The Exponential Power of The Long Game

The Exponential Power of The Long Game

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 47 of the business development podcast. And today we are talking about the power of the long game. 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 47 of the Business Development Podcast. It's amazing to be on with you today. Today on episode 47, I want to talk about the long game of business development.

But before we start, I want to give a gigantic thank you to Bryan Barletta for episode 46, the power of podcast marketing with Bryan Barletta, which was our Sunday episode. Brian, it was amazing to have you on. It was amazing to have the Sounds Profitable take on podcasting and podcast advertising. And once again, it was an absolute honor to have you on the show.

And after listening to that episode, guys, I have to eliminate, hit the nail on the head from my vocabulary. I listened back to that show. My gosh, it's so funny in podcasting where You get to kind of see your, your I believe it's idiosyncrasies is the right word. The things that are like annoying. My gosh.

I love the term hit the nail on the head, but I promise working forward, I will find other ways to agree with people. Thank you so much for being patient with me as I learn this lovely podcasting journey. We're at 47 episodes. I got to learn at some point, right? We, we were getting closer every single day.

Just want to give a show update, just, just on the topic of 47 episodes. If you guys have been with me from the beginning, thank you so much. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to the business development podcast, for following us, subscribing and leaving us reviews and ratings, and, and the most important is sending me those lovely LinkedIn messages and and podcast emails.

Just letting me know how the show has improved your life or what effects it has had on your life. It's really cool to hear some of the feedback that we get. And maybe one day I'll have a little episode where what we do is we just read some of the some of the listener feedback for the business development podcast, because my gosh, it melts my heart every time.

It's so cool to hear the effect that we are having on people with this show, to hear how we're helping grow business and, and just, and just taking things to the next level. And, and hopefully. Inspiring people to take that next step in their life, which is the goal of every show. And I just you know, I had a message this week from, from even Alexander Javier, who was one of the people we had for our community questions.

And he just got back and sent me just one of the kindest messages I've had. And just wanted to say, thank you, Alexander. That was very, very kind of you. And I appreciated it greatly. And thank you to everybody. You know, it's not just Alexander. I get tons and tons of LinkedIn messages of just people let me know what they think of the show and let me know how it's improved their business and improve their life.

Giving them the motivations to take the next steps. And really guys, I couldn't do this show without you. We don't get a lot of feedback. Like you would be surprised when you do a podcast, how little feedback you get. If people aren't actually reaching out and letting you know, it can be really hard to see the effects you're having on the world and the effects your show is having on the world when you're talking to a wall week over week.

So. It is greatly appreciated and I just want to thank each and every one of you who have sent me a note, dropped me a message, let me know kind of what's going on or just contributed to this podcast in any way, even with community questions. I appreciate it greatly and it really, really gives me the power to keep coming back week over week and delivering these shows for you.

We've had some crazy stats over the past five months, and we've definitely noticed some pretty massive show growth in just the past little bit here. We've had quite a jump in followers and such on the internet and on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, but I did just want to give you guys some rundowns. I typically do my tracking via Spotify and Apple Podcasts, being that those are kind of the two main platforms.

I'm sure we have followers kind of all over the place, but I Can't really tell outside of Spotify and Apple podcasts, how many we have, just to give you an idea of where we're sitting at right now, our show to date. So we're a little over five months. We've had 53, 500 downloads of the business development podcast episodes.

We've had, we have over 700 followers now on Spotify and Apple podcasts, which is so cool. Thank you so much. If you're following this show, I greatly appreciate it. And if you're not following the show yet, please stop by Apple Podcasts or Spotify, give us a follow and we'll keep you up to date on all of our future episodes.

But I appreciate it greatly. It helps us to grow the show across the new audiences is that's kind of the main metric that most of these things are, are tracking and then showing other people, our show also word of mouth guys, really appreciate the word of mouth. If you've told your friends. co workers, your colleagues, people you love about the business development podcast.

I appreciate it greatly and it helps us to really broaden that audience. So we have had 53, 500 downloads, 700 followers on Spotify and Apple podcasts. We've had 20 guest episodes to date and 27 episodes hosted by yours truly, which is pretty 47 episodes. Little over five months, we will hit our 50th episode before the end of July.

I believe it's July 30th. Our 50th episode of the business development podcast will air and It's crazy. When I started this show, I could have never, never even thought about episode 50. Heck, I wasn't even thinking about episode 20 when I started this show. And to think that we're going to be at Coming up on six months here in August by August 6th, and we will have over 50 episodes is really mind blowing.

And I really appreciate it. Like I said, I could not do this show without you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for coming back week over week. And I hope that we continue to deliver over and over again. And now it is time to deliver with today's episode. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about the long game of business development.

Okay, we don't talk about this much. I know that we all have kind of expectations when you're doing business development for a company, you know, your managers or whoever else is kind of on, you know, we want results today. We want results today. We want results today, right? Agreed. We all want results today, but it is critical to remember that business development Isn't necessarily results today.

Although it can seem like that when you've put in the effort and you're getting results week over week. But remember it never starts that way, right? When you go back to the beginning, when you go back to the beginning of your business development career, or when you're starting for a new company, you have to build up that interest.

And that takes time. That takes time. Business development is a long game. And I don't care who you're working for or what point in your career you are or what level of business development you're at, whether that's just, you know, an entry level business development rep right up to a business development director for a large organization.

It all takes time. It takes time to create relationships. It takes time to create structure and follow structure and create consistency. So good business development is not overnight. And I know that that can be really tough sometimes as a business development rep when you're trying to manage the reality, which is that it takes time, to the expectations, whereas we want sales tomorrow.

And I understand how challenging that can be because I spent many, many, many years in business development for other companies and kind of Trying to manage expectations and letting them know, like, yes, absolutely. I mean, that's obviously that's our goal. Always. Our goal always is to, to deliver exponential results over time, right?

That's what all good business development is trying to do. But all of those exponential results come from great relationships and relationships and connections and spreading the word, shouting from the rooftops, it takes time. Does it take forever? No, but it does take. It does take a little bit of time and it is really important for all managers or professionals listening to this that your business development reps are going in week over week building relationships and those relationships will pay off in leaps and bounds.

They will pay off exponentially over time, but you have to give them the time to spread the message, to build the relationship, to start building interest in your products and services and shouting your company from the rooftops. It all takes consistency and effort, right? We have to take consistency and effort.

So. The point of all business development is to build relationships that turn into revenue over time. That is, that is the whole point of what we do week over week. It's always to generate new relationships that will turn into revenue over time. Once we've established those new relationships, it's up to an account manager to maintain that relationship and then really reap the rewards of it.

But business development, we are always after. the next opportunity. We're always looking to introduce a company to as many good opportunities as possible so that we're consistently keeping a funnel of good new opportunities coming into a business. Because the problem is even with your best clients in any business, okay, your best clients in any business can leave for any reason at any time.

And this is a fact and I've worked at enough companies to know that it happens and it happens regularly. You can have an absolutely amazing client that they're your best client. Let's say we're in 2023 today. Let's say it's your best client from 2022. In 2023, they might not even buy anything from you.

And that might not even be your fault. It might be to economic conditions. It might be that that company has financial problems. It might be that that company has found a supplier they like more. You don't control. All of these other companies, your account managers will do their best to maintain those relationships and to keep that revenue coming in week over week, month over month, year over year, it can end at any time for any reason, which is why you need somebody dedicated to new business development to keep those new opportunities coming in regularly so that when that amazing customer takes a break, whether that be a month, a year, two years, five years, whatever it is, You have new opportunities to fill that space.

Okay. And so new business development is critical. And what we're trying to do is always build relationships, new relationships that turn into revenue over time to keep that funnel moving, to always keep new opportunities at your door. Okay. And what is the key to this? How do we do this? Okay. So you need.

You need dedicated business development reps that are only focused on new business development, building your relationships, shouting your company from the rooftops, making you known. The reality is the reason people are not buying from your company is that they don't know who you are or what you do.

That's the truth. And that happens everywhere for every company. You don't mean even Pepsi somewhere in the world. No one knows who Pepsi is, right? Like that is a problem. Literally. Everywhere for every company. And I don't care like how popular your business is in your city. The reality is the next city over might not know who you are.

The next town from that city definitely doesn't know who you are. And so, it's your, it's your business development rep's job to consistently bring in new opportunity and to be constantly trying to kind of funnel in those, those great new opportunities and to shout your business from the rooftop and to expand your reach, okay?

They do this by by building relationships with new businesses over time, and they do this by being consistent in their processes. Okay, so the real secret to being great at business development is to have consistency and structure to have a process, right? You know, the difference between a good salesperson or a good business development rep and everyone else is that they have a process and they follow it week over week.

And yeah, some weeks maybe get, they get crap results, but over time, because they have consistency and structure and a process and they follow it and they hold themselves to it over time, they are exponentially successful compared to their peers because they follow a process. I've been successful in business development, whether that just be me, Kelly Kennedy, or with Capital Business Development, because I have a process.

I have a process and I follow it week over week, month over month, year over year, and it generates results. The difference between me and everyone else? Yeah, maybe I am good at making phone calls, maybe I, but the reality is, is that I've also made a thousand of them because I hold myself to a process and I make the phone calls even when I don't want to.

I make the phone calls even on days that suck. I make the phone calls and, and, and do my CRM data entry. consistently. And those are the things that over time have paid off in leaps and bounds. Like, I'm not waiting for the right phone call to connect through, right? I'm not sitting around and waiting for this, this today phone call to be the one that lines up the meeting.

The reality is I have people calling me to line up meetings at this point in my business development career. The reason is I've left them like 10, 15, 20 voicemails. And so I consistently get phone calls week over week, just saying, Hey, Kelly, finally got your message interested in lining up a meeting.

Let's do this. It's from the consistency. It's from following a process and constantly holding myself to whatever it is for my phone calls for the day, whether it be 10, 15, 20 phone calls for the day for my client or whatever I'm doing those over time compound, because I do them. I do them every day, or on the set days that I have them set to do, but I do it on a weekly basis, and it's following a process.

And keeping my data up to date and doing this week over week over week that has made me exponentially successful it you know I mean the reality is when Capital comes in we provide exponential value to our clients to our cost and we do that because we are consistent and yeah sure we've had lots of practice you know me and me and Cole are great at what we do but the reality is is that it's the consistency consistency gives you an unfair advantage.

Let's just call it that. Consistency gives you an unfair advantage when you're in business development or sales. And so if you can hold yourself to a pattern, if you can hold yourself to a process and follow it consistently or consistently, you will succeed. You will excel. You will become the best of the best.

Okay, so remember, only 2% of all sales happen at the first point of contact. And ironically, most people give up after one call. After one call, guys. That's the statistic. Most business development and sales people never call back again. My gosh, yeah, like, it takes an average of 8 touches. Eight, eight, eight, everybody, right?

It takes an average of eight touches to even to even book a meeting or to make an initial contact even. And You know, it takes, it might take multiples after that to get to a sale or get to a relationship stage, right? So it's absolutely critical that we are dedicating the right amount of time, that we are being consistent, that we're not giving up.

We can't be giving up, right? We need to stick to the long game. Stick to the long game. Don't give up on these people. You know, like, In Alberta, right? Like for those of you who are listening from the United States or from around the world, I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, okay? Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is, like, a major manufacturing center for the oil and gas industry here in, here in Canada.

And the main oil and gas industry in Canada is in northern BC and northern Alberta, where we do a lot of the oil sands productions, right? And so Edmonton is kind of the closest big city to Fort McMurray, which is where the oil sands are. So we do a lot of manufacturing here. The reality is, is that if you're trying to work for the oil and gas companies here in Canada and you were to give up after the first contact, you would never work.

You would never work. And ironically, like even eight is not enough. Like I've had companies where it took me 25, 30 touches before I even talk to somebody. And if I would have given up, At five, six, eight, I would have never got there. I would have never got those big downtown meetings in Calgary. They don't happen unless you are dedicated as a business development rep, as an entrepreneur, whatever you're trying to do with regards to making that connection, you have to be dedicated to getting a result.

And those take time. Success takes time. Good business development, it takes time. Hold yourself to a process. Follow it and you will find success, but you need to, you need to give yourself that opportunity. Okay. It takes an average of eight touches to get a meeting, right? We touched on this only 8% of sales professionals follow up six or more times, 8%.

8%. My gosh, like those statistics, man, we can do better, right? Think about this. If you're listening to this episode today, if you're listening to this episode today and you decide tomorrow that you are going to follow up seven times, eight times, 15 times, you say, look, I have the right contact in this business.

I'm going to follow up, whatever. I'm going to give myself to 20 times. I'm going to give myself this money. I'm going to follow up 20 weeks in a row because why? Because I want this gigantic oil and gas company. I want this gigantic manufacturing company. And I recognize that if I want to stand out, if I want to be in the top 1%, I need to make the calls.

I need to follow up week over week. You can make that choice. You can make that choice today. And I hope you do because you deserve it. Your company deserves it. And my gosh, look, just think about that. Think about that. If you have wins like that under your belt, right? I have wins at Capital Business Development that man, I never dreamed of.

I never dreamed of because I didn't recognize at the time in the beginning of my business development career. You know how challenging some of this is and if you're in the beginning of your business development career understand I'm right there with you. I I remember I remember being at the beginning Yeah, for me, it was a lot of years ago.

Like we're going back 12 years for me I remember being at the beginning and kind of recognizing that I don't necessarily know what to do here. I don't know You know, the sales calls are scary. You know, I come from a person. I'm a person who gets anxious. I write, I get anxious. I live with anxiety and yeah, like making cold calls in the beginning was incredibly anxious.

So I understand, I understand the way that you're feeling, but trust me. It gets better. It gets better as you get better, and you get better by facing your fears, and if your fear is making cold calls, if your fear is making connections and just not really sure how to go about doing it, you got this. You can do it.

You can do it. I believe in you because I was you. You can do it. Just set, set a schedule, and you will. Set some consistency for yourself, follow it week over week and you are going to find success. Believe me, you will find success, okay? Business development is about making an unknown company known. So remember, like I talked about in the beginning, it doesn't matter what your company is, right?

It doesn't matter Who you are, how big you are, who you're working for. Someone doesn't know who you are. One of your customers has no clue who you are, and it is your job in business development to make your company known, which is why, which is why we focus on doing digital introductions, which is why we focus on adding companies to our weekly call list.

Every week, you guys should have 20, 30 call. 30, 30 companies, at least on your weekly call list week over week, over week, that you're following up with until you get that meeting or you get the call to disqualify them, right? Remember, your goal with the weekly call list is to disqualify. If you disqualify, you did what you needed to do, you got them off the list.

They're one less person that you need to knock that door. But guess what? For every person you disqualify, you're also gonna book a meeting, right? You're gonna get the meeting, and so, You can't get that meeting unless you make the call and disqualify all the people who are first need to be disqualified, right?

We can't get to the meeting without cutting some of that, without cutting some of the fat out, right? Can't get to the, can't get to the lean cuts without getting rid of some of the fat. We get rid of the fat. By making the calls and, and finding the people who say no, who give you the definite no, great, they're out.

And, and you either find a new contact at the company to give you a yes, or you keep going until, with the new companies until you find the one who wants to know more, who's interested. And if, as long as we're disqualifying people, we're adding new people each week and we are doing what we need to be doing.

We're creating. That amazing sales funnel that is going to give you opportunity after opportunity, after opportunity, week over week, you are, instead of you making phone calls to line up meetings, you'll have left so many voicemails and so many messages for people. People are going to be calling you to line up the meeting.

Okay. That's the secret to good business development is the consistency, because if you're consistent. People start calling you to line up meetings. Okay. Relationships are key and they take multiple contacts to create. Okay. So obviously the goal with business development is we need to create a rapport, right?

We need to create enough interest in a company and come across kind and sweet and exciting and like somebody that somebody wants to talk to you, but. Believe it or not, you are creating a relationship every single time you leave a voicemail. You're creating a happy tone. You're painting a picture of who you are.

Every time you leave a voicemail, every time you send an email, every time you have a quick two minute discussion on the phone, you are building a relationship with a potential future customer, okay? And so it's critical that we are creating a very positive relationship, that we're someone they want to talk to.

We do that by being conscious about how we are communicating with these people. And making sure that we are, we have a, we have a smile on our face. We have a good tone. We're, we're not boring. Right. And that we're trying to create a human relationship. Okay. If we can do that over time, we are going to build a personable relationship. We're going to become somebody that they want to talk to, and we're going to make that meeting far more likely to happen, okay? So we also need to keep organized and we need to utilize our CRM effectively. This is also critical to our long term success, okay? The CRM, you might get people who, who you get on the line and they say, You know, in my case, Kelly, you know, we, we love what you're doing.

We see the benefit of your business, but guess what? We don't have an opportunity right now, but we might have an opportunity in six months. Okay, great. These are great. Like, don't, don't get upset if these are the calls you get, because what this means is you have somebody who potentially is a hot lead in the future.

I always put these into a future, a future leads or a future opportunities section on my CRM. And I make sure that I have very detailed notes. Why? Because in six months. You think you're going to remember when you talk to John at oil sands company one, what, what you talked about? Of course, you're not going to.

And so if you just have brief jot notes in there, like talk to John conversations, good follow up in six months, you're not going to have the meat and potatoes of that conversation. You're going to have a challenge calling John and saying, Hey, I know we talked six months ago and you were interested, but what was that about again?

You can't do that. You can't do that. That is not professional. You need to hold yourself to a higher standard than that. What do we do in that case, okay? When you're off that conversation with John, and you know that you're going to be entering an entry into your CRM for six months down the line, you need to write like two paragraphs.

Give yourself some real meat and potatoes. Talk about what did you talk about in that conversation? What was the interest point? When did John maybe have an opportunity coming up? What was that opportunity? Did you know what site that was on? What? Project that was what phase that was all of that data in.

And that way, when you call John back in six months, say, Hey, John, it's Kelly. You know, I'm interested in connecting with you. We talked about phase one. I know you have some capital construction going on there. You're putting in some new tanks. You're putting in this. We are interested. I would love an RFP for this package.

Are you guys issuing one yet? Now, you know, you come across like, you know exactly what you're talking about. You know what to ask for. John's going to be impressed because he'll have forgot. He'll forgot that he even talked to you. And he's going to be very impressed that you have all that data that you knew exactly what to ask about.

And guess what? He's probably issuing you an RFP and your boss is happy because you just killed it and got an RFP that seemed to fall out of left field, but it wasn't out of left field. You knew about it, you knew the opportunity, you had great notes, and you followed up. You did all the right things.

That's, that's what I mean when I say that like mediocre business development people are mediocre salespeople who don't follow a process. It like, To them, this would look like, Oh, wow, you got lucky, but you know, you didn't get lucky. You were prepared. You were prepared and being prepared is half the battle, which means keeping your CRMs up to date, keeping your notes, great, holding yourself to a high standard, following a consistent process week over week over week is what is going to make you stand out from the crowd.

It's what can, it's, what's going to provide exponential value to your cost over time, and it's, what's going to make you an absolute business rockstar. So we talked about structure and process. Remember if we utilize good structure, you will create a funnel of meetings and interests that pay off week.

over week over week. That is the goal. That is the goal. That's what I mean by business development is a long game, right? It's not, it's not today. John got lucky, made a phone call and got this great contract, right? It's, it's being consistent. It's keeping good notes. It's holding yourself to, to an organized and structured process.

And it looks like magic when it's working properly, but it's not magic. It's not magic. It's just consistency. It's just consistency. Okay. It's following a process consistently will give you exponential results to your cost over time. We'll provide your company exponential results, and frankly, we'll make you invaluable to whatever business you work for.

Period. I want you to measure your effectiveness. In meetings. Okay? Meetings are what matters. Right? All of this work we do, all of this business development work we do, you know, from, from the social media strategy, to the LinkedIn digital contact introductions, to the follow up calls, to the brochures, to, you know, expos, or whatever you're doing, remember, none of it matters.

None of that matters. It's just what you have to do to get to the end result. The end result is in meetings, and if you're a business development rep, if you're a business owner, if you are selling anything, if you are marketing anything, you need to be measuring yourself in meetings, okay? Because meetings are where relationships are built, meetings are where connections are made, and meetings are where the deal is done.

I don't care how you do these meetings, but you have to get face to face with your customers. You have to get face to face with decision makers. And if you start measuring yourself in meetings, instead of how many phone calls did I make? How many digital introductions did I make? Remember, you need to decide how many meetings you need to make and then work backwards, right?

No. Okay. Well, if I need to make 10 meetings in the next month, how many calls do I need to make to get there? How many LinkedIn digital introductions do I need to make? You'll start to figure it out because it will be a trend. If you guys are measuring all of your, all of your work, if you're providing weekly reports, like I talk about in this show all the time.

You are going to start to see trends. You're going to start to see, yeah, you know what? We had 10 meetings last month and maybe that took 150 phone calls. Maybe that took 200 phone calls, whatever it took. You'll start to see a trend and you will be able to work backwards and say, okay, if my mandate right now is to make whatever 30 meetings in the next six months, this is how many calls I have to make.

This is how many digital introductions I have to make. This is how many connections I need to make and work backwards, but measure yourself in meetings. Are what matters meeting is where the deal is done. All right that is the end of our episode today episode 47. I have some amazing shoutouts that I want to get to you.

We have a few this week because it's been a great week. My gosh. So many awesome messages. Thank you so much to all the people who have reached out, shot us messages, shot us, you know, thanks. In, in some of these cases have shot us community questions. I'm going to get into that really briefly before we move into this.

Community Questions. I want to do this monthly. Okay. Which means I need lots of questions. So community, you're listening. You're the community. Shoot me some questions. That we can answer on a community questions episode, send them over to podcast@capitalbd.ca that's podcast@capitalbd.ca, and we will work to answer your community questions.

And like I said, I want to do monthly right now. I'm hoping at some point, potentially to get to a bi weekly where we're doing two month, because I think that there's a lot of value in this, not just for you the person who asked the question, but for all the people listening who may have a similar question and just never thought to ask it or, or just.

We can help them. The reality is if you have a question, there's a thousand other people that probably also have that same question and we can help them over time. So there's no stupid questions with regards to business development, entrepreneurship. If I have an answer, I'll let you know. If I don't, I'll also let you know.

Sometimes, heck, we might even be able to get an expert on here to answer some of the harder ones. So don't don't feel bad. Send me whatever you got, field them. And I will do my best to answer them in the capital, the capital business development, Kelly Kennedy. Answer. Okay. All right. Shout outs.

Esther Hall, Aaron Haberman, Ben Martin Kathryn Nolan, Jamie Van Kastren, Alexander Javier, Monica Jaime, and Brian Barletta. Thank you so much for reaching out, giving me Amazing messages letting me know what you think of the show and in some cases providing community questions and being an amazing guest it's great to have all of these and like I said, if you guys shoot me a drop me a line I do try to make sure to mention you on the show.

I appreciate each and every one of them If you are enjoying this show Please follow, like, subscribe on your platform of choice. And if you, if you or your company is operating within Canada and you guys are looking for some direct business development support, if we can help, we will. Capital Business Development, I'm the owner, and we do an awesome job if you guys need direct business development service.

Once again, Kelly Kennedy, Capital Business Development. You've been listening to The Business Development Podcast. 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.capital bd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.