The Power of Feedback

The Power of Feedback

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 77 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, we are chatting about the importance of feedback. It means everything. It can change everything. Stick with us. You're going to love today's show.

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 77 of the business development podcast. I hope you all had an absolutely amazing, amazing Halloween. I hope that you enjoyed episode 76 gigantic thank you to Brennan Storr for episode 76, identify the fear. I'm so cool having Brennan store come on the show. I absolutely, absolutely love his book, A Strange Little Place. If you're just hearing this today, maybe this is your first time on the show. Go back one episode. We just had an amazing Halloween special.

And I know people say it's business development. Why do you need a Halloween special? And I just said because I wanted one. Because I love a good spooky story, I love a good scary book, and it just seemed very fitting to bring on an author to chat with us about authorship, and give us a little scare along the way, and I appreciated that a lot, Brennan.

Thank you so much for gracing us with your presence. Also! Earlier this week we, we got to go to the Heritage Classic Edmonton Oilers versus Calgary Flames hockey game. The tickets were donated by one of our amazing, amazing sponsors, Colin Harms of Hypervac Technologies. Just a special thanks to you, Colin.

That was very much appreciated. Very kind of you. Very generous. And thanks for doing that. We had an absolutely amazing time and there's never a bad hockey game. So, very cool. Once again, Colin, thank you so much. I wanted to start our episode today because we're heading into a new month just by, you know, chatting a little bit about where we're at as a show.

And it's kind of interesting because it will definitely fall forward into our episode topic today where we're going to be talking a lot about the importance of feedback. But! If you've been with us for a while, you've listened to a few episodes, we would absolutely love to have some of your feedback.

We'd love to know what you think of the show how it has affected you, if there's things that you think we've missed, or topics that you think you wish we would have covered, or that we haven't covered yet. Or if you hate the show. The show is the worst thing you ever listened to. I am open to feedback.

I'm not going to take it personally. I want to know what you think and how we can improve. So please shoot us an email podcast@capitalbd.ca that's podcast@capitalbd.ca for your feedback on the business development podcast. Let us know what you love. And we will try to do a little better as we move into this next phase of our show.

We are quickly, quickly approaching 100, 000 downloads. Very, very likely we will attain 100, 000 downloads in November. If not November, definitely in December. It's absolutely amazing. And this show is growing because of you, our lovely fans. And I appreciate you so, so much. If you have told a friend, a family member, a colleague, if you've come by our page, like, subscribe.

And I know you're doing it because our page numbers are growing. Our LinkedIn groups are growing. Our Spotify and Apple Podcast followers are growing. And we appreciate you greatly. Thank you so much for doing that. If you haven't done that yet, please do. Please swing on over and give us a like, follow, subscribe.

Tell a friend, tell a family member. That is how shows like this grow. And if you're getting benefit from this show, likely other people will too. Your friends, your family will too. So please, if you love the show, let some people know and help us to grow this thing organically. It's absolutely amazing. I, I could not have thought that this show would ever end up where it has ended up.

We are so fortunate now to have sponsors of the show to help field some of those costs, allow us to continue to advertise and grow this show in the way that we want to do it. And it's just, it's all because of you guys. It really is. You know, most of our sponsors are listeners. I know that most of the people who, who write us are our longtime listeners.

Who really enjoy the show or have found it when they were looking for a job or found it when, you know, they just got a new management position and they just needed a little help. Or heck, they just started a business and they didn't know what the heck to do. You know? They knew what they knew, but they weren't really sure how to do the business development aspect of it, and they found us.

And if this is you, thank you so much. Thanks for not only finding us, but searching us out and sticking with us. And I hope that you have found something here that has allowed you to take your business to the next level, no matter whether you work for someone else or whether you're starting your very own business.

And I hope that week over week, we are able to encourage you and help to help to alleviate any of those questions that you guys may have. We have amazing entrepreneurial interviews. I could not have grown this show to the level it's at without the level of amazing guests we've had. And if you just go back.

through our back catalog. I think right now we're sitting at something like 34 or 35 guest interviews at this point. And a gigantic thank you to all the guests that have come on our show. Like I said, could not have done this without you. Your stories are amazing. Your companies are amazing. And we appreciate all of you greatly. And obviously we've been talking a lot about feedback and yeah, I want to know. I really do. Podcasting is one of those weird spaces where unless people tell you how you're doing, it can be really hard to tell. And so I appreciate it. If you've reached out to me recently, or if you're thinking about it, you're on the fence, you're like, I want to reach out to Kelly and ask him a question, or I want to reach out to Kelly and just let him know how, how the podcast has affected my life.

Please do. Please do, I appreciate it greatly. And if you just want to reach out to Kelly to tell him that I don't like something that you did and I think maybe you should do something different, let me know too, because I really do want to know how we can improve this show. Right? I get it. We can't stay in this same pace forever.

We can't stay in the same place forever. Things have to evolve. Business has to evolve. People have to evolve. And at some point, this show as well will have to evolve. And we're going to do it based on feedback we get from our listeners on things that you want, topics you want covered, ways that we can improve this show.

I want to hear it from you. I want to hear it from our dedicated listeners. So please, if you have a minute today and you want something to do, we need your help, shoot us some feedback on the show, right? This episode, you're getting at 77 episodes. We are very, very quickly approaching 100 episodes. Very likely we will be over 100 episodes by the new year, if not just into the new year of 2024.

So if you want things to be a little different in 2024, if there's things that we can do better, let me know. If there's things you want the same, let me know. Podcast@capitalbd.ca and since we've been talking so much about feedback, let's get into our show topic today. The importance of asking for feedback.

Okay? This is not something I have always been good at, nor am I perfect at by any means, by any means of the word. I'm going to give you some examples today of where... I had to, you know, shake my head and bite my tongue and just listen because feedback is critical to your growth. Feedback is critical to your company's growth, to winning successful bids, to having more fruitful conversations with potential clients or with your clients, right?

We have to be open to having a conversation that creates win win scenarios, and sometimes that can mean... Getting feedback and sometimes that feedback is positive and sometimes that feedback is critical, but it's all valuable and we're going to talk about that today. Okay, so being open to feedback is absolutely critical to your success in business development or entrepreneurship.

Relationships and negotiations are a two way street and dialogue and openness are critical to getting you there. Okay. I wanted to talk today about some situations that I ran into in the past, right? I've worked business development for a lot of years, a lot of years, like 12 plus years at this point directly in business development.

And I learned a lot of hard lessons in that time, working with the same clients over a long period of time. And whenever we were struggling in business, whenever our business was struggling with one of my previous clients, One of the challenges that we were typically facing was we weren't being open to dialogue with our customer.

Okay. Most of the time, you know, at the time, if we didn't have good dialogue going on with our customer, what was happening was we would hit them up with the price guides for the year and say, Hey, you know, Mr. And Mrs. Customer, this is our pricing for the year. And most of the time they wouldn't necessarily write us back, but here's what would happen.

We wouldn't get any orders, the phone wouldn't ring, you know, the times of the year where we would normally get a whole bunch of orders just wouldn't happen. And I know the question would be like, well, what's going on? Like, we know they're working, we know that they're hiring, what is happening here?

And when we finally did get in touch with the client, it would be something silly, like, oh yeah, like, you know, you're five bucks more than XYZ company down the street, or or yeah, yeah, we just decided that it's just a hair more this year, so we don't want to make that jump. Without having that open conversation with them.

Literally five bucks lost us, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in orders. And so this could be happening to you and your company as well. And it's very, very critical that we are having an open policy, an openness with our customers, where you go to your customer and say, look, I want to work with you.

I want to work with you. I need your feedback. What do you need? What is it that you need? What are you buying this year? Because the answer isn't the same as last year. Not very often, okay? It does happen, but times change, clients change, their needs change, the internal policies change, the pricing at which they're willing to buy over the next year changes, the budget changes, right?

Everything changes. And if we are not having Open conversations with our customers, getting real feedback on what they need. We are going to lose out. And so let me talk to you a little bit about what happened in this place. How were we successful? How were we able to overcome this? Well, account management starts to become really critical in these scenarios, right?

There's, these were current clients that we worked with on a regular basis. And so what, what happened was. I would go for lunch with these people in a neutral location. I would sit down with them and I'd say, you know, John, Jack, Jill, what do you need this year? What do you got coming up for projects?

And they would say, well, Kelly, we have, you know, this construction project, or we're going to have this shutdown need, and we're likely going to need this many people. And instead of me saying, great, you need this many people. It's going to cost you this much. I would sit down with them and say, amazing.

What do you need from me? How do we win? What are the scenarios that you need us? to bid for? What are the circumstances that we're going to need to bid? Are there opportunities for us to save money and cut costs on our end? How do we get that number to where you want it? Oh, and by the way, what is the number that you need for us to win this bid?

Because if I had these conversations with these customers, if I had this open conversation with them, where what I'm telling them is we want the business. Let us know how we get it. How do we create a win win scenario for you and for us? And no, I'm not saying that this always works. That's not what I'm telling you right now.

What I'm saying is have the conversation. So at least you know what they need, because if you don't have this conversation, They won't tell you, they just won't buy from you. And that is a very, very bad place to be as a business to have no self awareness as to what's going on in the market around you, why your customers are going with your competitors and why they're not going with you, right?

It's really as simple for the most part as open conversations with your customers. And it's really, really critical that we're getting feedback. This translates all over the place, right? Right at the beginning of the show, I'm asking you, what do you think of the podcast? If you're a longtime listener, how can we improve?

What do you want different? What do you want to stay the same? How do we get better at podcasting? The reality is I didn't come into podcasting as a podcaster. I came into podcasting as a business development specialist, as an expert in business development, and I started talking to a wall. So I am by no means the best podcaster in the world.

I do not. For a second, try to claim that title. I know it's not me, but I'm doing the best I can. And I'm open to learning and I'm open to improving. And I want you, my customer, my listener to let me know how I can do better for you. How can I make this show better for you? How can I make it more valuable for you?

And how can I improve myself as a podcaster, as a business development specialist, to be able to provide you. The information that you need. I want to have an open dialogue. And how do we do that? We sit down and we ask for feedback. And that is what I'm doing today with you. And that is what I'm going to teach you today to do with your clients, because it's absolutely critical to your success in business.

And it's something that could be really hard. And I struggled with for a long time. I really did. I was not always good at taking critical feedback and maybe I'm not, maybe I'm still not the best at it. I'm not going to lie, but I'll tell you what. The value of critical feedback has become very, very, very apparent to me since I became an entrepreneur myself.

It has become very, very apparent to me since I started talking to a wall with a podcast, knowing that I'm learning, and I have a lot to learn, and I'm going to be learning for probably my entire duration of doing this. So, you have to kind of take that mindset to it that don't feel, like, feedback isn't necessarily about Dissing you or, or hating on your company or, or telling you that you're doing it wrong.

What it usually is about is saying, Hey, I'm your customer. And this is where your products and services are a little bit misaligned with us today. If we want to work with you, but can we maybe try to get more in alignment? This is a two way street as well. I'm not telling you that you need to bend over backwards for your customer.

What I'm telling you is find the win, win, find the middle ground, find the negotiation that's good for you. and good for your customer, right? And if we, if we ask for feedback, we have open conversations, we are just going to be more successful. I want to talk a little bit about, you know, what I've been doing with the podcast to try to get better over the past little bit.

For those of you who are, you know, long time listeners of the show, you might have got a reach out, especially if we're connected on LinkedIn and, you know, we've talked quite a bit, you may have noticed that in the past month, I have been asking you to let me know how I'm doing, how could I improve this show, and Well, I want you all to know, I'm going to tell you what the feedback is.

I got today because I did learn some lessons from each and every one of you. There is something specifically that came up in every single conversation, and I am going to work to implement that, but I would not have known that it was important to you. If I hadn't had those conversations, if we didn't have that open conversation, and if you weren't honest with me, and I appreciate that greatly for those of you who were honest with me and told me, Hey, Kelly, this is what I like.

This is what I think you could do better at. This is where I think you could improve. I appreciate that greatly because it's very hard to see that from a myopic standpoint, which is kind of where I sit, unfortunately. If we don't always have these direct conversations, it tends to be where we sit, right?

So the bit of feedback that I've gotten over the past month from around three or four different listeners, but it came back very consistently from each one of them, was that in my, in my entrepreneurial episodes, my Sunday episodes, If I could ask more business development oriented questions to our guests, that would be beneficial to them because we want an outside understanding of not just what you think about this business development strategy, but also what has been effective for them.

And you know, it's funny in the very beginning of the podcast, when I first started doing guest interviews, this was a part of my show plan was to ask very specific business development questions, but Believe it or not, I kind of stopped asking those and it was done intentionally because I was doing a more organic conversation and kind of leading through the entrepreneurial journey.

Because for me, I find the entrepreneurial journey very interesting. But what is important is that it's not necessarily just about me. And I know you guys find it interesting too. But what you also want is business development. You guys are here for business development. And so moving forward, no matter what the show topic, no matter what the the interview or who I'm talking to, I am going to make an effort to ask them about their business development strategies, to ask them if I can help with any of their business development questions and see if we can answer some of those questions or learn some things together about business development from our guests.

And so that was a takeaway that I got. And I wouldn't have had that without having that conversation with multiple listeners who all told me the same thing. And so Thank you. It's one of those things where, yeah, it, feedback is absolutely critical and I can't get it living in a vacuum. And so you can't either.

That's just the truth. You can't either. You can't see what you can't see. You don't know what you don't know. And I learned that very early on as a business, business owner, but I'm learning that now as a business podcaster, as a podcaster in general, or heck as an entrepreneur, right? I've learned a lot of hard lessons for the past few months and we'll get into some of them.

And, you know, it really did come down to. feedback was absolutely critical in me rectifying some of these challenges, and it will be critical in you rectifying the challenges as well. And we will talk about how we solicit feedback or what we can do, some approaches we can take to get feedback down the line.

But I hope that you're understanding today that I'm humble with regards to feedback, and I've been humbled with feedback. And I think you can be too. And you don't have to be afraid of it. You just have to learn from it because the worst thing you can do is have a big challenge hit you. Like, you know, you lose a big contract or you lose a client or a client just stops talking to you and you don't know why the worst thing to do is nothing.

Because if you do nothing, you're never going to learn the lesson that you could have learned from that situation. You're never going to figure out how to fix it, how to get better or how to have more luck with the next customer unless you ask for the feedback. Okay. So I wanted to talk about my own recent business model revamps and I had to take some pretty devastating losses and I'm going to be straight with you guys.

I'm going to be straight with you. You know, I would say August, September, 2023 were some really, really humbling months. Yeah, the podcast was clipping along. Life was great. At Capital, we lost three back to back proposals. Three. Three. I know, I know. Maybe to some of you that doesn't seem like a lot, but that's probably the most we've ever lost back to back.

And I hadn't did anything different. And I remember sitting down with my employees saying like, you know, like, I think our model's good. Like, I think our pricing's good. Like, I know we can deliver on it. You know, we've come up with, we've come up with like, you know, a good pricing structure and some deliverables that we know our customers will want and we know we can do it.

So what the heck's going on here? What the heck's going on? And so, yeah, we lost three and I went back to a couple of them and I just asked like, Hey, you know, like I get it. You didn't move forward with this. What could we have done better? What could we have done better with that information? The information that I got was there was nothing there.

There was a couple different bits of feedback that we got, but the one main one that we got was we needed to be. more structured on our deliverables, right? And they felt like, how, how could they know that we were going to deliver on what we said? Because we didn't have a structured guarantee in our proposals.

And so now it's like, it seems so silly. And now, now that I look back at it, When I look back at the changes that I had to make, and that I would have won those proposals, had I just had a couple very, very minor changes. Things that we could have committed to, not things out of left field, not things that would have been hard, things that would have been a piece of paper that we were already doing, we just didn't have it down on the paper, was enough to, to not provide enough confidence in our, in our service to move forward.

And so that was a hard lesson learned. That was a lesson that I had to learn the hard way. And now that we're doing essentially more project based proposals instead of unlimited proposals, we're going to win a lot more, frankly, because we know what we can deliver on. What we can deliver on is impressive.

And we're willing to put that where our mouth is. We're willing to put our money where our mouth is. And that's all it took, but it took some serious feedback and it took some serious losses. Like the reality is those proposals, I don't know the dollar value, but it would have been substantial. We, we lost a lot of money by not winning those proposals.

And I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I'm sure I'm talking to a lot of BD people that have been in the same place that had some proposals out or whatever else. And, and you lost them. And in, in, in, in retrospect, you lost them maybe due to something that wasn't even that major, but, or it could have been fixed really easily.

But you just didn't know at the time what the problem was. And usually once you realize what the problem is, you can rectify that really quickly. You can rectify that for the customer. You can give them a rebid or a re proposal. And we've done that with some of them and we have some stuff out. So I'm hoping for it, but.

The reality is, once you know what the challenges are, and you find out the challenges through relationships, through asking for truth and honesty, for real feedback, real feedback, and that's what's absolutely critical. You have to make sure that when you're asking for feedback, you're asking for feedback from people who won't feed it full of bullshit, who will tell you the truth, who will tell you Candidly, and even if it hurts, even if it's something that's a little, maybe more personal to you or something that you did, it's important that you surround yourself with people who will give you honest feedback about how you can improve.

And if you can take that without getting upset without. Realize it's not a character defect or a flaw. Usually it's something that's very easy for you to fix. And if you can fix it, you're going to turn those things around. You're going to turn the whole situation around. You're going to be able to give better proposals.

You're going to be able to fix your business model where you, where you're falling short and you're just going to win. And the reality is. Okay, I'm talking about these changes that we've made to our business model at Capital. Yeah, we're going to be more successful now. I have no question about it. We're going to be more successful because we implemented some things that just weren't there before that were easy to implement that I frankly should have implemented from before.

But remember how I told you about the myopic standpoint. It's really hard to see what you need to fix when you think you have it right. And I, you know, I, of all people, I'm going to tell you that. I struggle to change my mind when I think I have the right idea. And I feel like this is something that, you know, I've even talked to you with Colin Christensen about where I was just discussing, like, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have our ways of doing things.

And if they've worked for us in the past, it's really hard sometimes for us to change the way that we're looking at it. And that was where I was at. That was where I was at. It actually took an outside opinion. It took two or three outside opinions and frankly, outside opinions from people and colleagues that I trust in my, in my inner circle before I could realize, okay, shit, I'm wrong.

In this scenario, the way I'm doing it is wrong. It's me. It's the thing that I came up with. That's the challenge. And if I make a few small changes, I'm going to win. And once I was able to step back. From myself. Once I was able to step back from myself and think critically and think clearly about, about the changes that I could implement here, I don't know why I ever did it the other way.

And this is what I'm trying to tell you right now. I'm trying to tell you right now that without feedback, without, without open, honest feedback, without getting a second, third, fourth opinion on things, we are in our way. We, we think we have it right. We think we have it right. And maybe we do, maybe you do.

Maybe the third or fourth opinion you get is the way you're doing is absolutely perfect. That wouldn't change a thing. Amazing. But you don't know that. And my suggestion to you is if you're losing proposals or if you're struggling to, to, to make the sales you need to make. This is probably where you need to sit.

I think you need to, you need to ask some of these proposals of these people that you've sent proposals to, how could I have improved this? What could I have done better? How could I have met your needs better? Where did we fall short? Where did we win? And hopefully they'll give you the feedback you want.

Okay. But it's really hard to see the forest through the trees, I think, is maybe the expression. It's hard to see the forest through the trees. You need to be able to take a step back from yourself and be open that you might be wrong. I had to do that. It humbled me this, you know, this month, this October, it, it humbled me because I thought I had it right.

I thought that I'd been doing it right because we'd been winning proposals like that for a long time. And now that I sit back and look at it, absolutely. I maybe should have done it completely differently, but I couldn't see it at the time. I just couldn't see it. And maybe the way that I'm doing it now is wrong.

And you know what? I'm not beyond that either. Maybe the way that I have it right now, isn't going to meet all people's needs either. And I need to be open to having those conversations. and making a decision as to whether or not I want to make those changes. But I guess what I'm getting at is here, we all need to evolve.

As people, as companies, and what worked for you last year is not necessarily going to work for you this year. And so it's very, very critical that we are keeping an open mind, that we're having real conversations with our customers, with our fans, if you're a podcaster, right? With our listeners, with our readers, whatever you do, make sure that you are open to finding ways to get feedback and then open to implementing that feedback because these people are telling you how to win them.

Right? Whether it's you, my listener, or whether it's my client, or whether it's your client, or your reader, if you write a blog, or you write a book, they will tell you what they want. And if you can meet that need, or find a way to meet that need, underneath the services that you provide, or the products that you provide, you're going to win.

But you have to meet them where they are. You can't just tell them, this is where I'm at, and you need to meet me. Because, yeah, some people will buy that, but most won't. Most won't. You have to find the win win scenario. So how do we get this feedback, right? We've been talking about feedback. How do we get it?

Well, you know, you know me, man. Pick up a phone. Call and ask. This is what I did. I called everybody we lost from. I asked, what could we do better? What do you need? How do we fix this? And they told me. They told me, thank God they told me, but the reality is, it's, it's not that hard, we just have to be open to doing it, and what ends up happening is, is that we get in our own heads, and we're like, well, ah, you know, we make up reasons, we start to make up reasons, I know, because I do this, I do this too, I'm not, I'm not knocking you, well, you know, it's them, they, they did this, or, you know, things have changed on their end, so they're not moving forward.

Guys, it's typically not them. Yeah, sure. I'm sure sometimes it is, but most of the time it's something you could have done differently. We have to look in the mirror. We have to look at ourselves because we're the people we can change, right? We can't change our customers. We can't change our loved ones. We can't change our, well, I guess we can, but you know what I'm saying?

What I'm saying is. We can work on ourselves. We can improve our businesses. We can improve ourselves. Personally, we can get better at BD. We can get better at entrepreneurship. We can get better at proposals. We can get better at being business owners. And as long as we take that responsibility under ourselves, it's up to us.

The sky's the limit. The sky's the limit. We can do it, right? You can do it. Just take ownership, take ownership. Don't get, don't get upset. Ask for feedback, take ownership. You don't have to implement it, but wouldn't it be great to know what the challenges are? Wouldn't it be great to know why you lost that bid?

Why you're not, you know, selling as much as you did last year? Or why you're, you know, maybe why you're selling more, right? Maybe you're having a friggin bumper year. Maybe it's like the best year your business has ever had. Have you thought to ask your customers maybe why that is or what it is about your company or your product or service that's really in demand this year?

Trust me, probably good to know. And you might think you know, but that doesn't mean you really know. How are you gonna know? We ask for feedback. That's how we're going to know. So we can call and ask. Another way, we can ask for reviews and we can take them seriously, right? We all hate bad reviews. I know, you know, I do too, right?

Nobody wants a bad review, but a bad review can teach you something, especially if you can engage in a dialogue with the person who left it for you, right? What did we do wrong? How could we have done better? Where did we fail you? Because most of the time, if you're getting a bad review, it's because you failed somebody.

And we hate to say that, but that's probably true. They wouldn't be upset. If they were happy, if everything was done right to their satisfaction, they wouldn't be upset, would they? So, I think it's really important to look at the lessons we can learn from every crappy scenario, including bad reviews, right?

You know, I would, I would seriously suggest if you get a bad review on something, whether it's your company, your product, your service, or just some bad feedback from a client, have an open conversation with them. Ask them, sorry, you know, I'm sorry we failed you. How could we have done this better? How could we have fixed this scenario?

Because, one, It's going to show that you care a lot about them, and it's going to start to build trust. Because if you can fix this scenario with them, what other future scenarios can you fix? When they're in trouble, you're not going to, you're not going to run away. You're going to run towards them.

You're going to figure out how to fix the problem instead of running away from the problem. Who would you rather work with? Because I'll tell you, I would rather work with that person any day of the week over a company that turns and runs the moment there's a challenge or just stops responding, right?

Dialogue, open conversation. It really is the solution. It really is. We can also do it through polls, right? You know, LinkedIn, you can do polls on LinkedIn. You can do polls on Facebook. Ask if you have a question or if you have like you know, maybe some names for something or some ideas for the next year.

And, you know, we're going to look at implementing this shortly as well. So. Feel free to be ready to see some polls for for the business development podcast because, yeah, I'm going to maybe try to put out some ideas for what we could do in, in, in our next hundred shows and see what hits or, or, or, you know, I could ask, do you like this?

I'm going to try to find some information. I'm going to put out some polls. So, polls is another great way that we can we can ask for information. Make sure that we are asking people that we trust. Okay? This is the other important thing. Does it make sense to ask somebody who you don't even know who has never bought your product or service, who, or maybe who has never even interacted with you if you're in business development for a review on how you can do better?

Probably not. Probably not. It's important that we're asking people who would actually know. I think that that's very critical. It's also important that if we are asking people we trust, this is where the challenge happens. If we ask people we trust, They're too close to us and we're too close to them. And sometimes they don't want to hurt us, right?

We don't want to hurt our friends or our family. And so it's very important that if we are asking people, we trust that we say, look, don't sugarcoat this for me. I need you to tell me the brutal, honest truth about this question. I'm going to ask you because it is for my growth. And if you lie to me, or if you try to sugarcoat it or make it better than it is.

It's only going to hurt me because I'm not going to be able to implement the change that needs to happen for me to improve as a business owner, as a person, as a business development specialist, right? We have to be sure that we're asking for honest feedback. And if you're asking for this feedback from people you trust and love and care about, or that may care about you, it is very, very critical that you're asking them for the truth.

And another great way, and the way that I did it for many, many, many years when I was doing account management, managing a lot of accounts on behalf of a inspection firm. Go for lunch, go for lunch, take your clients out for lunch. When you're out for lunch, we used to do it quarterly at least, at least, bare minimum, take your clients out for lunch quarterly.

We would have a conversation then, we'd say, hey, you know, John, Jill, XYZ company, what do you guys got coming up over the next, say, three to six months? What is, what does spring look like? What does fall look like? What does winter look like? You got any big projects coming up? Great. Great. Yeah. That sounds like you do have a lot of great projects coming up.

What kind of inspection need or what type of need might you have in this time? And they would say, Oh, well, you know, we might need, we don't need four or five people on this project and two and three on this. Oh, great. Oh, how long are those projects? Great. How much, how, you know, what's the shift we try to find out as much information as we could, right?

And then we would get to pricing and we would say, we would just say, look, what are you paying for these positions? If you're outsourcing these positions, what does that look like? What's in the budget for you guys? Oh, okay. Okay. And they would tell you, and sometimes it would be low and sometimes it'd be right where you needed to be.

And sometimes it would be high and you know what I mean? That what you're doing is you're opening the conversation. At least you can hit them back and say, Hey, you know what? I don't think we can meet at that, at that number, but I'll tell you what we could meet at. And you could hit them up with something, maybe five or 10 bucks more and feel them out and see what they say.

You're opening the dialogue. You're opening the conversation and you were essentially negotiating through the feedback that you're getting, but you wouldn't even know where to start. Or if your bid was good, high, low. on point, unless you have that conversation with them. And so it's very critical that we are opening that dialogue, that we are having feedback, right?

You know, one of these questions we would ask is, Hey, how, you know, how do we get that? Like, I get it. You have lots of options available. You could work with our competitor XYZ company, or maybe you are working with our competitor. Are they able to supply all the need for that? Oh yeah, well, they can supply maybe half.

Great. Can we supply the other half? How do we, how do we supply the other half? Tell us what you need, tell us what you need. And we had that open policy. We didn't have necessarily a set price. We did. We knew what our set pricing was or what we had to make, but when we were dealing with our customers, we regularly had that open dialogue with them so that they could give us a number.

And what I would say to them, I'd say, look, give me the number. I'll tell you if we can hit it or if we can't. And I'll be straight with you. If we can hit it, I'll tell you. If we can't, I'll tell you either way. I'll tell you the truth. And they love that. They respected that. They respected that relationship with us, right?

If we have that relationship with our clients, it only makes us more powerful. It makes us stronger and it makes that relationship invaluable to them as well, because. Clients want people that they can have dialogues with, that they can have open conversations that they can say, Hey, you know, on this project, we're a little slim, our margins kind of suck, but we still want your service.

Can you maybe bend on this project and we'll make it up on the next one? I saw that happen tons of times as well. So the reality is, as long as you have open conversation with your customers, open conversations, open dialogue, open feedback on how you can improve, my gosh, it is only going to make you better.

It's only going to make you better. But remember, none of it matters. None of it matters if we do not implement the lessons learned from the feedback we get. Okay. You know, I can't win bids if I don't know, or if I don't fix the problems that are stopping me from winning bids. Right? Neither can you. This is, this is like every business owner's problem.

At the end of the day, you can't win projects unless you can figure out why you're losing projects. Right? And if you find out why you're losing projects and you don't make changes, that's on you, that's on you. And it was on me too. It was on me too. I'm not calling you out. I'm just telling you I had to make changes.

You probably have to make changes and take that feedback and implement it because it is only going to make you better. It's only going to improve your closing rates. It's only going to improve the relationships with your clients and it's only going to make you better at business over time. Okay. So we have to make sure that we know how.

To, to meet the new need, right? Ask for help, ask for outside opinions, right? Always ask. Remember, there's always people around you who can help you, who can give you the feedback that you need to improve. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Don't be afraid to ask your clients. Don't be afraid to ask your mentors.

Don't be afraid to ask your friends, your family, your coworkers, your employees. How can we do better? Because it is only going to make you better as an entrepreneur, as a business development specialist, right, as an expert in whatever field you're in, asking for advice and finding ways to implement the little lessons will only make you better over time.

We have to be open to change, okay? Just because it worked for you in the past, or it worked for you last year, or hell, it even worked for you last proposal, that does not necessarily mean it's going to work for you into the future or today or tomorrow or any day past that. Okay. We have to be open to growth and change as a business.

This is growth and change in our models, growth and change in the technologies, growth and change in the policies and procedures, growth and change in the processes that we do our business in. Okay. We have to be. Open to growth and change. Always. We have to be open to it because if we're not, we're going to get left in the past and you will lose business and potentially long term.

If you do not implement some of these changes, you lose your business altogether. The businesses that make it are the ones that grow and change with time. They're the most businesses that you look at that have been around 40, 50 years. They might not even be doing. the same thing that they did when they started at all, maybe not even at all.

And you see this a lot. And what happened was they grew and changed with the need, with the demand, with the, with as the demands change, right? And sometimes those demands, they changed in a way that took them right out of the initial business they did. And that could happen for me. And that could happen for you, right?

And it could be to your benefit. It could be better for your business over time. You could have a much better business. You could be a much better business person. You could be a much better business development specialist, right? But change has to happen. And it's going to happen whether you like it or not.

And it's going to happen whether you implement it or not. But unfortunately, if we don't learn how to implement the change, we typically lose. This is a battle that we typically don't win. So we have to be open to change. And just remember that just because something worked before, it does not mean that it always works moving forward.

We also have to find the win win scenario. There is always a win win, okay? No matter what the scenario is with your client, there is a win win scenario. You just have to find it. And the only way to do that is to open a dialogue, get feedback, ask how you can do better, ask how you can meet their need better, and start to have a conversation on how you're going to do that.

Believe me, if you can get to that conversation stage. I would say probably 90 percent of the time there is a win win scenario for you and your customer. There's a scenario where they say, absolutely, I'm pumped. And where you say, absolutely, I'm excited to get started on this project, right? We have to find the win win.

It exists. The only way you're going to find it is by having a dialogue. And a dialogue does not mean give them your price sheet. And say, this is our prices for 2025 or 2024. This is what it is. And then this is what you got to do. Remember, that's probably not going to meet a lot of client needs. What is going to meet a lot of client needs is saying, Hey, you know, this is our price sheet.

We're not necessarily stuck on it. Let me know what you need and we'll see if we can find some creative solutions together. This is going to win you way, way more business than for you to say, this is my price sheet, best of luck to you. And we can't wait to work with you down the line. Cause yeah, you're going to win some sure.

You're going to lose a lot more. And remember, we have to keep the conversation going and be open to asking more questions. The more questions you ask, the better you are going to get, the more effective at business you are going to get, and it's just going to be best for you and your clients. Okay? All right!

So, to close off, asking for feedback and taking action on great feedback will allow you and your company to evolve with an ever changing business landscape. You just will be better prepared for long term success. All right, that brings us to the end of episode 77. Thank you for sticking with us. If you have had a chance and you get it, I'm asking for feedback.

This episode's about feedback. Shoot me some feedback. Podcast@capitalbd.ca. Find me on LinkedIn. Shoot me a connect. Let me know what you think. Let me know. Let me know how can we make this show better for you? How can we improve the business development podcast? And how can I improve? Not just in, not just as a podcaster, maybe in business development.

Let me know. Let me know the topics that are important to you. Let me know how we can make the next 100 shows better for you. All right. Shout outs this week. Aaron Haberman, Colin Harms, Rahul Gupta, Chris Ecklund, Rodney Lover, and Mckinley Hyland you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for the consistent support of the Business Development Podcast.

We just signed Maverick NDT Inspection as a sponsor. Mckinley Hyland has been with us from the very beginning. His episode is episode number eight. Just go for it. He was my very first guest. We are absolutely honored to have him as a sponsor of the show. Thank you, Mckinley. Until next time, this is the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the 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.