Why you need Business Development

Why you need Business Development Reps

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

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. This is episode four. Holy cow. We are clipping along. Didn't know where the heck this was gonna go or if it was even gonna pan out, and I'm happy to say that just yesterday we hit our first 100 downloads, so, Super proud, super proud of this and where it's going and what we're doing with it.

And I just wanted to thank all of you who are listening. I, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for taking the time to be with me today and have a little bit of fun. Learn something new and hopefully over time teach me something as well. So I really do appreciate my listeners.

Thank you for being here with me today. And thanks for sticking around so far. Really do appreciate all of you. Wanted to give a quick show update as well. Been doing a lot of things on the background. If you guys don't know much about me my name is Kelly Kennedy. I am the owner of Capital Business Development.

I'm an incredibly busy person. I work my own contracts, run a company and try to do this podcast at the same time. So, Kind of running from place to place, trying to get this podcast set up kind of in the background because I do have day-to-day obligations and clients that expect me to perform well, and I expect to perform well for them.

So please do bear with me as we kind of get things going and as I get my groove with this, I'm also not a podcaster, I'm a business development rep, so I'm learning the ropes of what it means to be a podcaster, what it means to put yourself out there and give it all you got and try to deliver value week after week.

So please bear with me and I do appreciate your patience and your love. Just a heads up as well, we are moving into the next phase of the Business Development podcast, which means that I am getting set up for guests so you can expect to start seeing guests on the show. I'm starting to kind of send out invitations and get some feelers out and see what what company owners, what business development reps would love to sit down and chat with me.

So, please do expect that over the next couple weeks that you will start to see guest interviews this week's episode, why your Business Needs Business Development Representatives. This one is going to be fun because I get to somewhat justify my job, justify why we exist and why we get to have this, this great, this great position within a.

When you start a business, you probably started a business because it was something that you were passionate about, that you love, that you are great at, that you are technically skilled to do. Whether that's you've opened a quality company where you're selling inspectors, or whether you're a fabrication shop and you're building great things, or a construction company and you know you're building the next high-rise.

The reality is when you got into this. You did that because you understood engineering or you understood welding, or you had an understanding of a, of how to build a product. Maybe you designed and built a, a new technology or a new product, and that is your skillset and it is an amazing skillset and it has got you to where you are today.

What you were not prepared for when you started your company was, how the heck do I market this company? And suddenly some things got a little bit scary cuz you had to pick up some phones, you had to call some people who didn't know who you were and introduce yourself. And those are all new skills that frankly are hard.

They take a lot of practice, they take a lot of repetition, and they take a lot of time. And time is something that you as a business owner have very, very little of. If you have a small business like. You were wearing five hats. You know, maybe you're doing your invoicing, maybe you're doing your accounting, your marketing, your sales, and you are providing the service or product that, that your company provides.

And that can be incredibly taxing, especially when you're new, especially when you're only a couple years old. Maybe you only got a couple employees and you're really trying to spread things out as thin as you can and have people wear many hats. Where you will start to run into challenges is that you are, frankly, you are too busy, you are too busy to be doing business development effectively.

And you know, take it I'm a business development company. Starting my company was challenging. A lot of the work that I got off the bat was word of mouth because frankly, even though I'm a business development company, I'm still pretty damn busy. And in some cases I'm literally too busy to do my own marketing.

And so I get it. I get it. It's like, what's my excuse? So if, what's my excuse, then I know what your excuse is. That's, that's just the reality. So you are frankly too busy. You have a different skillset. We talked about this a little bit earlier. Your skillset is likely in technical knowledge. You're may be really great at running your company.

You're really great at sell, at not necessarily selling your product, but maybe you're really. At, at explaining your product and then building your product and demonstrating it to a client. However, to get to that stage, we need a little bit of work. We need some steps. We need some people out there banging the doors and shouting from the rooftops and saying, Hey, company one two threes got the product you need.

They got the, they got the product to the century and you need to check it out. Well, you need somebody out there doing that for you. And I get it. If, if BD is not your, your technical skillset, if talking to people and learning how to conversate and market your product is not your technical skillset, it's challenging, and you're gonna need a little bit of help.

The next thing is digital strategies and passive marketing methods for are for brand recognition and not selling. So if you're, if you are in this stage, maybe you are dumping a ton of money, maybe you're, maybe you're dumping. I don't know, five grand a week into LinkedIn and digital marketing agencies or whatever else you're doing as far as trying to market your product across the internet.

I'm sorry. You know, it's just, it's not that effective. I, I wish it was because it would, it would make life a lot easier, even for me in a business development company, if I could just throw up some ads on LinkedIn or throw up some ads on Facebook or across the internet on Google ad. And it would just drive this massive amount of revenue to my company.

Of course I'd do it. I would be stupid not to. And so would you. But the reality is it's just not working, is it? You know, you have to look at what, what you're throwing your money into. If you're spending five, six, $10,000 a month on digital advertising and it's not delivering you results, that's a BD rep, you know?

The reality is that could, you could, you could afford to just hire a BD rep to do this 10 times more effectively for you. So I want you to really consider that. I understand as a new company, the appeal, I, I fell for it too. I did, I fell for it too. When I started Capital, the first thing I did was I literally, well, I told the people that I was working with, that I did this cuz I wanted, I knew that I could get a contract right off the bat with companies that I was, I was already working with.

So I did that, but obviously the next thing I did is, oh, I gotta get my name out there. Let's, let's buy some LinkedIn ads, let's buy some Facebook ads. Let's get on Google AdWords. I'm not sure that I ever got even a phone call from probably the two or $3,000 I dumped into that right off the bat. And yes, I didn't go too far cuz I'd recognized my, the error in my ways rather quickly.

But trust me, if you are dumping stupid amounts of money into your online presence and marketing. Yeah, I, we'll talk about that. We need to, we need to find a better way and there is a better way, and it does fall under the business development side of things. It also does fall under your website.

So we'll kind of touch on that near the end of this episode. The next one is a BD rep like me will champion your business. Like I said, I love my clients. I do, I have the best clients. I take the best clients. That's why I'm very selective and picky about the people that I'm willing to work with. The other side of it is,

Yeah. I believe in what they sell. My clients have great products. They sell great services. They care. They, they are, they're making a difference in, in our local economy, in Alberta, in Canada as a whole. And that matters to me. And because it matters to me. I'm out there and I talk nothing but praise, nothing but praise for my clients.

I get out there and I, I'm excited. I'm genuinely excited to pick up my phone and call people and introduce them to my clients. Why? Because I know people. People need them. People need their services. And the only thing in the way of these people who need their services and them actually selling their services is just an introduction.

And so I recognize that, yeah, I'm gonna get lots of no's, I'm gonna get lots of turndowns, and so are you. Your company's gonna get shut down. I don't care if you have the best product on earth, someone's gonna tell you it's no good and they don't need it. You have to not take it to. These people would've said that to anything.

Most likely. Maybe you just got them on a bad day. You just don't know. You just don't know. And so you really have to not take it to heart and try to just move past it. Make that next phone call. Please, please for me. For me and your business and yourself, when you get shut down, pick up that phone, get back on the horse and make another call, because that next call could be your million dollar phone call.

That's the next thing I'm gonna flip into here. You don't know. Which call is gonna be your million dollar phone call. You don't. You don't. You have no idea. And until you get out there and you call 50 companies, 60 companies, a hundred companies, 500 companies, you just don't know. But any one of those calls could be the client that you've been waiting for, any one of them.

They could be the client, the dream client, the client of your dreams. You just don't know. And the only way to get to that client is to get past the other 50 that that turned you down or were, or were cold. And it's gonna take a little bit of work. It's gonna take practice. But that's why you have a BD guy.

That's why you have a guy whose skillset. Is to be able to somewhat take rejection and keep on trucking, right? They got a good mindset. They're probably incredibly positive. They love your product and it's not gonna affect them. When you're a business owner making phone calls on behalf of your business, it's very hard to not take it personally because in some ways your business is your baby, right?

It's like capital is my baby. I love capital. And when someone's like, oh, this, this sucks, it's like, oh. You suck . Right? But we know that, we know that that's just, that's just our egos. That's just, that's just us as business owners who created something and poured our hearts and our, and our souls into it.

And we're just like, we hate it. And I do think that's a major reason why, why, frankly, you should not market your own company. And oh man, I, I'm gonna get a little flack for this cause like I own a business development company and I hate marketing my company. The rejection is so much different when it's somebody else's company.

It's like, it's like, oh, whatever. When it's your company, you do take it personally. So another reason I this, this is off topic, I didn't expect to get here, but this is another reason why you should probably hire a BD rep to market your company for you, because that rejection of your own sweat and blood, it can be harder to take than if it was somebody elses.

BD reps will make the calls that you can't or will not make. That's the other side of it, right? It's, we hate making calls. We hate it. We hate it. You know what I mean? I'm a BD guy and it took me a long time. I, I don't hate 'em anymore, but it took me a really long time to get there to a point where I didn't hate making phone calls where it didn't suck, where it, where I started to see the value.

I think that's really where it changed for me. I needed to see, OK Yes. This is the, this is the path that works. It's the path that no one wants to do. And frankly, that is why it works. It's because nobody wants to do it that makes it so bloody effective. People are getting bombarded with digital marketing ads with Facebook ads.

Like, God, hop on your LinkedIn. Just scroll down. I bet you the, the first six or seven posts you. At least five of seven will be ads. You are getting bombarded with digital ads all the time, which is why at Capital, and my personal belief is, is that online digital marketing should be for corporate exposure only.

 I don't think you're selling with them. There's just, there's too much stuff going on. What you are doing with it, what it's incredibly effective at is brand recognition, right? It's like Nike. Everyone knows Nike. You saw this, you saw the check mark everywhere. That's what you need for your company. People need to see your company's logo everywhere.

They need to see some, some verbiage and some wording just saying like, Hey, ABC Company, we're the best at the best. Check us out. That's it. That's it. All they should do is funnel people to your website. All these, all these digital ads should do is funnel people to your website, which should be the true face of your company.

And I'm actually just gonna take a little segue here. I, I mentioned that I would chat about your website in this, it wasn't planned, it wasn't technically part of the show today, but I do wanna talk about it briefly. Your website is the showcase of your company, okay? In the modern world, it's not your office.

It's not your sky rise. Your website is the show, the showcase of your company. If it looks like a pig, your company is gonna be perceived as a pig. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's that simple. It hurts. You need to spend some money and create a good website. You need to hire a professional. You need to have somebody, you need to update it and maintain it.

You need to be spending some time and money on that website. If you're right now dumping, let's say 5,000 bucks a month into Google AdWords, I want you to stop doing that for a bare minimum one month. Just stop, stop doing it. I would like you to take five grand and put it on your website. Okay? I want you to build the most beautiful website that the world has ever seen.

I want you to go to your website and damn near cry, okay? Because that's how nice your website should be. The reason is it's your face. It is your company. In the modern day and age, it doesn't matter whether you sell products, services, whether you build sky rises, you know, or, or whether you're selling pharmaceutical drugs.

Your website is critical to the image of your business. Frankly, it is the image of your business. And so websites critically important take some time, spend some money, build that face of your company, build the face. That is, that is, that is in my mind, some of the best money that you can spend at this day and age is to, is to increase the value of your company by having a high value perceived website.

Okay. BD reps will review and manage your marketing programs and strategies. This is something that, once again, as a business owner, you were pretty busy. You know, the, you probably have a lot of sales, you probably have a lot of, of current customers that you're working with, and you just don't have the time to review how your marketing strategy is going, what's effective, what's not effective.

If you had a BD guy and he was taking a look at your, your digital ad revenue right now, and, and looking at the the amount of calls and orders, he might sit back and say, Hey, Mr. Owner. I'm noticing some challenges here. We're

dumping a lot of money into this digital ad spend and we are getting like nothing in return for this.

If you had a good BD guy, he would, he would point that out for you. He'd say, I think it's time that we take a look at a different strategy and so, So they can take the time and they can essentially review your marketing program, review what you have, review your, your brochures and your marketing material and your website, and they can say, yep, we have these points to get it to improve.

And they can either, they can either work with your internal teams to get that initiative started, which is what we do at Capital or they can maybe do it on their own depending on how your business is or, or what your what your skillsets are. But they are really great at managing and reviewing your marketing program as well as, Creating strategy for the future, BD reps can provide the consistent weekly follow up that it takes to create rapport with your customers and book meetings.

It takes work. It takes consistent weekly efforts to be a good BD person okay to to grow your business. A good BD person is going to put in consistent weekly efforts. This is just something that you have no time to do. Business owner. You have no time. I know it because I am one. I get it. You have no time.

I, half the time I'm trying to figure out where the heck I'm gonna get time to do my day because I have obligations. I have clients to please. I have a family, I have a podcast. I have growth plans. I have just planning in general. I I, I would love to take a day or two off a week to try to rest, which, you know, never happens, but whatever.

It's . It's a solid, it's a solid effort goal. It's, it's great to have dreams, right. I get it, man, you're too busy. You guys are just too busy. And you need, you need to be able to offload some of that effort. It's just, it's just what you have to do. And, and frankly, your customers deserve it. Your customers deserve the attention They deserve to have somebody who's willing to call them week after week and say,

Mr. Customer, I'm with a ABC company. We have a great product. I think you'll love, I would love to introduce it to. , if you could gimme a shout back, I'd love to just line up an introduction meeting with you and take this to the next steps. You need somebody who's willing to do that on a repetitive basis to start to build that rapport with your customer, to build a little bit of trust and to set up that meeting, which is what you need.

You need those meetings. Those meetings are everything. It's, it's really the entire job, the whole BD job as far as I'm concerned, the entire point of bd, and I mean every step, every single step, right down to helping to build a beautiful website. It's leading you to meetings, okay? All of these are steps along the way that build a great brand perception of your, of your product or company, which make people interested.

And then the BD guy comes along and says, Hey, I know you're interested. I know you've seen our social ads. I know you've been to our website. , and I know you want to chat cuz I know that I have a product that you're gonna love. So let's just talk about it. You don't gotta buy, but let's talk, let's have a meeting, let's make an introduction.

Let's, let's make a new friend today because that is the point. And if you can start doing that and you're doing that on a consistent basis, you're getting those weekly meetings, it's going to just blow your business up. You are going to make sales, you are going to inevitably make sales. But the only way that you are going to do this is to get in front of people.

And you need consistency and a plan to do it.

Your BD rep will drive your company's sales and marketing program to its end goal, which is meetings that lead to vendor list, RFPs and rfq. So this just kind of takes back to, I kind of got into this in the last the last little topic there, but, The whole point of this right, is to, is for meetings and what is the end goal of the meetings?

Well, the end goal of the meetings is to get you either on an approved vendor list for, for the prospective client. It's either to get you in order that day, like which heck happens. And it's absolutely amazing. But you know, it's, it's not, it's not regular. Or it gets you on the bid list where you're gonna start getting these large RFQ or RFPs for major projects or parts of major projects, which, which ultimately lead, you know, to massive, massive revenues for your company.

They are going to do that work for you on a consistent basis to lead you to orders. Does a BD person have to fill that order? No. We talked about this in a previous episode. I think you need an account manager or sales team to start managing the customer once he is a customer. However, you do need that BD guy to lead you right to that point and to create that rapport and to create that relationship.

In conclusion, BD reps are the driving force of your sales program. They put in the necessary time, effort, and consistency required to market your company to successful meetings that drive revenue for your business. Good business development can provide exponential value to its cost over time. This. This is it.

This is the most important thing about BD people. This is why BD is the best job in a business. We pay for ourselves exponentially. Think about it. You pay a BD guy, let's say you pay him 50, 60 K a year to come in for your company and, and work, and work to, to do sales. Heck, depending on your business or your product, one order could be 50 K with a profit margin of say, 15 to 20%.

Well I don't know about you, but that means that he only needs to do a couple orders a year to literally pay for himself. So where, where else in your business are you getting that? Where else in your business is somebody driving that level of value? We're hard to beat. We are hard to beat. We are worth the money, especially a good one.

A good BD guy. Can 10 x his value, and that's, that's a damn good investment. I don't know if, I don't know if , I don't know if about you, but 10 X looks pretty damn good to me, and I, I genuinely, I genuinely believe that you a good BD guy can, can work, work magic, pay for himself, and and have a great time doing it.

You know, most BD people also love their job. And I think that that's, that's something that's kind of interesting because most people look at what BD does. They look at, they look at the, the monotony. There's a lot of monotony. , there's a lot of monotony in the day to day, however, BD people tend to have a good disposition.

They tend to enjoy what they do. They tend to work very hard to create value in the eyes of a customer. And when they win, they truly love it. Like God, I am, I love winning. I love winning. I hate losing. And I've been incredibly good at BD because I love winning. And I think a lot of BD people are this way.

They truly are. They just, they're in it to win. They're in it for their own personal value. They feel truly good about themselves when they make a sale for their, for their client, or when they bring, bring exponential value to their client. And it's, it's truly an amazing, an amazing position. And I'm incredibly proud.

I'm incredibly proud to be a BD person. I know I say it a lot, but I, I mean it, I mean it, I could have never expected that this is where I would go. BD people don't go to school to be BD. BD chooses you and I am I'm incredibly proud that it chose me. So what if, on the other hand, you were a new business owner who's just getting started and you just don't have the money.

You just don't. And I get it. I get it. I'm there. You know, I've, I've been there. I've, I'm really, I'm starting to grow capital, but it took me a long time, took me a long time to get to the point where I had the money where I could start looking at it and say, yeah, I think I can, I think I can blow this thing up a little bit.

Let's see what we can do. What can you do? Well, you need to set aside time every day to do certain tasks. I get it. You don't have time. Well, now you're gonna have a little less time because you have to do this. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Your business deserves a little bit of effort in growth, and you need to take some time, set it aside, and do a few things.

The first thing that you need to do is you need to create your crm, your customer relationship management program. There's lots of great options out there. I recommend Pipedrive. At Capital, we use Pipedrive. I am not affiliated with Pipedrive. I've just used them. For eight years. And it's an amazing program.

They're updating it all the time and it's, it's exactly what you need and, and none of what you don't need. And so I highly recommend it if if you're not utilizing a CRM at the moment, if you are great. But you need to be utilizing your CRM to track your business development efforts. You need to send at least 10 digital invitations to target companies a week.

What do I mean by this? You need to be hopping on whether, whether you're using socials, whether you're using Facebook, LinkedIn obviously LinkedIn is, it's king. It's king and business. Kay. It's just, it is what it is. LinkedIn is the world now. So what you need to be doing you have a hundred invites a week, guys use 'em

use 'em. Send bare minimum, send 10 invites. And then if you can send them either a LinkedIn mail or or or a direct message and just introduce your company. Introduce yourself first. Right? Like . You know what, I'm John. I'm with a ABC company. We just, it's great to connect with you today. Just wanted to make a quick introduction.

We do this. We'd love to chat further with you. Contact details, fire it off. , add that guy to your CRM and make sure that, that you were, you were consistently doing at least 10 of those a week. I, I know like, come on, if you really wanna grow your business, you need to do more than 10. But I get it. I get it.

I'm trying to set the goals low for you. I'm trying to make life easier for you to try to get you to just start doing something because I, sitting around and, and investing in these digital ads, it's not helping you. It's not helping your company. Trust me, you're bleeding money and there's better. You need to make phone calls to target companies on a weekly basis.

Once again, let's set the bar low. 10. 10, pick 10 companies you wanna work with. I want you to call and make an introduction of your company to them. I get it. It's scary. You're sweating. Your palms are shaky. knees, weak. Arms are sweating , but, but you gotta do it. You gotta make those calls. It, it's critical.

It's critical to the success of your business. My fellow business owner. You gotta do it, man. You gotta, you gotta make the call. If you're not making those calls, your competitors are someone, is. Someone is. And I really do want it to be you. I want you to be making those calls. 10. I would like you to set a minimum goal of 10 per week.

If you can do more, great. But, but send those invites, send those those introductory calls to target companies. I would like you to practice your speaking skills. Speaking. This is super funny. I'm just gonna talk a little bit about myself. Here I am, I know I come across probably as a little bit of an extrovert.

I I work in a business development role and I talk to strangers quite regularly. I'm incredibly introverted. I love alone time. I, before I was a business development guy, I spent a lot of time kind of just on my own and doing my own thing. I had really, really like solo hobbies and like just loved peace and quiet.

And for me, I had to step outta my comfort zone. I had to learn how to be a little bit extroverted in order to become good at what I do. It took practice, it took time, and it took repetition. And the best way that you are going to practice at getting good at, at providing a good introductory pitch to your customers is to just do it over and over and over again.

You're gonna suck. Okay? You're gonna suck. It's okay. We all suck at something. When we start. It just means that we're getting better. Okay? Just make the calls, make the calls. And in the beginning, if you gotta take notes on where you struggled or where you hung up, fine. But make the calls, make the introduction, and every single one will become better than the last.

Every single one will become better than the last. And over time you are going to get incredibly good at making introductory calls. And hopefully by that time you'll have made enough money that you can hire a BD rep to do it for you. So look, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but you gotta get there on your own first read books.

Okay? I get it. We're busy. We're on the road. Business owners, we do a lot of traveling. We're kind of usually hopping from place to place, or we're filling orders, or we're doing all sorts of things. I spend a lot of time driving. I'm in bd, so I do a lot of meetings kind of across the country. I'm either driving to Grand Prairie or driving to Fort Mac or driving to Calgary.

We're driving, we're driving or we're flying or we're just, we're ripping all over the place. I listen to a lot of audio books. I think as a business owner, most of you probably are too. We're, we're part of that demographic, right? We're part of that, that let's get better at our lives demographic. We're trying , but I would like you to start listening to audiobooks on how to be a more likable human being.

Yay. I know, I know. Kind of boring, but trust me, there's some really good knowledge to be learned in, in psychological books. Specifically there's two books that have made a huge difference in my life. One is called the Like Switch. It's actually about a retired FBI agent whose job it was was to convert spies.

It's a really neat, neat book. I would highly recommend it. Another one is Dale Carnegie's. How To Win Friends and Influence People. God, I don't even know how old this book is. It's probably a hundred years old. Kind of old timey. The message is a bit old timey, but the practices are just as true and valid today as they were a hundred years ago.

And it's an, it's, it is the standard. It's the standard for personable books. If you haven't read it, please do, do give it a read. I would like you to learn how to utilize social media to drive corporate exposure once again, right? If you're paying right now for LinkedIn ads, that sort of thing, there's better ways.

Okay. There's better ways. I was actually just turned onto ai, social media posting. That's gonna change the world. It really is. Holy crap. I've been playing around with that now for a couple weeks. I've been doing posts on behalf of a couple of my clients and yeah. It's, it's next level. It truly is.

It's worth every penny that they cost. They, they vary in cost depending if you're working with like the top level ones or if you're just working with something kind of on the mid-level. I don't wanna make too many recommendations on this yet because frankly I've only used it for a couple weeks myself.

I'm learning how it all works. But let me tell you this it is going to change the way that businesses advertise over social media. There's no question. It's value is hard to beat. Hard to beat. The content it creates is top-notch When you consider that the goal is just exposure trust me, learn how to do your own social media posts.

Learn how to use an AI-based social media posting platform. Okay? That would be my tip. That's my tip on that for you. I would like you to also work with a great graphic design company to make brochures and marketing materials. Okay? So graphic design companies, what you do is, you know, you may hop on Photoshop or something.

You may find some pictures that you like and you'll buy them that they represent your business. Or maybe you have corporate photos of your business that you would like to utilize in your brochures. For your brochures, you need to be making sure your brochures are top notch, and I mean visually appealing.

I want you to think about this. I want you. Think about how many people receive crap advertising. Yep. It's a lot of people are receiving crap advertising. Okay? So if you are, if you are physically marketing your, your material, if you are creating brochures, and this also includes digital brochures and you need them, you need digital brochures for your business.

Kay? And I'll explain this in maybe later video. You need digital brochures as well. You need somebody to help you compile this into a nice format, okay? A great graphic design company can help you with this. What I would highly suggest you do is you write the content so you know you need an about us, you need a why.

Why our company? Why would you choose us over a competitor? What are our services? Where are our locations? That sort of thing. You need those as part of your brochure. You need highly compelling visual images. I want people to look at the cover of your brochure and be like, holy shit, I have to open this.

I have to see what this is. You need something visually appealing. We live in a visual world. US millennials are now the people who are doing a lot of the buying. We're, we're visually appealing. We, we love pretty things and if it's boring, we don't have the attention span or the care in the world to open the product.

I need you to look at your current marketing material. Look at the cover and just ask yourself. Is this boring? Would I wanna open this? If the answer is yes, you need to go back to the drawing board. You need to find either a better cover image, you need to simplify it. You need to make it something that people want to open.

You will do this by utilizing essentially a graphic design company. If you are in the Edmonton area, I am gonna throw out a little shout out today. Impact computer graphics and printing. Karen Alexander, you are amazing at what you do. I've worked with Karen now for 10 years creating different brochures for different companies that I've worked with, including printing brochures for my own company and care and, and designing my logo.

And creating business cards. And Karen, you kill it. You kill it, you kill it. If you guys are in the Edmonton area or heck in Alberta, please reach out to Karen Alexander and impact computer graphics and printing in Edmonton. They do an absolute top notch job. Design a great website. We are gonna leave off today guys, on the part that we chatted about, kind of midway through your website.

It's, it is who you are, it is who you are in this modern day and age. And I'm not gonna keep going on this. We chatted about it, but, it is probably the most important thing that you can do for your business is have a top notch, high quality website that is visually appealing, that's modern, that makes you look like a company that builds skyscrapers, even if you are a one person job.

So please spend some time. Build a great website, and I do hope that these tips will provide value and have helped you today. If you're enjoying this podcast, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you so much. It's, it's an absolute pleasure to host it for you. And I hope that I can continue to do so for quite some time.

Please do like, subscribe, rate, share get me out there. I I'm just one guy, just doing the best I can. We got a hundred, we got a hundred downloads. I would love to get to 200. So please do, please tell your friends. Please tell your business owner friends and your BD friends and let's see if we can't ship shape things up around here and and boost the sucker out there. If you have any questions that you would like me to answer on the podcast or you would just like to reach out to me, you can get me at podcast@capitalbd.ca. That is podcast@capitalbd.ca. And you can come check us out on the website at www.businessdevelopmentpodcast.ca

thank you so much for listening. You have an excellent day and we will see you again next week.

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. 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.