The Blueprint for Active Marketing: 4 Steps to Elevate Your Strategy

The Blueprint for Active Marketing: 4 Steps to Elevate Your Strategy

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 143 of the business development podcast. And if you have questions regarding an active marketing process and why an active marketing process might be best for your business, stick with us. We're going to chat all about the four steps and we are going to get you set up for success.

Stay tuned.

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 143 of the business development podcast. Today, we're going to be chatting about four fundamental steps of the active marketing process. You guys know, I love talking about this, but before I get into it, we're going to start with a show update. Guys, we are at 169, 345 downloads.

We are 16 and a half months into the business development podcast. I have a super, super cool announcement. The capital business development website, capitalbd. ca has been revamped and updated and is live, and you should definitely check it out. It's awesome. It talks about business development services, coaching, and obviously the business development podcast.

Which is our world, guys. It's the world that we live in. It's an honor. There was a lot of hard work that went into it. I want to thank Isaiah Gionet, Shelby Hobbs, and Cole Chorney for their hard work in making making all the updates and making sure that it's up and running and doing what it needs to do.

And it came out awesome guys. It's a 20 story skyscraper website and I absolutely love it. And very thankful that we got it done. So go check it out. Capitalbd.ca. Also a reminder. Coaching is in full swing. If you guys need any business development support, whether that just be weekly encouragement, whether that be implementing a full scope business development program, whether that be a sounding board for your amazing business development ideas, I want to hear from you.

I want to work with you. Come check it out. You can get to coaching now a few different ways from the business development podcast website, from the capital BD website, or directly from my LinkedIn profile, but check it out, book a free discovery call. Let's have a conversation and let's see where it goes.

But I think there's probably something we can chat about. And I think that together we can vastly improve your business development systems that lead to exponential growth over time, which is the goal of all business development. And we need to make sure that we do it right to get that type of result.

So. Capital Business Development Coaching with me, Kelly Kennedy. You can book it just about anywhere you can find this show. Remember guys, to give us a follow on LinkedIn, Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts really helps the growth of this show guys. Everything is going on on LinkedIn. So if you guys want to see kind of what's going on with the conversations, all the posts, all the stuff going on, upcoming guests.

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All right, guys, today we're chatting about one of my absolute favorite, favorite topics to chat about. We are chatting about the active marketing process and you guys know, I am passionate. I am passionate about the active marketing process. I believe tremendously in the active marketing process for business development.

Active marketing is not only the most effective way to generate new B2B relationships. It is also predictable, calculatable, and cost effective guys. It really is. It is top notch. If you are looking to build long term business to business relationships that lead to repeat business for your organization or new opportunities.

An active marketing process really is one of the best options for you guys to consider. And I know that there's a lot of fear around it. And a big part of this show is to try to overcome those fears and show you guys there is a better way. There is a great way to do business development and not a new way to do business development.

A new way to approach it in the new world. And so we're going to chat all about that today. Remember guys, I started capital business development based on my own active marketing process, and I teach it and continue to teach and talk about it on this show until I find a better way or the robot overlords make relationships.

Irrelevant. I don't think that that's happening anytime soon. I think relationships are still very, very important. Until then, we will continue to build great real relationships that lead to long term repeat business over time. We love exponential growth and long term business relationships over time.

And we will continue to advocate for that until the cows come home or the robots take over. All right, guys, let's just get into it. Let's get into it. So you guys know it's a four step active marketing process. So we have a system at Capital Business Development. We actually call it the five step system.

And the fifth step is actually the four step active marketing process. And the reason that it is that is that is the space where most business development people should be spending their time, right? Once you've done your target research, you know what industry you want to work with, you know the people you need to contact in that industry to get where you need to go.

That's when you need to start working into the active marketing process, which is a really simple four step process. Guys, this is really, really straightforward. Easy to implement, and it's something that you guys can utilize week over week, month over month, year over year to get consistent results over time.

The cool thing about it too is that if you're tracking all of your data, you can start to realize how many cold contacts you need to have, how many warm contacts you need to have before you start to get meetings. And once you can do that, you can literally calculate what it is going to take to reach your growth goals over time.

And, you know, that's a conversation for a different show, but. What I'm getting at today is the active marketing process for an organization is a process that should be enacted and followed on a daily basis to achieve consistent results over time, right? The worst thing about business development?

is that if you don't have a process and you're not following it consistently over time, your results are all over the place. And you don't know what is happening or where your next opportunities are coming from. You're just shooting in the dark, hoping for the best, right? The reason that at Capital Business Development and on the show, I advocate so much for consistency and process over time is that if you can follow follow consistent process over time, you get reliable, dependable results over time as well.

Things you can calculate, you can start to calculate how many meetings you're going to have this year. You can start to calculate out of those meetings, how many you close and what that means for you in real dollars and cents. Following a consistent process for business development specialists will lead to a better to better business development, higher business growth, exponential business growth over time.

But remember, good process has to be enacted and followed. If you're not following a process, you're shooting in the dark, you're eventually going to run out of leads. And then what, then you're just stuck. And you're wondering why you're not delivering, you're wondering why you don't have all this opportunity coming in your door.

And I guarantee you it really is because There is not a good process being followed at your organization, or your business development people just don't have enough experience or know how to enact that great business development process. And so what are we doing on the show? We're teaching your business development people.

We're teaching you Mr and Mrs entrepreneur. We are showing you how to implement a great business development process that will lead to exponential results and amazing relationships for you and your organization over time. That is the total goal here of all of our business development shows on the business development podcast.

And, you know, we'll continue to reinforce these things and we'll continue to bring you great information week over week. But I really do want you to listen to this show, listen to this episode and enact the active marketing process at your organization and watch it turn around. Okay. So let's just do it.

Step one, Step one, I always call either the cold contact stage or what I like to call the digital introduction stage. Okay. At the digital introduction stage, we're assuming that a couple things have happened. Okay. So this isn't the whole business development process. There's a part before where you need to create your ideal target lists.

Okay. And with our ideal target list, what we're trying to do is go by. Industry, sub industry, location, and then ideal people at that company to contact. So we are assuming at this stage you have done that work. You've identified the main industries that you want to work at. You've identified the sub industries.

You've identified the locations that you can be successful at. And where can you be the most successful? You can always be the most successful right where you are, okay? Your home base is the most successful location for you to operate out of. It's where you're going to be most competitive. It's where you're going to be able to provide the best service and heck, maybe as you grow and get better and better, that next city, that next province, that next state starts to open itself up.

But most of the time, the further you get from home base, the harder it is to enact your product and service in the most competitive way. Likely there's somebody at that other location who isn't. Is local to that place who can deliver an equivalent, if not better service because they are local. So you are always most effective where you are, start there, move out.

But we've identified the main industries, the sub industries. And remember, what do I say? The sub industries typically offer the best opportunity for your organization. Most of the time they get big contracts with the large industry bite off more than they can chew and need that support. So don't rule them out.

The largest. Companies that your organization can service are not always the best opportunity for your company. Remember that there's usually a sub industry or an intermediary who you might fit better with, who might be a better opportunity for your organization. For a lot of the service companies that I work with, that does tend to be the way it works out.

So just want to remember the companies, the biggest companies in your organization, not always the best opportunity, usually there's some other opportunities there, but we list them both out. And we use them both as targets that we are going to go after. Okay. So we have identified our ideal target companies.

We have then identified the target industries and roles within those industries that we want to reach out to who can actually. Actually make a buying decision or get us in the room with someone who can make a buying decision at the ideal target companies. Okay. So what next? The next thing that we always want to do is we utilize socials.

Obviously I'm leaning towards LinkedIn. LinkedIn really is the best social for business, but it is not the only social for business. And so I don't want you to feel roped in here and say, well, Kelly, you're telling me LinkedIn, but I use Instagram, whatever. Use whatever you want, as long as you can make direct contact with the target individual, and you are confident that they will read the message.

Okay. That is the key. We need to make sure that we are getting our information in front of the target individual. So I always recommend that you actually connect with them first. I'm a huge advocate for actually connecting with somebody on LinkedIn, and then sending them a message, as opposed to in mails.

I think 99. 999 percent of in mails used for sales and marketing just go out the window. People don't even look at them. And so in my mind, it's kind of a gigantic waste. But You can try it, but in my mind, the in males have never been that effective for me. My approach is always to make direct contact.

It is the most personal thing to do as well. So don't be afraid to connect to that individual and then shoot them a message about a week after you connected as to why you connected with them. Okay. But we want to make that digital introduction first. Okay. And so use LinkedIn, use whatever. If we are doing this, you are probably going to need a LinkedIn premium account.

Guys. I always recommend just the basic business account. It gives you everything that you need. It's a great value. I think it's around 600 or 700 Canadian a year. It's a great value in the grand scheme of things. And you don't really need those like thousand in mails or whatever you get with the sales navigator.

So I always just recommend get the basic business account on LinkedIn. It will give you the opportunity to search people, right? If you do not pay for an account, LinkedIn starts to limit the amount of people that you can search over a given month. And so we need to eliminate that. We need to eliminate that.

Because we need to connect with 100 people every single week to keep our digital pipelines full. Okay? So we want to get our LinkedIn premium. I always recommend the basic business account. It's the best value for your money and it does everything you need it to do.

Once we do that, we need to search the roles for the individuals we are after at the organizations we are at. This is very simple, guys, very easy to do. Type in the name of the company, hit enter, click people, click refine, search and hit supply chain, operations manager, CEO, founder, president, whatever it is, and you can track down the individual that you are after.

Once we do that, we want to connect with them. Once we get a connect invite back, we want to probably wait a day to a week Before we send that introduction message, right? And introduction messages in this case, guys, it is personal. You do not want to just slam them with, I'm, you know, X, Y, Z, and this is my business, and this is why you want to work with me.

No, introduce yourself, be a person. You are never going to do business with somebody directly over LinkedIn. LinkedIn is just an intermediary to make an introduction of yourself so that when you reach out to them, they are aware of who you are. You are no longer coming in cold. Okay? So be personal. Say something interesting about yourself.

Introduce yourself. Say why you connected with them. Maybe mentioned something about their profile. Try to be nice about it. Try to be a human in a world of AI and robots, be a human guys. I'm all about it. Humanizing the workplace is important. And it is one of those things that you can definitely do on LinkedIn.

So don't be afraid to do a brief introduction of yourself, attach a brochure for your organization. If you have one, they do get read guys. Most people get curious and we'll read the brochure. So don't be afraid to just talk about yourself, what company you work with, attach a brochure and say, you look forward to chatting with them in the future.

Transcripts Keep it short, keep it personal, keep it fun, whatever you want to do, but keep it human, okay? And let your brochure do the talking. And then remember, this is just stage one. Once we've done this, we're actually going to add this contact into our digital introduction stage of our CRM, guys. So our very first stage of our CRM is is our digital introduction stage.

Okay. And in this digital introduction stage, that's where we're going to put all of these people that we've connected with on LinkedIn or on Instagram or whatever. And we've sent that personalized introduction message with a brochure. All right. And then we're going to lead into our step two, which is our, what I like to call our direct contact or warm stage.

Okay. So The people in the direct contact or warm stage, we are actually moving them in from the digital introduction stage. How are we doing this? You are going to qualify which ones you think are the best opportunities from your digital introduction stage that you made contact with in the last week.

Okay? Once you've done that, we are going to Track down the contact information, and this is not that hard guys. Don't get super overwhelmed with this. I know people look at it and they're like, how the heck am I going to find this person's information? It is not as hard as you think. Okay. Mark my words. It is not as hard as you think.

And no, you don't need to pay for all of these premium contact information services. You do not need to do this. Can you do this? Yes, but you do not need to do this. Okay. It is not that hard. On LinkedIn, 99 percent of the time, the contact is going to have the business they work at and the location they work out of.

Call the main line. It's not that hard. Call the main line and just say, Hey, I want to speak with John Smith from XYZ company. And 99 percent of the time, they'll say, yep. Just hold now and I'll transfer you if that happens, you now have the direct line to that person, that man or woman that you need to make contact with, and you can now move them from digital introduction stage into into contact made or weekly contacted stage, okay, this is where we want to get people.

We need people in this weekly contact stage. Why? Because it takes multiple weeks, most of the time to book the meetings you want to book. Multiple weeks, guys, on average, it takes anywhere between eight and 15 direct contacts before you were going to book that meeting. And I know most of you are like, what, eight to 15, I'm giving up at two or three.

I know you are, I know you are. And that's why you are not booking the amount of meetings you should be booking. You really do need to reach out. At Capital, we're finding 11, 11 seems to be that magical number. Where with most of the companies we work with at medium size, small to medium sized companies, it takes around 11 weeks of weekly reach out to get that initial meeting.

But that's all it takes. Consistency over time wins the day. Every single time guys, I booked a meeting not that long ago that I've been working on for literally a year for one of my premium clients. And guys, if they wanted to meet with one of the largest companies in Canada, and it's not easy to book those meetings, sometimes it took multiple, multiple reach outs.

I'm not sure how many I'm at with that, but it is considerable. It is more than 30 for sure. And that's just what it took. It took multiple reach outs. It took a couple of contact changes and eventually we got it, but consistency over time wins the day. Don't just give up. Don't just give up. Follow up weekly.

For a reasonable amount of time, I would say at least 10 times before you guys say, okay, I'm done with this company, but give them 10 tries. I think you'll find that somewhere in there, you're going to get that meeting that you've been after. Okay. So we want to get them into that weekly follow up stage.

Once we have the contact information It's not hard. It's not hard. Finding emails is a lot of the time just as easy as reaching out to them and saying, Hey, I'm john or jill with XYZ company. We do this and I'd love to send you a formal introduction to our company. 99. 9 percent of the time they're going to give you their email, you now have their phone number, their email weekly contact is easy.

And I want you to follow up weekly until you either book the meeting, or get disqualified either get a, no, we don't need this service or yes. We would love to book a meeting with you. Also, there's an in between on that guys, there's a, we don't need that service right now. And if it's, we don't need that service right now, follow up with.

Would you mind if I reach back out in six months and 99 percent of the time once again, they're gonna say, yeah, we might have an opportunity in six months. Try back then. Trust me, there are always options and finding that contact details. It is not as hard as you think in the information age, finding phone numbers, finding emails, you don't necessarily need to pay for these premium services.

You can find them very easily with a little bit of detective work on your own. And I find 99 percent of the time. That's what works for me. Okay. Alright, and so once we have them in that weekly follow up stage, right, we are reaching out once per week via phone or email, and we are asking for a meeting. If you get them on the phone, if you get them on the email, ask for a meeting.

What do you got to do? Ask for a meeting! Every time I know you can introduce the company, but if you don't ask for the meeting, they are not going to give it to you. Tell them what you want. Tell them you can't wait to meet them. You would love to book a 30 minute, a one hour, a 45 minute introduction meeting to introduce your company and learn more about their company and see if it is a fit.

Trust me, ask for the meeting, every opportunity you get, because you may not get a second opportunity. Ask for the meeting, guys. That is the whole point of business development. It's to get in front of the right people and build that relationship, which will lead to more success. Opportunities, RFPs, orders, and repeat business over time.

Okay. And remember every single time in our weekly contact to stage that we reach out via email, via phone call, update all actions in the CRM, make sure that you're giving a complete log as to what happened, what the conversation was, what did you ask for and make sure that you are following up and you are updating that data in the moment.

Okay. Remember disqualify or get the meeting. Either one is a win. That's your point, right? We need to get the people off the weekly contact stage that are a waste of time. And we need to get the ones that aren't a waste of time into that meeting stage so that we can roll someone else in as soon as possible.

Okay, once we get to the meeting stage, step three, we need to book that meeting. So you got them on the phone. You got them on email and they said, yeah, I'm interested. Let's book a meeting. Amazing. Book the meeting on the spot, guys. Don't wait. Don't wait. If you're going to book a team's meeting, super easy.

Just send them the calendar invite for the date that you've selected with them, the time that you've selected with them. Make sure that you get the the time zone, correct guys. Like I'm in Canada. I'm, I'm talking to the U S I'm talking to the UK. I got to make sure that I'm getting the time zones, right?

Most of the time, but make Make sure that your time zones are right and book that meeting. If you are booking a lunch meeting, amazing, same thing, get it into your calendar, send the invite, have the location details for the restaurant or the location you're going to meet them at, have the time time zones.

And then remember, if you are booking a lunch meeting, make a reservation. If you are going to be at a restaurant, make a reservation. Don't be the fool who didn't do it. Show up on the busiest day of the year and you didn't know it. And now you can't get a table. My gosh, it is horrible and I hate to admit it, but I've had this happen once and you do not want it to happen to you ever again.

So trust me on this book, a reservation. You don't know what days a restaurant is going to be busy, especially if it's in a city that you are not familiar with. Call, make the reservation. And that way, you know, that you and your client are going to have a great in person meeting. But remember the meeting is the whole point.

Don't waste any time. If they agree to a meeting, you book it as soon as humanly possible. From the moment they say yes, because you need to get them in there. You need to get them accepting the calendar invite. You need to get that meeting locked. Cause that meeting is the whole point. That meeting is what's going to lead to exponential growth, repeat business, and a happy, happy new customer for you over time.

Okay. All right. So we need to schedule those meetings immediately. We need to show up to in person meetings, 30 minutes early to prep. Okay. 30 minutes early. I say this on purpose because you never want to be late for a meeting that you organized with a client. You never, never, never want this because you need to know more than they do.

They're coming to a meeting for you to introduce your product and service. You need time to research a little bit. You need time to collect yourself, to prepare your brochures and your business cards, and to just think about the meeting, just get into the moment. Okay. It never hurts to do this. I always recommend wherever possible to show up to your meetings 30 minutes early.

And if not that. At least 15 minutes early to your meetings, guys. You always want to be there early. Tell the client where you're sitting, have some time to get collected, to get organized, to think through the meeting and learn a little bit more about the client or what you want to talk about. Get your thoughts collected, get your talking points collected, and that way you are just going to be even more of a rockstar than you already are preparation.

Breeds success preparation is like magic. It really will change the way that your business meetings go. So try to get there early. 30 minutes is a great, great goal. Okay. All right. And like I said, have brochures, have business cards, always have something physical that you can give your client. It's just good business.

I always have either physical brochures or business cards, or 90 percent of the time I have both. Okay. And be a human first guys. Business comes second. Okay. Business will always come. It will always come people know why they're at lunch with you. Okay. You don't need to just sit down and jump into business and hit them hard.

Right. Connect as a person, do things that a friend would do because ultimately what you're trying to build here is a long term relationship over time with your new client. Okay. Be a human. Talk about your day. Talk about something crazy that happened to you. Talk about your last vacation. Ask them about their last vacation.

Figure out what you have in common and build on that. Trust me, the business will come. I I've had, I've had plenty of meetings where we did amazing business and you know where it came, it came in the last five minutes of the meeting, because at the end of the day, it's much more fun to have a great conversation with a potential friend or with a friend that leads to great business than to just be there to chat about business and nothing else.

Right. Guys, some people are like this. 90 percent of people aren't feel free to be yourself and connect as yourself. First business person. Second, this will lead to more success for you over time. Okay. Remember to ask great questions and listen. All right. I got great at business development. When I remember that.

People aren't there to hear me talk. They're here to tell me their challenges. If you can sit back and just ask great questions and listen to the answers, they're going to tell you what's wrong. They're going to tell you what pain they are experiencing. And you are going to be able to say, Mr. And Mrs.

Customer, I hear what you're saying. And I think we might have a solution for you. I think my products and services might be a great fit. Can we chat about that? And they're going to say, yes, and you are likely going to get a new customer. And so. Don't be afraid to just ask great questions and be quiet.

Most of the time, this is going to lead to a much better conversation for you than if you just steal the airwaves chatting about your product and service. Okay. Let them tell you what their challenges are. Let them tell you who your competitors are. Let them tell you what's going on in their organization and what they need and what they can afford to pay for things, right?

Like people will tell you all sorts of things. If you just sit back, ask the right questions and listen. Okay. And then always guys, always, always, always at the end of every meeting, whether it be a team's meeting, a lunch meeting I don't know, a literal internal meeting, always ask for next steps. What are the next steps?

What is the next thing we need to do? Do I need to get you brochures? Do I need to send you a rate guide? Do I need to put together a proposal? Do you need to send me an RFQ, RFP, a bid list? What needs to happen next, but don't forget. What are the next steps? Five words that will change your life. I literally did a show on it called five words that will change your life.

What are the next steps will change your business life. If you are in a meeting, I do not want you to leave a meeting ever again without asking those five magic words. Okay. And guys, I talk about it all the time. Okay, business development should be business development only. And I know I got a lot of BD people who do BD and account management are like, Kelly, but I do both.

The problem with this guys is that business development always gets neglected. If you have somebody doing business development and account management at your organization, I can guarantee you they are doing way more account management than business development. Why? It's just an easier position to do.

Great business development really needs to be new business development. We need to focus our business development people on staying in that new business development cycle and bringing us new opportunity over time. So part four guys. is handoff. Okay. We always need to hand off to account management. So what is a great handoff?

We've had a great meeting. We've done the business development. We've asked for an opportunity. They gave us one. Now's the time to have operations, account management come in. Knock it out of the ballpark for that customer and do an appropriate handoff to the account manager for that customer so that the business development person can get back to what they do best, what they're passionate about, which is getting you new business.

Okay. So we always want to book a meeting with account management, with operations management, bring them up to speed on this customer, what the order is. What they have going on. Then we want to introduce our prospect to the account manager and the operations team who is going to help them. And then we are going to take a step back, guys.

We are going to take a step back. Your job is done. Congratulations. You business developed the crap out of that, and now you are going to do it all over again. Okay. All right, guys, active and passive marketing both have their roles to play in business to business. I always recommend an 80 20 rule, 80 percent active marketing to 20 percent passive advertising in a world of AI and virtual assistants and robots.

Be a human to stand out. Okay. If you enjoyed this episode and you want help with developing an effective BD system for your company, reach out to me and book a coaching discovery call at CapitalBD. ca. We have solutions. I can help you. I can help you establish an effective business development program, which will lead to exponential growth and repeat business for your company over time.

Shout outs this week, Marcus Chan, Liz Ryan, Govind Kusa, David Meltzer, Nate Simpson, Paulos Kleenthuis, J Maul, Lou Adler, Jason Chakalakal, Colin Harms, Sean Neils, Vince Phillips, Rodney Lover, Tatiana Zabetolina, Aaron Haberman, Gary N, Mike Mack, and Brian Hayes. Until next time, this has been the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you.

On the flip side,

Intro: 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.capital bd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.