Unleash the Power of Business Development for your Business

Unleash the Power of Business Development for Your Business

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 35 of the Business Development Podcast, and on today's episode we are chatting about would your company benefit from business development? This is a question that we've gotten quite a bit. I think there's some confusion about. Why your company might need business development, and I think in this episode we're really gonna address what a business development person can do for your company and what some of the scenarios are that you might need some support.

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. In 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 The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 35 of the Business Development Podcast. Today is a super cool day.

Today is. June 6th, which actually marks four months to the day since we launched the Business Development Podcast. And my gosh, My gosh, we've we've gone some places haven't we. It's sometimes a little bit hard to believe for me that it's only been four months and we're sitting at 35 episodes. But it's just, it's been amazing.

We're just kind of trucking along week after week and hopefully you guys are, are getting an absolute ton of value from these shows. I hope to continue to deliver value week over week. And I thought today that I would start the episode out by just giving you guys a little bit of stats in four months of kind of where we have gone.

So, just so you guys know, we are four months today. We are sitting at 35 episodes and 35 amazing episodes, which I, I'm very proud of each and every one of them, and I've come a long way in my podcasting journey as well. I sometimes listen to my first few episodes and just get a little bit of a laugh because it definitely has a learning period, especially.

Considering I never came from podcasting. I never came from any type of broadcasting or radio background like so many of my lovely podcasters do. I came very much from a business development and business background with very little public speaking required in any of my job tasks, aside from speaking to a boardroom full of executives.

So I'm still learning as I go. I, I do not claim to be any expert in the podcasting space. But I am getting better. Every day. And I definitely see a huge difference. If you listen to this episode, go back to the beginning, listen to some of my first couple, and I think you'll notice a big difference in my ability to speak to this microphone and to you.

My lovely, lovely listeners, we are sitting at over. 40,000 downloads of the Business Development podcast to date. So four months over 40,000 downloads, actually 40,457 downloads to date. And we are sitting at 450 followers between Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So just to give you an idea where we're sitting, and if you are listening to this podcast and you like it, please do.

Please follow us. Follow us on Apple Podcast. Follow us on Spotify. Keep up to date on all the latest business development podcast news episodes and, and as they come along. And we appreciate it. We appreciate those follows, and if you do, please give us a rating and if you really, really feeling up for it, we would love it if you left us a written review.

I love to read the reviews. I'd love to hear what you think of the show we get quite a few different emails. A lot of people send us an email over to podcast capital bd.ca just to let us know how we're doing. I get a lot of LinkedIn messages, but if we wanna grow the show, definitely need to have that done on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

So if you have a moment today and you're enjoying this lovely show, please drop us a rating. Follow us and make sure to leave us a written review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Just helps us really grow this show and take it to the next level, which is our goal here. We always want to be moving forward. We've already done some really amazing things with this show.

Thanks to you, my listeners, for nominating us for the Quill Podcast Awards. We won Best Business Podcast 2023 at the Quill Podcast Awards. And that's an amazing, that's an amazing feat. I'm very proud of that. And I just want to thank each and every one of you who nominated us for the Quill Podcast Awards to help us to get to that point.

And it was really cool cause I actually got to interview. Fatima of Quill Inc. Who kind of let me know how that process worked and that it was a very independent band of judges and they had nothing to do with it. And I thought that was really, really cool, especially considering we were competing in North America as a space, really, any podcast could have been nominated and we were fortunate enough to not only be nominated, But also win against a panel of judges.

So super cool. Super proud of that. Super proud to be moving forward with the Business Development Podcast. I also wanted to just take a minute today and thank Tash Jefferies for giving us another amazing episode This time, episode 34. The myth of work-life balance, where we really talked about mental health and wellness as a, as a professional, as an executive, as a founder, entrepreneur, and somebody who is high performance.

And I know that there's a lot of us out there that are working real hard, that are putting in the effort that maybe letting our mental health suffer a little bit. Maybe letting our wellbeing suffer a little bit. Me included. You know, I talk about it on the episode where Tash would give me shit because I'm not always the healthiest when it comes down to my daily life choices.

And Yeah, basically the, the gist of that really came down to you need to look after yourself because if you aren't looking after yourself, your customers are not getting 100% and neither is your family. And so I totally, totally took that to heart and will be looking to improve my mental health and wellness, and I hope that you all do as well.

This is a interesting episode and it kind of came from an interesting phone call that we got at Capital Business Development, which I will get into later on in this episode. But the episode title today is, would My company Benefit from Business Development? And I think that there's a lot of companies out there that you know, they may have sales teams, they may have account managers, they maybe have operations people just kind of trying to do business development on their own, and they're thinking.

Well, I don't know, like what is the benefit? What, what is the benefit that we may get from a business development program? And I'll definitely get into this, but I'm gonna start it out with a little bit of a story of an interesting phone call that Cole actually got this week. And I'm not gonna get into it too much.

You're not gonna name any companies or anything. Just gonna kind of explain what happened. So we ended up getting a call at Capital Business Development and Cole kind of gave our pitch and let them know like what, what we could do for them. And it came back with, you know, I just need help setting up a passive strategy.

I just wanna set up my socials. I wanna set up, you know, a website and I just wanna wait for the phone to ring. And I thought that that was a very interesting, interesting thing to say, like, this person did not want to have meetings. They did not want to attend any meetings. I imagine, you know, they, they probably are a little bit introverted, which I am as well, so I totally understand this and this.

I don't think that this is uncommon. I think we live in a day and time where people really, really wish that a passive strategy would just work. You know, they don't want the meetings, they don't want to have to do all this phone calls and leg work and cold calls to make, to make business happen. They would really love it if just.

They could set up their website, they could put out their social advertising, maybe they could pay for some paid digital marketing, and the phone would just ring, and I totally empathize with this customer. I totally empathize with you. I also totally understand and wish that marketing worked this way.

Unfortunately, the problem is, You have competitors. This particular company, this particular industry that this person worked in had a lot of competitors, like hundreds just in Canada, if not thousands in Canada. Literally like that was the, that was the level that this person would've been competing at and I ended up talking to Cole and just said, look, you know, give this guy a call back. Let him know that we understand why he feels this way. Unfortunately, that's not our model. We work very much on an active marketing model, but if he does try these other avenues, doesn't get the results he wants, he's more than welcome to call us back and we will help him at that time.

And that, that is the way that I would always approach this cuz I, I totally get it. Some people just need to try it. Some people just need to try it their way and see. Okay. What is passive marketing really about? I'll be honest, I was literally one of these people, and so I thought about this from that standpoint of when I started Capital Business Development.

I also just hope that I could put out some ads and that the phone would ring, even though I knew better. And I talk about this in the beginning of the podcast when I first kind of started, and I was hoping that I could just, you know, throw out some LinkedIn ads, throw out some Facebook ads, do up a beautiful website and wait for the phone to ring.

But the problem is everybody, The problem with a passive marketing strategy, only if that is your only marketing strategy. Okay? I understand why you wish this would work. I understand why you did it. The f the critical thing that you did not think about with a passive only strategy is this. You are asking your customer to jump through one too many hoops.

You're just asking for too much and you're competing in a very saturated space, right? So if you're just waiting for the phone to ring, if you've got your ads out there, let's say you've paid for LinkedIn marketing, Facebook marketing, maybe Instagram, maybe heck, maybe even a billboard. Maybe you've really just gone out to town and you've even got yourself a billboard or maybe heck a radio ad or something.

Those things can work. You know, like billboards, radio ads, they do work. I'm not sure, depending on what you do, I'm not sure if you're still reaching the right people though. The problem with this strategy is, is that you are competing in a heavily saturated space, so you're competing likely against most of your competition who also has all those things, and you're competing against people's attention against other advertisements that aren't.

That. And so like you know, an example that I'll give you right now is hop onto your LinkedIn, scroll down, and I bet you, you know, if you start scrolling down, maybe the first four or five things you see are advertisements, did you even see them? Probably not. You probably scrolled right past them. And that's the problem is that most people, even if they, even if your ad pops up in front of them, they just scroll on by.

It's, it's really a brand recognition strategy that you need to be looking at your passive marketing strategy, in my opinion. Is that you need to use it as brand recognition. So great. They should see your logo when, you know when they're spinning through their LinkedIns. Maybe they do come across a cool, highly engaging ad and they look at it and they're like, oh, cool, cool logo, cool company.

That's interesting. They keep going. Obviously if they do that a hundred times, it's just like Nike. You guys all know what the Nike logo is. Why? Cause you've seen it a a million times. You've seen the Nike logo a million times in your life. It's, it's everywhere. So you know the brand. That's what you should be aiming to do with your social media strategy, with your passive strategies.

It should be to create a brand awareness about your organization, your brand, and people should eventually be able to come across your logo and say, oh, I know what they do. Even if they don't buy, they should be able to know what you do. The problem comes when you hope that that strategy also makes your phone ring.

And it might, please don't. Don't take this as like, no, it never works. That's not true. It does work. However, you have to get people when they're actively looking for your product or service, they're actively out there looking for your product or service. You're catching them on their worst day in the exact buying decision when they maybe have to buy tomorrow.

And maybe you get lucky and they do come across your ad. The problem is, is that that's very unlikely. Most of the time you're asking too much. Cuz even when they click that link, well now they have to fill out a contact form. Now they have to wait for someone to call them. You're just asking people for too much.

Right? My opinion and, and what we do at Capital Business Development is we don't wait around. We don't wait around. We introduce your company or people's companies or our company to people way before they need the product or service. Why? Because that's the best time to get them. And if you physically reach out to them, make an introduction, heck, maybe you get a meeting out of it and you really get to build that one-on-one rapport and relationship with them.

Well, guess what? When they eventually need your product, cuz you know that eventually they probably will need your product service, but now they don't have to jump through 15 hoops. They already know who you are. They have your contact information. You've maybe already made a pitch to them. They maybe already have your brochure on their desk and they know exactly who they're gonna go with.

They know exactly it's you. Because you're the only one who's taken that next step. And the problem with a passive only strategy is your competition is very likely taking that next step. They've, if you are not implementing an active marketing strategy in your business, you guaranteed your, your competition is.

And so your your step behind man, you know, you're a step behind and you can't allow that to happen. So what you really need to be doing, I know we all wish passive marketing strategies worked. But you need to be implementing an active marketing strategy in your business. And I do hope with this podcast that we are really inspiring companies to take that step.

To take the step to start looking for business. Don't wait around for business to show up on your doorstep. Make those introductions early. Okay, so who can benefit from a business development program? Like what kind of companies? Well, any business who wants to drive growth, create new oppor opportunities, and ensure long-term success needs business development.

We support all business growth. Okay? All business growth with your, with your business is supported through your business development program. We're like a long game, right? We're like, we're, we're like a tactic, a long-term tactic. We, we work always with the benefit of the business, right? We al we always work for the benefit of the business.

How do we grow the business? How do we create new relationships, new opportunities? And how do we ensure the continued success of this business? That is what's on your business development team's mind. Okay. Entrepreneurs and business owners, startups, small businesses, corporations, both large and small, sales and marketing teams, professional service providers, nonprofit organizations, individuals and professionals can all benefit from business development.

Basically, if you have to market your company to. Another person or another business or generate relationships or partnerships, business development, that's what we can help with. A hundred percent. There's, there's basically, there's not a lot of scenarios where business development would not be effective for your business in one way or another.

Okay. Business development, we can help to determine your value proposition and help your company realize its goals. So you know, if you're sitting down with your company and you're trying to plan the next steps for it, you should always involve your business development teams, because we can sit down and say, okay, we want a revenue growth of say, half a million or a million dollars this year.

Great. How are we gonna do that? How can your business development team. Create enough leads to bring that new opportunity, or how can your account management team, you know, knock back on those doors enough times to try to get current customers to, to meet that need. But those are all discussions that can be had when we're discussing business development, when we're having a a business growth meeting, you should definitely always involve.

Your business development teams, even if it is account management, even if it is revenue and growth goals, because they will, they will start to spitball ideas on how we can achieve this growth for your company by understanding where your company wants to go. Okay. Business development can help you launch new product lines.

Okay? Yeah, so like if you are, if you already have an established company, an established product, but heck now we're gonna launch a new product line. Get your business development people involved, that's where we can come in and we can help you to target the industries that may need that product or service.

We can help you to generate and, and evaluate and create good value propositions that we can then market. So we can help create essentially brochures. We can help. Create good images, things like that to help you to. Create a pitch that is then marketable and then we can go ahead and market it. So that's where your business development teams can do that as well.

We can help you establish strategic partnerships. So I talked about this in one of my last episodes where we were chatting about what are some of the other things business development's good at that most people don't think about. Well, heck, you might have company A and company A is really great at building this one product.

And then you know of company B who also makes this other great product and, and maybe those two products are really great to sell together, or if you combine them, you have a much better or a much higher value proposition for your customers. Well, heck, we can maybe help introduce company A to company B and explain why we want to have that meeting.

And then facilitate that meeting, which heck maybe turns into a future partnership that's very lucrative for both businesses. That is something that business development can do for you as well. We can help to identify new applications for your products. So heck, maybe you have this really great product and you've been selling it to oil and gas for a really, really long time.

But we identify that, heck, you know that that product's really great, but I think there might be some opportunity over here in manufacturing. Well, heck, we can maybe help identify that. Then we can help to. Make those connections with manufacturing and maybe even expand your product reach outside of oil and gas to manufacturing.

That is something else that business development can be good for. Business development supports your existing sales teams and account managers. So you guys know I hit on this all the time. Business development is its own separate thing and if you start to put it together with sales and account management and all this other stuff, I'll tell you what happens.

Business development gets neglected. Why? Because account management, account management is just a different job in a lot of cases. It requires a lot of time, a lot of effort to be done correctly, and frankly, business development can be flipping challenging. It can be really hard compared to account management be why?

Because you're constantly doing the things that people are afraid of. You're doing the cold calls, you're doing the cold emails, you're knocking new doors, you're doing research, you're finding new avenues for, for marketing. You're doing target list. There's a thousand things the business development is doing.

If you're doing it correctly, great. But the problem is, is that what ends up happening at most businesses is your business development teams start to manage accounts. And the next thing you know, they're managing 10, 15 accounts. And you know what? That's a very labor intensive job. Account management. In some cases it's a funner job, so a lot of people do tend to gravitate towards account management.

And so what will end up happening is, is that, heck, you might have good business development for six months, but then once those people essentially create those relationships, if you don't have a way to hand them off and you're having your business development people manage those relationships moving forward, I guarantee you your business development is being neglected.

The business development that your company needs to be doing. On a consistent basis will be neglected If you have your business development people doing too many tasks, doing account management sales, and then kind of managing what that looks like. That There's no question, there's no, I've done business development long enough to tell you that there's no question your new business development gets neglected.

That is where a company like Capital Business Development, like my business, can come in and essentially take over that business, that new business development side of things, allow your account managers to do what they need to do and constantly bring new leads and new opportunities into your business.

That is where that is where we fit very, very well. Okay. But if you're managing your own internal business development team, please separate them out. Have your business development, focus on new business development, have your account managers focus on account management, and if you keep them separated and you allow them to operate that way, you are going to be better off your business development people are going to be to be more effective.

Your account managers are gonna be more effective and your customers are going to be happier because of this. Okay. Business Development can help evaluate your marketing material. So, you know, I talk about this as well. I, I do not necessarily advocate for your business development people to be creating your marketing material.

Why? Well, you know, we just didn't go to design school to create beautiful marketing material, however, We have a very good eye and a very good understanding about what good compelling marketing material looks like. Why? Cause we've seen it a thousand times. If you've worked in a place like Capital Business Development, where we work with multiple clients, we've literally seen it a thousand times.

So we can tell by looking at a piece of marketing material if this is gonna be compelling, if customers are gonna keep it on their desks, if they're gonna open it. That's something that good business development can help you with. While we won't necessarily be the people that we, that should graphically design that, because why there's great graphic designers, there's great opportunities for that outside of business development.

What we can do is work very closely with those teams to create amazing marketing material that is both visually compelling and also compelling in the way that it presents and markets your company or your product or service. So we can, we can look at it and make it very compelling for you. So you should definitely involve your business development teams inside of your marketing.

Okay. Okay. Business development shouts your company from the rooftops, and we work to increase your brand recognition. I love the companies that I work for. Most of the companies that I've worked with here at At Capital Business Development, I truly. You know what? I would say, all of them, every company that I've worked with at Capital Business Development, I have believed in their product or service.

I thought it was a great product or service. I think they're great at what they do and I shout that from the rooftops. I truly love my clients. I have amazing clients. They're great to work with. It. It doesn't matter that, you know, some of them are just like world class, cuz they are. But the reality is, is that.

If you believe in your clients, if you believe in the products and services that you're marketing, you will shout them from the rooftops. There is no better advocate for your product or service than your business development team. And if you do your job right and you help them, and you support them, and you provide them great marketing material, you have a great product or service.

There is no reason that your business development team cannot provide exponential value to your business. And that's what we strive to do every single time. Okay. So, yes, we help, we help to essentially create brand recognition. We always portray, you know, the business, the product, the service in the best light possible.

And we try to com to, basically, we try to create a very compelling argument as to why someone should give your product or service a try. Okay. So business development creates interests in your products services, right? And we craft pitches that drive interests in your product services. So this kind of goes back to the last part that I just talked about.

Basically what we're doing is we are your, the problem. Your problem. You have one problem as a business, let me tell you what your problem is. Your problem is your brand is unknown. Your product or service is unknown. The reality is there's probably thousands of people who need your product or service, maybe millions depending on what it is you're selling.

Think about that for a second. There could be millions of people who need what you're selling. Your problem is they have no idea who you are. So my job as a business development team, or as a business development company, or a business development rep is to. Increase the brand awareness, and we do that through an active marketing campaign.

We do that through literally shouting your company from the rooftops. That's literally what we do. We create compe, we create target lists. We, we add all the right people that we need to connect with who could actually buy your product. And then we reach out to them and create interest in your product.

That hopefully leads us to a meeting, which then hopefully leads us to an RFI order or vendor list application. Or heck, you know, like you said, maybe even they phone up and say, we need 15 on what you got. Right. We're always trying to move it to that stage. We're trying to move from an unknown stage all the way, hopefully to an initial order stage.

That is really the goals of your business development team is just to. Keep those phones ringing because the reality is you need opportunity and you, you are unknown. So that's what good business development will do. So basically, if you have a great product or service, And your company is unknown. You 100% need good business development.

You 100%. Or heck, if you're entering a new market, maybe your company is known, but maybe they're not known in a certain province or, or state, or maybe they're not. Maybe they're launching a new product or service that is not as well known. Well, now you're back to the beginning. You still need business development again, cuz basically every time you launch a new product or service, every time you're entering a new market area, anything like that, where you're unknown.

You're just as unknown as everyone else, and you need good business development to make your brand known to local companies. Okay. Okay. We set up meetings and we move deals to a successful R F P or rfq. So like I, you know, going right back to what I just talked about we're, our goal is to. Get you in front of people who are interested and can buy your product or service.

Our goal is always to continue to move meetings forward. So while we may need a, a, a product expert at your company to attend that meeting, to, to kind of make the pitch on behalf of the company, we are gonna be working in that meeting to to move. Your order to a successful RFP, RFQ or to get you on a vendor list, or heck to even get an order.

We are always trying to push to push things to the next steps. We're always trying to move things to the next steps, which is beneficial for your business. Okay. We keep future opportunities coming over time. So a big, big, big job of business development and something that I think gets neglected or forgotten when people are looking at hiring a business development firm like myself is we create opportunities.

That pay off in the future. Okay, so we are an investment Business Development is an investment, and that doesn't matter whether that's your employee who's a business development, or whether you're hiring capital business development to help you with business development On behalf of your business, you are investing in your company's future.

Why? How do, why do I say that? Because good business development takes time. We introduce your company to potentially hundreds, if not thousands of other companies over time. And not all of them need your product or service today. And depending on what your product or service is, sometimes that can be a year, two years down the line.

So even though we come in and we do all that work today, our work can pay off months and years into the future. It truly is an investment over time. So business development. Think about it as while our goal is always to get you, an order as soon as possible. The reality is the orders come sometimes months and years down the line, but it truly is an investment cause we have introduced you to so many people.

We've created so much brand recognition and awareness for your company that sometimes. Recognizing how much benefit a business development has done for you is almost intangible. It's hard to understand, but we truly do provide exponential value to our cost over time. Exponential value to our cost over time is the goal of all business development people and is 100% a goal of mine at Capital Business Development.

Right. I don't wanna, I don't want you just to pay us off. I want you to pay us off 10 times. Okay? So how can Capital BD help you? So, obviously, you know, I talk about business development a ton on this, on this podcast. I don't talk too much about my business, which is Capital Business Development. If you are listening to this podcast today, and you operate a business, or you work in a, in a decision making capability for your business, and you know your sales are lackluster, or your product, you know, you're not reaching the right people or you're not really sure if your business development teams are doing what they need to be doing.

Or you're just, you're just wondering, you know, why, why are we not getting the phone? Why are we not getting the calls that we should be getting? That is 100% worth a call or a reach out here to Capital Business Development. What Capital Business Development can do is we can come in, we can evaluate your marketing material, we can take a look at your current value proposition.

We can take a look at your current market offerings, where your, where you're marketing these things. And we can put together potentially a much better business development program. We can help you set up and establish a business development program. And we can even directly market that program for you.

So we can completely take over your business development program and and populate a C R M, make all those cold calls. And get you into those meeting stages that maybe you're struggling to get into right now. That is what a place like that is what Capital Business Development can ultimately do for your company.

If you already have an in-house program and you essentially just want it evaluated or you want it to be set up in the way that we do things at Capital, that's something else that we can also work out through business development consulting. Okay. So yeah, if you guys are struggling with business development and you just want a little bit of support, Give us a shout.

Capital Business Development can probably help you out. And you can get, you can reach right out to me directly at Kelly.Kennedy@capitalbd.ca or you can always get me right here on the podcast, at podcast@capitalbd.ca And just to move this forward into questions. If you have any questions for the show, once again, please send it to podcast@capitalbd.ca, subject line community questions, and we will address them for you in a future episode.

Shout outs for this week. We've had some really, really great great reach outs over the last week here. Aaron Haberman, Martin Blessing. Colin Harms, Tash Jefferies, Auguston Marrone, Bartha Alexander and Alexander Javier have all reached out, given us some really, really great feedback. Let us know what they thought of the show, and I really appreciate you guys reaching out.

If you have enjoyed this show today, once again, just like the beginning. Please please follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Please rate us and please do leave a written review. It helps a ton. It helps us to reach new audiences. And if you have enjoyed this show, thank you so much for listening and I'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website@www.capitalbd.ca see you next time on the Business Development Podcast.