Synergizing Success: The Fusion of Active and Passive Marketing

Synergizing Success: The Fusion of Active and Passive Marketing

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 127 of the business development podcast. And today we're chatting all about synergy. How can we synergize active and passive marketing to exponentially grow our companies? Stick with us. This is a must listen episode.

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: Hello, welcome to episode 127 of the business development podcast. It's an absolute honor to be on with you guys today. Today's show is going to be all about active and passive marketing and how do we synergize it together.

But before we get into today's show, I wanted to give you guys some show updates. We had an absolutely amazing, amazing weekend. My gosh, we must've got like 15 or 20 new Apple podcast reviews over the weekend. And so for those of you that I did reach out to and asked if you could submit one for me, I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you so much for doing that. I know that leaving a review for a podcast can sometimes be a bit of a weird thing. I totally get it. Like I have left very few of my own. And so I am incredibly, incredibly thankful to all of the listeners of this show who hop on and take five, 10 minutes of their day to To go on Apple podcasts on Spotify and leave us a review, leave us a rating.

My gosh, does that ever just like melt my heart? I appreciate you guys immensely. This show cannot grow without people consistently doing things like that, leaving reviews, telling their friends and family members and listening on. And I know that you guys do that for us and I appreciate you immensely.

And thank you so much. We have a rockstar listenership on the business development podcast, and this show could not go on without your support. We were actually. Number 30 in entrepreneurship in Canadian entrepreneurship on Monday, which was amazing. We have really rode that like top 40, top 30, top 50 space off and on for the whole duration of this show for the most part.

And we are really, really working to break into those 20s because we know as soon as we get into those 20s, it's onward and upward to the tens, the teens, and hopefully eventually. That's where we're going with this show at some point here. I know we'll get there eventually, but we're slogging it out. It's definitely a battle and every review helps.

Every rating helps. Every time you tell a friend, a family member, a coworker to check out the business development podcast, it helps grow this show. And we could not, could not do this without you got a super, super cool situation. I was nominated for the connector of the year. In my home city of Edmonton for the Y. E. G. Startup Awards. So cool. It is by vote. I've gotten a lot of votes already. Thank goodness. We have some amazing supporters, but if you guys want to help me with that, that'd be super cool. If you had to my LinkedIn page, there's a couple different situations right now for you to vote on. It's really weird how sometimes just things line up. And I guess springtime people are doing awards.

So we have the quill podcast awards on till Friday. So if you're hearing this, hopefully you're hearing it on Wednesday and you can hop onto our page and give us a nomination ahead of Friday. That's the closure date for that one. But the YEG startup awards, I think there's still a few more days, but we're on page three.

So if you don't know anything about Edmonton or the businesses going on, that's fine. You can click into that. You can skip three pages forward. and nominate Kelly Kennedy for the connector of the year at Edmonton. That'd be so cool. It'd be such an honor to win an award in my home city. I think that's, you know, every entrepreneur, we all started somewhere and I started in Edmonton.

And so it is my home. Even though we have this worldwide tool that is the business development podcast, we preach the business development word worldwide, but it It's really cool to win things right here in Edmonton. So it would be a total honor if you guys would head on down to our LinkedIn page or just Google Y E G startup awards, and you can vote for us.

We're on page three under connector of the year for a Mr. Kelly Kennedy. That would be super cool. And I appreciate it immensely. Yeah, so Quill Podcast Awards, we touched on that briefly. Deadline is Friday. We've, you know, you guys are amazing. I know we've gotten a ton of votes already and it's so cool and I appreciate you guys.

We were fortunate enough last year to win Best Business Podcast 2023 and it would be really cool to win something similar here in 2024. So, you know, awards are nice. They're not a, they're not a need to have. They're a nice to have. We appreciate them. They do help us to market and grow this show further.

And so. We're always looking at it from that standpoint. It's really cool to win one award. I think most shows could and should be happy if they win anything. And so we were honored to win an award in our first five months of this show, which was bonkers and amazing and a whirlwind all of its own. But we do appreciate it.

And we do recognize that you guys taking time out of your day to nominate us. We appreciate it. It speaks to you guys too. It speaks to our listeners and the rockstar listenership that we have. So hopefully we've gotten to the bottom of it. We appreciate you. We're thankful. Thanks for all you do. And thank you to all of you who have done kind things for both Kelly Kennedy and The Business Development Podcast.

I could not appreciate you more. Just before we get into this today, just so you're all aware, my one on one personalized business development coaching is now open. We have eight spots available, and the coaching right now is just going to be taking place on Mondays, because that's the time that I have slotted away to do business development coaching.

So if you love this show, If you're in business development, entrepreneurship, startup, you're a founder, you're a president, you're a CEO, and you are responsible for any aspect of the business development of your company. I can help you. I can work a personalized one on one coaching system with you. Give me three months of your time and I will show you how to exponentially grow your business.

You can book that by reaching out to podcast@capitalbd.ca we'll send you all the information. If you just want to meet me and try that out and have that conversation and see if it fits you, we can definitely, definitely accommodate. Okay, let's just get into it. Passive and Active marketing strategies.

We talk about that a bit on this show, don't we? Yes, we do. You guys know capital business development. My company was built on active marketing. I'm a huge active marketing activist. I love active marketing. I love human to human personal relationships. Everything that I do, and in my mind, you should do in business development is about getting to that face to face about getting to that meeting, that team's meeting, that in person meeting, that place where you can build trust, where you can build rapport, where you can just build a real relationship with your customer that leads to repeat business and orders over time.

And that is really done with active marketing. And so everything that you do in business to business in my opinion, Really should be heavily weighted towards the active marketing side. However, however, we get it. This is social media's time, isn't it? Right? Social media has become huge. Whether you're on Instagram, whether you're on Facebook, LinkedIn, where most of us business people hang out, that's where the whole business development podcast world is.

We live on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. If you guys want to connect with me, that's where I'm at. That's where my world is. That's where we focus 99 percent of our social media efforts because we're speaking to business people, right? Where do business people go? They go to LinkedIn. LinkedIn has become this just absolutely amazing, not even a nice to have, but a need to have tool in 2023, 2024 and beyond at this point, LinkedIn.

is the king. As far as business socials, it is the king. It's where everybody is. And in business to business relationship, that should be your playground. However, passive marketing strategies, such as your website, your social media strategy, your digital marketing, spend things along those lines, blogs, right?

They still have their place. And active marketing is not as effective as it could be. if you do not combine it with a passive marketing strategy. So let's just chat really quickly. Let's just do a little recap on what is active marketing. Okay. Active marketing is direct contact. You are getting to the correct person.

You either have the correct email, the correct phone number. You're getting a Direct line to them, right? In person, that's probably the most directest you can get in person, right? But you are, you are getting in front of the customer. Like, this is not, there's no intermediaries. There is you and the customer, and you are speaking directly to them.

That is active marketing. It builds real human connection. It builds trust. It builds rapport for repeat business opportunity. Passive marketing, on the other hand, Is indirect contact. It's through a digital means. Maybe it's through your social media campaign. You're building brand awareness, right? You're shouting your company name from the rooftop, but you're not necessarily doing it.

You're using intermediaries, such as digital marketing companies, such as billboard ads, such as TV ads, such as radio ads such as your website, your blogs your books, any type of way that it's not you directly communicating, but you're indirectly communicating, right? It's, it's very important. Okay.

Because in 2024 and on brand recognition has always been important, but the way that we get brand recognition is changing and it really is shifting to your social strategies. How are you putting yourself out there? Are you creating weekly posts, right? These are all things that we have to do to make active marketing More successful because you and me both know nobody likes a completely cold call, right?

I'm in business development. I don't like a completely cold call. Actually. Not only that I screen them a lot of the times, because if I haven't had any type of interaction with this company, I've never seen anything from them. I know nothing about them. You know, just trusting somebody over the phone is a tough pitch.

Right. And that's fair. I think that's completely fair as a business development person. I'm telling you that's fair. Okay. But. We have these tools, we have these tools now that we never had before, right? We have social media strategy. Everybody in business for the most part is on LinkedIn. We have social media strategy.

We can connect with the right people. We can do weekly posts to build brand recognition about who we are. Who is your company? What are you doing? What fun things are you doing? How are you connecting with the world around you? These are ways and people are watching you. They are. Mark my words. If you think that people are not stopping for a second to check out your posts, especially when you're posting at the latest trade show or when you're posting your company updates.

Yeah, some of them get scrolled by, but mark my words, a lot of them, a lot of them get checked out. You know, I mean, I'm not gigantic, like, obviously, I'm more known in the business development world than ever before, fair, but the reality is, is that I'll put out a post now, and most of my posts, by the time LinkedIn is telling me how many people have checked them out that week, they're well into the 4 or 5 thousands, like, things are there.

People stop and look, people check out your posts, they watch your videos, they, they read your blogs, right? So, you have this gigantic opportunity. If you have LinkedIn and you have, you have a few people that you're connected to, or you're constantly doing the 100 connections a week, and you're growing that network, what you're ultimately doing is growing your Your warm contact network, right?

All of those people who have seen your posts, seen your company logo and pictures, read something that you're doing, read something exciting about your company. They are no longer cold. This is a superpower in business development, everyone. It is a superpower and it is the way that you should be doing business development going forward.

There should be No more necessary cold contacts. You should have somebody making connection with someone on LinkedIn, sending them a digital introduction, a brief personal introduction through words and attaching a brochure with the digital info for your company. Boom, that person is no longer cold. They are now warm.

And when you put them into that direct contact stage to make that first What you would normally call cold call. It is no longer cold. It's a warm call. They know who you are. They know what your company does and you are just that much closer to your pitch actually being accepted and you being able to take that to the next steps, you being able to take that to a meeting.

So I hope you guys can see there is a synergy. There is a synergy here. And I know that I pitch active marketing all the time. I love it. I love it. I'm a huge advocate. I think human to human relationships are absolutely critical. They need to happen. We need to focus on them in business, but there is still that passive marketing strategy and it's not a big part.

Okay. I don't want you to listen to me here and think, okay, well, Kelly's telling me now that I need to spend all the digital ad spend. I need to spend more time on social media. And no, that's not necessarily what I'm saying. Although if you don't have any type of social media game going on, yeah, you need to up that immediately.

But what I am saying is you need to spend probably about 20 percent of your business development time on your passive marketing strategies, on growing your LinkedIn, on making a better LinkedIn page on making sure that your website is absolutely killer. That's your 20 story skyscraper, right? In 2024, that is what your website is.

It's your 20 story skyscraper. Make it that way. Make it that way. Make it engaging. Make it beautiful. Make sure that the content you're putting out is beautiful. Make sure that it helps people or that it's relevant. Okay. And start to build your social media presence because what you're ultimately building with your social media presence.

Is your brand, you are building brand recognition and brand recognition makes active marketing that much easier. It makes the real work of business development, of building those relationships, of booking those meetings, of making those initial pitches, of setting those brochures and getting people interested in what you do that much easier.

Easier. Okay. It really is a secret weapon. The secret to success in 2024 and beyond is utilizing both strategies in synergy to drive brand recognition, warm introductions and interest ahead of the active marketing efforts, right at capital. We still primarily use an 80 20 rule. And what am I talking about here?

80 percent of our business development time is spent on active marketing, right? Direct contact, digital introductions, making sure that our CRM is up to date, right? Emails, just doing all the types of interactions that will get us the meeting. Because everything that we do in business development needs to have the end goal of getting us in that room of getting that opportunity of asking for that RFP, RFQ, bid list, order, whatever it is we're after, right?

Everything we do has to lead us there. We need to utilize these active and passive strategies in order to accomplish that goal. Okay. 20 percent of our business development time. is passive. And that's doing that's doing the legwork. That's doing the digital connections. That's sending the digital introduction and attaching the brochure to make a warm contact for the future.

That is creating social media content and making sure that it's out there and it's engaging and people are going to stop and look at it. It's creating brand recognition. Yeah, maybe it is doing digital ad spend. Maybe it is putting up a billboard. Maybe it is doing a TV commercial, right? Maybe it's doing a podcast, right?

In my case, maybe it's doing a podcast. Maybe it's doing podcast advertising like we do here on the show, right? But it's all passive marketing strategies. They are important because what they do is drive home. Your brand, they build your brand. And so many people have it wrong. What they think is I'm going to put out all these digital ads and my phone is just going to ring off the hook.

You and me both know that's not what's happening. Okay. I know, I know it's hard. I, I get it. I wanted that to be true. I wanted that to be true when I launched Capital Business Development, even though what I was launching was a business development firm. Okay. I knew it. I wanted it to be easy. I wanted there to be the easy button, right?

I like the easy button too. The easy button doesn't always work though. And so when I started Capital Business Development, I literally like off the bat, I like invested in a whole bunch of Facebook ads, just like cross my fingers and hope for the best. You know how many phone calls I got? None, none. I think I spent thousands of dollars on Facebook ads and literally didn't get a single phone call.

Why? Because passive marketing strategies are not great at business to business. Get your phone to ring. They work really, really great in business to customer. Get your phone to ring though. If I was trying to market all my stuff to like one person for like John's, I don't know, like who knows? Well, you know what I'm saying?

If I'm selling like a t shirt or I'm selling shoes or I'm selling a product that an end user, just an everyday Joe can buy. B to C Facebook ads, things like that. They work amazing. And your phone does ring and they does order and it does auto ship, right? Like it works for that. It does not work well in business to business it because you have to get them exactly when they're looking.

And the problem with that is that by the time they're doing that, you're competing against probably five to 10 other companies and you'd have to get them on their very worst day. You and me both know the odds of that are slim to none. And so the reason we do active marketing is we get ahead of the need.

Yeah, you know what? You might pitch a lot of people and they look at you and say, you know what? Sorry, Joe. This isn't what we need today. We're not interested in that right now. That's totally fine. I want you guys to get it out of your head that that's it. Joe didn't buy. That's not it. That's not it. Okay.

He now knows, or she now knows what it is you do, who you are, where to go when they have the need for that product. Believe me, that just put you miles ahead of your competition. If they're only advertising through passive marketing strategy, mark my words miles ahead. I've had companies call me. That I, that I met with, I dropped brochures at who said, Kelly, I've had your brochure on my desk for the last two years, haven't needed it, but today I need it.

And guess who's brochures on my desk? What did that mean? That meant that I got them so far ahead of the need, but they still thought about it. It was still in their mind. The moment they had that need years later. I was the person they thought about because my brochure was still sitting on their desk.

Think about that. It's not about being there at the exact time of need. You know what I mean? If it was ideal and you could do it, sure, that might be the best way to do it. But me and you both know that that's impossible. That is just the amount of ad spend you would have to make To be there at everybody's time of need always is like slim to none.

It's not going to work. You're going to kill your company in digital ad spend, literally trying to be there at the time of need. You need to get ahead of the need. And if you get ahead of the need, you are going to constantly have your phone ringing with people who know who you are, they've met with you.

They trust you. You've built brand recognition. And when they think of that product or service, your company XYZ company comes up to their mind. That's what you want. That's why we need to combine these strategies together to create an effective marketing plan that gets you ahead of the need. So the secret to success is always going to be about getting ahead of the need.

What do we need to do in passive marketing strategies? How do we do this to create a great platform that we can work from, okay? Number one. The first thing I want you guys to do is reevaluate your websites. We do need to create an absolutely rock star website in 2024 and beyond. It's absolutely critical.

We are literally in the middle of a gigantic, the largest website redesign we've ever done at capital business development. It is huge. And the new website is absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely sick. It blows my old website so far of the water. It might as well have been built in 2002. I'm not even kidding.

That is the jump that we are making from my old website to my new website. Why? Because I need to make a future proofed website. I need to make a website that's going to last me five years, three years, five years, whatever it lasts, but it's got to last some time. Okay. And so we've put a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of criticism into creating the best website that we possibly can for Capital Business Development.

And it is visually appealing. It has awesome video. It is engaging. It says exactly what we do and nothing more. It's very. Beautiful and very simple, but these are things that are absolutely critical in 2024, right? You're marketing to millennials. You're marketing to people with very short attention spans.

It needs to be easy to use, easy to understand and simple. And the most important thing that your website has to do. Is actually explain what you do. The biggest problem with my old website. And I'm, you know, I'm going to knock myself on this. My biggest problem with my old website was when I launched Capital Business Development.

I didn't have all the answers. I literally launched Capital Business Development not necessarily knowing. What it would become not knowing that this podcast was on the horizon, not knowing about digital podcast ads that we could create in the future, not knowing that coaching was going to be an avenue for Kelly Kennedy.

This like none of these things existed, right? And so As you can see, a website that you built even three, four years ago is probably irrelevant today. And I really mean that. And so if you haven't really evaluated your website in quite some time, that is 100 percent the place to start. And you need to start asking yourself a few questions about it.

Is this competitive against my competition? Are these things still relevant for who I am as a company? Does it explain who I am, what I do, where we're going? Does it have anything to do with this? If the answer is no, scrap it, revamp. Visually appealing. Look, video. We're in a video generation now, everyone, like, sorry, it is what it is.

All modern websites moving forward need video component, need visual component. They have to be actively engaging. Just a little thing shaking a little bit on the screen, or a picture that's zooming in and out, isn't going to cut it anymore. It's not going to cut it anymore. And so video moving forward is going to be absolutely critical.

Getting to know who, who the company is, right? Like if this is a company, like capital business development is 100%, built around me, Kelly Kennedy, right? Like I have been the head business development person at my company since inception. The company is really about what we do, our process, me and, and, and everything we do at Capital Business Development, right?

And so if that is your company, if that's what you do, you need to make sure that you are a big part of your website, that you are a part of. The company that you have an outward face, whether it be, you know, a YouTube video, a podcast, whatever, you need some way of engaging with your potential clients to show them that, hey, there is a person behind this company and they're pretty awesome, right?

We live in a time where we want to know the people behind companies. That's not enough to hide behind a logo anymore. It really isn't. You know what COVID did? COVID pulled this gigantic blanket away from corporations, and it said, you are no longer allowed, Mr. CEO, Mrs. CEO, to hide behind this veil. We want to know who you are.

We want to know what you stand for. We want to know that you actually know your shit. That you're not just hiding. behind a corporation. That is what happened. It really did. And I think founders, CEOs, presidents, they're starting to wake up and realize, and I think everyone's starting to realize, okay, crap, we got to do something.

We got to do something. I recognize this late 2022, hence The Business Development Podcast. Did I know whether it'd be successful or not? No, I just knew that I needed an outward face of some type and I loved podcasts, right? I still love podcasts. I still listen, like. Two or three podcasts every day. Like that's my world.

I love them. And so this is why I show up with so much enthusiasm to the show, right? It's, it's a platform I love. It's a media forum that I love, but find the media form that you love. Find the one that is for you, whether that is YouTube. Maybe that is a podcast. Maybe it's both. Maybe you're doing a video podcast, figure out, figure out what works for you and just go for it.

But I think you're going to find that once you do that, Doors are going to open up for you that you could have never. Ever seen coming right? There are so many ways to market yourself in 2024. It really is about just figuring out a way to do it. We need to utilize social media to drive our brand recognitions, right?

If you are not doing weekly social media posts of some type, and I don't mean like all the time, like Dude, I know I put out a lot of content, but let's get real. I'm like pretty much three companies, right? Like we have the, we have the business development arm of the company. We have the coaching arm of the company.

We have podcast and podcast advertising arm of the company. Yeah. You're seeing lots of posts for capital business development, the business development podcast, business development coaching. You're seeing it all, but. Understand that there's a lot going on behind the scenes here at Capital Business Development.

It's just, it's a big world. We do a lot of stuff. But you don't necessarily need to do two, three, four, five posts a week. What you need to do is do at least one, but do it consistently, right? Do it consistently. Make a commitment to yourself that you're going to put out something about your company or about you that's exciting, that's going to be engaging.

A week. And that's really all it takes because you need to just start building brand recognition. And whether you're a one person company or a hundred person company, you still need brand recognition. It doesn't matter. People need to know who you are, what you do so that they know that they can engage you and your company, right?

So we have to create brand recognition. We do need to create digital and physical brochures. You guys know I pump them. They are not dead. Physical brochures are not dead. I take them with me to every single meeting. Period. I take them with me to my face to face lunches. I take them with me to any client facing meetings, and I attach them digitally to all my LinkedIn introductions to my new connections that I'm going to reach out to in person to give me that warm contact to give me that first stage.

So that when I do make that phone call, send that email, I'm no longer coming in cold, right? We have to utilize. All these avenues in order to be successful and digital and physical brochures are still an amazing avenue to make that connection ahead of the active marketing contact. Okay, do test new avenues.

Okay. Yeah. Right. You guys have heard us talk about digital marketing. You guys know AI is changing everything. It is. It's changing everything. You know, chat GPT, I didn't even know what that was a year and a half ago. And now it's like a huge part of stuff that we do. Right. I always say use chat GBT, but make sure that you change it.

Make sure that you add some humanity back to it. Make sure that it still represents you and your company and the way that you speak, because robots. They speak good, but they do speak a different robotic language, and it's easy for people to pick it up on. I had a conversation not that long ago with Jan Hnat, and he was talking about how we are actually generating the ability to instantly recognize AI content.

Now, think about that for a second. When people can instantly recognize AI content, you are back to square one. You are back to typing up everything just like you did before, adding mistakes and all, because I think at some point you're going to find that people are looking for mistakes. They're looking for mistakes in grammar to be able to tell whether that's a person or whether that's a robot.

Isn't that crazy? So we create these cool things. They help us, but eventually Nobody's going to read it because it's going to be all AI based and there's and like we're going to screen it out just like that's human. That's what we do. We adapt. What we're doing is we're adapting to AI. And so if you guys are constantly just using robotic AI content, you're going to find that at some point people are going to screen you out.

And so you need to make sure that you're adding you back into it. AI is great. AI does a lot of amazing things. It can give you great ideas. But if you are using it for all of your copywriting, mark my words. It is going to get screened eventually, if not today, tomorrow, make sure that you're adding yourself back into it.

Okay. So try new avenues, but always test for success, right? There's lots of digital ad spends you can do, right? You know, you can do advertising through LinkedIn. You can do advertising through Meta. You can do advertising on the radio. Try all of these things and figure out what works for you, but make sure that you are measuring the real results to your company, right?

Does it move the needles that matter? Does it move the needles that matter? Remember, none of this matters. If it doesn't eventually generate revenue for your organization, okay, brand recognition is amazing, but it's amazing because it helps your active marketing campaigns turn into real meetings, which then turn into real sales, right?

We don't have businesses without profit. You understand that none of these things, digital marketing, spend business development. None of it matters if it does not eventually lead your organization to an opportunity to generate income. I don't know about you guys, but my business definitely doesn't run on good thoughts and rainbows, right?

I wish it did. I wish it did. I wish that my business ran on good thoughts and rainbows, and I could just spread the business development word forever. far and wide all the time and I do my best. This podcast is probably the closest that we're ever going to get, but it really does like you have to generate income and I think it's easy to look at everything you're doing and think, okay, I'm doing all these things like income is going to come.

It's not necessarily going to just come. Okay. You have to look at what things are actually making your phone ring. What things are you using that are creating that brand recognition that are making the opportunity for active marketing to work possible? Make sure that whenever you are implementing a new technology, that you are finding ways to measure and test to make sure that that new digital ad system, that new technology is actually doing what you want it to do, and it's doing it effectively and better than the old way.

Because. You can also end up with just a whole bunch of avenues and not knowing what the heck is doing it. And that is a bad place to be as well because then you know you're wasting money, right? Okay, do personal digital introductions. Okay, so we talked about the digital introductions. We talked about them.

They're critical. They're absolutely critical. They're really part one in the whole active marketing process. We have to send that digital introduction, that connection to make warm contact. But Understand I am not sending just this like canned ugly message. What I'm ultimately doing is I'm using, I'm creating a very brief, probably one paragraph or less introduction to who I am.

Who is Kelly Kennedy and why did I connect with them? And I am attaching the brochure for the company that I want to promote to them. Why? Because I want to connect with the prospect as a person and I want them to learn about the company through me. through the advertising material. If you do it this way, you can create a personal connection that they're not going to screen out, and you'll find that they actually will read the brochures, giving you that opportunity to make warm contact later.

Alright, active marketing dues. Do incorporate an 80 percent active strategy. What does this mean? It means 80 percent of the time I want you guys to be making digital contacts, digital introductions, phone calls, emails, tracking down the phone numbers, being the little business development detectives that you are making direct contact and asking for that meeting saying, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, I have a product and service that you are going to want to know about. I would absolutely love to meet you and chat about it further. Can we set up a meeting either in person, digitally, Or for coffee, find a way, find a way to get in front of these people, make a real introduction, become a person to these people and build trust, build rapport, be able to pitch your product in a way that you simply just can't do digitally and be able to get to a stage where the next time that they have a need, they are going to ask you.

They are going to ask you. They're not going to the market. They're going to you because you took the time to meet with them. You took the time to introduce your product and service, and you will get a shot because of it. Do make between 30 and 60 direct contacts a week. Guys, between 30 and 60 direct contacts every single week, right? That should be your active marketing goals. You should be looking to make 30 to 60 phone calls or direct emails every single week. If you can do more, great. The reason that I kind of capted this and it's not a cap, it's more of a rough guideline. But the reason that I picked this specific guideline is anybody in business development knows they can sit down at their desk and they can look at a call list that says they got to call 200 people this week and they can puke.

Okay. I want to make sure that every single call is getting 150 percent of your effort. Okay. The way that we do this is we set attainable calls. We make sure that we're doing the right screening, right? You don't need 200 phone calls. Okay, let me tell you that right now. You don't need 200 phone calls to book a significant amount of meetings.

What you need to be doing is enough pre work to make sure that you have the right people at the organizations. Warm contact has been done. You have the right direct person, the right target at that organization. You've picked an organization that actually makes sense for your company. If you do all of these things effectively, 30 to 60 calls a week is probably going to book you guys anywhere between four and five meetings.

And I'm not kidding. It's not about the number of calls, it's about the quality of the work that you've done that led you to that spot. If you have the right person at an organization, the organization can buy your product and service and is a good fit for it. You've done the targeting to make sure that you have the person, you've tracked down their phone number, you've tracked down their direct email, you've made that digital pitch.

You're not coming in directly cold. You have a proposal that adds value that shows and builds interest in your company. You do those things, people are going to meet with you. They are going to meet with you. That's the secret. Okay. The secret isn't the number of calls. And you know, the number of calls, the reason that in the old days, we just made a whole bunch of calls because nobody did this work.

The tools maybe weren't as available to track down the right people at an organization. They are now. And that's why I call business development, very much detective work. It really is detective work. If you do this work, right. And you do all the pre work when you do that closing work, those phone calls, asking for those meetings, you are going to book more of them.

So remember 30 to 60 direct contacts a week is a great place to aim. As long as you are doing the pre work to make sure that you have the right people. Okay. Do utilize your CRM to track all contacts. You guys know this. I hammer CRMs, CRMs. You have to use them for your digital introduction, your direct contact, your follow up calls, right?

Hot leads, meetings booked, back burner, right? I have a whole episodes on how to set up your CRM. So feel free to go back and check those out if you haven't done so, but utilize your CRM, do ask for meetings. Always non negotiable guys. If you get people on the phone, if you get them through email and it is a target, you ask for a meeting every time, every single time, the whole point of business development, the whole point is to get to a meeting where you can build rapport, ask for an RFP, RFQ, bid list.

Build a relationship. Be a person. Be a human. Right? Trust me. Trust me. Do not do this. I, you know, I mean, I literally made this mistake. I spent probably a year in a business development where I somehow thought that other people would ask for the meeting if they were interested. No, it is the business development person's job to ask for the meeting.

Ask every single time and watch your meeting calendar. Do start with digital introductions first to create warm contact ahead of the active marketing phone calls, direct emails. K digital introductions, 100 invites on linkedin a week to potential prospects and then Make sure that when they do accept, you're sending that very brief personal digital introduction.

You're adding the brochure, and then they're warm. From that point forward, you can track down the contact information, reach out to them, and book that face to face meeting. Do work to build genuine connection always. Business development is about relationships. That is key, right? It's key. It's key to success in business, is relationships.

Make sure that everything that you're doing in business development Does not compromise the opportunity for a relationship to be built and carries it to that next step where you can have that meeting, build that rapport and start to build trust with that customer to build a relationship, frankly, that could last your entire career.

Remember, everything can be challenging in the beginning. Practicing active marketing will make you better no matter where you start. Business Development is a learnable skill and one that when you improve it can lead your organization to. Exponential growth. An 80 20 active to passive marketing strategy is what is most effective for business to business.

If you were in business to customer, reverse this to 20 percent active 80 percent passive. But in business to business, 80 percent active 20 percent passive is the rule that will take you to the next level. Active and passive marketing works best in Together shout outs this week. Raphael Cervan, Jonathan D'souza, Colin Harms. Jory Evans, Shawn Neels, Vijayan Swaminathan, Tatsiana Zametalina, Jan Hnat, Lucas Benjamin Schmidt, Carmen Liebel, Brad Warren, David Sobeus, Ahmed Mobasher, Roni Patkai, Aaron Haberman, Zael Miransky, Chantal Cote, Jesse Kerr, Jenny Hembree, Janu Subramaniam, Shawn Sooley, and Samantha Germain. 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. Kelly has 15 years in sales. 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.