High Quality Leads, How to get better opportunities!

High Quality Leads, How to get better opportunities?

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. On this week's episode, targeting high quality leads. We're gonna teach you all about how to pick the right people so that you can get more opportunity. 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, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. It's my pleasure to be back on with you today, and I'm really looking forward to today's episode because I think it's gonna help a lot of you.

Today's episode, we're gonna spend some time chatting about. How to target high quality leads for your business. I think that this is gonna be an incredibly beneficial episode for you where we are gonna take some time to teach you how to do the correct things to get to the right people. This work, it's gonna take a little bit of effort to do correctly, but I guarantee you the payoff will be worth the effort.

I first just wanna start this episode by just acknowledging everybody who has been sharing, liking, subscribing to my podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to do this for you. I am incredibly thankful to all of you. I wanna let you know that we have just surpassed the 250 downloads mark, which.

Frankly, I didn't really know what to expect when I started this when I started this podcast, I wasn't really sure what the growth rate would be, but I just wanna say I, I didn't think that it would be as well received as it has been. So, and for those of you who have took some time to just shoot me a LinkedIn message or send me send me a message over the website, I just wanna say thank you so much.

It is so encouraging to know that this work that I'm doing is actually helping people. , it's sometimes hard to tell from this standpoint, right? On this side of the mic, we don't, we don't necessarily know, like podcast analytics aren't super great. So we don't really get to know unless you are messaging us, shooting us emails, subscribing, rating, leaving us comments.

We don't really know how we're doing. So just wanna say, I, I love these comments guys. I love them. I love the messages. Please send them, send them to me with some questions. Email me your questions to podcast@capitalbd.ca. Anything that I can do to help you guys, I want to do it. I do. The whole point of this podcast is to help people grow their business, and that is, that is my passion.

That is what I'm interested in. And if you have some time in your day to just drop me a line to to recommend me to a friend, to recommend me to a colleague, to subscribe to our show, as well as maybe rate it. Oh, eternally grateful. Eternally grateful, and I love you all. Thank you so much. It is really encouraging and it is allowing me to kind of keep doing this and feeling really great about it.

So just wanna say thank you to those of you who have dropped me line. I appreciate it immensely. Okay, let's get started. Targeting leads for business requires you to understand who is buying your product. Okay. This is where a lot of you are stumbling, and I know it because I stumbled here too. When I first started doing business development, I was kind of given the instruction like, okay, just sell this product.

And it's like, great. But if you don't know the steps on how to figure out who to talk to, you will burn and waste a lot of time. And let's get real. We don't have time to be wasted. Let's just, let's, let's skip a little bit of effort here. Let's just have a quick conversation on how you go about doing this.

And it's different depending on what your product or service is, and guess what? It is not always the supply chain manager who you need to reach out to. Yes. Typically, at some point you will need to go through supply chain. However, they may not be interested in hearing from you about your amazing product or service unless it's being referred to by the right person within the company.

And I want to reiterate this again. They need it to be referred to them by the right person within their company. So let me just give you an example. Let's assume that you are a welding company and you sell, let's say welding and non-destructive services. Okay? If you reach out to s scm, yeah, they might be interested in chatting with you.

However, SCM is not typically the people who buy your product, are they? No. For those of you in my audience, and I know there's lots of you who are in the quality world, It is the, the quality director or quality manager of that company. And if you didn't know that and you kept targeting, say, the president of the company, the scms, the buyers, you're gonna get this ring around and you may not get to the right person for 20 contacts, and that's gonna be a serious, serious problem.

You're gonna waste days and days and days trying to figure this out. So what you need to do is you need to do that work upfront. Okay? So I'm just gonna give you a little bit of tips, figure out what you're selling, you know, what your product and service is, and try to just think through your head. Who on that side is the likely person buying your product?

It could be a project manager, it could be a superintendent, it could be a quality manager, it could be a safety director or a safety manager. You need to look at what your service or product is. Think about who on that site or on that company. Would be utilizing that service. And try to start there. That is critical.

If you start with the right person, you are going to be infinitely more successful than if you keep trying to market the wrong people. So just a, just an intro there. The next part is, so you've set up your crm, you've created top quality marketing materials. Your website is stunning. Now what? Now it's time for target list guys.

So we're gonna get into this quickly. Target. Target lists need to be based on three things. You need to base your target list based on the industries that will buy your products or services. Is it oil and gas? Is it forestry? Is it retail? Is it manufacturing? Figure it out. Who is the most likely person to be or, or industry to be buying your product?

Then what you need to do is start compiling a list of the top companies in that industry that you want to work with. What I recommend is put together 50. Put together 50 companies and say three or four different industries that could buy your service or product. And that's a really, really great place to start.

You need to break this down. You need to break this down by location. Best location to start is where you're at. So you know, if you're in Edmonton, if you're in Calgary, if you're in Ontario, if you're in Toronto, whatever, you need to start in your area and work your way out. Why? You are the most competitive in your area.

You're more likely to get traction. You're more likely to be able to have face-to-face meetings, which are important, and you are able to do physical marketing, which we will talk about later on in this show. The next part is you need to utilize Google to help you. So let's say that, you know, you put together, say 20 companies that you can think of, of the top of your head, or that you've done the research for, and you can think of these 20 companies would be ideal clients for you.

Well, guess what? There's a lot more than that. If you. Put your head out there and start thinking about it. There's probably lots of sub-companies or supporting companies that also need your services or products. And so a good place to do this is Google. Yes, I know. Great. Big secret. Google say distribution companies or manufacturing companies and then search your area and I guess what you're gonna have Google populate you a list of like 50 to a hundred different companies.

Yeah. You're going to have to look through, you're gonna have to do a little bit of detective work to make sure that these companies are relevant. But I'll tell you what, in my experience a lot of the time, these companies are relevant. They are. And and it'll give you lists of companies that you might not have even thought of to market to.

And this is just a really great tool and you don't wanna think a lot of BD people who are in the know, do utilize it to create target lists. But what you wanna do is you wanna start with your top 20 or 30 or 50 companies, and I guarantee you, you have them. I know, I know. If you sell products or services, you can think of who you wanna work with.

You know, if you're in Canada or in you're Alberta, it's like everyone wants to work with the big oil and gas companies. Everyone wants to work with the big manufacturing and distribution companies. There are a lot of supporting service companies that also would likely need your service who also utilize and work with those big companies.

So if you break it down and you just start thinking about it from like a distribution or manufacturing layout, you will start to figure out, okay, there are sub companies here that also need my products or services, and you definitely need to add those to your target list. The next part now. So we have our target list created.

We have the companies now what? Now we need to find the right people. How can we go about doing this? We can start with the website. You would be surprised how many companies on their website list their executive directors, the executives that you need to get in touch with. So in the case of if you're like, you know, I'll go back to my earlier example.

If you're looking for safety directors or you're looking for quality directors, or you're looking for s SCM people, guess what? Or Presidents, guess what? Their contact information or names at bare minimum are usually on the website. So a really great place to start when you're looking for people is just to check the website, see if they have a executives list, see if they have people who work for us or an employee's bio.

And a lot of time if you hop on there, you can find some people that you can at least start with. Remember, BD is a detective's job, okay? It's never gonna just be laid out for you on a platter. You're gonna have to work for it, which is why it's an entire job, however, You have to just know how to do it.

And you have to just keep following the leads. One lead to the next lead to the next lead. And if you follow enough of these, you are going to get to the right place. Now what? Okay, you can ask someone who may know. Well, guess what? If you're in an industry, likely you have industry friends, just ask 'em, guys, you know what?

You'd be surprised how many times people are just willing to, willing to help you. And this could even be competitors. I've found a lot of times. That I've made friends with, competitors I've made friends with, with other people in the industry who I can just drop a line to. Or maybe in my case, since it's, I have, I am in bd you know what I mean?

I can work, I can ask my employees or I can ask some some partners that we've worked with or, heck, I just have a lot of BD friends, so I can just call and say, Hey, John, I I'm, I'm working for this company here. I'm trying to get into this company. Do you by chance know who the SCM guy is here? Do you know who I should reach out to for these services?

And you would be surprised how often people say, you know what? I know exactly who you need to talk to. Give me two seconds. I'll drop you their information and we'll go from there. And guys, oh my gosh, that is so helpful. I can't tell you how many times that I've just been struggling to get the right person and just asking somebody for a little bit of help.

And this can also be a tactic that you guys can utilize on LinkedIn. So a way that you can utilize this on LinkedIn, which works really effectively. If you say add somebody from that company. Let's say it's like a high level person, or let's just say it's a, it's a field worker. You can always just drop a line and say, Hey John I'm with ABC company.

We're struggling a little bit to get the right contact at your company. Is there any chance that you could maybe point me in the right direction or just drop me a name or potentially just forward on our information? And you know what I would. I get, it's not a hundred percent of the time, but I would say like a solid 60 to 70% of the time they get back to you and say, you know what?

Yeah, a hundred percent. You can either send it to me or you should try this person. I would say it's incredibly effective and you can utilize that quite regularly. And like I said, just add a few people from the company, shoot 'em. Just a quick message just saying, Hey, thanks so much for the connect, really appreciate having you on my network.

I'm having a little bit of trouble getting to the right person in your company. Can you maybe help me out? I think a lot of the times, guys, you're gonna find that they do actually help you. The next part, obviously, we just kind of talked on briefly utilized socials. I, I kind of named one way to go about it.

The other way is potentially you can just connect with the right person. So you've done the legwork, now you've figured out, okay, I need the quality director at ABC Company to get my product out. Now I'm gonna hop on LinkedIn. I'm gonna search the company, I'm gonna search people and I'm gonna scroll down until hopefully I find the quality director and then you add them and then you're off to the races, cuz now you have the direct contact of somebody you actually need who can buy your product. And if you do this part right, where you make that introduction and you take it into the contact stages, you are going to likely be fairly successful in, at bare minimum introducing your company and product, which is what the goal is to begin with.

The other part is, Understand who you were looking for. So I went over this briefly before. Okay. I know a lot of times people will tell you, well, supply chain, supply chain, just get in touch with supply chain. Get in touch with the buyers. Yeah. I know. I, it works sometimes. Okay. But once again, you have to remember, supply chain is dealing with hundreds of vendors, hundreds of products, hundreds of service.

They don't necessarily have the time to try to do the, the research figure out, do we need your service or product today? So the reality is there could be a huge demand for your product or service, and s SCM doesn't even necessarily know about it because it's being handled by project managers. It's being handled by the directors of, of whatever the the department is.

And if you don't get to the right people and you just get to scm, let's say you get to s scm, which is also can be incredibly challeng. You still may be waiting for quite some time before that director reaches out to SCM and says, Hey, you know what? We're actually running, we're struggling on this part.

Can you go out to the market and try and find this product or service. Guys, they basically, within a company, they gotta be hurting. They gotta be really, . Struggling to find this internally to reach out to tm. So it is very critical to be effective to find the people in the company that actually need and request your product.

Cuz if you can get to. They can fast track the SCM process for you. They can fast track the vendor application, the rfq, they can make sure you get one. You might not have even got one even if you were on the SCM list, maybe they got five or six other vendors on there that are frankly better than you because they actually have worked with them before.

So they look at it as well, we've worked with them. We know they can provide the service. We're gonna start there. We're not gonna start with company number five on the list, unless you make a really, really good connection with the guy who's asking for that service where they'll just say, We would like to send an RFQ or an RFP or we would like to add company ABC to the vendor list because we think they might be able to do it better than the other companies on our list.

 SCM just gets in line typically and says, okay, we'll we'll look into it. We'll give it a try. So getting to the right people is very critical, and if you do the detective work, it can take a little bit of time. Don't rush it. This will be incredibly effective for you. Make initial contact softly before you call. Once again, we chatted about this. Let's say you've done the legwork. You've figured out who the right person is to talk to at ABC Company. You know who it is. You, you know, you maybe have them on LinkedIn, or you maybe have their email, or you maybe have their phone number. What I would suggest is to make a soft call.

So what What we like to do at Capital is we like to make a soft introduction before we just cold call someone. So it's not so hard. It's not like you're coming in completely, cold, which is incredibly hard. It's incredibly hard to have that initial discussion if they don't even have a general idea of who you are.

They haven't come across your company before. The way that I like to do this is I like to send introductions. I like to send like an email introduction with the brochure attached. I like to send a LinkedIn quick introduction with the brochure attached. Usually just a big thank you, just, hey, really appreciate you adding me on the network.

Thank you so much for your time. I work with ABC Company. We provide this service. I think you might be interested in it. I've attached a brochure. Thanks for taking the time to look at it. Have a great day. Kelly Kennedy. That's it. That's it. It's really, really not that hard guys, but if you do these soft introductions, it kind of primes them a little bit.

So when you do finally get their, their phone number, or when you do finally get their email and you make, you make a, an active contact where you, you reach out and you say, Hey, I'm John. I'm with ABC Company. Did you get my message? Did you have a chance to review the initial message? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I've seen it.

I've seen it. Thanks for calling. I appreciate your time. And then, then you're, you're off to the races, cuz then it's just a matter of, hey, well great. You've already looked at it. Could we potentially line up just an introduction meeting to chat a little bit more about my products and services? Not to mention I would really love to learn more about ABC company.

Maybe you can bring me up to speed about what products and services you typically do, how you handle this product and service typically, and maybe what your upcoming needs are. And they're gonna be far more likely to say yes if they've had a nice warmup contact. If you if you don't know who's buying, how can you be effective?

So this is the other side of it, right? Like you don't want to waste your time. You don't wanna waste your time knocking doors at companies, and you don't even know if you got the right person, because frankly, your time is limited, especially if you're a business owner doing this for yourself. You don't have any time.

I know it cuz I'm a business owner. I don't have any time. You have to maximize your time, which means that you have to make sure that the contacts that you are, you are reaching out to are high probability. Otherwise, you don't have time to waste. You're just, you're burning your bridges, you're spinning your tires, and you're gonna get frustrated.

You're gonna get annoyed, you're gonna get discouraged, and that's just nowhere to be, that's nowhere to be for you. So I really, really wanna help you here. And the way the most effective thing that you can do is do your research up front to try to figure out who buys your product. Who at the company actually buys your product?

Not scm necessarily. Who at the company actually buys your product? Is it a director? Is it a project manager? Is it a superintendent? and go from there. And, you know what I mean? This is the same for like manufacturing companies or anything. I, I'm using construction because I'm, I'm, I'm very well versed in construction.

I've worked in industrial construction realm for like 10 years, so I, I really understand it well, so I use it a lot in my examples, but this is, this carries over into anything that you are marketing to. It really does. It's not just construction. This would work for manufacturing companies, whether you need the plant manager, this would work for like food processing, same thing.

Maybe plant manager, rightly, you just need to. Who, who at the company would be potentially buying your product And then you're off to the races, cuz you're not gonna waste your time spinning your tires. So do the legwork. Do the detective work up front, don't spin your tires, and that way you're going to get where you need to go.

So you wanna reach out digitally. So we talked about this. Maybe touch them with LinkedIn. You know, I don't know. I don't know where you're doing your marketing. Maybe you do do it on Instagram, maybe you do do it on Facebook. I'm not sure. You want to make those connections digitally as best you can. Once you have the right person, see if you can find 'em digitally, see if you can drop 'em a line.

Make soft contact. That's a perfect first step. I want you guys also to think about something that's a little bit old school. Guess what guys? Old school works. It's old school. I get it. We're living in the digital age. We wanna do everything easy and passive. Easy and passive gives you shit results. I'm sorry. It does, it does.

You can spend all the money in the world on your Google AdWords, your on, on your on your LinkedIn boosts or your Facebook boosts. Guys, you know, it's, it's for brand recognition. Okay. I want you always, and you know, I, I nail this all the time, social media or LinkedIn or any type of passive marketing system where it's just popping up your ad where it's like click here, guys, it's just for, it's just for brand recognition because I guarantee you people are getting bombarded.

They're getting bombarded with ads. Okay? Like, like I've said it before, hop on your LinkedIn, scroll down. First five. First five posts are gonna be ads, guaranteed. They're gonna be ads. That's how much we are seeing. So you have to be really smart about the way that you are handling these ads. I really, really want you to be effective and to be effective.

Sometimes old school is the way to go about doing it. I'm a huge, huge advocate for active marketing. What is active marketing? Active marketing is actually calling somebody, doing real detective work to find the contact. Instead of just shooting, shooting for fish in a barrel and hoping that something lands, it's actually doing work.

It's physically figuring out who the right person is. Send an introduction, make a call, send an e-mail. Ask for a face-to-face meeting. It's, and in this case, we are going to move on to the next part. Physically drop a brochure. I know, I know. It seems a little bit crazy. You wouldn't believe how much business I used to do by physically driving to the company that I wanted to get the contact for.

Once again, this is a great way to get the right contact because maybe they're not on LinkedIn, maybe they're not on the website. Well crap. Now you need to figure out who the quality director is, or the safety director or the plant manager is at this specific location. And there's just not an easy way to do it.

Maybe you called the office and the office said, sorry, we screen calls. We're not interested in giving out employee information or giving that. Now what? Now you're, now you're, you're, you're stuck in the barrel. Right? Guess what? At almost every single office on this planet when you walk in the front door on the reception desk is a rack of business cards, and most important employees are typically in that rack of business cards.

What do you. Well, this is why I advocate for physical brochures. I advocate for physical brochures for two reasons. You, you should always give something to get something. So if you're going to get business cards, you should have either a business card of your own to drop or a brochure of your own to drop because it's just, it's just a good way to do business.

It's a good way you should give something to get something. I'm a huge advocate for it. I always have business cards or brochures on me at all times. I utilize them when I'm either dropping at an office or when I'm going to a business meeting. Why? Because it's just good practice. Have your information on you all the time.

But when you go to these offices, most of the time, like I said, if you get there, Most of the time on, on that front desk is that contact. It's, it's that there's, there's a whole section of business cards and you can typically find plant manager, quality director, safety director, or whoever you are trying to get, and it'll give you everything.

It'll give you their phone number, their email, their cell number, and it gives you the opportunity to drop your brochure and say, Hey, I would like you to give this to John. Drop their business, drop the business card, literally off their desk onto the piece of piece of brochure. and, and they'll take it right to him.

Boom. Now you know he's got it because you literally told them to give it to them. You are off to the races, so please don't be afraid to physically market your product. This is why we start locally, right? Because. You have the ability, if you're struggling to get to the right person, you always have the ability to drive there, to drop a brochure, to grab a business card, and then follow up with him after, and you already know that he's got it.

It's a really, really great tactic, guys. It is not outdated. It is not old school, and don't be afraid to do it. I know we're living in a post covid world where, oh, well we don't wanna leave the office, or we don't wanna leave our home. Like, what a pain in the ass. I get it. Maybe it is a pain in the ass, but it's going to be effective.

And what's more important to. Selling your products or services or being comfortable. Sometimes you gotta go a little bit outta your comfort zone to be effective. And this is a great way to do it and I highly, highly recommend it. Okay. So the takeaways we have made it, thank you so much for sticking around with me.

What are the takeaways from today? The takeaways are create industry specific target lists. You know, industry specific target lists that give you industry location and branches. This is a great way to break down your target lists. Know who to contact the most critical thing, literally the most important thing, the biggest takeaway I want you to take away today is to make sure that you know who in that business buys your product or service.

Because if you know who in the business buys your product or service, you are going to be a hundred percent more effective. You're not gonna waste your time and spend your wheels, and you're going to be able to move through these contacts and take them to the meeting stages faster than ever before. You need to utilize your connections.

So once again, don't be afraid to ask your friends, family, industry colleagues. Don't be afraid to add a couple people from the company on LinkedIn and just ask, don't be afraid to utilize your connections and ask for help to get where you want. Don't be afraid to drive to the office and ask for the right person.

Look at the, look at the desk. Is there business card right there? And remember, always bring a brochure. Always bring a brochure, business card, bring something to leave for for that person. Know who buys your products and don't be afraid to do some detective work. Guys, business development is all about a little bit of detective work, okay?

Nobody hands this stuff over to any of us. We have to look for it. We have to do some research. We have to look, but if you do this and you do this right, you are going to be incredibly successful. Don't be afraid to pick up the phone. Don't be afraid to send some emails. Don't be afraid to do a little bit of hard leg work to get good results, and I guarantee you, you will.

It's been an absolute pleasure to host this show for you today. Once again, you're talking to Kelly Kennedy of the Business Development Podcast. I would love it if you would come to my page and like, and subscribe. Drop me a line, send me some information. I've had some really, really great comments and messages sent to me on LinkedIn and I just wanna say to those of you that did that, thank you so much.

I can't tell you how much it means to me. I can't tell you how much it, it means to know that this information is providing value and the only way that I know what kind of value I'm providing is if you let me know. So really do appreciate the time and until the next time. You're listening to the Business Development Podcast.

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. Brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.