What to look for in a Business Development Representative

What to look for in a Business Development Rep

Kelly Kennedy: Hello and welcome to the Business Development Podcast on today's episode. We are going to address what to look for in a BD rep. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca. Lets do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now you are expert host Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy:

This week's episode is one that's kind of close to me right now because I am actually in the middle of hiring for BD reps at Capital Business Development. So, It's it's right time, right time, right place, and I'm thankful today to be here, to be able to deliver that for you.

Today's episode, I want to talk a little bit about what to look for in a BD rep, and this is probably a little different than what you would think, but we'll get started and we'll go from there. And if you have any comments, questions, or concerns. Please do shoot me an email, shoot me some questions either on LinkedIn or you can always get me at podcast@capitalbd.ca.

So what to look for in a BD rep? This is a tough one, and I think a lot of you will start off by saying, well, hey, you know, did they go to business school? Did they got an mba or they business administration or marketing experience, or maybe a marketing degree. I want to encourage you to keep an open mind, okay?

Because. Let me tell you a little secret about bd. Nobody goes to school for business development. I like to say that you don't choose business development. Business development chooses you. When I got into business development many, many, many, many years ago, I had just graduated with a diploma in business administration.

You know, a small growing company took a shot, took a shot with me and brought me on. And at the time it was really just about, Hey, can you like help us with the day-to-day office stuff? Or I'm, I'm trying to like do my payroll or I'm trying to put together some type of marketing material, that sort of thing.

But over time that position became, well, hey, you're really good at talking to clients. You're really good at account manage. , would you be interested in handling the BD for me and at that time, I had no idea what business development was. I was like, bd, what? What I'm here for business manager, for office manager.

I don't want to do the BD . But I had no idea what it was at the time. And Oh boy. I feel like a lot of people who get offered BD roles go home and Google BD and they're like, what the heck is this? What does this mean? How is this different from a salesperson or an office representative? But yeah, I do just wanna let you know that nobody who you put in a BD role, for the most part, went to school and was like, when I graduate, I can't wait to end up in bd.

which is exactly why in my mind, yeah, sure. It's great to have some marketing material. It's great to have some business background. I definitely put it in my ads cuz I do want people who at least have a good idea of what business is. But let me tell you, bd, you either got it or you don't. And I'm gonna start off there.

I like to say the number one thing that I look for in a BD rep is, Likability. Okay. Likability and soft skills is something that you kind of either have or you don't. And I like to say you'll know in the first five minutes, you know, I've hired plenty of sales reps and stuff over my time and I knew in the first five minutes whether or not I liked them or that they would be good for the job.

And you know what? I would say 99% of the time I made a good choice because you need to like somebody rather quickly when you're in bd, right? You might only have 10 seconds. To make a good first impression. And if in that, in that first 10 seconds they bomb or they come across as aggressive or pushy or just not nice they got a bad demeanor that is gonna reflect poorly on your company, that is gonna reflect poorly and they're probably going to struggle.

And so I like to say that likability should be your very first skill when you're doing those interview process. I want you to just have a little note where you're saying, Hey, in the first five minutes, did this person make me laugh? Did they put a smile on my face? Were they smiling? Were they happy and excited and enthusiastic?

That should be your very first gauge on whether or not you should hire this candidate or not. The next part, I touched on it briefly, schooling. Yes, you know, you can go either way with this and like I said, at Capital I like to look for people with a business background. I like to look for people with some marketing experience or potentially just some sales, some outside sales experience.

 But ultimately that's up to you. Although I would suggest maybe sticking with a business background, marketing background, but I don't want you to weigh so heavily on this. You don't need somebody who's got a degree in marketing or somebody who's got a degree in business or an mba, I guess I should say an mba.

The reality. That's not going to make the difference and whether or not they can sell your product or not, what's going to make the difference is how do they show up? How do they show up every day? Are they consistent? Are they delivering? Are they showing up on a bad day? You know, like, let's get real. We are humans.

Bd. God, I can't tell you how many times I've showed up to work and I've had a nightmare of a night before. You know, whether it's, you know, it's, it's a fight. Whether it's just something's happened in the family, whether, you know, I didn't get some news that I was happy about or maybe, heck, maybe I'm just struggling at the job and or I'm struggling with some, with some things that happened.

 We're all struggling. Okay. I'm sorry. You know, , all, all of us employees, all of us owners, all of us managers, we all are fighting our struggles. and you need somebody who can show up every day, even when they're struggling. That is, that is a key element. And you know what? A good attitude goes a long way and a good attitude.

You'll know, you'll be able to tell if this candidate's got a good attitude, they're gonna be able to tough it out. Or at bare minimum, they're gonna be able to be honest with you when they can't tough it out. You need somebody who's willing, willing to work, and you're going to get that through people with a good attitude and a good outlook.

The other one problem solving. Okay. So a little bit tougher to see, but a good business development rep does a ton of problem solving. Okay? They are, they're little detectives. You got a bunch of little detectives working for you. You might have said, John, I need, or, or Janet, I need somebody. At ABC company and we don't have any connections there, and John or Janet May hit out there, hit the pavement.

They might add John or Janet or send, send cold calls out to their companies and just reach out and say, Hey, do you guys have somebody who's going to fit the bill or, or are you gonna be able to get to the right person who's going to. Open that door for you. And that takes a lot of little detective work.

And sometimes it can take six months or longer to get into that company that you really want them to get into because they gotta go through 16 or 20 different people to get to the decision maker. So you need people who are willing to sit down, put the pencil to paper. And really do the problem solving required.

So, you know what I mean? If you, it, it's hard to test for this obviously, but if you can think of a way to try to guide them into giving you some examples of where, where they stayed determined, where they found that, that connection for, for your company, it's gonna go a long way. The ability to take no and keep on going.

This one's tough and I struggled with this. I am a perfectionist and I, you know, I get it. Nobody should be a perfectionist, but hey, there's the some of us who just hate losing and I'm one of those people I hate losing and I don't care what the situation is. And I think that's why I've been so incredibly good at what I do.

However, you have to be able to take no and be able and, and not let it, not let it cave you. And that's tough and I'm, that, that takes learning. And you know, I was guilty of this. I would get a no and it would put me in a bad head space and the next thing you know, I've wasted two hours or three hours thinking about that.

No. Instead of just getting back to it and making those calls. And it took me years. It took me years guys to, to get to a point where I could just take no slash it out, where it had just zero effect on me and keep on going. The ability to take no is something that is critical for any BD rep. It's gonna be critical for any salesperson, and it is a learned skill.

And if they can give you some examples on how they were able to take no and keep on going, it's going to show a long way. Self-motivation and a drive to succeed. So I talked about this briefly. I think I've, I've always been incredibly successful at business development, and I think I have because I hate losing.

I've driven to succeed. I truly hate it. The idea of failing a client for me is literally the worst thing in the world. And. I couldn't imagine doing it. And so you need some people who are, who have almost that mindset, and I, I get that it can be unhealthy at times. You know, I'm, I, I'm guilty. I, I've been a workaholic for sure.

I've definitely hit that point where work has just been on my mind. But you need somebody who's willing to sit down and just crush it day and day and day. And that is truly a, a self-motivated individual. That is somebody who, who in their core, That's who they are in their core. They, they want to succeed.

They're driven to succeed, and that drive is gonna keep them showing up day after day because business development is about consistency. Okay. Sometimes it takes 20 or 30 contacts to get to the right people. I, I've had people call me back and book meetings that frankly I've called on a weekly basis for about 30 weeks in some cases, like, Like just leaving messages here or, or there.

But just not, not giving up. Just not giving up, just saying, and always staying friendly, right? Always making that call and just saying, Hey, you know, it's Kelly. I'd love to set up this meeting with you. We'd love to connect. I do think there's some synergies. I think we can help you, and I want to do this.

And sometimes it's call 30 that I get through, it's call 30 that they call me back and they say, man, you're persistent, but you're kind. And I appreciate that . And I've had that more, more times in the past like year than than you could imagine. That's a really great call to get because you know, what it shows to me is that it's just about timing and you don't know when you're gonna get the right timing.

So being able to be consistent in your follow ups, being consistent and showing up every day and making those calls, and making those, those LinkedIn contacts or those emails that you need to make on a consistent basis, that is what's going to lead you to success. The next part is trustworthy. So trustworthiness, obviously you need somebody with the modern BD roles.

Most people are working on a hybrid model or they're working from home. I don't think there's a lot of full-time BD guys that are working at the office these days. And so trustworthiness goes a long way because this kicks back to the last part of self-motivation. You don't need your BD guys sitting at home.

And just killing two or three days a week and only working two or three days a week for you, if you got a guy working five days, you need him to be working five days. And so the ability to trust your employee is, is critical now. And so trying to find somebody who you can build a good rapport with, that you can kind of feel him out and see, okay, is this guy pulling my chain or is he showing up?

And, and he, is he putting in the effort that's gonna deliver results for our company? So trustworthiness obviously once again, really hard to measure. You have three months to kind of watch these people and see what they do, and I would really encourage you in that time to be keeping an eye and just making sure that you're getting consistent weekly results, willing to travel, and a good abstract.

Okay. We have a lot of armchair BD people these days, guys. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. All the Zoom meetings and Google meets in the world are zero replacement for an in-person meeting. At Capital we push for in-person meetings whenever possible. Obviously, we work for clients that are Canada-wide, and sometimes that's just not possible, but, you know, if they're local or if they're in the next city, we do our best to show up and meet them, and, and I think that that leads to a much better rapport, a much better connection.

and you really want to build that great connection with your clients. And you do it in person, you do it in person. And so what I would really suggest is that you have a BD guy who's not, not stuck in the office, not not stuck in his home, or not afraid to put on some kilometers. Yeah, don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid to drive for lunch. Don't be afraid to drive to the office and have that meeting in their office. Guys, show up. Show up. Show up with coffee and just show them that you are interested and that you have something to give and that you are a human, and that, that you can stand out and you're gonna stand out by having those face-to-face meetings.

So if right now your business is, is focused primarily on Zoom meetings or Google meets, or they're doing, they're doing things remotely, you know, I get it. I get it. Covid was hard and we're all kind of recouping and trying to figure out how to recover from that. But if your clients are open to in-person meetings, you should also be open to in-person meetings.

That would be my rule of thumb for you. The next one loves your business and products. Okay? Your BD guy is a champion for your business. My God, I shout from the rooftops for my clients because my clients are awesome and they really are. They truly are. I, I make a, I make a conscious choice to work for good clients and I think that that's very important.

You have to like what you're selling. You really do. You have to believe that what you have is a high quality product. And so you need to kind of gauge your BD guy on what his feel is for the company. Is he lukewarm? Does he care? Does, is this just a job to him or is this something that he's truly passionate about?

Does he love being a BD guy and does he love selling your. Because you need somebody who's going to talk, who's going to talk well about your product, who's gonna talk well about your company. They need to be the champions. They need to be the people leading the charge for your business. And so you definitely need somebody who does have a good view of your business and product.

And you know, you can obviously gauge this in an interview and just say, Hey, tell me a little bit about my business. What do you think of it? Do you, are you behind our values? Do you believe in what we're doing? Because if the answer is no, they're probably not going to be very great at marketing your product.

Able to relate and create connections with your clients. So this is the other one. So a lot of BD isn't actually talking, and it took me a really long time to figure this out. I used to sit in business meetings and talk about my product and talk about my company and why they should buy my product and why my product is so good.

Guys, just be quiet. Your, your clients will tell you what they want and why they like your company and why they're there. What I would like you to focus on, Is spend a little bit of time just being a human with your clients guys. Relate with them. Ask them how their, their kid's ball game was. Them if they had a hard week and let them just talk.

Let them talk because you know what? Sometimes my BD friends, my BD men and women out there fighting the good fight. You guys are the best person that they talk to during the day, okay? Your interactions with your clients should always be enjoyable, should always be something people really look forward to, and I think I pride myself.

I think if you would talk to any of my clients, they would say that when they got to chat with me, I improved their day and I made that a goal of every single conversation that I had was that. , I improved somebody's day just a little bit. And I think that as a BD rep, you have the opportunity to make that who you are.

You have the ability to cheer up your clients, cheer up your accounts you're working with, because these people, they don't just buy your product. They are other people. And you know, I've made many, many, many friends of clients over the years, people that I would consider to this day to be good friends.

We're just clients at one time that frankly, over time realized that hell, we had a lot in common. We loved riding motorcycles or, you know, we went clay shooting, or heck we, you know, we were going through the same problems. And you'd be surprised how much of business development can truly just lead to you improving people's lives.

And I think that that should truly be a goal of all your business development people. It shouldn't just be about selling your product, but it should be truly about bringing value to your client. You need somebody who is able to articulate well, both written and verbally. , I'll be honest, I suck at writing.

I hate physically writing things. I have, you know, I write like a doctor's notes. My, my, my note page is just full of like scribbles and doctor's notes. So that's not what I mean, that's not what I mean. I mean, the ability to type. Well-formed sentences, well-formed thoughts as well as speak in a well-formed informed way and articulate your message incredibly well, and also know when to just be quiet and listen.

Okay, so the ability to talk is a business development person's secret weapon, right? We are really good at just having conversations with people. We are really good at listening. We obviously didn't start out good at listening. , it takes practice. You, you, you get there, you get there. I realized probably halfway through my BD career that I was talking too much and I needed to just ask questions and sit back and listen.

So that's an articulation skill. That's a skill that I learned along the way. And, and your BD people will as well if you give them the time and you give them the space to to learn it. The ability to articulate is truly important, and you'll be able to tell in your interview how they are explaining their backgrounds, how they're explaining their likes, or what they're up to, or why you should hire them.

They should be able to articulate this to you very well, including examples as to as to as to things that they've done. That would make them a good candidate for your business. Okay, so I think I think that's one that's kind of learned. You can definitely teach articulation. You can you can criti critique, I guess I should say.

Not criticize, but critique emails. But over time, you should definitely see an improvement. Your BD people should very easily be able to communicate, not just with your client, but with you. The ability to follow routine on a sustained consistency. Sorry guys. , the ability to, sorry. The ability to follow routine on a sustained consistency.

So I talked about this a little bit briefly before, but what I was talking about is, The secret weapon to a BD person is consistency. Okay? It's being able to deliver results week after week, after week after week. And let me tell you, this is hard, okay? It's very easy to deliver results one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks.

But to be able to do it on a, on a consistent basis, okay? On a, on a consistent basis where you are booking, you know, say 1, 2, 3, meeting. Consistently week after week, after week after week is challenging. And what it takes is consistency. It takes your guy not just making four phone calls this week, lining up four meetings cuz he got lucky and then not making any more phone calls.

Okay. That, that can't be how it goes. And you know what? It's easy as a BD guy, especially a full-time BD guy working for a company a little bit different since I started my own company. You know what I mean? I feel like I, I hold myself to a much higher standard. But the reality is, it's easy to get a few wins and sit back and coast.

That's a very easy mindset to get into and a lot of BD people get into it. And one thing that I've learned, especially being out on my own, especially running my own BD company now, is that the most important thing to me is that my BD reps and that your BD reps. Are consistently delivering. They're making say 30, 40 phone calls a week.

They're sending maybe 30, 40 LinkedIn introductions every single week to keep that roster full. And yeah, heck, if they book four meetings in one day, great, great. But that doesn't mean it's time to stop. It means that you got lucky. And now in order to deliver that on a consistent basis, you still need to make your calls.

So you need to find people who are willing to understand that that way of thinking. And to be able to live by it, and that's going to deliver your business very consistent results over time. Demonstrates ability quickly. Okay, so this is the other side. Three months, right? That's all we get. That's all we get.

We get three months to figure out whether or not they can do this. And so it's very important, even though your BD people may be working remotely or stepped out or only come to the office once or twice a week, it's very important that you are seeing those. and the way that I would recommend that is that you have your BD people provide you a weekly report.

If you're not doing that right now if you are doing it great, that's great. Have them give you a weekly report. How many people did they talk to this week? How many digital interactions did they make? How many how many phone calls and emails did they make that week? And make sure that you were getting consistent data over three months that you are getting, if they're making on average twenty five, thirty phone calls a week.

Make sure that you were getting that consistently over time. And what you will see is that if they are consistent, you are gonna get meetings consistently, which is the goal of all BD is to get those meetings. So if you're getting consistent numbers of those phone calls, you should also be getting consistent meetings.

If you're not, you might have to check, you might have to do a checkup on your BD guy and say, Hey, you know, like you're making 35, 40 calls a week, why are we not getting more meetings? The answer unfortunately, guys, might be, he's not making 35 or 40 calls a week, he's just writing them down and. You'll know because it's results, right?

The result is to lead you to meetings. So if you're not getting those meetings, there might be there might be some challenges happening. Your BD guy also nowadays, especially, needs to be able to work remotely and at the office. Okay? So we're working from home these days, right? And so I'm gonna go back to my last point.

If you're getting consistent numbers on the reports, but you are not getting consistent numbers on the meetings. I mean, have a phone call with him. Just say, Hey, look, you know, we're having, we're having consistent numbers, but we're not getting the consistent meetings. Is this maybe something that we need to revamp or, or pitch?

You know, can you maybe let me know what you're saying as far as your pitch or things like that, because something is wrong. If you were getting consistent numbers. He's either talking to the wrong people or he's frankly not talking at all, which could also be a scary prospect. You guys really need to be able to trust your employees to work from home.

The way you're gonna do that is with the weekly reports. It's a standard at Capital Business Development. It will be a standard for the length that we are in business and measure them in meetings. Okay? That's what matters. How many meetings are you getting? Because that's where you're gonna sell.

That's where you're gonna either get on the vendor list or you're gonna get offered an RFQ or an RFP and, and move on to the next steps. So you need those meetings. That's what they gotta be doing. And if they're not, if they're demonstrating consistent numbers, but not getting the meetings, it's time for a talk.

 Is willing to provide weekly report is the other one. So you need somebody who's obviously willing to provide that weekly report to you. If somebody tells you that they don't want to provide that weekly report, my opinion is get rid of 'em. And I hate to say that cause I love, I love a lot of my BD people, but guys, you know, at the end of the day you have to demonstrate what you're doing and you gotta do it on a consistent basis.

And I know, I know a lot of us are coasting. I know a lot of you are coasting. And we're just not delivering the results that we could be delivering. So if you're not delivering weekly results, or sorry, weekly reports at the moment, I would highly recommend that you move to that and you start tracking.

Tracking your results on a weekly basis is, is consistent in leading prospects to meeting stages. So this is the other side, right? , everything that we do as a BD person. I hinted this a little bit before, but everything we do as a BD person is to lead us to a meeting. Okay? So every stage, every stage of contact should be moving them to a next stage, which eventually will get them into a contacted weekly stage.

and then get them into those meeting stages. So you need to look at your BD program at the, at the stages of contact, at at your introductions, at your follow-ups the consistency of your follow-ups, what the message is. But you need to make sure that all of the effort in your BD is leading you to meetings.

Okay? And you should be measuring all BD work in how many meetings are we? Your BD person needs to be able to work independently and as part, as a, as part of a team. Okay. BD, we work as part of a team, right? Like we work in our office, we have other BD people we're working with. We have sales teams. We have to be able to do that, but we're also like little loan rangers and we're out there doing our own thing and generating revenue on our own.

And so the ability, if you get a guy who, or a girl who is really good on their own, but struggles in a team, , it can work, it can work, but the ability to work as part of a team is gonna exponentially increase their value because they can get leads from the team, or they can give leads to the team, or they can talk to people who might be better at handling this client than they are.

You know, I've, I've run into situations where it took two people because for whatever reason, the client I reached out to, you know, was either having a bad day the first time I got him, or was just getting sick of my voice. Cause I've called him 30 times over 30 weeks and, and it's time for a secondary call.

When you get to that stage, it's really important that they have a team member, that they have a business development manager that they can reach out to and say, Hey, you know, I, I don't wanna give up on this client, but maybe can you step in and help me? Or maybe do, you gotta contact who I don't have.

So the ability to work as, as a team will superpower or, or supercharge your bd. So do you make sure that they can get, they can get along independently and as part of a team? References can confirm performance. Okay. Guys, your BD people, they need to be able to prove their performance. They need to be able to prove that they have a good track record.

If you, if you're looking at their resume and you're seeing that every three months or every six months, they're hopping companies. And they're, and they're employees. They're not a contractor per se. I guess that can happen as a contractor. But if they're employees in their hopping companies, there's probably a problem.

They're probably, you know, riding it out to that three month mark. And then they're, they're getting realized that they're not getting the results that they want and they're kind of moving on to the next. So it's really important that when we are, when we are checking on these employees, when we are going through that interview process, that we are checking, checking the references.

Okay. And yeah, I really appreciate that. Just to give you just a heads up, that's what I'm doing right now. Capital Business Development is is looking at hiring some employees for the Edmonton area. So if you do know anybody who's looking do, do you send them our way. If you could have them email their resume and CV as well as a cover letter to info capital bd.ca, that would be excellent.

 If you, if you have any questions about today's podcast or you'd just like to get in touch with me, you can always get me at podcast@capitalbd.ca. It's been an absolute pleasure to be with you. The next episode, I would like to talk about how you should measure your BD efforts. I look forward to getting in touch with you.

I look forward to continuing this podcast with you. Thank you so much for listening today, 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 at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.