EW 008 – How To Build A Successful Business Development Program To Win New Clients with CEO Kelly Kennedy from Capital Business Development

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.282)
Kelly, welcome to the show. is great to have you here.

Kelly Kennedy (00:04.458)
It is an honor and a privilege, Gordon. Thanks for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (00:07.564)
Well, I'm honestly in one conversation with you, you've already impacted the work that I'm doing in business development for my work. I know that's at the core of the work that you do. And I'm just so excited today about today's show because we're going to hear a lot of inspiration from you about the methodology, the reasons why, the people that you've helped, that kind of thing. And I just can't wait to get to sort of the meat of this episode. But before we get started, there's going be a lot of people here listening.

that don't know you. if you're at a cocktail party and you had to introduce yourself, please let us know who you are and what you're all about.

Kelly Kennedy (00:41.452)
All right, well, thank you, Gordon. Well, my name is Kelly Kennedy. I'm a business development coach and a business development expert. I'm based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, just like you. And I host the award-winning The Business Development Podcast. And we have been blessed and privileged and we have recently crossed our 200th episode. We're at 211 I'm recording today. So it's been a journey.

But all I want to do, Gordon, at the end of the day is I just want to educate and inspire people. I think I really found my passion when I launched the podcast. I didn't realize what it was going to be, but I love teaching. I love educating and I love helping people. And that's something that I've really been able to do over the past couple of years with the show. like I said, it's having a podcast is an honor and a privilege and it's really cool to be on yours.

Gordon Sheppard (01:29.592)
I appreciate that. mean, certainly we're a newbie in terms of 211. What kind of persistence? I you got to get out of bed every day to 200 of anything. Like, come on, pushups doesn't matter what it is. how did you get, like, why didn't you quit after 100, 150? Like, what is it that got you this far and why are you going to keep going?

Kelly Kennedy (01:35.438)
I'm

Kelly Kennedy (01:47.79)
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's intrinsic motivation, right? I want to succeed and I love to educate and inspire people. And it's just something that I've been able to do with it. And you're absolutely right. And we're going to talk about that today because consistency over time is the secret. The secret is there is no secret. It's consistency over time. And if you look at all of the leading podcasts, all the ones that I'm sure me and you follow, many of them are at their 400th episode.

their 500th episode. They've been at this thing for six or seven years long. And that's what it takes. If you want to succeed at whatever you do, you have to put in the time, you know? Like everybody wants that shortcut to success. But if there's something you learn in business development and podcasting, there is no shortcut to success. It's consistency over time. That's what makes success.

Gordon Sheppard (02:37.08)
You're taking me back to my Malcolm Gladwell, 10,000 hours, the Beatles were not the Beatles right away. They put a few hours in in German bars as an example before they hit. And you're demonstrating your own sort of tenacity as you sort of elevate your own approach to things. One of the kickoff questions here for this podcast format is to say, if you had to describe your biggest win in business in the last couple of years, what would it be? How would you describe it?

Kelly Kennedy (03:04.974)
Yeah, you and me talked about this before and it's an interesting one because you know, there's so many wins as a business owner, right? There's so many things to be proud of, frankly. Business isn't easy and it's hard to really narrow down. But one of the things that I think I wanted to chat about was a win that we had with a client we were working with. And if you're in Alberta, you know, we're speaking to a lot of Canadians, but if you're in Alberta, you know that almost every company wants to work with the big boys in oil and gas. And you know, there's almost no one bigger than CNRL.

And I was working with a client a few years ago who I spent a lot of time with and they really wanted a meeting with C N RL. And when I knew that I had the right person there, I knew that I just had to be consistent with it over time. And there's a lot of people right now who are going to be surprised, but it took 30 reach outs on average to close a meeting with this client. And yes, we were able to secure that meeting and I believe we were sitting at 32.

And the funny thing about this, Gordon, is that this is once per week reach outs. This is just consistency over time. It's not being a pest. It's not being annoying. It's knowing you have the right person, which is the first challenge in any type of connection, right? We have to make sure that we have the right contact, the right person who understands our value and what our product and service is. And then we have to reach out consistently and get them. And when we were, me and you were talking before, the reason it can take 30 some reach outs with these really big clients,

is you have to remember it from the other side. And I think so many people doing business development, they just think about it from their side. Well, I reached out, I reached out 10 times and they never got back to me, right? You know mean? I know there's so many people who think, well, if I reach out to somebody 10 times and they don't get back to me, they're not interested. But understand, that is not the case. You have to understand that with these really big companies, you know, the CNRLs, the Sinovuses, the Kiara Energies, they are getting...

around a thousand reach outs a week, a thousand emails a week. Could you imagine having to filter through and respond back to a thousand emails a week? You can't, because you're not going to do it, right? You have to understand when you're reaching out to these really big companies, you have to get them at a time that they need you because they are actually searching and filtering the emails for the keywords of the services and products they are interested in looking for at any given time.

Kelly Kennedy (05:27.758)
So it's really important for organizations not to get upset, not to feel like, they're picking on you or they're getting back to you because they don't like you or whatever. It's not that. It's you have to have the need on that side meet the right timing. And so if you can just be consistent over time, don't get upset about it. Be consistent. Don't be afraid to even send the same email multiple times because you don't know.

when they're going to be searching for your product and service and they're going to see your email. It might be your 30th email, but they're seeing it for the very first time. And yeah, we were able to secure that meeting at 32 meetings. you know mean? That's just one example, Gordon. We've done this with multiple companies, some in the oil and gas sector, some in the potash sector, Nutrien specifically out of Saskatchewan. And that's just what it takes. And I think most people doing business development, they're not doing it consistently.

And that is the biggest challenge or that's the biggest setback for them at this time, most likely.

Gordon Sheppard (06:31.32)
So I'm gonna play the part of the impatient business development person for a second and say, wait a minute, you didn't get me a sale, you got me a meeting. Just a meeting? I'm starting to level set my expectations through your experience, right? Like this is a really interesting, you can hear the discipline. You didn't arrive at this in two seconds. It takes a while to get to this level of patience that you're demonstrating.

Kelly Kennedy (06:35.971)
Ha

Kelly Kennedy (06:39.438)
Sure, Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (06:58.858)
of what true business development, true relationship development takes and that piece of really emphasizing the person on the other side. So you're taking it away from you and what you want and when you want it as into assuming that you have a valuable product or service to offer them, then all you're saying is it's just a matter of timing for when that moment is right for them to be open to doing that. I mean, that's tremendous in terms of.

just if we could stop right there, if people could just learn that one lesson, I'm sure from a business development point of view, that you've been able to sort of help people through. What you've also said is you've got a track record. You didn't do this once, you've done this multiple times, and you have the ability now for reaching into those large, multi hundreds, thousands of employee companies to find that right person, which takes its own sort of discipline. And then you're helping me to manage my own expectations as in get to the meeting. Cause when I get to the meeting that I've got a good

you better chance, but you're at that piece in business development where you're helping them get the process of knowing how to do that and saying, do that in a consistent basis and follow sort of the methodology in a sense that you've developed. Where's this methodology from?

Kelly Kennedy (08:08.024)
just years and years of experience and putting it down together for a process, right? You know, when I started Capital Business Development, I recognized that what I was ultimately doing was creating a process that if I followed it consistently, would work from organization to organization to organization. And honestly, I learned a lot from this Gordon even personally, right? Like when I was a new business developer, I remember, you know, sitting in rooms and people saying, okay, we want to chase, you know, the big oil and gas companies.

And just feeling like, well, that's impossible. Why even try that? But if that's your mindset, if the mindset is it's impossible, well, you're right. Right? Like whether you say you can or you say you can't, you're right. Right? And so what I learned was I had to overcome my own negative mindsets. And once I, once I had a few wins under my belt, what I was able to understand, Gordon, is that most of our problem is ourselves.

You know, we're in our own way and especially as business owners. And I know we're talking to a lot of business owners today. Business owners specifically are in our way the most because there's no harder business to market than your own. There's something weird about the mindset of having to market yourself and your own organization that makes it so much harder than marketing somebody else's organization. I can say that from experience, you know, like my whole business has been that.

And yet marketing my own business, I've been in my own way for so much of that time. And I think a lot of business owners struggle with that. So we have to get over our own negative beliefs, our own negative feelings. But I'll tell you what, there's no company on earth that you can't get a meeting with given enough time. Given enough time and effort, you can get a meeting. You just have to get out of your own way.

Gordon Sheppard (09:54.361)
that's lighting some ears on fire right now, I guarantee that are taking this in. And the idea of getting out of the way of yourself as being the block, it's not CNRL or the big company that's the block, it's actually you and having to kind of work through that. This is super powerful. One of the things I like to do is introduce at this point in the conversation, because we know what the win is. You have 32 tries, you got a meeting with CRNL for your client.

Kelly Kennedy (10:09.176)
That's great.

Gordon Sheppard (10:22.776)
And they would have maybe had that early mindset of maybe this isn't possible or whatever that is, or they're checking in with you week to week. It's week 16, it's week 22. You know what I mean? They're not getting there. You know, well, is this working? Why am I paying you to do this? What's going on? But you got them to that meeting after the 32 tries, which they would then roll the dice on any time. I'm sure again, with you, once you've proven yourself out in that way, it's just then how do you sort of manage those expectations along that process of

Kelly Kennedy (10:30.2)
That's right.

Gordon Sheppard (10:48.608)
you know, multi-weeks and how you do it. So we introduced the anatomy of the win, which is to go through, to get a win, you know, for me anyway, the anatomy is, you know, what is the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations and results behind getting that win? Now we hear the win is after, know, they hired you to do business development. I want to get into a big company. You did your process and you got the meeting and that was the win. And I love, I love the elegance of how simple that is, but it's significant because again, we talk about all the things that it takes to get in there. What was the strategy?

behind that, your values, your sort of mission, vision, your goals to get that win. How would you describe it?

Kelly Kennedy (11:23.182)
Sure. Sure. Okay, sure. So when an organization, and you know, like this is my, this is the business development aspect of the company. We have the training aspect of the company as well, which is different. So that's the coaching where I'm helping them establish a process for their own organization. But some companies, they don't want that. They just want to hire, you know, capital business development on retainer to do that work for them. So we have a couple of different branches, but let's talk to the actual contracted business development side. So a company will come in and they will hire capital business development as they look.

We need to, and the first thing we're going to do is try to establish what the growth goals are for the company. What is the dollar value we are trying to figure out? Once we figure out what the dollar value is, we reverse engineer that to a meeting number that they require based on an average customer value and an average closure rate. Usually that works out to be somewhere between 40 and 50 meetings per year for an organization. Once we kind of back engineer that, that typically works out to be somewhere between

four and five meetings per month. So a meeting a week, usually what it works out to be. And we will get to work. So we have to qualify first, what are the organizations, industries and areas that are going to work best for that customer? Once we can kind of identify, is oil and gas their thing? Is forestry their thing? Is mining their thing? And then figure out the sub industries as well, because I think most people, they get kind of bottlenecked to thinking, well, I'm a mining industry company. Well, are you?

because there's a lot of organizations that service the mining industry who probably also need your products and services. And in my experience, nine times out of 10, they're also better customers than those direct big mining companies, right? They're the PCLs of the world, the Q-ITS of the world who take on big projects and need that additional support, sometimes bigger than those mining companies do. So it's identifying first, who are the buyers of our products and services?

Once we can identify the industries, sub industries and areas, then we can track down what are the specific positions in that company who buy our products and services. And if we can identify now the industries and the buying positions, we can then connect with them on a mass scale, identify the actual people, reach out to them directly, week over week, once per week, and ask for that meeting. And over time, here's what happens, Gordon. You're right. It's like,

Kelly Kennedy (13:45.102)
You have to, it's like fishing, right? You don't know when you're going to catch the fish, but you know if you got enough lines in the water, you're gonna catch something probably pretty consistently, right? So typically what we're doing is we will reach out to, let's call it 30 to 50 of these people per week, leave our constant voicemail, leave our email, always working to build interest because a business developer, our job,

Believe it or not, our job is not sales. Our job is not to close the dollars and cents. And I think a lot of people get that a little bit confused. What our job is as business developers is to introduce our clients or the companies we work for to new opportunities that will pay off over time. They don't necessarily pay off instantly, but having those relationships, having those conversations, asking to get on the vendor lists, those typically result in an RFP or an order over time.

And so business developers, what we're really in the beginning stages, we're like the biggest advocates for a company. We shout it from the rooftops, we help create the marketing materials, we distribute those marketing materials, all with the idea of building enough interest to get a new meeting with a new potential customer. This is the thing. Business development is about new opportunity. And when we're doing it right, that's where we have our business developers focused. We then have

an account management and sales team to actually handle the orders and the RFPs themselves. And obviously those relationships, business developers are not relationship, you know, sustainers, we're relationship creators. And so what we do is we open the door for those relationships to happen. And when that's done, our job is done and we go back to the beginning. But what we know is if we have statistically enough meetings and we know what our closure rates are, we are revenue generators too, just in a very different way.

Gordon Sheppard (15:35.543)
You've given me a lot of hope with this formula. Like if you work the formula, if you do a meeting a week, and what's nice is I'm going to guarantee, guarantee, for the businesses that I do business advisory work with, they're often not budgeted or patient for the process that you just described. But what you're saying is if you make the investment with you and your group, there's a formula. And I like that formula piece because it's not unlike SEO.

Kelly Kennedy (16:01.324)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (16:05.112)
in social media advertising, in social media, sorry, in website work. The SEO folks, the experienced ones will tell you, give me a year, two years, and we're gonna test and try, and then we're gonna try the next thing. But we will dial it in for you based on that level of experimentation. What I'm hearing now is you're talking about a level of experimentation, but actually it's more refined. I like this idea of a name and a title in a place.

Kelly Kennedy (16:31.118)
That's right.

Gordon Sheppard (16:31.16)
that you are then focused on. You're not sort of saying, I want to reach all human resource professionals. I want to reach all VPs of whatever, procurement. You've said, no, we're going to know who they are. We're going to know how to reach out to them in a respectful manner, knowing that we have a good product and service and it's just a matter of timing where we're going to actually dial in on that thing. And you've got the assurance from your experience to know that this consistent level, my guess is most people don't have enough fishing lines in the water. Is that?

Kelly Kennedy (16:49.934)
That's right.

Gordon Sheppard (17:01.036)
About right.

Kelly Kennedy (17:01.038)
Definitely. And here's the thing, here's the thing. And many, many business owners are small business owners, right? Statistically, there's a lot more small business owners than larger business owners or mediums. So most of the time they're tied between having to do business development and execute the actual service that they provide. And so unfortunately, the business development doesn't feel like that's the thing that makes me the money. So they spend very little time there.

But the problem is, if you aren't consistently doing that business development and dedicating that time, and so much of my coaching is about helping people value their time at $1,000 an hour, because the reality is that's what your time is worth as a business owner. And you have to make sure that you're using all of your time in the most efficient way as possible. But business development has to be something that they are focused on at least, at least half a day a week, really. If you are executing...

business on a consistent basis, you need to be dedicating at least half a day per week to your business development efforts, to making those connections, to introducing your company to new business, and to booking meetings. Because meetings are where the magic happens.

Gordon Sheppard (18:13.004)
meetings are the lifeblood in terms of what you're looking for. So we know the strategy behind it. We know that you have a formula. We know that you have sort of a values-based and experience-based approach in your strategy when you're getting this win after the 32 outreaches to get that meeting with CNRL, which was a significant win for you and your client in terms of demonstrating the validity of your own model and approach, along with getting them that meeting. Also, I love that you're sticking to your knitting. I think this thing of like BD does this.

Let me again level set the expectations. And there's probably a handoff in there somewhere where you wanna make sure that they're really good going to that meeting so they don't, you know, they have an opportunity there. But you're saying, no, no, no, this is what business development is. And if you make this investment at the right level on a consistent basis, it is money in your pocket and it will pay off for you. And then we can scale that up to half day a week to five days a week, depending on the size of the business, whatever that investment is. That's great. So if we have a strategy,

Kelly Kennedy (18:50.903)
Absolutely.

Gordon Sheppard (19:08.962)
Then we need a work plan. This is the what, who, and when, the practical parts of actually executing your strategy. You've already mentioned a few of these things. We're gonna reach out once a week to this organization, to this person in a respectful manner using the highlights from your marketing materials that are appropriate for that situation. Am I describing that roughly if I got the timeline out and sort of mapped this out?

Kelly Kennedy (19:13.314)
Right.

Kelly Kennedy (19:28.078)
Sure. So the steps of the process, you know, now that we utilize, because we use a digital age, you can do a lot of this work upfront actually on LinkedIn. So, you know, obviously we got to sit down as a team and we got to identify what are the industries we want to serve, what are the locations we want to serve, obviously where you're at is probably where you're going to be most competitive. So start there. And then we identify who are the buying positions at our organization, right? So let's just call it supply chain, you know, just for general easiness, but most of the time, just for our listeners.

most of the time supply chain is actually not the buyer of your products and service. It's somebody in the field. It's a project manager. It's a director of operations. It's a plant manager, whatever you call it. There's somebody else who then instructs supply chain to go and find your product and service. So supply chain is the low-hanging fruit, but most of the time they are actually not per se the procurer of your products and services. You need to introduce yourself to the right person at that organization. So half the battle is identifying

who actually understands your product and service and has a need for it and will understand when you reach out to them why they need your product and service. Supply chain is typically not that person. They're a step in the way. They can be a joiner or someone who can tell you maybe who that person is, but most of the time they just get the request to buy the product and service. we have to do that work upfront. But once we've done that work upfront, the first stage in everything we do is called digital introduction. And digital introduction means we've gone on LinkedIn,

We've searched that person, that specific person, that project manager at the company that we wanna work with. We have a name, we have an identity, and hopefully we've connected with them on LinkedIn. If we can do those things, we can do something that I call a personal introduction. So what we do is I just hop on, introduce myself. Hi, I'm Kelly Kennedy, I'm working with XYZ Company. We do this, I think you'll find it interesting. I've attached a couple of brochures, check them out. This isn't to sell anything. This is just to prime your target. This is just to prime the person.

so that when you do reach out to them, you're not coming in directly cold. When you reach out to them, they've likely seen your brochure. They know who you are. They know why you're contacting them. And that greatly improves your closure rate of the meeting itself. And so when you reach out to them week over week, typically you're just asking for that meeting, right? Once a week, reach out, hey, just wanted to follow up on our connection on LinkedIn. You you've seen our brochure. I'd love to meet with you and chat a little bit further about it. Let me know what your schedule looks like next couple of weeks.

Kelly Kennedy (21:54.85)
This works incredibly well, Gordon. And so once we have that digital introduction stage, what we're doing is this is on a CRM as well, just so our listeners understand. So in order to do business development properly, you really need to have this laid out in an easy to understand way. And one of the softwares we use to do so is called a CRM. You know, I'm not affiliated with them, but Pipe Drive is one that we use. We just had to pick one for the organization. There's plenty. There's HubSpot, Pipe Drive, Salesforce, whatever, take your pick. There's lots. But a CRM is just to track

where we're at with any customer at any given time. So once we've connected with somebody on LinkedIn, we've done the digital introduction, we've sent them the brochures, we add them to the digital introduction stage of the CRM. After that, we need to track down their contact details. Well, this is also super easy because most of the time on LinkedIn, it says what office they work out of. Did they work at Edmonton? Did they work out of Calgary? Did they work out of Fort McMurray? Take your pick. It's one of those. Call the main line. If you get through to their voicemail,

on the main line or through to them, you now have what I like to call weekly contact stage. So the stage right after digital introduction is weekly contact. We want to follow up with these people once per week until we either disqualify or get the meeting. Just call with the goal of disqualifying, know, pat yourself on the back if you disqualify them, because it's one less person you got to call each week. And if we do this consistently and we have about, let's call it 30 people in that weekly follow-up stage, Gordon, we're constantly moving these people either to what I like to call

future opportunity, which is they will tell you, hey, you know what, Kelly, this isn't something we need today, but six months from now, we got a big shutdown coming up and I would love to chat with you then. Great, they're now future opportunity. It's another stage we set in the CRM or we have meeting booked, which is the goal of everything we do. You call them, say, you know what, this sounds great. I'd love to learn a little bit more. Can we set up a meeting in the next month? Boom, that's it. Pat yourself on the back. That is what business development is about. Once we have the meeting, you asked about this. Yes.

the business developers do attend the meeting because we are still professionals in taking things to what I like to call next steps, right? We don't know, we are not the be all end all of the product and service. Really, we know enough to be dangerous, right? We just can't, we can't know everything. But we always bring experts with us. So whenever I go to that meeting, it's never just little old Kelly. And I think a lot of companies get this a little bit wrong is they try to send their BD people like they're the product experts. No, your BD people are not.

Kelly Kennedy (24:19.352)
product experts. They are people experts. They are meeting booking experts. That's what they are great at. You have an engineer, a director of operations, somebody who truly understands your product and service, and they should be attending every single meeting along with your business developer. And they answer the hard questions. They answer the technical questions, the things that your BD guy simply just can't answer. We're not working in the field. We don't get it, right? But what do we get?

we get how to take it to the next steps. And I always say, there's five magic words every business developer needs to have. And those are, what are the next steps? These need to be asked at the end of every single meeting, internally, externally, what is next? Is there an RFP? Is there a vendor list? What can we be doing? Do you have an opportunity coming up that we can just bid on or whatever? But what are the next steps? Our jobs in those meetings are simply,

to figure out what is next and make sure that it is in the schedule and that we're following up to get that opportunity. Once that person or that RFP comes in, understand that is the end of business development. Business development is now done. We go back to the beginning, we do all of that over again, find that new opportunity, somebody at your organization, whether it be an account manager, preferably, or a salesperson, which could be the same thing.

then manages that relationship, follows up with them, takes them out to lunch, builds and establishes a true relationship. But business development, our job, everything to do with new opportunity or new partnerships. That's where we come in. And you asked in the beginning, Gordon, you know, like, why is this so important? Why is it important that we're constantly doing business development? And it is for this very reason. And we know this in Alberta. A customer can leave at any time for any reason.

period at any time for any reason. And so we cannot be too dependent on our current customers at any given time. We have to always be looking for that new opportunity. And that's why having an effective business development process, understanding how to do it, dedicating at least half a day a week to this. You if you're a solopreneur, if you're just a single person company.

Kelly Kennedy (26:33.848)
But heck, if you can put a team on this, if you can put a person at this dedicated role consistently, you can identify how many meetings you need to actually accomplish over the course of a year. And I always say too, business development is not measured in dollars and cents. It needs to be measured in meetings. Why? Because meetings is something your business developer can actually measure themselves and succeed in. Dollars and cents, we don't know when they're coming, but we know that enough meetings over time always leads to dollars and cents.

Gordon Sheppard (27:04.696)
I think if somebody threw that in a chat GPT, they'd have a masterclass. Thank you for your stream of experienced consciousness there. That again, if someone got that out and followed it step by step and they'd be lucky to have you Yoda on their shoulder, taking them along this process. Cause you can hear that you've invested in it. You can hear the experience and what you're talking about. And it doesn't sound like there's any moment along the way where you're intimidated. You actually, cause you know the math, you know the process, you know the patience that's required.

Kelly Kennedy (27:05.026)
I think it's too.

Gordon Sheppard (27:34.329)
to kind of do things. Sorry, I have to jump in with, there's a few things I need to unpack from what you just said. One, I was in a role years ago. I've been consulting for about 13, 14 years now. And I did an MBA to transition out of the TV business. But when I worked in the TV business before, I was in a moment in creative where we supported salespeople and there was a, we were in a mixed meeting and there was a salesperson that walked in one day to that mixed meeting and they had lost their two major accounts and their income was down 80%.

and they didn't have the backup that you're talking about to go and fill that pipeline for like, I mean, lose your house type thing. And I've never watched the crush. I've never seen someone's jaw crush so much as when that was announced. And that poor fella who had sort of been coasting in a sense on those major accounts and done well, they were gone. And it was just sort of an overnight moment. So I think, you know, the harbinger that you've given us to sort of beware of

Getting back to your formula of this one meeting a week as a great way to measure. Measure number of meetings as success as opposed to being overly reliant on the dollars or when the dollars come in, don't take your foot off the gas on getting more meetings. A lot of people aren't having the discipline to fill in those CRMs the way that you're talking about. So again, what you're saying is,

Kelly Kennedy (28:49.006)
Correct. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (28:55.178)
I get my information, I'm always filling that in. I'm always sort of diarizing in a sense, those next steps with all those sort of insights that I get along the way, plus getting those reminders about that next outreach. And the piece that I'll jump into on the LinkedIn piece where you said, send the brochure. I'm like, come on, I said this to you in the pre-interview. They don't open the brochure, they don't know it's there. And you said something different to me. Can you please explain that? Wait a minute, I'm sending this brochure, I'm sending it once a week. What happens?

Kelly Kennedy (29:20.77)
Yeah. So with the digital introduction, believe it or not, I'm actually only sending that once. So the brochure I'm only sending the one time. But the reason being is that even if they don't respond to the message, it's very, very likely that they took a look at at least the first couple pages of the brochure. And we're going to talk about marketing materials just really quickly, because it is super important, because you have to understand who you're marketing to these days.

You know, most of them are like me, we're millennials. We have very short attention spans. And frankly, the younger generation is only getting worse. And so it's important that, you know, there was a time, let's call it 2010, 2012, when you could have really wordy brochures, right? Where almost every pamphlet was just full of words, as much words as you could put on a page, right? We don't resonate well with that. So you need to have...

highly visually impactful marketing materials, visual appeal over even the words. Because you need people to stick around long enough to at least read that first couple of messages you got on the first two pages. And so I always say, just create marketing materials that are high impact visually, that are going to hook people in. Not so much words, but keywords. Make sure that only the important stuff is there, only enough stuff to build interest. Your brochures don't sell anything. Understand that.

Your meetings are where you sell. The relationship is where you sell. The brochure is only to generate interest. Make sure all of our marketing materials, websites, brochures are designed with that in mind. Build enough interest to get you to a meeting because relationships are where the magic happens.

Gordon Sheppard (30:57.214)
I love it. And I think again, you said thousand bucks an hour. know in the work that I do, I'll say, are we doing 15 bucks an hour? Are we standing in the line at Staples today? Are we doing the 150, 200 bucks an hour sort of workhorse work? Are we doing the thousand, $10,000 an hour work? And you're trying to keep people at that thousand bucks an hour mindset so that when they're creating the visual brochure, when they're entering that information in the CRM, when they're on meeting number 16 and they're going to go to a meeting number 17.

Kelly Kennedy (31:14.253)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (31:24.368)
They're making a thousand bucks an hour. They've got to have that mindset that they're able to do that going forward. This is just outstanding. It's so fun to hear. Again, you've got the strategy in place. You got the win. We know the kind of the work plan. We've hit some highlights in terms of what it takes for the what, who, and the when. The third step in the anatomy of a win for me is describing the people to get a win. So if we broke down the kind of the stakeholders to get this meeting, there's you in the situation because you're the go-between.

I'm not sure if you've got people in the background in your area that say you're subcontracting to or working with, just leave it there for just a second. And then you've got your clients, one or two sort of folks out of an organization. And then you've got the people on the CNRL side that you've got to get this meeting, actually book the meeting with in a sense. Can you describe sort of the key stakeholders in this win and really kind of their roles and their attitudes to get it?

Kelly Kennedy (32:13.87)
Sure. Okay, so you have to connect with somebody who actually knows what your service is, right? Because you can spend all day booking meetings with the wrong people, first off, right? There's a lot of people who don't mind booking a two-hour meeting or an hour meeting with you just to waste your time and just to kill an hour of their day. So we have to make sure, and I think a lot of companies just say, well, I need to book a meeting with XYZ Company. They don't think granularly with who at XYZ Company do I actually need to meet with.

If that's the difference between a good business developer and somebody in sales just throwing rocks at the wall and hoping for the best, right? The reality is I consistently book meetings with no more than 20 to 30 calls a week, Gordon. And it's simply because I know I've done the homework upfront to make sure that I am connecting with the people at the organizations who understand what my product and services that I'm marketing that day. And they will have a need or will be interested, or will at least be able to say,

We're good, we have enough in this area. But you can go through four meetings to get to that person, or you can do the homework up front and just get to that person in the first place. And I would say that most people, if you're making 100 calls a week, 200 calls a week, it's simply because you are not doing your homework up front. And if you don't do your homework up front, you're gonna burn out. You can't do 100 calls a week consistently and not just hate your life on Mondays. It's just not gonna happen.

The best people in business development, they're making a handful of calls, but they're making a handful of calls to the right people and consistently booking meetings. So it starts there. We have to identify the right person on the other side to make that initial call. The second, you need somebody at the organization. It is typically leadership of some sort, Gordon. You need somebody who truly understands what your products and services are and can answer the hard technical questions about them. Because guess what? You might only get one meeting.

And I think a lot of companies forget this, right? You get one chance at a good first impression. So send your best people, send the best people to make that initial connection. And so I always say, you need a business developer who can set up that initial meeting. And then you need a product or service expert who can answer the hard questions and preferably somebody in your executive team. Somebody who's going to be around a while, somebody who has a vested interest in that success. And if you can get those three people in the same room,

Kelly Kennedy (34:41.836)
That's where magic happens.

Gordon Sheppard (34:43.168)
And that's where the magic's happening. And again, I'll just dig in a little bit here and touch on your attitude. So I'm going through my 32 touch points. You just said it. I got the 32 touch points. I got them to the meeting. Are they excited? It's week four. They're like, Kelly, great. I'm so, I love what you're doing. Gosh, I wish you could take another 20 some odd weeks to get this over the finish line. That'd be like, what is your attitude and their attitude as you sort of, again, you're transferring your, your, your

Kelly Kennedy (34:54.958)
Yes.

Kelly Kennedy (34:59.768)
Hahaha!

Kelly Kennedy (35:05.442)
you

Gordon Sheppard (35:13.076)
approach, you're transferring your confidence, what's your what's the attitude? Take me on that ride.

Kelly Kennedy (35:18.882)
shit, well by week four, we've probably also had other meetings. So remember this Gordon, like we're talking big fish, right? When we're talking the CNRLs of the world, they are what I like to call the wish list. So when we sit down with an initial company and we say, look, you know, if you could work with 50 of the best companies on earth, who would they be? Give me the wish list. The wish list takes time. The wish list, the Walmarts of the world, the CNRLs, the Synovuses, I'm sorry, they take time. There's no two ways about it. It would be a small miracle if you got that meeting within the first month and who knows, it happens.

It happens because it's rule of the draw. Are they interested in that service that week? Maybe, maybe not. But it doesn't mean they're impossible. It just means that you have to be consistent over time. Don't stop until you get that answer. Don't stop until you either disqualify or get the meeting. Make that the differentiator, right? Disqualify or get the meeting. If you don't get, if you're at like week 10 and you're still not getting anywhere, but you know you have the right person.

You know you have the person at that organization who is the be all end all. They understand your products and service. They can make that call. Don't give up on them so soon. Put them on the wish list. But remember Gordon, we're talking one of let's call it 30 to 50 people that you're following up with each week. And you know that if we're making 30 calls and leaving 30 voicemails or 30 direct emails and we're asking for what we want each time, this is the other thing. Ask for what you want every time and what you want as a meeting, okay? So every time, every interaction.

Can we have a meeting in the next couple of weeks? I'm really looking forward to meeting you. Be somebody that they want to meet with. Leave voicemails that you would want to call back being the other side of this, right? Don't leave that boring voicemail. You know, be excited, be enthusiastic. Let them know how excited you are to meet them. And you know, you think that your product and service would be a great fit for their company. And you very much look forward to that call back. Leave that voicemail every week and you will be surprised how many people will actually call you back to set it up.

Gordon Sheppard (37:08.94)
It sounds so much better than 200 cold calls, right? like right, said, I've got the right person. I've got the right approach. You're in the middle of all this sort of managing expectations, but because of your experience and again, because you're not, you're not putting your bets on one horse. You got 30, 40 horses in the race because you've got a variety of things. So it's not just one that we're dependent on as we go along the way. So we've looked at the strategy, the work plan. talked a lot about the people and the attitudes that are involved. The four step is operationally, need to have a few things in place.

Kelly Kennedy (37:11.65)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (37:38.946)
The main thing I'm hearing here is the CRM sort of as the key tool. Any highlights about the CRM in this process to get this win that you'd want to pass along?

Kelly Kennedy (37:41.325)
Yes.

Kelly Kennedy (37:49.39)
The CRM is mandatory. So I think there's a lot of people who are like, well, I just use it on an Excel sheet. Excel sheet was very 2010, we're in 2025. CRMs are not expensive. I think with PipeDrive, I pay about 25 bucks a month. It is not expensive. And what it does is it allows you to keep all of your information in one place. And so...

We didn't really talk to the data entry of this. You whenever I make phone calls, I'm actually entering data at the same time, left a voicemail, asked for a meeting. I'm setting up reminder for my follow updates and I'm following it to a T so that I know next week when I sit down with that client, here's the 20 or 30 calls I need to make. Here's where it was last week. Did we have a meeting with them? Great. They're in the meeting book stage. After the meeting, we always make sure there's a summary in there. So that if I come back to it six months later, I know exactly what took place or whether they bought it that time or not.

So just make sure that you're using highly detailed information and you're keeping it in a singular sourced place, which is why a CRM is so important. But no, like, you know, obviously the operations of the business are very different, but business development, you don't need complex systems. You need a well set up CRM and you need to dedicate a certain amount of time each week to making sure that you are doing both the digital introductions for the new opportunities and that you're then moving them into a weekly contacted stage into squalifying them. But...

You we talked to, you asked, you know, like at week four, are they freaking out a little bit? Cause they're like, this going to take 30 weeks. Okay. Well remember that was with the big, big fish, right? Big fish take 30 some weeks. Regular fish typically take about 10 weeks. So, and here's the thing, the funny thing about this Gordon is that most business developers are giving up after the second phone call. They're giving up after two and on average it takes eight to 10. So

You know, I think with us, typically about 11, you know, statistically 11 calls with a regular company, we've booked the meeting. So it's just about giving yourself that length of runway. And the funny thing is, is that after about a month, you start to get consistent wins because you have a whole bunch of companies entering that fifth week, entering that sixth week, that seventh week, that like statistically you're likely to book a meeting at. And so don't, don't be, don't let yourself down. Don't, don't give up too soon.

Kelly Kennedy (40:01.3)
Most business developers are just giving up a little too soon. Give yourself at least 10 weeks to make a choice to say, okay, do we want to look for a new contact at this organization? Is this maybe not quite the right person? Could there be somebody better? Or do I want to just backburner this guy? Do I want to just disqualify them and move someone in with better opportunity? But I would say give yourself at least 10 weeks of weekly follow-up, asking for that meeting, making sure that they're getting the right information before you make that call.

And you will be surprised at how many more meetings you're going to start booking because you're giving it the appropriate amount of time and you're not giving up too soon.

Gordon Sheppard (40:37.784)
Well, and again, your experience is screaming out here into something that's actually quite manageable. Book a meeting a week, but we want to have 30 to 40. We're going to examine them on a regular basis. We're going to qualify them, not qualify them, whatever those things are. But it's, it's, is a dedication of time and energy that's in a formula of sorts, as opposed to it being magical. that so many people think about, there was one small business owner I met one time who hired a business development person who put like 6,000 contacts from a Excel spreadsheet they bought off a

Kelly Kennedy (40:53.262)
Correct. That's right.

Gordon Sheppard (41:07.288)
database, threw it into CRM and said their work was done and nothing happened. They were just enraged when that occurred. it's also here, the affordability of CRM people so often stop at CRM. There's not many people that I remember dealing with one business owner one time, it was all on his phone and he was all mad because then he had to get his, you know, once I was talking to him, he's like, I had to get it out of his phone and into a some sort of system that he was able to sort of work with. Again, as much as the detail and experience that I'm hearing your confidence is screaming through.

And I think that's something that people should really pick up on as in, I've done it, this works, here's what you need to follow and it's gonna happen. We've gone through the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations, the final pieces, results. So for this win, how would you measure the win sort of qualitatively and quantitatively? And I'm gonna say the measurements I've already heard are, we made 32 calls and we got a meeting. And those are the fundamental things to measure. Anything else to measure in this situation?

Kelly Kennedy (42:03.906)
Yeah, you have to measure your weekly efforts. So at the end of the day, you know, whether I work for a client or not, or it's just me, I create a weekly report for myself and I send it to all my clients and you should be sending, if you were doing business development for an organization or you're an organization with business development, they should be providing you a weekly report of what they did and what their results were. This is two pronged, okay? Because on one hand, it's about holding yourself accountable, right?

If I'm gonna hold myself accountable, I need to make sure that I'm consistently delivering the same amount of work, the same amount of results. Because it's consistency over time that creates success, right? If I'm only making these calls one week, then I'm skipping two weeks, then I'm making these calls again, I'm not being consistent. And so I can't start to deliver consistent results. But if I hold myself to this and I make sure that I make those calls,

and I write it down and I add it to the CRMs and I do everything that I need to be doing every single week and I send that report to my client and say, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Client, we booked two meetings this week, we made 30 calls, we had like 25 digital introductions. Here's all the new companies, by the way, that we've also reached out to. Remember, it's not so much about the data. At the end of the day, it's the meetings that matter, but it's holding yourself accountable to delivering that data that makes those meetings possible.

Gordon Sheppard (43:22.166)
interesting. So I can measure my weekly accountability as another measurement along the way. I can measure my confidence level now having a business development process and not getting into, it, Kai Saki's with the hope is not a strategy. Do know what I mean? Like when we get into those areas, right? So you've said we put it on a formula, we pull it all together. Wow. I mean, just

Kelly Kennedy (43:26.04)
Correct.

Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy (43:40.588)
Yes. That's right.

Gordon Sheppard (43:48.737)
I think so many people are going to listen to this and hear the gift of your experience screaming through and certainly want to reach out to you in terms of the possibility. If people did have to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Kelly Kennedy (44:00.957)
just connect with me on LinkedIn. So just Kelly Kennedy official on LinkedIn and come say hello.

Gordon Sheppard (44:06.188)
I think that's gonna be a valuable thing for people. And again, I hope they listen to this episode and reach out to you, because I think this has just been so valuable along the way. Anything that you wanna sort of to put a bow on this, any closing comment to say, you know, we got this win, but beyond the win, I know you have sort of a bigger picture in mind and put a bow on it for me to sort of give us a last thought.

Kelly Kennedy (44:27.318)
It's really, if you aren't getting the results in your business that you want, you have to take accountability to do it. Look, nobody is gonna do the business development for you unless you hire somebody to do that work and hold them accountable to getting you those results. But here's the thing, you can't really measure success in business development and sales. It's the end goal, absolutely. But something you can absolutely measure your success in is,

how many meetings with the right people who can buy my products and services am I doing on a consistent basis? know, Gordon hit the nail on the head. If you're doing a meeting a week as a small business with someone who can actually buy your products and services, within a year, you're gonna be sitting with, you know, 40 to 50 people that can buy your products and services and know who and what you are. That's huge. That is 100 % going to lead to revenue for your organization. So if you are not gaining

the growth that you want to gain, take control of your business development.

Gordon Sheppard (45:26.39)
massive. And we could keep talking, but I just want to say thank you so much for spending the time here on the show today to give such valuable information. We really, really appreciate it.

Kelly Kennedy (45:35.126)
It was my pleasure, Gordon, and congratulations on your show. I hope it's incredibly successful.

Gordon Sheppard (45:43.149)
All good.

Kelly Kennedy (45:44.366)
Yeah, that's