What is Business Development?

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 will get expert Business Development advice, tips and experiences and you will hear interviews with business owners CEO's and Business Development reps. You will 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 you're expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy

Hello. Welcome back to The Business Development Podcast. My name is Kelly Kennedy, and I am so thankful to have you on today. Today's episode. We are going to try to answer the age-old question. What is Business Development? My gosh, what a loaded question? I have been doing this for an incredibly long time and I have yet to have anybody give me the same definition for what they think Business Development is. So I am going to do my best for my new entrepreneurs, business owners, and heck, existing business owners to just do my best to try to explain to you what I think Business Development really is, and I am really excited to do this with you today. Just on the flipside after that, I don't know about how your week has been going, but my gosh, it has been a busy one. If you, if you know anybody in business development, you probably know someone that puts on a heck of a lot of miles. My gosh, I must put on 40,000 plus kilometers a year, we're up in Canada, so 40,000 kilometers a year in driving, just back and forth from client meetings. And when, when you're not making phone calls, you're not sending emails or making connections, you are probably driving. So I don't know about you. I have had a busy week, it's been definitely a challenging one and put on probably about 600 - 700 km just on Monday driving back and forth from Calgary. For any of you that are around the Alberta area, the Edmonton to Calgary Jaunt is a very very common one for me and definitely did that trip and feeling it a little bit today. Between that and just the everyday to day grind of a Business Development lead and rep in my case. I absolutely love what I do though and I wouldn't have it any other way. So I would like to start today's topic just by maybe just reviewing what the definition of Business Development is according to the Oxford dictionary. Business Development is the activity of pursuing strategic opportunities for a particular business or Organization, for example, cultivating Partnerships and other commercial relationships or identifying new markets for its products or services. Well, I don't know about you, but that sounds a little bit loaded. Oh, yeah. So it's a little bit of sales of everything. Yeah. Good job  Oxford Dictionary, it's a tough one and I think that a lot of people in a Business Development role for my owners and people doing hiring for Business Development and sales roles in your company, it is incredibly important for you to define for your sales teams, your Business Development leads, your Business Development reps and BD managers and directors, what you expect from them in those cases because in a lot of cases, you can tell them hey we want to, we want you to handle well sales, we want you to hit certain a sales targets or this and that but you need to let them know exactly what you expect from them in that case because business development is very wide-ranging and it has a lot of different elements to it and but there are some that are very specific and I will also let you know what it is not at the end of this podcast episode. So what is Business Development? According to Kelly, Kennedy and Capital Business Development. We create Target lists, we research appropriate customers. Look that's honestly that is a Business Development reps job. They need to know what your business is, what you're selling and who's going to buy it and it is up to them to then select the appropriate. Customer Targets and the appropriate companies to Market to that is 100% a business development job. The next one, Is marketing material review and assistance in development, understand that I say a assistance in development. Business Development Representatives, Managers, Directors are typically not content creators, okay? Like we do not create graphic images and beautiful brochures. There are amazing companies or heck, maybe your company has an amazing graphic design artist within it. Make sure that you are utilizing people for what they are good at. Business Development reps are really, really great at looking at something and saying you know what I can sell this, what we're not good at necessarily is putting it together in a nice pretty package, so I would like you to keep that in mind. When you are asking your Business Development reps, to take a look at your marketing material, which 100% should be part of their job, understand that if there are changes required, or if they see some edits. Understand you're going to need a professional to do that for you correctly, and I would highly recommend that you utilize that. The next one marketing of digital and physical materials. So, that is, that is really our job. So once we have per se, the digital marketing, say your digital brochures, your physical brochures, a beautiful website created, it is up to us to create a nice little blurb package to send that out to prospective clients to generate interest in your business. Our job is to generate interest in your business and that leads you down the path, to a meeting, and a potential vendor list opportunity, or rfq's, or rfp's. It is our job to lead your business there. Okay. So 100% part of what we need to be doing. Cold calls, follow-up calls and lead generation. So, okay, this is an interesting one, and I am going to get a little bit of flack for this I think because, we have the new generation who relies on way too heavily on the digital marketing aspect of things. Guys, my fellow Business Development reps  and leads, I feel for you, I understand, I am sorry. You still have to pick up the phone and make those cold calls on a weekly basis. I know, I know you hate me right now. I love you, you're hating me, but trust me, trust me. There is no replacement. And, I mean, zero replacement. I don't care if you were doing all the LinkedIn ads, all the Facebook and Google marketing ads in the world, okay? There is zero replacement for your voice, for your voice, okay? You're being paid for your beautiful, lovely voices. Utilize them, call your perspective clients, introduce the company introduced yourself, do it in a smiling, happy. Loving way. Come across in a way that you would want to talk to, be a person that you would want to talk to okay? And that is how you are going to move forward for my fellow lovely business owners when you were Hiring your business development reps and leads. Okay, the number one thing, the number one thing, make sure that you like them in the interview, okay? You will know in the first five minutes whether or not they will be a good, BD rep, you know how you will like them, you will like talking to them and you cannot teach that. I don't care who you are and once again, I am sorry for the world who saying Kelly, you can teach it, you can teach soft skills, you can refine soft skills, you cannot teach soft skills okay, they need to have them and you will know in the first five minutes, you can teach them everything else in Business Development but soft skills that one is on them. Okay, all right. Next one, social media, marketing a hundred percent, so I just talked about it. What I was saying, I wasn't saying it's not useful. What I was saying was that is not your prime delivery method. Prime delivery method will always still be cold calls and emails. However, every modern company needs to be utilizing digital marketing in some way. My recommendation, to all company and business owners is while having the Google AdWords is great, while doing your LinkedIn paid posts is great as well. Remember, those do not generate sales, okay, I am sorry. There is not a digital marketing program for business to business in the world. That is going to be someone's going to click on that. And be like, yep, I am buying this today. No, it is about education, okay? I want you to think about it this way, all of the money that you are spending on social media ads, you should be thinking about not from a return on investment or how much, you know for $600 am I going to make a thousand dollars? No, no what you are doing is you are creating interest in your company. You are educating the world about your company, okay? The problem with your company and this is probably for like 99.9% of the companies on Earth unless you're Walmart or Best Buy or Fluor, okay? Unless you're like a gigantic corporation, people do not know who you are. There are people in the next city who don't know who you are, okay? You are unknown. So all of your social media, marketing needs to be based on the idea of driving interest in your company, having them click and learn about you and say, you know what, okay I know what company ABC does, I got a fit for company ABC in the future, now it's your BD rep's job to then call that company and say, hey company ABC, we got something for you and they will be like, hey, I have seen you on social media and that is all it is good for, okay. The only tidbit of information where I can say that I am a little bit off on that is, if you are not in business to business, if you are business to customer 100% social media, marketing is key and king, it works amazing. What it does not work? Well in is the relationship generation required for business to business, okay? So I want my business owners to be keeping this in mind when you were creating your marketing plan with your business development team. Remember, it's just for Education, ok, anything on the digital side is about education. Your business development reps, are the ones driving interest and setting those meetings up for you and they should be doing it with phone calls, emails and cold contacts okay, and follow-ups, obviously. But those come after the initial contact, the next one is keep your eye open for strategic partnerships that can help your company. So that is something else that be reps are really great at. So, I will give you an example. If you're working with a construction firm, well you know nowadays a lot of companies are looking for a full service package, so they want the engineering procurement construction all in one space. If you are just Joe's Construction Company you are at a little bit of a disadvantage and the way that you can fix that, that disadvantage is you can have your BD rep, and you, this is obviously a corporate meeting. You sit down and say, hey like what are some strategic partnerships we might be able to align with. Is there an engineering company that might be able to help us excetera if you offer service A but service, A and B are usually sold together? Well, is there another company selling service B that you can partner with? And that is also on a business development reps, task board, and the way that they do that is they just call in and say, hey, I am company a, we do this, and we think that there may be some strategic advantages to us working together. Can we set up an introduction meeting and just, I will bring my experts. You bring yours. Let us collaborate and see if maybe. There're some synergies between our companies. And that can definitely Drive some really great partnerships. And I have done it plenty of times in my, in my, tenure as a Business Development rep. So I would highly recommend that you are considering that in your Business Development role, okay, the role of a BD manager, this is just another spot that I just kind of want to step in quickly. So we went briefly over what the rules of a BD rep is and what they should be doing your BD managers, okay? So they're the ones that are essentially creating the be the BD budget throughout the year. They're monitoring your expenses, but their overall job, okay? And I want you to keep this in mind, their job is to drive the, the directive and the profits for the company. So they're setting the revenue goals, and they are holding their BD reps to that account. They should be supporting your BD reps in every role or any time that they need support. So, BD reps should be being supported by their BD managers and that is definitely a great next step. Okay. Well, that takes us pretty much to the end of our show today. What I would also like to talk to, is what BD is not. So this is very important because this is where I think a lot of the lines get blurred especially with new companies as to hey, my BD guy should also be doing my sales. You should also be my product expert and I think you should also show up and do all the account management. I am sorry, I am sorry. I know, I know that we are tightening our belts, and We're trying to be budget-conscious, but my fellow business owners. Your BD rep should be doing one thing and that is helping your business, maximize profits and building your business. And the way that they are doing that is through introductions. Okay, they are introducing your company to other companies, while yes, they should definitely show up for those initial meetings. While yes, they should maybe on occasion take your client for lunch, or they should take your client out to an introduction golf, you can create a rapport and a friendly relationship with that client. You should be having account representatives. You can call this your sales team, you can call this your account rep. But you should have somebody who's going to manage that client directly and, and you should allow your BD team to go and do what they do best and that is introduced your company to other companies. So, just a heads up. One of those things, BD is not account management. You should have account managers. The other side is BD is not direct sales. We are not necessarily your product expert sales team that is not necessarily our job, okay? A BD person does not need to be an expert in what your service or product is, and they probably are not, no matter how much you think they are, okay? That is just not what their job is. You know, realistically. I did BD for company for 10 years and I still don't completely understand the service that I was selling. It was never required, because I knew what the client needed and I knew what we did and I knew it matched, and I could Speak to it in a way that showed that I understood the need of the client and that we could deliver on what they needed. That was the extent of the knowledge that I needed. All right, well in conclusion your BD reps should be driving introductions for your company. They should be the champions of your company out there, waving the flag, making the introductions, sending your brochures around doing cold calls, doing cold emails and ultimately doing everything that they can do to drive the revenue of your business, BD reps are really, really unique. We have a job that allows us to provide exponential value to our cost. And I think that's a really, really great thing. And I have been very proud of being able to do that, consistently on an annual basis. With all the companies, I have been able to work with and being able to just bring that exponential value is truly what being a BD rep is all about. And I like to think and I used to say this with my last boss that the BD job is truly the best job in a company and you know I think even as a CEO of a business now, it really is. It's really just one of the greatest jobs on Earth. And I am so lucky and proud to be a BD representative. And I definitely want to shout out to my BD reps today. You guys should all be proud of yourselves to you. This is a hell of a tough job and you do it well, and you do it with your heads held high and you do it when you're feeling shitty inside and you do it when you're happy and It's really quite the role, and I am proud of each and every one of you and I would love to hear back from you today. If you think maybe I got something wrong or you think that maybe I missed a point? Please do please. Do shoot me an email maybe reply, or I am gonna put this on LinkedIn. So feel free to reach out on LinkedIn and just let me know what your thoughts are. Let me know if you think I might have missed anything or if your roles or your idea of a BD rep would be a little bit different. I would love to hear it. Also, if you would like to send me, Questions for the show. I would love to answer questions for you guys. Please do shoot me. Some questions podcast at capitalbd.ca that is podcast at capitalbd.ca, shoot, me your questions. Shoot me your love or your hate whatever. I would love to just hear what you guys think of the show so far? And it's been an absolute pleasure hosting this for you today and I look forward to our next show and just heads up our next show. I plan to do a show specifically on what Look for in a BD rep what to look for when you're hiring a BD rep, so I think that will be a really great show and I look forward to it. All right, everyone, thank you so much for sticking around with me today. This has been Kelly Kennedy. And you are listening to the Business Development Podcast. Have an excellent day.

Outro

This is 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 at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on The Business Development Podcast.