able to find some nuggets of information in this today. So one of the things that I really wanted to touch on was obviously effective communication in business development is absolutely critical.

Because if you don't have it, it's impossible to build a good value proposition. If you can't build a good value proposition, you can't generate interest. And if you can't generate interest, well, we know what happens next, right? So a communication should always lead a prospect down a path to a successful outcome.

You as the communicator. get to kind of decide what that path is. You also get to decide what the outcome of that communication is best for you. It's kind of a weird thing. I don't want to call it manipulation because it's not manipulation, although it does follow the same guise, doesn't it? Good communication.

I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. Because I got bamboozled once by an absolutely amazing, amazing salesperson. And I don't want to say bamboozled because at the end of the day, he was a guy doing a job selling a product and he did it incredibly well. Guy calls me up, cold call, and wanted to chat with me about like some amazing sunglass promotion that they had.

They were like a proposals company. They were selling, you know swag. They were selling swag. And the company that I was working at the time, we had a show coming up and we needed some stuff. And he was like, This guy, my gosh, was like one of the best communicators that I've ever come across. And I kid you not, like he talked to me probably for like eight minutes.

I bought like 500 pairs of sunglasses from this guy. Sight unseen. Hadn't even seen them. That's how great this guy was. And I think what it is, and they came in and they were subpar, of course. They were subpar. We still gave them away at the show, but they were nothing like what he kind of chatted about.

So in some ways I kind of felt a little bit bamboozled by it. On the other hand. This guy led me through why, why I want these sunglasses, how all the people are buying them, what they do, what they look like, where they're getting them from, where they're manufacturing them. The story was so bloody good. I kid you not, I felt like I had no choice but to buy this guy's sunglasses.

And I did, we bought like 500 pairs of these things. I think it ended up costing the company we were working at the time like 1500 bucks. It was, it was like a considerable investment when they showed up. It wasn't quite as expected. I felt a little crappy about it, but whatever. The point is we're talking the story of good communication and this guy.

He had amazing communication, he was able to paint a picture, build a story, lead me down a path, and led to the successful conclusion that he wanted. He controlled that whole scenario. And this is what, and I hate to say it, because it sounds bad, but this is ultimately what effective communication can do for you.

If you can lead somebody down a path, build a picture, build value, I sure hope you also deliver on that value and the picture you build isn't fake or false, but If you can do it effectively, this is the outcome. People can feel absolutely compelled to give your product or service a try. So effective communication when done right is incredibly, incredibly effective in getting you a successful outcome that you want and leading them down the path to get there, right?

So communication is obviously different and critical at all parts of the business development process. So we always talk about the steps of the business development process, right? We talk about, we want to get the LinkedIn digital introductions done. We want to take them to the cold call stage. We want to then move it to a meeting stage.

The communication throughout all of these various steps is actually different and can be done incorrectly or correctly depending on the scenario. All communication must do three things. It has to generate interest. It has to show value, and it has to lead to the next logical step in the process, right?

We always talk about that. One of the downfalls of a lot of communication, and I think it comes down to we can get scared. We get scared as business owners. We get scared to ask for something to ask our clients of something, right? But if we don't Ask them for the next logical step. It's very unlikely that we will get it.

And so being able to communicate the next logical step, no matter what step of the process we are in is absolutely critical to the success of the process as a whole, to the success of you as a business development person, or as a business owner, or as a salesperson, you have to be able to ask and have the confidence to ask, right?

But once again, it all falls into that communication side. So. One of the things that we also have to kind of think about when we are communicating is less is usually more. And what do I mean by this? It's very easy when we're communicating to talk ourselves right out of an opportunity. I've been guilty of this.

I have, I, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm the first to say that I've made all the mistakes in the book. I've made all the mistakes in the book. I feel like the fact that I can sit here now and have this conversation with you is only because I've made so many of the business development mistakes and really had to, or mistakes and had to learn.

As I went, really had to learn by trial and error, by burning my hands, by burning my feet as I went to learn what was effective, what's not effective. And I hope that you guys can all learn from the mistakes that I've made and not have to make those same mistakes twice. Really, that's, that's really the benefit of learning anything is hopefully that you won't have to make the same mistakes that we have as we've learned.

But you know, the reality is I used to talk way too much. So I would, you know, sit down for a business meeting and I would say, Hey, like I work for X, Y, Z company. We have this service. Like we do this, this, and this, and this is why we're the best at it. And this is why you need it. And heck they would be like, they'd be like, yeah, no, we, we know we need it.

Like we, we want to move forward. And I would still be talking. I would still be like explaining to them why we're the best and they should move with us instead of just. Shutting up. To be frank. To be completely frank. Just shutting up and listening to my client. Okay? It took me, I almost hate to admit this, I think it took me almost five years.

Almost five years. To learn this lesson that less is more that sometimes going in and just having a few questions sitting back and quietly listening to your client is more valuable than any word that you have to say almost in that entire conversation. I can't, I got really great at business development when I learned to sit back, ask a few questions, listen.

Listen intently. This isn't just listening. This isn't passive listening. This is truly listening. Like, heck, sometimes take notes. What, like, for me, I find that I zone out. So, when I'm listening, you know, if we're in a meeting together, you might notice that I have a notebook. And you might notice that I'm writing things down.

This is actually... to allow me to stay present in the conversation, which can sometimes be a challenge for me. And so what I've found over time is that if I can take notes during a meeting, it will help me stay present. It'll help me reflect back on other questions that I may want to ask regarding a topic that my customer was talking about.

But being able to stay present and listening is. Absolutely critical to any type of communication. I would almost argue it's more important than any other communication that you probably have in that meeting with your customer. You need to let the customer articulate. As well as possible, and then you need to also probe them based on the articulation that they are providing to you to be able to really narrow down what their challenge is, what their problem point is, and then ask them, or, you know, in your case, if you may have a solution, you can then speak to those challenges and say, Hey, this is XYZ company.

This is why our company can support these challenges. It sounds like these are the challenges you're having. Let me know if I'm wrong. Did I miss anything? Asking them if you missed anything is equally critical. You need to be able to find that, that point. What's that point that they're really there for you?

Why, why is it that they said yes to this meeting with you? Remember, there is a reason and it's not just because, Oh, we just want to see what your company does. Most of the time, they have a preconceived notion of what your company can do for them. And it's up to you to really narrow that down and draw that out of them.

Because for you. Mr. business owner, Ms. business owner, Mr. business development rep, or Mrs. business development rep. If you can narrow down what that main reason is, you can potentially provide a solution. And if you can, if you can meet that solution in a way that they are happy with, you probably just made a sale.

But the only way that you are going to get there. is if you can narrow down what that main reason is, what was the reason that they met with you today? What is the underlying reason? It's not just because they want to know who you are. Most of the time, they've Googled you, they know who you are, they have an idea of what service that you provide may solve their problem.

But you have to pull that out of them because they are not necessarily going to just give that to you and say, Great, you're exactly what we needed. And this is what we need. You need to draw it out of them. And you draw it out of them by listening And asking the right questions to try to draw the main reason that they met with you today.

And if you can get to that, it's definitely going to take you to the right place. So, less is more. That's one of the things that I wanted to talk about today. Obviously, asking good questions and listening opens way more doors than talking. If you are one of those business development people or business owners right now that sits down at a meeting and the first thing you do is you just start talking about your business and all the things you do and why you're the best at it and why they should consider you.

It's probably not working. It's probably not working. And I know this only because I've been there and done that. I know this from experience. When I sit down for a meeting, most of the time, what I want to know first is who am I meeting? Who are they? I'll spend some time. I will, I'll check out their LinkedIn.

I'll learn their background. I'll learn about their business. I'll do some research. And when I sit down with them, I usually want to hear their story. I know surprising because we do this quite a bit with our guests, but It is a genuine curiosity that I have and have had long before the podcast, long before, before I frankly got good at business development, to be honest.

I I genuinely love people. I love getting to know people. I love knowing, you know, I love knowing people personally and knowing what they love to do for fun and what their hobbies are and where they went for vacation and how many kids they have. And I think if you can communicate in that way where it's like we obviously know if we're at a business meeting that we're there to talk business.

We know this, right? We know this. Nobody's surprised, right? But that doesn't mean that that's where you have to start, right? Most people will ask you about your business if you just don't bring it up. And in some ways... That's way more effective. I would always recommend that when you sit down and you're making those first initial communications with your customer, you know, maybe it's your first face to face meeting or your first Teams meeting or whatever else, ask them some questions about the background, ask them about their life, ask them about their family, ask them how they got into that career.

You know, most people have an amazing story about how they ended up where they are. Most people, it's not just, oh yeah, I, I went to school and we got out and this is the first job I got. And yeah, here I am, right? You know that that's not how it is. Almost each one of us has an amazing story behind how we got there.

Most people didn't choose to end up exactly where they're at. I find most people, you know, especially business owners, something happened in their life that led them down that path. Or, you know, they lost a job and then they decided to try, take a risk and try something new. Or the opportunity presented itself and there was a risk involved or whatever.

But most people have an amazing story. And so sitting down and trying to spend some time communicating as a human, not a business, as a human, is going to make you 100 percent more effective. at Business Development Communication. Because if you can connect with them as a person, have those conversations, talk to me about your current business, how did you end up here?

What do you guys do? What excites you about your business? It, it always leads to, you know, I met with you today because you guys do this and we're facing this challenge. If you can start the open lines of communication in the very beginning, It makes it a lot easier for them to tell you the truth for why they were interested in having that meeting with you today.

Instead of feeling so guarded about having to kind of keep that to a secret because they don't want to be taken advantage of in some way, right? And so it's really important that we are focusing our communication on building trust, building relationships, opening those lines of communication, and not being all business.

Because if all you do is go in all business, It puts up walls. It puts up walls in the whole communication and it just makes it that much harder to break those down when you really want to get to the truth of something. So we need to definitely spend some time in our communication, communicating as people, connecting as people, finding common ground, finding a way to open up an open dialogue, some laughter.

Right? Have some fun. Have some fun in your communication. I start all my meetings this way because I don't, I don't just want to do business with people. I want to know people. I want to know them. Because if I know them, I can build trust with them. I can build rapport with them. And vice versa. They can build trust with me and rapport with me.

And either way, That leads to a better, a better business relationship down the line. So it is important that we are not just asking good questions, but we are also listening. We are caring. We are showing genuine interest in who they are as people. It's going to make you better always. All right. So I wanted to just talk about a few different scenarios of communication and ways that I have found to be effective.

I, this does not mean it's the be all end all okay. Each one of you have your own. Pros and cons, the ways that you communicate that are better than others, okay? I can only speak to what has been effective for me, Kelly Kennedy, or Capital Business Development, or our employees. I can't speak for each and every one of you.

All I can do is give you some tips on how I like to communicate in various ways, and how it has worked for me, and you try to implement it and see if it works for you or make it your own. But ultimately, there are different ways to communicate in different platforms or different steps of the process that are more effective than others, okay?

I wanted to start by just talking about LinkedIn, because for us, the LinkedIn step is the first outreach step of business development for us, where we're, we're essentially, we found the target, we are we have identified them, we're now connecting with them on LinkedIn. So as you know, we always reach out, we connect with our potential prospects on LinkedIn.

And when once they accept, usually about a week later, we send an introduction message. And the introduction message is always geared to do a few good things, okay? It's short and sweet, always, because what we have found is that long LinkedIn introduction messages are automatically flagged by not just the algorithms, but people, and we choose not to read them.

We just choose not to read long introductions. Not to mention, we also choose not to read long introductions that are not personable. So this is the other side of LinkedIn that maybe you weren't thinking about. It's not just enough. to have a short and sweet LinkedIn message. If you go straight to business and you do not introduce yourself first, once again, it's getting flagged.

Most of the time people aren't reading it. People don't want to be sold on LinkedIn. They want to make a connection on LinkedIn. They want to be introduced to a person. Why should they care about you? Not just your business, but you. Okay. And so it's very important that we are Introducing ourselves first in a personable, friendly way.

Like, Hey, I'm Kelly Kennedy. I'm the host of the business development podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to be part of your network. You know, we do this. I think potentially there could be a connection for us in the future. It's great to have you once again, thanks for connecting and feel free to reach out anytime.

Make it a very personable, kind message. Introduce yourself, use your brochure in this case. Okay. When you use your brochure to communicate for you. If one things that we are one thing that we have kind of noticed over our time at capital is that even if people don't necessarily read your message or give it the full read, they do tend to open and read your brochure.

So it's okay to have a really short introduction on LinkedIn. It's really okay. Don't feel like you have to give your whole life story on the LinkedIn introduction. You can actually give your whole life story in your brochure. And just have a nice, kind thank you for connecting with me. It's great to be part of your network.

You know, I see that we're both professionals. We're both executives and you know, always love to connect with people such as yourself. We do this if you're interested. I've attached a brochure, you know, let's connect sometime. That's it. Real easy, really sweet, really personal. They're going to like that.

They're going to read it and It's going to make sure that when you go in for that cold call, you are not coming in cold. You're warm because they've actually already seen who you are. They probably read your brochure, right? It's important that we build value in these LinkedIn introductions, not just in our business, but in ourself.

What you really want to do is build value in yourself. And you've actually built value in yourself by being personal, by not coming across business only or 100 percent business, or you need to work with us, or I work with XYZ company, we're the best. That's not doing what you want it to do. What you need to do on LinkedIn is connect as a person.

Connect as a person, and that builds value. That builds way more value than you can build by trying to slam your company down their throat, okay? And remember, we always have to lead to the next logical step. So, what in this process leads to the next logical step? The brochure did. The brochure led you to the next logical step because you know that once you've connected with them on LinkedIn, the next step is to connect with them via phone or direct email, right?

The brochure gave you enough interest that when you do connect via email or by phone, you're no longer coming in cold. It was the thing that led you to the next logical step. And we need to think about this in every single step of business development, no matter what we're doing. What is the next logical step and is the action that I'm taking going to lead us there?

Okay so I'm just going to kind of go into the two options that typically come after the LinkedIn communication. So the two options that typically come for us at Capital are either the formal email or the phone. So typically people will reach out to us on LinkedIn after we've sent that introduction and say, Hey, you know what?

That's amazing. Can you send me a direct email with your, with your proposal or with your brochure information? To our formal email, this is the one where the formal email can be done just like that formal, you can give your full pitch, you can give your full value proposition, they're probably going to read the whole thing.

So the formal email position is the position where you can then get into that deep dive. Instead of getting into the deep dive on your LinkedIn, get into it in the formal email introduction. But remember, Remember, what is the next logical step? And is my formal email leading me to that place? Okay, so with our formal email, we have to build value.

We have to lead it to a meeting. Okay, so you need to build your value. And you need to ask for the next logical step, which after a formal email is a face to face or a Teams meeting, okay? So, let's make sure that when we are crafting our formal emails, that we are making sure that it is leading them somewhere.

The email isn't just a pitch about your company. It should be. Our company does this. This is why you want to consider us for it. And we think that the next logical step here would be for us to sit down and learn more about your business to see where we fit to see if there is a synchronicity or a synergy between our companies.

Always lead them down a path, lead them down a path that will take you to the next logical step, which in the case of our formal email. Is a meeting and then remember to we don't want to be pestering people. Okay, I see this all the time. BD people are salespeople that reach out one day. Then they reach out a day later.

Then they reach out three days later. You are just pissing off your prospect and trust me if they didn't answer the first week. And you keep doing that, you are going to, you're going to burn your bridge. You're going to lose every opportunity there. Remember the once a week rule. The once a week rule for follow up or for reach out is absolutely critical to your success in business development or sales.

Make sure that you are only reaching out on a weekly basis. If they hit the ball over the net, if they don't hit it back, don't just keep swinging at the air or hitting balls over and over and over again. You're going to hurt yourself. You're going to hurt yourself. Move on. Give them a week. Give them some space.

It's okay after a week to send a follow up email. It's okay after a week to make another phone call. Make sure that you are giving yourself, and your prospect, enough time to be receptive again. Okay? A week, in our experience, is the right amount of time. So, a weekly follow up. No more, no less, once a week, but do it weekly until they either disqualify or you get the meeting, okay?

Alright, so, formal email. The next one, obviously, is phone! You guys know I love the phone. Well, you know, we all have a love hate relationship for the phone. But, I've made, oh goodness, I don't even know, thousands, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of phone calls in my time in business development, okay?

Like, it is stupid. And... You know, every single day that I know that it's going to be a cold call day has been challenging. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. It's always a fight, but you got to get better at winning that fight against yourself, okay? Because it's you. It's you that's holding yourself back.

You know that if you made 10 cold calls a day that your business would be more successful. You know this. Intrinsically, you know. You know you'd get more meetings. You know you'd have more conversations. But there's that fear and you have to overcome that fear of conversation. And you know, me of all people, I struggled with that because I struggled with performance anxiety.

I struggled with losing. I hate losing. I still hate losing. I always have, but the reality is it's not a loss. You have to turn them into a win. A no is a win and a yes is a win. A no means you don't got to worry about following up with that person anymore, which is a win because you're just wasting your time.

A yes is a win because obviously now you have an opportunity for a proposal. Or another conversation that could lead to a proposal. You have to change the script in your head. A no is not a lose. A no is a win. And a yes is a win. And if you can just get through those first five calls, you're going to hit something called a cold call cadence, and you are going to get better and better and better, and you are going to be able to sit down one day and make 20, 30 calls in a day, and it's going to be no sweat off your brow.

It doesn't mean that the next day when you sit down, those first five calls aren't challenging. They're always challenging. They're always challenging. But you have to get better. You have to get better at making them. You have to get better at holding yourself accountable. And if you can do that, you are going to lead to more meetings.

You're going to have more opportunities and you're just going to become better at business development in general. So on a phone, we have to remember to smile. Okay. Kindness translates, smiles, happiness, it translates over the phone and it is contagious. Okay. It is contagious. A person smiling, having a laugh, chatting, asking for a meeting is going to work 150 percent more effective than somebody who you can tell is just there for business.

And it's a little bit grumpy or has a low tone, or it's just not coming across kind. It's just not going to work as well. And there's no two ways about it. There's no replacement for it. A good trick is to smile when you make phone calls, and I get that it sounds kind of stupid or weird or silly, or you might feel awkward at first, trust me, you're gonna get better and better and better at it, but a good trick in the beginning is just to smile.

When you make a phone call to somebody, fake a smile. It, it has this weird effect on your brain that will make the conversation go better, okay? Another way that you need to do it is you need to refine your pitch, okay? Nobody starts good at a, at a phone pitch, okay? I don't care whether it's your company, or whether you work for a company, or whether you have a new product or service, or whether it's an old product or service, and you're just new to it.

Pitches take time. Having that conversation over and over and over again, each time, you get a little bit better. You get a little bit better. Each and every time. And every time you get a little bit better at that pitch, your, your pitch gets better. And eventually you get the pitch so refined that you can have that conversation with just about anybody.

You can build the value proposition and you can ask for the meeting and you're going to get way, way, way more effective at getting yeses. But the pitch takes time. And I want you to understand that nobody starts out perfect at it. And so if you, if you're just in the beginning of working for a company and you're just working on the pitch for the first time, or heck if you're a business owner and you're like shit, like Sometimes as a business owner, pitching your own company can be challenging.

Trust me. I know I've done it. I, you know what? I found it harder to pitch capital than I ever did to pitch anybody else's company. And I think it's cause I'm emotionally invested in my business. Just like each and every one of you business owners is. I know that for a fact. You poured your blood, sweat, tears in there, and sometimes it hurts for someone to say, yeah, I don't need that.

And you take a little bit personal, but understand it's not personal. It's not personal. It's just, we all. Take that pain a little bit at first, but understand that if you're not versed at your picture, you know, you're like shit. I don't know what I would say. It's going to get better. It's going to get better in time.

You have to just make it over and over and over again. Typically at capital. I would say that our pitch is fairly well refined at about one month. At about one month of service, we've really nailed down the pitch. We've learned the product. We've sat in a few meetings. We've heard the, the owners or the, the, the, you know, the sales people or whoever's at the company really knows the product in and out, have that conversation.

We've taken down the points and we've, we've figured out how to articulate them well in our value proposition. But it takes us time too. We don't just sit down with a company and immediately we make that pitch and we're great at it. That's not how it works. Okay? The pitches take time. But the only way to get better at them is to actually do them.

So you have to take the time, have the pitch, do the value proposition, refine it, make it better, you know, learn as you go. But I think you'll find that after about a month of doing, doing that pitch over and over and over again, you're going to refine it to the point where. It becomes muscle memory and you've really got it down to where you can build a nice value picture for your customer to build enough interest to then say, could we line up a meeting to chat about this a little bit further?

And they're going to say, yeah, that sounds awesome. Let's do that. And then we always want to make sure exactly that we are building interest. And we are asking for the meeting. Okay. If we're on the phone and we get somebody on the phone, you guys know you, you get the voicemail like 80 percent of the time.

So when you actually get them on the phone, don't waste that opportunity. Ask them for a meeting. Hey, can we line up a team's meeting for sometime in the next two weeks? Can we get together for lunch or coffee? What's a good next step here? Because I want to meet you. I want to have a conversation about how we might be able to work together.

Ask for that meeting. Don't waste. Those people you get on the line, you know, it's challenging to get people on the line. Don't waste that time. Ask for the meeting. Okay. When you guys get to the meeting, okay, here's the fun part. So we're there, right? Communication still just crit. It's absolutely critical, right?

At the meeting, once again, smile. You know, remember, like I said, in the beginning, don't make it all about business. Ask probing questions, be curious, learn about them and be quiet. Shut up. I mean, on the best possible way, shut up and listen, listen to them. Let your customers talk, let your prospects talk, let them tell their story.

The more they're talking, the more you're learning. That is what you need to be doing at these meetings. You need to be learning. You need to be taking notes. You need to be understanding the pain points. So that you can better understand how you can potentially help this customer. And remember, don't be, don't be always looking for your leg in to talk, right?

Make sure that they are, they're done. That they have completely finished their thought or their sentence before you chime in. And if, like I said, if you're like me, and sometimes you can zone out. Take notes, take notes, it'll keep you in the game. And you know, I had to learn this the hard way too. So don't be afraid to have a notebook with you and just let them know ahead of time.

Hey, if you don't mind, like I like to take notes when I'm listening. It just helps me to better reflect. Nobody's going to say don't take notes. Okay, no one's going to say that. So if you got to like explain to them why you take notes or it's not a big deal, but taking notes, it can be incredibly effective in meetings.

And I've been doing it for the better part of a decade now. I've just, it just works for me. So it may work for you too. So take notes. Okay. So remember, we want to ask probing questions. We want to be personal. We want to be quiet. And remember like the business always comes, the business will always come.

Don't be afraid that the business is not going to come up in a conversation at a meeting. It always comes up. Sometimes when business is the last five minutes of the meeting, that's the best business meeting you'll ever have because typically by the time they get there, if they've liked you, they've liked the conversation, they want to work with you.

They're going to say, Hey, great. You know what? This has been awesome. I think we can work together. Send us a proposal. Like I've been in meetings like that where the last five minutes, that's all it was. Yeah. We have some opportunities come up. I'll get them to you right after this meeting. I'll let you know, you know, where you can send a proposal to or what we need, and then you can let us know how you're going to fill it.

I've been in so many meetings where that's how it ended up because the rest of the conversation was just talking about life and the kids and motorcycle riding and I don't know, target shooting or whatever else we were talking about that month. That's all that needed to happen for the business to happen.

We just had to create a relationship. We had to create a rapport. We had to build trust. And once we did all those things, the business was coming. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. The business always comes when you have the meeting. Be a person first. The business will come. Mark my words on that. All right.

So, what is our takeaway? Communicating effectively is not just critical in BD, but in every aspect of your life. Practice communication daily and make it a critical part of all your interactions. Okay. Shoutouts this week. Samuel Scott, Colin Christensen, Colin Harms, Jesse Schewchuk, Rodney Lover, and Conrad Leger.

You guys are awesome. Thank you for your continued support of the Business Development Podcast. Honestly, the show would not continue without all your support, guys. I appreciate Each and every one of you, each and every one of my business development listeners. I love you all. Thank you for your continued support.

Oh, one of the cool things that I totally forgot in the beginning here capital business development and the business development podcast are going to be. At the OEG trade show, the Oilers Entertainment Group trade show in Edmonton at Roger's place on October 17th. We will have a booth. We will have information.

I will be there. Cole will be there. And you guys come on, come on down, come say hi. If you're in the Edmonton area and you want to come and meet the team at the Business Development Podcast, have a little conversation. I would love to meet you. Come by our booth. We're going to be at the OEG trade show on October 17th, hosted by the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce.

This has been episode 67 of the Business Development Podcast. Until next time, we'll catch you on the flip side.

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

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