Supercharge Your Business Development: The Power of Structure and Organization

Supercharge Your Business Development: The Power of Structure and Organization

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 145 of the business development podcast. And today we're chatting all about organization and structure and how mastering these things will absolutely change you and your business forever. Stick with us. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: 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 145 of the business development podcast. My gosh, we're trucking along.

We're going to be at episode 150 before you know it. And my gosh, do we have some absolute rockstar experts coming on? I am so grateful that I get to come on and do this show with you guys every week. I really am. Like it seems unreal that we've gotten to 145 episodes already and won't be long till we're at 150 and then 200.

But as the time goes on, one thing really remains the same. And it's you guys, it's our amazing rockstar audience. I couldn't be more grateful for each and every one of you. I couldn't be more grateful for all of our amazing experts who have taken their time to share their journeys with us, their expertise, and their lessons learned.

We really do benefit from all of that as a whole. And it's really what makes the Business Development Podcast such an amazing adventure. And just want to say guys, whether this is your first episode or your hundred and 45th episode, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for joining us on this journey.

Thanks for reaching out to me and letting me know how it's affecting your life. Some of the best messages I got guys, I look forward to them all the time. So. Thank you to those of you who have done that. Thank you to those of you who have left us a written review, rated our show, followed our show. It really is the lifeblood of this show, guys.

And I just want to say thank you as we got into episode 145 today. Couldn't do it without you. Today, I wanted to chat very much about organization and structure and how we can utilize these two things to become the most effective business development people we can be. And this is beneficial, guys, not just to business development specialists.

But to entrepreneurs, anybody in a leadership role, we need to get organized and structured, and we need to be consistent to have effectiveness over time, right? Consistency is what leads to effectiveness over time, and so organization and structure and the things that we do Consistently are the things that make us the most successful and kind of separate the experts from the people who are just winging it.

And so we're going to chat all about that today. But before we do, I wanted to give you guys a show update. We are sitting at this moment. This is June 25th. We are sitting at 170, 395 total downloads. We're closing in on 17 months of the BDP July 6th. Will be 17 months of the business development podcast.

We are sitting at 2, 222 followers on Apple podcasts and Spotify. Wow. That's a lot of twos weird coincidence. We have 1, 900 followers and growing on LinkedIn and we have expert guests book guys to November 4th. first of 2024. That is over 42 expert guests waiting to come on the business development podcast.

What an honor. That's so, so amazing. I'm so grateful. And guys, if you're looking for ways to just help this show out, really, it really is just supporting the show in these easy free ways. Guys, it's telling your friends and family. It's following us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Apple podcast, Spotify. It's giving us a rating wherever you can.

It really is these little things. It's sharing our posts when we post on LinkedIn or Instagram with your groups. It really is just building that community and that reach which doesn't cost a thing, guys. Those are the most powerful drivers for our show. And we could not do it without you. So, if you haven't had a chance to do that yet, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it if you would follow us on Apple Podcasts, Wherever you guys are, the business development podcast probably is.

And please do come on, join the community on LinkedIn, right? We talk, we comment on all of our all of our posts. We post multiple posts a week. Guys, LinkedIn is the main home of the business development podcast. It's where we have like a lot of the conversations. It's where you get to see the show update schedule.

We have the update schedule here for July coming up shortly. You'll get to see all of the guests we have coming and my gosh, do we have some rock stars coming in, in July guys. It is going to be amazing. And yeah, just come join the community. It really is. Right. We are we're a kind community. You can reach out to me anytime on LinkedIn guys.

I love to chat. And if there's any questions you guys have, feel free to send them on over podcast@capitalbd.ca I'm happy to answer questions. And I would love to do a community questions episode one of these days soon. So if you guys send me a bunch of questions, you send them and tag them a community questions episode.

I'd be happy to do it at a future time for you. Or if you just want to get a hold of me directly, just shoot me a message. Love to hear from you. Okay, let's just get into it. Organization and structure in business development is not just more effective. It gives you an easy roadmap to follow on a daily basis.

The difference between strategic success and luck falls down on how structured and organized you are, guys. And I am saying this from experience. experience. I really am. When I started my business development career, like many of you, I didn't have all of the organization and structure. I really was flying by the seat of my pants, which I know so many of you are, and it's not even your fault.

That's just, that's the way that business development has been done for a long time because that's Like I always say, you don't choose business development, business development chooses you. And usually you were an expert in something else. You were doing something else before you ended up in business development.

So most people don't have a roadmap. One of my goals with the business development podcast was to really help create that roadmap. And I think we've done a really exceptional job in 145 episodes of doing that. But, you know, we try to get better at this all the time. And whenever I learn something new, I like to come on here and re evaluate or re talk about a subject.

The reality is guys, 145 episodes. There's going to be things that like episode 15 that you may have missed. And so it's always important that we circle back to them. And organization and structure is always going to be one of the things we circle back on. And I think that many business development specialists are winging it.

But like I said, it's not their fault. Nobody ever taught them the ropes. There wasn't like a business development podcast, not even that long ago, right? Like there just wasn't, there wasn't a lot of great information for us. We were working off of. you know, outdated books and things that really helped. And there's definitely some great books out there that will help you.

But there wasn't a lot of stuff speaking directly to business development. So I try with every show, like I said, guys, to give you guys some amazing tips to be able to create your own structures, right? You don't have to follow mine, but you can create your own or you can follow mine. But what I can say is whatever you do, the structures you create will make you more effective.

If you follow them, right, I learned the hard way myself, but over time, I built my own five step system that we use at capital success comes from consistency over time and great structure and organization will make this possible for you. Okay, let's chat about organization first. What do I mean by organization?

I mean, like, guys, in the old days when I started business development, we still used a Rolodex. I'm not even sure many of you even know what that is. Like, if you're older, you probably do. But if you're younger, like, if you're younger than 25, you've probably never even seen a Rolodex. But it used to be this thing that we kept our business cards in.

And so whenever you'd go out, you know, prospecting, We used to do a lot of like manual prospecting. So I would go to client sites, I'd drop a brochure and I'd grab a business card. And this is how we would create our contact lists. Right. So my business, my business cards back in the day were literally like all over my desk.

Like I was not that organized. I had my, I had my Rolodex, but like I also had business cards everywhere. And then eventually I had a business card book and I tried to kind of get them all in there and keep track of it. But guys. Now we have this amazing, amazing tool called a CRM and a CRM is absolutely next level.

It's super, super effective. I love to use pipe drive, but you can use whatever you want. I just picked pipe drive because that's the one I was really familiar with. And we needed to standardize something at our company. And so that was the one we went with. But yeah, there's like HubSpot, there's Salesforce, there's all sorts of CRM systems you guys can ultimately use.

If you're doing coaching, now there's one like Kajabi, right? Kajabi is one that even I use coaching. But there's lots and lots of CRMs out there. What is important is that you have a central data area that you can input all the data for your customers, that you can keep all of your data and your customer contacts and your sales information and your customer information, your order information, all in one organized place.

It just makes your life better. So much easier. But either way, the whole point here is utilize your CRM daily, utilize it daily. I do have an affiliate link for pipe drive. Like I said, pipe drive is the one that we use. We've used it forever. If you want to check it out, I'll make sure that it's in the show notes of this particular show.

But Like I said, don't need to have it. Affiliate link will give you, I think, 30 extra days or gives you like double the amount of time on the trial. So if you want to check it out, go for it. Like I said, I'm not pushing pipe drive. It's just the one we use. It does everything I need it to do for the cost effective way.

But you can use whatever works for you. But the important thing is that we're using a CRM daily and with our CRMs, our CRMs are only as good as we are. And this is why organization starts to become very critical, right? You can use a CRM very, very poorly. And a lot of people are utilizing a CRM poorly, okay?

And what do I mean by poorly? When you utilize a CRM and you put in your contact information, it's you. You're manually putting in this data entry. And what I've seen is a lot of people taking shortcuts. They put in only a first name. They put in only a company name. They don't put the position or job title or phone number or email.

And then they have to circle back to this thing in a week, two weeks, a month, however long it is. And when they get back there, they don't know. They have to start from the beginning. They have to start from the beginning and track down all this information again. And so What I want you guys to get in the habit of is fully completing information in your CRM.

If you're entering a new contact, make sure that you have first name, last name, job title, company, position phone number, email, right? As much data as you can possibly get. Pack that CRM with data because you never know when you're going to need that data again. And then whenever you're making your digital introductions, your phone calls, things along those lines, Make sure that you're moving that company down the line.

Right? We always start a digital introduction. Then we move to contact made. Then maybe we move to back burner or future opportunity or meeting booked. Right? But we need to make sure that we're actually utilizing our CRM correctly, that we're doing the data entry, that we're putting the follow up dates in.

This is the one that gets missed the most. You guys forget to put the follow up dates in. And then suddenly your CRM looks super out of date. Anybody looking at it has no idea where you're at. And like, while you might say, well, I'm the only one looking at my CRM. Who cares? There's something about looking at your CRM and seeing what you actually have coming up to do that makes it beneficial.

It's like literally one of the features of the CRM is to show you what you have to do this week, or who you followed up with last week, or when the next follow up dates are, right? Utilize your CRM fully and completely. So the tip number one here in organization, start to use your CRM, use it to its full effectiveness.

Use every feature in it that you can because they are designed to help you. They are designed to remind you. They are designed to keep you current and to give you the best possible opportunity of closing that future client. Not to mention, if you completely fill out the data, let's say you have a great meeting with someone, but they don't buy immediately, great.

If you've completely filled out that data, you've put the meeting summary into the CRM, when you do circle back on it in 3 months, 6 months, or whatever, you have all of that data. You don't have to try to like rake through your emails to figure out what happened, or to try to guess what happened, it's all right there.

And that's what we want. We want our CRM to be this like, amazing place that we can just go to and grab all that information and not really need to go anywhere else. We can see it all in one place. We can make that follow up call. We can book that meeting, right? Let's utilize our CRMs daily and to their full effectiveness.

This will automatically help you like this will automatically put you in a whole nother level. If you start doing this, use a notepad guys. And I know this is like, I know I'm talking to a lot of, you know, younger generation. Guys, like, you know, I'm a millennial. I still use a notepad. I love notepads. I have a notepad every day.

Actually, I have I'm sitting at my desk recording this on my computer and I have three past notepads on my right hand side and my current notepad with my show notes for this show sitting in front of me. And yes, there's something about a notepad. There's something about having something written down that is powerful, right?

Like for me, when I do my digital introductions for the beginning of a week, what I do is I do all my digital introductions. I write them down as I'm going on and actually do my data entry on like Thursday or Friday. I do it ahead of my weekly report. And that way I'm kind of, I'm allowed to just kind of keep working throughout the week.

If I need to add something, I add something quickly. And then I do all that data entry at one time. To me, it makes me more efficient, makes me more effective. But not only that, Every single day that I'm doing work for a client or I'm doing work for capital, I have a top things to do today. The first thing I write down is top things to do today for XYZ client or top things to do today for capital business development.

And I'll usually write out anywhere between five and ten items that are critical to do this week and I check them off as I go along. But you know what? I get them done. And if you want to take this to even more efficiency, if you want to go even further with this, we'll get into it later, but Start to schedule the times that you're going to do each of these things in your calendar, just for that added horsepower, just for that added, I'm actually going to get this done this week.

And I think you'll find if you start to check off the things you need to do this week, those top five, those top 10 things. And you start to do this on a consistent basis, you are gonna have so much more success, you are gonna get so much more done than you ever thought possible because time management will change your life, and we'll get into that as we go on, but it really is one of those things where if you start to utilize these tools, it makes you like a superhuman, it makes you like A whole nother level.

But if you do not follow organization and structure, you cannot be this efficient. You cannot be this effective. You cannot be this coordinated. And you may get lucky, and you may start to book a meeting here and there. But you will start to book meetings on a consistent basis if you follow a structure on a weekly basis.

Okay? So, start to use your notepad. Start to write out top things to do this week. Track your digital introductions on page. Track your phone calls on page. You can enter the digital introductions later in the week, but I would always recommend as you're making the calls, do that in your CRM as you're going because It'll keep it fresh and it'll keep those notes accurate, right?

So I enter my phone calls as I'm making them and the data from those phone calls into the CRM, but I update my digital introduction stage of my CRM once per week after I've completed all my digital introductions for that week, okay? And I track those on my paper. So just kind of giving you an idea on how I do it.

You do it however you want, but this is how I've been doing it for over 10 years and it works very, very well for me. Detail is key, guys. Like I said, just making sure that you're keeping track of good notes. That you're keeping all the data that you're not half assing it. And I know guys like I'm, I'm speaking to myself.

I'm speaking to myself. If you're like one of those people right now who like doesn't enter great notes, who maybe was only putting first names in the CRM, maybe you weren't even doing that. Maybe you're just putting the companies in and you're not kind of updating that data. That was me. I was a slow learner.

I was a slow learner because I didn't start with a CRM. I started with an Excel spreadsheet, which I half assed, kept up to date. Plus my My handwritten notes and my Rolodex full of business cards. So it took me a while to get on board with CRM. And I like hate to admit that because I'm only 35. But it took me a little while to really get on board with using a CRM.

But now I couldn't imagine not using one. So I kind of want you to think about it from that standpoint. If I can do it, if I can get more effective with my data entry, so can you. You are not alone. I was there. Today can be the day that you say, all right, no more of that. I am going to keep detailed notes.

I'm going to be completely accurate on my CRM. I'm going to enter all the contact details. I'm going to enter everything from this point forward and mark my words. It will change your life. Okay. All right. Effective calendar use. All right. We just talked about this effective calendar use, right? What do I mean by this?

Your calendar if you get time management right and this is something that I'm learning to you like I am by no means like an expert on time management I have really started to get control of my time as I became an entrepreneur so I would say like really I'm probably only like four years into getting better at time management so I am by no means the expert on the subject what I can say is I get more done when I schedule my time correctly, I get more done when I can kind of bank my time or set my time aside or start to use my calendar and live by my calendar.

Especially now, like I booked so many meetings guys, like I have meetings for this podcast, I have meetings for capital, I have meetings for clients, I have meetings for coaching, like I have to like, I have to like balance my calendar in a way that I didn't even think was humanly possible once upon a time.

So just put it this way. I have gotten so good at utilizing my calendar using tools like Calendly to schedule my time, schedule meetings. But the point is, is that if you want to be effective, you want to be like a crazy busy entrepreneur, but is also getting things done and you're not missing things, you have to start to live by your calendar.

You have to start to schedule everything. And I really mean this like Everything guys, like even if you have like a lunch with your family or something like that, like schedule it in, like schedule everything, block out all your time and make sure that you're living by that calendar. If you say you're going to make calls for one hour between nine and 10 o'clock, make your calls between nine and 10 o'clock.

Trust me. Trust me. If you start to do this, you're going to be able to get so much more done in the time you work than you ever have before. Because if you were like me, you were never managing your time this way. You were never managing your time this effectively. And so. Now, when I need to be super effective, I need to be more effective than I've ever been as an entrepreneur, as a podcaster, as a coach, I have to be more effective than ever at this point.

So I have to use time management, but what I'll say is start to use your calendar, use it on a daily basis, check it first thing in the morning when you live by it, that way you'll never miss a meeting. I've been guilty of missing meetings because I didn't check my calendar. If you live by your calendar and you check it first thing in the morning, that won't happen to you.

So start to live by your calendar. If you want to be super effective, you want to be organized, you want to be structured, Start to bank your day by your calendar. Yeah, things come up, they change, shift things around. But if you live by your calendar, it will change your life. You will be more effective.

There's no two ways about it. You will be more effective. You will do more. You will schedule more. You'll book more meetings. You just will do more as an entrepreneur, as a business development specialist. So start to live by your calendar. Start to schedule all your time. The time for calls, the time for digital introductions, the time for data entry, the time for meetings.

Schedule it all and watch it turn around. Meeting summaries, guys, this is something that especially in 2023 and on with the advent of AI, meeting summaries are, they're worth their weight in gold, guys, right? Like in the old days, you would literally have a meeting, you would quickly maybe send an email or like update your CRM with like the details of that meeting, right?

But now you can literally record the meetings and then have an AI summarize the whole thing for you. It's a game changer. It's a total game changer. We use a tool, a capital called tactic, tactic dot IO. Don't quote me on that. I think it's called tactic dot IO, but it's called tactic and it works absolutely amazing.

And what it does is you hop into a meeting and it'll record the meeting and then it'll pump you out a detailed summary of what was discussed, what the key takeaways were. And don't be afraid to copy that information. Obviously, guys, make sure you're asking permission. Again, Of your clients, let them know that you are recording this and make sure they're okay with that.

Not everybody is cool with it. So let me just say like first off, make sure that you are being honest about it. If it's recording, let them know. Everybody should have the right to opt out if they don't want to, but it does make you considerably more effective and I would recommend Tactic. It does a great job.

But yeah, take this, take this information, take these meeting summaries and put them into your CRM. And my gosh, you have more detailed notes than you have ever had before. You can send a summary to everybody who needs to know what the heck happened. You can have, like I said, more data than ever before.

More key takeaways. Like, you know, You can just be more effective with meeting summaries. So start to take those meeting summaries, guys. Find whatever program works for you. Like I said, I've used Tactic. I don't get paid by them. I just use it and it works really well. But there's lots of other ones as well, and they're popping up all the time.

So don't be afraid to start to utilize tools like AI tools like that. To your benefit, especially when you're doing meetings. Okay, so figure out your meeting summaries, find a way to update that data and start to use them on a regular basis. Weekly BD meetings guys will also help you immensely. If you're a business development manager, if you're a business development specialist and you work in a company and right now you guys do not have a weekly BD meeting with the stakeholders, the operations team the director of sales, maybe the president.

It's time to start implementing a weekly BD meeting where everybody gets in a room and talks about what's happening. You would be surprised at how much is actually going on outside of the BD team, with the operations team, with the president. We need to work as a team, right? Business development does not happen in a silo.

Business development is a team environment. And so we do weekly BD meetings with all of our clients. We live by them. They're incredibly effective. And I would say, If you are not currently having a weekly BD meeting, we like to have it on the first day of the week. So if you start work on Monday or Tuesday, have it on that day, it doesn't take long.

45 minutes guys is a ton of time, a ton of time for BD meeting. You could probably even cut it down to 30 minutes. It's just about chatting about what do you got coming up this week? What meetings do you have scheduled? What's looking hot? What is everyone else working on? Are there any other opportunities that's worth chasing?

You'll be surprised at how this like little collaborative atmosphere starts to become a really great space. And then once again, take a meeting summary of the meeting, you have a full meeting summary of what's going on that week, what everybody's working on, and it will supercharge your ability to do business development on behalf of your company.

And then guys, of course, weekly reports. And I get it. Nobody likes reports. Nobody likes reports. Like, everybody wants to just be like, yeah, I did what I need to do. But Weekly reports are not just for you, Mr. and Mrs. business development person. They are for everybody else in your organization who is a stakeholder who needs to know what is happening.

Not to mention, it does keep you on point, it keeps you accountable to what you need to be doing. But it also keeps everybody else in the loop and you can utilize those weekly report data over time to check your effectiveness to start to measure statistics for your company out of how many meetings do you have do you close deals things like that things that are incredibly valuable that you can start to pull off of that meeting report data so a week ending business development report that you fill out for yourself.

Maybe you send it to the operations team just to keep them all in the loop. Incredibly beneficial. It really does help not only you today and to keep you on point today, but it also gives you a lot of future statistics that you can put together in like a six month report or a one year report, which really does start to paint a big picture as to what your business development program looks like.

Okay. So I know no one likes weekly reports. I live by them and you should too. Okay, and now we are going to get into structure. So what do I mean by structure? By structure, I mean things that you live by and that you do on a consistent basis. Structure and process are very similar, but structure Is like, you can have a process and not follow it.

Structure is about following your processes. Following your daily routines. Making your daily routines work for you and holding yourself accountable to doing them, okay? The difference between success and failure 99 percent of the time was Was there structure? Did you follow it? Most of the time when you fail at something, you stop following the structure, you stop following the process, you stop doing that thing that makes you successful over time, or you started winging it.

And whenever we wing it, yeah, we get lucky sometimes, sure, I've gotten lucky, I made 5 phone calls, booked 5 meetings once, but I probably couldn't do it on a repeated basis, right? And that's what we need to remember is that it's consistency over time that leads to success. It's structure over time that leads to success.

It's not winging it. It's not five calls here and six calls there and 12 calls there. And oh, we didn't book meetings this week. So I better get on the calls and book a whole bunch of them. That's like, well, yeah, like what you're doing is you're playing catch up. If you were just to be consistent and make 15 or 20 calls every single day, you would have success all the time.

You, you wouldn't allow room for error. Or you could, you could adjust because you'd know what wasn't working, right? There's something about structure and consistency over time that just, they supercharge you. They turn you from a great entrepreneur, Or a great business development person into like a superhuman entrepreneur or superhuman business developers, right?

Like it's that different. It's that big. And if you currently don't have a business development process or a structure that you're going to follow on a consistent basis, today is the day, man. Today is the day. Make your choice. Say from now on. If I'm working business development, I'm going to make 20 calls, and I'm going to make 20 digital introductions every day that I do this.

It's, it's not that much. Really, you'd be surprised at how fast you can crush out 20 calls. Like, you'd probably crush out 20 calls in an hour if you really, really want to. Like, it's not impossible by any means. And you can do 20 digital introductions in probably 15 minutes, like it is not that hard. Yeah, there's data entry after the digital introduction sure adds a little bit of time.

But point is that it's not asking that much for you to commit to something like that. It's in your head. The reason that you haven't committed to structure is because you're afraid. Like you hit that point where you're like, Oh, I don't know if I could do that. I don't want to commit. Like we don't want to commit to things.

I get it. I get it. But it will change you. It will. Change your business, and is that not worth it? Do you have to hit the wall before you're gonna do this? And I would say like, most people do. So like, if I'm getting you and you're not there, that's cool. But I think one day you're gonna hit the wall where you didn't make the sales you need to make.

Where you might be starting to get into trouble. You might be starting to get antsy. And when that moment comes, I want you to remember this. I want you to remember this show. And I want you to remember that the solution for you is structure. The solution for you is building a daily process that works for you.

Okay, like I said, I always recommend that you make at least at least 10 to 15 calls, at least 10 to 15 calls every single day that you are doing direct business development work. 10 to 15 calls, maybe 15 to 20 digital introductions a day is a great amount to aim for. If you can do more, great, but I don't want to overload you.

I don't want to overwhelm you. Like the funny thing is, if you get good at this, you can book meetings with 10 to 15 calls a day all the time. It's really comes down to like practice and over time, if you're doing this in a structured way, you're going to get really great at it. You're going to realize, okay, this pitch didn't work.

This is where I can change it a little bit. You're going to figure out what works for you and you're going to get way, way, way more effective at doing what you need to do, which is book meetings that lead to repeat business and relationships over time, right? The key here is holding yourself accountable.

You have to hold yourself accountable, which is where that scheduling time in your calendar really starts to come in. If you're like me and you have days like, like, get it, like, I've been doing this forever. I've been doing business development, my gosh, like forever. And I still have days I don't want to make my calls.

But if I have it in my calendar, I live by my calendar and I live by my calendar. And so I make the calls. And so I schedule the time, right? Between 10 o'clock and noon today, I'm making calls. I'm going to make 20 calls today. I'm going to make 30 calls today. I just write it down on my things to do today.

And I do it, guys. I just do it. When you decide to start living by your calendar, and you decide to start living by structure, and you commit to a certain amount of effort each day, Inevitably, you're going to succeed. Our five step system at Capital Business Development is so reliable and so dependable that I can guarantee meetings.

I know that if I put in X amount of effort, I can damn near guarantee X amount of meetings every single month. And so on behalf of our clients, when we sit down and we figure out what they need to do We do. We literally guarantee a certain level of performance because we can. Because statistically, we know we can.

We know that if we put in this much effort on a consistent basis, no matter how big the client, eventually we'll get them. And so it really is one of those things, guys, where like the statistics, as you start to keep track of your structure, As you start to keep track of your results, as you start to commit to something on a daily basis, it starts to become predictable and measurable, which is what we need in business development.

We need predictability. We need to know how many opportunities we have coming down the pipe. And when you know roughly how many calls it takes to book a meeting, You can also monitor performance. You can talk to your business development people and say, you know, like statistically, our company, we book a meeting like every 11 calls and you're doing it every 25.

What's going on? And you can start to measure people, you can start to measure your own company performance, which is what we all want, right? Like, we don't want woo woo, we want real results. We want tangible, credible results that we can bank on because as business owners, we have to bank on something. We have to bank on opportunity.

We have to know we're going to have opportunities coming down the pipe. And tracking your information, following a consistent process. is the way to do that. Okay, you need to follow an active marketing process, right? Like if you guys don't know what that is, you can go back to many shows that I have on active marketing.

But active marketing ultimately is direct contact with the customer, right? Either via phone, via direct email, knowing you have the right contact, the right contact information. We need to be doing this like 80 percent of the time. We need to be falling back on our digital marketing on our passive advertising 20 percent of the time.

Right? If we're working B to B, this is the formula. This is the formula that will lead to success for you. You can't be following 80 percent on the digital marketing and only making calls when you feel like it. It's not going to work. It is not going to work. You're not getting the customer. ahead of their problem.

And if you're not getting them ahead of their problem, you might as well not be getting them at all because you're competing against every Joe Blow and every other company out there who may or may not do what you do when they're searching for it. They may not find you. The reality is you need to get people ahead of the need and active marketing does that.

Making these 20 calls a week does that. Sending direct emails, introducing yourself and your company, asking for a meeting does that. Do more of what works, which is get in front of real people and start building real relationship because business development is a long game. It's not a quick win. It's not about like, Oh, I made a call.

I'm going to book a meeting today. I'm going to have work next week. That's not how it works. That's not how it works. You have to get ahead of the need. But if you get ahead of the need, you were going to find you have so much more opportunity than you ever could have imagined. Okay. Take ownership for your success and stop blaming external factors.

I am so guilty for this, guys. You know, I'm going to tell you straight up, like, I remember being a relatively new business development person and say, summer coming, summer coming, right? We're in the summer right now. And summer coming and saying, oh, well, everybody's on vacation. Like, I can't get ahold of anybody.

Everybody's on vacation. And then I just wouldn't make the calls. But of course, if I don't make the calls, I'm not going to get the meeting. Like, how dumb of me, right? Like, how, what was I thinking? Point is, what I should have said to myself was, sure, people may be on vacation, but guess what? I leave voicemails 80 percent of the time anyway, so they'll get me when they get me.

And I'm just going to keep making the calls, because over time, I'm going to get the one person who's not on vacation today. I'm going to talk to the company who has a need maybe today or tomorrow or next week, or when they get back from vacation, they're going to get back to me. That was the mindset I should have had.

Don't even change. Do the same thing consistently. Stop being intermittent and I would be more successful. Guys, it took me too long. Honestly, it took me too long to realize this. And so I would recommend to each and every one of you, consistency. No matter the season. No matter the time of year. I don't care whether it's Christmas, summer, Thanksgiving, Easter.

Keep going. Keep going. Do the same things. Stay consistent with it. Leave the voicemail. They will get back to you. The opportunities will come. Like I said, I, I remember in the old days, I used to do brochure drops. So we would go around to like different companies, I'd drop the brochure, and I'd I remember having a company call me and say, Kelly, I've had your brochure on my desk for two years.

Two years! And now we need you, so I'm gonna give you a call. That's what happens, guys. If you start to do this, Opportunities will just come. Work you did six months ago will pay off. That'll be the time they need it. They'll reach out to you. But if you weren't consistent about this, if you weren't doing those 20 calls, you may have never had that opportunity because you never reached out to them.

Right? And so I want you guys to be consistent over time. I want you to be structured over time. These things will lead to the most success that you could have. Remember, you're going to have bad weeks and you're going to have good weeks. But success. Will happen for you over time if you're consistent, right?

There are going to be weeks that you make 20 calls and you get not a single call back. And it happens. And then there are going to be weeks that you make 20 calls and all 20 call you back. And it happens. And, but most of the time you're going to make those 20 calls, maybe 5 to 10 will call you back.

Great. But over time, it averages out to success over time. You're going to book more meetings than if you did not do this, you were going to close more business than if you did not do this, becoming organized and structured takes an active choice. And I want you to make that choice today. And I want you to watch your world change.

You got this. All right, guys, that takes us to the end of our episode today. If you're hearing this and you're like, Kelly, I know organization and structure is hard. We're not doing this right now at our company and you want some help. If you guys are having trouble with, with your business development program, with implementing a structure and process at your organization, this is something I can definitely help you guys.

My coaching program is designed. To walk you through all the steps. We're going to create a business development process. We can implement my five step system or do something that works a little better for you. But at the end of the day, we are going to set you guys up for success. It's a three month program.

It's really quick guys. And you guys are going to come out the other side, ready to take on the world. So if this is speaking to you today, and you think you might want some help with this, Book a free discovery call. You can do that right on the capital business development website, right on the business development podcast website, or straight from my LinkedIn.

You can do it at any of those locations. Shout outs this week. Harji Singh, Govind Khosa, Jillian Schecher, Brett Erik, Kaleeem Ullah. Jodi Davey, Daryl Curry, Melanie Whittingham, Rodney Lover, Shawn Neels, Vince Phillips, Colin Harms, Gary N, Bryan Hayes, Tatsiana Zametalina, Nate Simpson, Tanzeel Ansari, Farzin Jamatlou, Sophie Baran, Martin Blessing, and Will Bonell.

Until next time, this has been the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. He 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.