The Art of Balancing Business Development and Account Management

The Art of Balancing Business Development and Account Management

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 56 of the business development podcast. And today we are probably chatting about my most requested show ever. How do we juggle business development and account management? You guys know how I feel about this, but we're going to take it on. Stay tuned.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences.

And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 56 of the business development podcast.

Thank you so much for joining us today on this lovely Sunday. I get, I get that we don't know necessarily when you listen to these shows, but this is my Sunday show. And it's honestly one of my favorite ones of the week, because typically it ends up being Any of my guest shows or things along those lines.

But today I've been getting so many questions I have. It's been awesome. I really appreciate your questions. If you listen to this show and you want to send questions to the show, you can do it podcast@capitalbd.ca subject line, community questions. I. Absolutely love them. I love to see them because you think that all of your questions are different, but ironically it's typically.

It tends to be the same questions for every single company from different people. So there's definitely a list of very similar questions that I get quite regularly, but. But, there is one. One that has stood out above the rest. So much so, that I've gotten so many times in conversations, honestly, since the very beginning of this show.

56 episodes ago, I have had a topic that you guys know I'm passionate about. But on the flip side, I also understand the needs that you guys have. My listeners, my BD people, my account managers, my people. My poor people that are keep being asked to do both. Okay? Today, you know, due to popular demand, and very specifically, due to Daniel Aultman Jr.

and Lauryn Chromey, today we are talking about Juggling account management and business development. Yes, we're doing it. I know. I know. You guys know how I feel about this. I'm going to reiterate my points and stance a hundred times over, a thousand times over maybe in the lifespan of this show. However, I also understand you.

I've been you. I get it. We are being asked as business development people to wear many hats. I know I've been there. I totally get it. You know, when I did business development, my ask was to do business development, account management, and heck, maybe some operations while we're at it until I started my own company and separated that all out and said, no, no more.

I'm going to do the thing you need me to do the most. And we will get on that. I will definitely touch on it more, but you know, like today's topic has really come from so many community questions, so many just one on one messages and questions, and there's been absolutely a ton of listeners that have had the same question.

So I recognize that. Ultimately, many of you are facing the same challenge, and I hope today that we can address how we can handle this better. I get it. We're not going to fix the problem, but we can potentially do it better. And I hope today to leave you with tools to be able to handle business development and account management more effectively for not just you, but your business, and hopefully take your business to an area where both things can be Their own thing and handled more effective together.

So in the example that this show is based on, it was actually given to me very specifically from Daniel and he had said that in his company, he's, he's just gained, I believe, a new position in the company and His task, the priority of the business has been let's develop new business. Let's find new customers.

Let's get this done. However, we are also not big enough to be able to handle account management too. And we have all these great accounts that I also need you to manage. His team is just not yet large enough. It's working that way. And Daniel, I just want to say I commend you because you very, you very definitely specified that that the company goals are not to keep you in this position.

It's to, it's, it's to mitigate the problem in the meantime, until you can get dedicated account managers and dedicated business development people. So I commend you greatly. That is incredibly forward thinking. That is modern. That is smart. And it's going to be the best course of action for your business moving forward.

However, what do we do in the meantime? How do we juggle this was his very specific question. So before I talk about how we are going to fix this or how we are going to handle this better, I'm going to give very specific reasons Why we do not want to do it. And I think that that is a good place to start since the very beginning of this show, I have advocated for account management, business development to be two separate things.

Frankly, it just makes you more effective. And when those two things are done independently, you can do amazing account management, really, really effectively, really please your customers. Keep them happy. Make sure that their needs are being attended to without anything else pulling away from that. And on the business development front, making sure that we are consistently bringing in new business.

Let me repeat this new business, new partnerships. That is the job of business development. Business development is about finding new opportunity. Okay, new opportunity that gets that gets overlooked a lot in a lot of companies. A lot of companies look at business development like, yeah, find us new business, but also handle all of our accounts.

And then, heck, we're going to throw you into some operation stuff. That is not business development. That is not business development. Business development is about things that grow the business. Yes. However, our main task and the task that you should be hiring business development for is new opportunity.

Okay. New opportunity. That is the critical task of business development, because frankly. You don't know when your current customers are going to leave and they can leave at any time for any reason. Let me repeat that. Customers can leave at any time for any reason and it can have nothing to do with you and your company.

Or the business that you provide or the level of service that you provide. You can provide the best service in the world. It does not matter because you do not control your customers pocketbooks. You do not control their choices. You don't know their financial situations. Okay. And so it is critical for all business to always have a large pipeline of new opportunities coming in.

And if we have our business development people focused on account management, I guarantee you, They are spending way more time on account management than new business development. Why do I guarantee that? New business development is a skill set that takes a long time to acquire, and it takes even longer to get structure and do right.

Yes, there's ways. Listening to this show is a great way to supercharge your business development game, because I'm telling you the secrets. I'm telling you how to do this more effectively. And I'm not holding anything back. I am telling you how I do it, how I did it, how I continue to do it. On a weekly basis, and I hope that you guys implement all the steps, tools and tricks that I provide you on this show.

However, it is still a skill set. It is not something that you can throw somebody into and they're just going to be great at it. And if you're not practicing new business development, if you're not getting over your social anxieties, if you're not. Getting over your fear of picking up the phone, having direct contact, having face to face meetings with high level people that maybe scare the shit out of you, you need, you need practice.

That's how we, that's how we overcome this. However, think about this. If that's your choice, okay. And I'm talking to my business owners right now who have not recognized why they need to separate this. If that is your choice. Hard cold calls, new contacts, anxiety driving situations, or hey, manage our current account, take them golfing, take them out to lunch, build a great friendship, have a great time.

Which one are you going to pick? Which one are you going to pick? Obviously you're going to pick account management and this happens everywhere. Mark my words. You say this isn't happening in your business. This is happening in your business because it's human nature. It is human nature. Business development is the harder task.

It's the harder task, and we neglect the harder task for the one that makes us feel better. Account management, for what it is, for the most part, is a really, really cake cozy job. Yeah, manage this account, milk them for as many opportunities they can provide you, but ultimately build great friendships, have fun with them, do things you would do with friends.

Yeah, and it's the same premise, like, right? I teach the same things in business development. But on the account management side, what happens is you really solidify that relationship, you really solidify that friendship, and so it eventually becomes, well, shit, I could sit and make 25 or 30 phone calls today, or I could go and have lunch with my friend, right?

I know it sounds silly, I know I'm maybe oversimplifying it a little bit, but what I'm trying to really show you is that account management and business development have to be separate. They have to be separate because if they are not separate, one is going to get neglected. And you know, me and you both know which one it's going to be.

And unfortunately for you and your business, it is not the right one. It is not the right one because the reality is as much as important as it is. And you know, I Incredibly value my customers. I bend over backwards for them. I make sure they're looked after their needs are handled, and then I'm delivering week over week over week.

Absolutely. I make sure of it. But I also recognize they can leave at any time for any reason. So for me to spend all my time. Looking after them and making sure that they are 100% dealt with. It doesn't make enough sense. I have to make sure they're looked after very, very well. Absolutely. I have to make sure I deliver on the service I provide.

I have to make sure that I am complying with their requirements. I have to make sure that they are satisfied with the service. But if I was to spend all my time there, I can get let go for any reason. There could just be cost cuts. We could go into a recession. Who knows? We don't control any of it. And when you're working for a company, it In an account management level, or when you're working for a different company, I guess I should say, or your company is supplying services, you do not control the choices they make.

And so we have to be very smart. Which means that we need two teams. We really do. We need two teams. We need one team. Actively, actively pursuing account management, making sure our customers are looked after happy. Their needs are met and they're met quickly. Okay. Issues are addressed quickly. That's where account managers are top notch and critical, right?

Relationships are critical in those situations because if you don't have great relationships, they don't even call you. The call you get is we're done by they don't give you the opportunity to fix the problem. That's where great account management comes in is that hopefully they've built good enough relationships with the clients that when the clients have a problem, instead of just calling and canceling your service, they call your account rep and say, look, I got a problem.

You know, we have an open relationship here. We have a great conversation. Let's have a quick talk about how we can rectify this. They will give you an opportunity to rectify. That's where a great account management is incredibly beneficial. However, once again, on the business development side, you need high level business development, doing a great job, bringing all these new opportunities, setting up brand new meetings, establishing new opportunities for account management focused on that because once again, you can manage that customer all day long.

They can leave at any time for any reason. Don't ever forget that as a business, you are never safe. You are never safe. And I don't care whether you're IBM, SpaceX, you are not safe. Your customer can leave at. Anytime for any reason to a competitor or otherwise, or who knows what? So while account management is critical, it needs its own space.

It needs its own space to be handled and new business development needs to be made a priority in your business. Because if you do not prioritize new business development. You will run out of leads. And when that critical customer leaves, you are going to be in trouble. You are going to be in major, major trouble.

And so you need somebody dedicated to new business development. All right. Rant is over. My rant is over. Thank you for listening to me. Listening to me. I hope that I really hope that this has made you think, and it's clarified the reasons for my, for my madness behind separating account management and business development.

Okay. However. Let's do this. Let's get into it. How do we do it? How? Okay, we're a small business. We're an organization. We do not have account management, business development. Heck, maybe we're a business owner and we're doing both. We're doing both. And I get it, because I do this sometimes. However, I also have help now, which makes my life a lot easier.

But, I get it. What is the secret? So, step one, right? We have to, we have to decide what is the priority. At first. Okay, what is what is the most important thing? So I want you to sit down and take a look at your organization and say, Look, okay, we have 10 customers right now that are consistently providing great opportunities.

I do not foresee an issue at the moment. We have a large number of clients. And they are, they are looking after us. It's flowing smoothly. If this is you, I think your priority should switch over to new business development, right? Make sure that you're dedicating a little more time to the new business development side.

If your customers are content and you have quite a few of them. And I know this, it sounds a little bit contrary, but ironically, the more customers you have, the safer you are, the safer you are, because if you have 10 customers and one drops out, no big deal. If you have two customers and one drops out.

Really big deal. Really big deal. Okay. So it is kind of contrary and you have to decide for yourself what you think. And this is very, your business specific. I can't tell you, I can't tell you how to do this, but you need to decide for yourself. What do you think should be the priority in this given moment?

In this given moment, just given the situation, how many customers you have, how safe you think you are, can you spend more time on the new business development? Because if you can, you should. You should be spending time in new business development if you can, okay? So ironically, once again on the flip side, and, and you know, you could take this either way.

Like, ironically, the other side is, with 10 customers, you, they're, they're treating you well. You could also spend more time on that prioritization of those customers, right? You could. You could, and a little less on new business development. However, we should always skew towards looking after our business development.

If we have to do two things, we should be skewing towards new opportunity always, because once again, even if you're looking after them, absolutely amazing, they can leave at any time for any reason, right? And, and while it's critical to make sure that are looked after, if you do receive a complaint, prioritize it, deal with it, absolutely, but.

You should be spending that time on that new business development. On the flip side, you have like a handful of good customers, but it's a little shaky. You don't know where your next opportunity is coming from. It is tough. It is tough. I get it. I get it. I understand the dilemma. And as you can see, I've, I've neglected this topic for a little bit because it is hard.

It's very hard and it's very business specific and it's very you specific, right? You know, yourself, you know, your customers. I don't. I don't know the level of your relationship with your customers. If you don't have a great relationship with your customers, you need to find a way to make one. So I think that might be another way to gauge this, is that if you do not have a great relationship with your customers, you should be trying to spend more time with them, to learn more about them personally, to try to, to try to, Just rebuild that connection with them.

If that connection is already strong once again, that's great because they'll call you if they're running into challenges. If not, things will likely flow smoothly and life will go forward. In that case, things flowing smoothly, life going forward. Absolutely. Switch that switch that priority back to business development and task maybe 75% of your time into that new business development.

25% of your time into the account management. Right. But yeah, back to my original example where I was talking about if you had, say, like five customers, I think. I think you need to spend a little bit more time. If you only have a handful of customers, I do think you need to spend a little bit more time on the account management side, just because you need to establish that relationship, you need to control it.

You need to make sure that you are, you are connected with them. And then so in my what I would suggest is that if you only have a handful of customers probably spend maybe 40 to 50% of your time on the account management, the other 50% of the time on the new business development. But as you can tell from what I'm saying, this is going to kind of take us into the next.

I'm really giving you percentages of time. Okay, so what is the problem with business development as without structure? without structure. I think that's a good way of putting it. If, if you do business development without structure and you're kind of willy nilly in it, you show up and you're like, okay, yeah, today, okay, I need to grow the business.

I think I'm going to call John, Pat and Peter, see if they have opportunities coming up. I'm going to maybe call two customers from last week and then, okay, so I got those done. Nothing came of it. All right, let's, let's just continue to like create more content or do some more social posts or something, right?

If you aren't structured. It's the structure that makes you successful in business development, right? You guys know it. I hammer it. It's structure. Business development is not luck. It is consistently doing the same thing repeatedly that gets results over time. Okay? So business development is not luck.

It's consistently doing things repeatedly that get results over time. It can look like luck. Business development can look like luck to people that aren't doing it, that aren't being the ones doing that effective. But if you go behind any successful business development person, if frankly, if you go behind any successful sales person at all, period, the thing that differentiates them from.

Everybody else is consistency over time. They likely have a structure they follow. They likely follow it to a T day in, day out, even on the days where they're getting phone calls and yelled at. Right? Even on the days when, when everybody's hanging up on them or nobody's picking up the phone. They don't care.

Because what they recognize is, if I do this same thing repeatedly over time, More often than not, I'm going to get meetings more often than not, I'm going to get offered to or opportunities more often than not, they're going to call me back and set up that that's that meeting. They're going to give me the RFP, and that's what sets them apart.

So how do we do it? Okay, if we're if we're juggling both. If we're juggling both, structure, time for both, but be deliberate, okay? Be deliberate. Most of you are working five days a week, okay? So an easy way to do this that, that sets something up in your head is you could say, okay, Monday, Tuesday, I do account management.

Monday, Tuesday, I do account management. That is when I call all my current customers. I make sure that they're looked after. I asked them about new opportunities. I potentially line up lunch meetings. I potentially line up golf. I potentially line up any type of fun activity where we can build our relationship, become stronger, right?

Become stronger in the relationship and build that connection. Because if you have the connection, the connection gives you power. It gives you the ability. That when things go wrong to have an open conversation, instead of it just being a Nope, we're not interested by ABC company. It's Yeah, you know what, we're having a problem.

But I like you. And I want to fix this. So let's fix it. If you can come together and get that opportunity, nine times out of 10, you're gonna be able to fix that problem. And that and it just breezes over. And frankly, it that actually makes the relationship even stronger. When you are able to overcome problems together with your customers, it It makes your relationship even stronger for the next one.

So that's how we build great relationships, right? So let's say that's what we're doing. We're going to give them you know, I don't know the ratio two, two out of five days, right? Two out of five days. We're going to spend on account management a week. However, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, that's when you should be implementing your business development plan.

Okay. And I don't know, I don't know what you're doing for your business development plan. I don't know, but like. Make sure you're holding yourself to a structure. If you've committed to 20 calls per day and 100 digital LinkedIn introductions per week, do it. Do it on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and do it every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and do account management every Monday, Tuesday, until you can offload that onto someone else.

And when you can offload that onto someone else, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, do your business development and do it to your structure that you make. I can't tell you. how to do it. I can't tell you how, what, what you can commit to. You can commit to something though. Mark my words. You can commit to something.

And what you'll find is that if you hold yourself to a commitment and you start to do it on a regular basis, it just becomes automatic. You'll sit down at your desk. You'll know exactly what you're going to do that day. You can write out your priorities. You can write out the priority calls. You can write out the high probabilities, whatever you can update your CRMs, but.

That's the flip side. Once you have a process that you can follow on a weekly basis, as long as you follow it, you are going to be effective. What you're going to see is when you stop following your process, you become less and less effective. And this doesn't matter whether it's account management, whether it's business development, whether it's sales, if you do not follow consistent process, it will bite you in the butt.

It will bite you in the butt and you will not grow. Your business will not grow. You will not grow personally following a structure in your business development program is critical in your account management program is critical. So if you do not have one today, and you're listening to this, since the first episode, you're listening to you, maybe.

Understand, I have a whole bunch of information in this backlog of the Business Development Podcast that will help you create structure, show you how to do it, give you tips and tricks on how. You need to implement structure today. Implement structure today, watch your business turn around. It will. It will.

It's consistency over time that will make you better, okay? I would like you to also delegate account management whenever possible, okay? And I get it. I know what I'm asking. I do, I do. I know that what I'm saying to you is do the harder thing. I get it. I get it. However, I think you'll find that most things in business, the harder thing is what makes your business grow, right?

We grow through struggle. And it sounds stupid, I know. It sounds dumb, but it's true. It's true. You will not grow by taking your clients out for golf every Tuesday. You will not grow unless you're making the hard decisions and the hard calls. You need to make the cold calls. You need to make the new connections.

As uncomfortable as it may be for you, that is the best thing for your business, right? I know it's easy to make a LinkedIn post. I know it's easy to do a boosted post or a paid advertisement or like I said, account management where you're just hanging out with your buddies and going for lunch and golf or whatever.

But remember, although those benefit those relationships and potentially future opportunities there, and they should be managed, if your job is also to do business development, that's where your time needs to be. It really is. So, what I'm suggesting here to my business owners who have operations managers that work for you, and maybe you're doing both.

Maybe you're doing the business development and account management, but you have employees. Have your employees manage some accounts for you, okay? I know, I know I'm asking you to offload some of the stuff that might be more fun, or might be easier, or might be, in your mind, the reward for the hard work you've put in, okay?

But, and yeah, maybe the day is coming, you know, maybe the day is coming when you have business development people, and you have account management people, and we all strive for that day when we have it, and we can say, You know what? Today I'm a business owner and I want to go golfing and I want to have fun with some clients and great, great.

If that day is today for you, congratulations, you've made it. That is the goal, right? The goal is to find our way there. If you're not there and you're a small company and you're managing business development or you're managing business development, you're managing accounts and you're spending all your time in account management, because I know that's probably what's happening.

You need to, you need to stop. You need to stop. Delegate some of that stuff out to your employees. Operations managers are great for this. You know, operations managers project managers are great for this, right? Project managers talk to these people all the time. They are great at business development.

So put, or sorry, account management. So put them on the accounts. You know, if they're, if they're managing a big construction project and they're dealing with the client all the time, have them take the client golfing. You don't have to take the client golfing, okay? Your project manager or your, or your superintendent can do it, okay?

They're. Just understand that the most critical thing that you can do to grow your business is business development. And therefore we should be spending as much time as humanly possible doing that. Or hire people to do it for you. And I get who I'm speaking to here. I'm speaking to my medium and large size companies that are still doing things the way they always have.

But there are companies like mine. There are companies like Capital Business Development. There are people like me that you can bring on and say, look, I get it. I don't want to make all these crappy calls. I don't want to, I don't want to do this side of it. Just call me when the meetings are ready. And we'll do that.

There are opportunities out there for you to offload that and maybe do more account management if that's what you want to do. Right. But you need to have somebody handling account management for you. You need to be having somebody dedicated to new business development, new partnership development on your behalf as well.

Okay. The other part here is we need to get more effective at both. Okay, so that's the other side of this, right? We only have so much time today, right? Most of us have eight hours, five days a week, eight hours, 40 hours a week, right? That's most of us. So what is another way that we can do better? We can find ways to make ourselves more effective to utilize that time more effective.

Okay, so always be looking for the ways that you can improve your process. Could I speed up this process for you and give you a little bit more time? Could potentially inviting? Two people to a meeting instead of one alleviate the need for another meeting. I see this all the time. Okay whenever I have a business meeting, like a new business meeting, I bring the people that are critical to the organization I'm working with.

Why? Because why should I have to set up two meetings? They should be able to have a technical discussion with people who understand the product or service to a T. In that initial conversation, and by doing that, instead of needing to two meetings, we need one. And typically we get an RFP or a vendor applications list right after that, right?

Whereas typically it would have took two because me as the business development guy, I know enough to be dangerous. We all do, but we don't know necessarily the technical ins and outs of the products and services that we sell. We just don't because we don't provide, we don't actively do the service. So you need that, that, that industry expert.

And I don't care what organization you're working at. You can learn enough in business development to be dangerous. Like the reality is I worked in the inspection industry for long enough that I bet you I sounded 150% like I knew everything about inspection. You work anywhere for almost 10 years. You learn, you learn.

Trust me, you learn. However, did I know how to perform visual inspection? No. Did I know how to perform radiography? No. Never once spent time in the field watching them do it. And so, even though I knew what I was talking about, I knew the application, I did not know the ins and outs of how the technical skill was performed, okay?

Which is why if you can bring somebody with you to those initial meetings, who really knows the technical skill of the service or product that you are selling, they can answer any of your customer questions that come up. They're technical right there on the spot, saving you another meeting. And at the end, you can just say, Hey, this has been a great meeting, or the next, what are the next steps?

Can we potentially start, start filling out an RFP? Or can we potentially get on the vendor list or start filling out pre qualifications? You can just fast track that whole, that whole process. So what I'm suggesting is one way that you can improve your performance, that you can improve your systems.

There are lots, and each one of your organizations will have different ways. So keep your mind open, keep your eyes open. Think about it. You only have eight hours in every day. How do you get more out of it? How do you get more out of it? If, you know, like right now, let's say you're booking one meeting per day.

How can you book two? Figure it out. There's a way. There's a way. And you know how. If you just sit down, put pen to paper, and start thinking about how you can improve various steps of your process. Can I ask for more meetings? Like, that's another easy one. How many times have you been in meetings or been in conversations with somebody, email conversations or phone conversations, and then you just didn't ask for the meeting?

I'm not calling you out. I've done it. I've done it. It took me years to get better at this. And so what I'm suggesting is, is that There are little easy ways to do better, and I am not exempt, and you are not exempt, and I don't care if you're the CEO of the biggest company in Canada or the biggest company around the world, there's ways for them to improve, too, okay, where we all have to hold ourselves accountable and understand that we all have room for growth, because each and every one of us can get better at this job.

Each and every one of us can find ways to improve processes at our various businesses. So We also have to find ways, right? We have to find ways to get more effective. So what is another way that we can improve this? Okay. We need to have a plan of action for interactions. Okay. And I know this sounds stupid.

This might sound kind of silly. And I get that. I'm what I'm saying is have a plan, right? I get it. I have a plan. I have a plan. It's easy to work out. But how many times Have you went into a meeting without ever once thinking about what you wanted from that meeting or, or who you were talking to, or maybe you didn't even do your research on the company that you were meeting with.

And once again, I've been guilty. I'm not calling you out. I'm saying this happens everywhere where people just did not think about what they were doing. And because, because we went into it without a plan or without a outcome that we wanted in our minds. How were we able to achieve that outcome? How were we able to achieve it?

We hadn't even thought of what we wanted. Okay. And this happens a lot. If this is you, if you've been into plenty of meetings like this, and you're like, shit, this is me. Kelly's calling me out. I'm not calling you out, man. I'm not, I'm not, I get it. I've been there. I've done it. But we need to get more intentional.

We need to get more intentional about what we want from each interaction, okay? So, before you go into a meeting, before you go into a boardroom, I want you to sit down, whether that's alone or with your team, and say, look, what do we want from this? What is what is the best outcome? We can get. What is the second best outcome?

And if we can't get either of those outcomes, what is the best alternative? Okay, have three options before you go into every meeting. Just have some options as to what you hopefully want from these meetings. And I think what you'll find is that if you and your team are on the same page, It makes it really easy to walk the conversation in the direction that you want it to go.

But how can you walk a conversation in a direction that you want it to go if you don't even know what direction you're trying to go for? And so lack of intention is another problem that I see. And so if we only have a limited amount of time, if we're balancing business development and account management, now you have to be even more effective.

I want you to think about it this way. If you are balancing business development and account management, you would best be the best at both. And I genuinely mean that. You would best be the best at both. Because you are having to do what a full time person should be doing in half the time. Half the time.

How, how, how, right? Like, I think your wheels are starting to turn. I think I'm starting to unlock this in your brain as to why. Why we do things differently. Why I'm trying to push. For account management and business development to be handled separately, because this is a real problem. This is a genuine problem in a lot of businesses and business is suffering for it.

We have to separate them. We have to separate them. If we separate them, we are going to be more effective. Okay. All right. So track your interactions. Well, that's another one that we need to step on here. We have to track our interactions very well. How do we do this? We do this with a CRM. Okay. I've talked about it a hundred times.

We have to do it with a CRM. So we need to make sure that if once again, if we're doing account management and business development, okay. And that's you, you're doing it. Now your CRM becomes even more critical because you have to separate it out. You have to separate out your current accounts for account management, your new business development leads, and everything in between.

Okay? And you have to be making sure that you are following up with it, that you are, that you are using the CRM to its full potential. And that you are, you are, you're following the pipe drive and that you were giving the right amount of time to each one, right? We're giving two days to account management.

We're giving three days to business development. We're doing consistently. We're updating the data consistently. We are creating weekly reports to hold ourselves accountable to make sure that we're actually doing what we need to be doing. We are, we are also Entering proper data into our pipe drive.

We're not just putting a bunch of crap that no one's going to understand what the hell we were talking about six months down the line. We need to make sure that if we're inputting data, we're inputting good data, high quality data, data that if you weren't there anymore. Six months down the line, someone could open up that customer and know exactly where you're at with them, right?

Know exactly where you are at in the stages with that customer. That's the level of data we need to be inputting into our CRMs, okay? So it's like, it really is garbage in, garbage out. Quality in, high quality out. Like, that is the truth. And it's no more the truth with CRMs. CRMs can be used poorly, incredibly poorly, right?

Another thing that I want you to think about is that if you have... An all encompassing system, right? An all encompassing system that's handling your orders, your processing, your shipping, and then, there's a CRM function on there. Okay, nine times out of ten, the CRM function that's part of a group of, of, of other functions, it's crap.

It's crap. I have not seen one yet that deserves the money, frankly. In my mind, if you are operating a CRM system on behalf of your business, for your business development teams, for your account managers, for your sales teams, it needs to be an independent program. Have it integrate with whatever your full service system is or your full platform is.

However, I've not found one yet that was made independently or as an add on that worked properly. Okay, that did everything and it did it fast. Okay, the secret to business development, we need things done fast. It needs to be fast. We only have so much time in a day. We are, we're operating like Roadrunner.

We're out there beep beep, right? We're trying to get this done as quickly as possible, which means we need, we need horsepower. Okay. We need horsepower in our CRMs. These ones that are just add ons, they never ever work right. They're slow. They're clunky. The flow, the flow sucks. Okay. You know, I recommend pipe drive on this show.

That is what we use at Capital Business Development. That's what I've used for literally a decade at this point. There's probably lots of others, right? You know, I've heard of Salesforce. I've heard of a few others that are probably great. I'm not knocking any of them. I just say that pipe drive is the one that I use.

It does everything I need it to do. And it does it well, that's it. I got nothing more. I don't make any money from them. I just love their product. It does what I needed to do. And I implemented it all my customers, at least for the time being while we're there. Okay. But I use it because it's fast. It's not clunky.

It's got horsepower. It's cost effective. And I can just, I can use it. I can use it really quick. And I can use it to do a whole bunch of functions for me that I need. Okay. But the point is I use it and you need to use one too. So pick one, pick a CRM that's, that's made for business development. It's made for account management.

It's made for sales. It's going to run faster. It's going to run more effectively. It's going to have better flow. It's going to integrate better. It's going to do better. Okay. everything with phone calls, emails, everything you want to integrate. It just works better. Have something that was built for purpose, have something that was built for purpose, and it's going to help you.

Okay. And then obviously on our CRM, we need to, we need to have a separator. Okay. We need to be able to separate new accounts from. Like from current accounts, right? So make sure that you have a section on your CRM that is current customers, that your, that your accounts are in there. And if you're managing those accounts that they are, they're popping up, they're saying, Hey, you need to call John.

It's, you know, you haven't seen him in two months. Book a lunch, book a meeting, book a golf, right? Make sure that we are spending. We're not mixing our current accounts with our new business development stuff because we get so much of the new business development stuff that your current accounts will get lost in it and they will get neglected.

So we want to make sure that if we are, if account management is part of our responsibility, that we are dedicating the right amount of time, that they are being treated fairly and effectively. And we do that by separating them out on our CRMs. Okay. Okay. Well, I think we really hit it. So what did we learn, right?

If the choice is new business development versus account management, new business development loses every time. Unless your time is being allocated deliberately and effectively. If you are being asked to do this, plan for it accordingly, schedule the right amount of time, and hold yourself accountable.

You. You are the critical thing. You are the thing that's going to make this work or make it not work. You need to hold yourself accountable to the new business development side of it. And I get it. I get it. It's not always as fun. It's not always as, as luxurious or exciting, but it's critical. And if you want your business to win, if you want your business to be successful, if you want to be effective at business development, make sure that you are dedicating the right amount of time to new business development.

Every business should strive to separate their tasks for maximum effectiveness in both areas, new business development and account management. If you separate them, put independent people on each of those tasks, your company is going to be way more effective. The horsepower is going to be going in the right directions and you are going to see.

Independent results. Shoutouts, Daniel Aultman Jr. and Lauryn Chromey for this this specific topic. I highlighted you guys because you guys have really kind of pinned me down on this one. And said, look, we need to learn more. We need to know more. Because this is our situation. I know you don't like it. But I need to know more about it.

So they called me out a little bit. And I just wanted to say I appreciate you both. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for for, for making this episode possible. I would also like to big, give a big shout out to Mats Karlsson, Monica, Jaime and Micah Slavens. They all reached out, gave me a, gave me kind of high fives this week for the shows.

And I appreciate each and every one of you. And I'm very thankful to be doing the show. If you have enjoyed this show and you want to help. Please rate, follow, subscribe on your platforms of choice. I love having you here. I love doing this show and it really helps us to grow the network. So if you're looking at how to help us, that's how you help us rate, follow, subscribe, tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your family.

And until next time. 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 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.