🎙️ Over 130 Episodes and Counting! 🎬 Join the journey - the best is yet to come! 🌟
March 20, 2024

Marketing Materials Reimagined: Embracing the Physical in a Digital Age

Marketing Materials Reimagined: Embracing the Physical in a Digital Age

In Episode 117 of The Business Development Podcast, Kelly Kennedy delves into the realm of physical marketing materials and their significance in the digital era. With a focus on reimagining traditional marketing tools, Kelly emphasizes the endurin...

The player is loading ...
The Business Development Podcast

In Episode 117 of The Business Development Podcast, Kelly Kennedy delves into the realm of physical marketing materials and their significance in the digital era. With a focus on reimagining traditional marketing tools, Kelly emphasizes the enduring value of notebooks, brochures, and business cards in fostering meaningful connections and driving business growth. Through insightful anecdotes and practical advice, listeners are encouraged to leverage the tactile experience of physical marketing products to stand out in a crowded digital landscape and create lasting impressions on clients and prospects.

 

Join Kelly Kennedy on a journey of rediscovery as he unravels the power of physical marketing materials in Episode 117 of The Business Development Podcast. From the art of note-taking to the design of visually appealing brochures, this episode is a treasure trove of tips and tricks for modern businesses looking to make a memorable impact. So grab your notepad, revamp your brochures, and get ready to elevate your marketing game with tangible tools that speak volumes in a digital age. Tune in now and let your brand shine through the tactile allure of physical marketing materials!

 

Key Takeaways:

 

1. Embrace the physical: Physical marketing materials hold enduring value in a digital age.

2. Stand out with tactile experiences: Leverage tangible products to make lasting impressions.

3. Design matters: Create visually compelling brochures to capture attention.

4. Note-taking is key: Utilize notepads for effective organization and communication.

5. Be memorable: Give out client gifts and swag that reflect your brand positively.

6. Update traditional tools: Keep brochures and business cards modern and relevant.

7. Balance digital and physical: Utilize both mediums for comprehensive marketing strategies.

8. Stay organized: Use notebooks to track tasks and enhance productivity.

9. Quality over quantity: Produce high-quality physical items to make a lasting impact.

10. Evolve with the times: Adapt physical marketing materials to meet changing consumer preferences.

Transcript

Marketing Materials Reimagined: Embracing the Physical in a Digital Age

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 117 of the business development podcast. And today we're talking all about physical marketing products. What do we need? How do we use them? How should we make them in the modern day in the digital world? Are they even relevant? Today, we're going to chat all about it. 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. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 117 of the business development podcast. I hope you guys are all having a totally, totally amazing week. My gosh, today has been absolutely, absolutely amazing. We're going to get into it, but it has been a great, great week for both me, Kelly Kennedy, and the business development podcast.

And I have a lot of thanks to go around, but before we start today's show, I just want to start out by giving you guys a little show update. Number one, just brought on another amazing, amazing sponsor. I want to give a gigantic welcome to Plains Equipment Rentals. Shawn Neels and his team has now started to support this show, and we can't appreciate them more.

We love our sponsors here on the Business Development Podcast. And the reality is shows like this, they cannot continue to grow without amazing sponsors like the sponsors that we have on this show. And I want to just highlight a few specifically. I want to highlight our newest sponsor, Plains Equipment Rentals.

I want to highlight Hypervac Technologies. I want to highlight atWork Office Furniture. And I would love to highlight Foresight for IT. These are all the sponsors that we have currently, and they are absolutely amazing. They believe in what we're doing here. They support this show. And they support the growth of you, our amazing, amazing rockstar audience of executives and entrepreneurs around the world.

And so I just want to give a gigantic thank you to our sponsors and welcome Plains. Welcome, Shawn. It's great to have you. Today has been absolutely amazing, amazing so far. I woke up this morning to the news. that I had been named to peaks 2024 class of emerging leaders, which is a diverse list of exceptional people making meaningful impact in their communities and careers.

And it is such a huge honor to win this award. And as a Canadian, this is a Canada wide recognition. So super, super cool. I was actually nominated for this award by our amazing friend and sponsor Rodney Lover. So I just want to take a minute here. Thank you so much, Rodney, for taking that moment of your day and nominating us because it is truly an honour to win an award like this, and it wouldn't happen without amazing people like yourself supporting what we do here.

So I just wanted to express to you guys the power of community. This really shows how strong we all are together and why relationships are absolutely key everything that we do. So thank you so much to The Peaks and thank you so much to Rodney Lover for the incredibly kind nomination. And I hope that we can continue to change the world one episode at a time.

So just to show update we have just rolled over 140, 000 downloads late last week. We're actually at 141, 647 downloads as of this recording. So going up very steadily. We're at 1, 744 followers between Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Wow, that's crazy. So I just wanted to give like a quick request or a quick ask of each of you.

If you are not following us yet on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we could definitely use your help. Those numbers are a very low reflection of our Actual listenership on this show. So if you listen to us and you guys have not yet followed us on Apple podcasts or Spotify, man, I would really, really appreciate if you would do that and heck even leave us a rating and a review.

If you can, it really does help us to spread this show and reach far and wide. It's the way that they kind of measure these metrics as we move forward. So I know we have a lot more listeners than that. So if you're kind of on the fence about it. I could really, really use your help. Take this as your call to action and please do, please do follow us and rate us and review us on Apple podcasts and Spotify and help us to just reach as far and wide as we absolutely can with this show and one last update before we get into today's show, I wanted to let you all know last year we won the best business podcast, 2023 from Quill Inc.

That was, I believe last. April was the nominations. I'm pretty sure that they released the results of that in May, but what that means is the nomination for Quill Podcast Awards 2024 is coming up very, very soon. I believe it's starting on April 8th, and we are going to need all of your support. You guys supported us last year, took us all the way to the win, and we need that help again.

And so as soon as that's available, I will be making sure to share it with you guys all over LinkedIn. I'll let you guys know how you can nominate us and we would absolutely. Absolutely be honored to have your nominations and whatever categories you think are relevant for this show. And we would love, love to win another Quill podcast award here in 2024.

Thank you so much. All right. Not only that, I'm pumped. I'm like running on nitrous. It's one of those days where if you guys could see my smile, it's literally through the roof. And I actually get to do a topic today as well that I am so freaking passionate about. I keep getting questions. I keep getting questions about physical products, brochures, business cards, notepads, basically any product that a prospect can hold in their hand.

And I keep getting asked, are these things relevant in a world of digital? Are physical products still relevant? And I love this because I love answering it because it's so freaking important. And I think we live in a time where the world is trying to convince you guys, no, you don't need this blend into the background.

Don't have physical products anymore, but it couldn't be further from the truth. And what I would love to chat about here is that in the age of digital, Are physical products even necessary? And as you guys know, my answer is a resolute yes. You need physical brochures, business cards. I love a notepad and I'm going to explain to you why.

I love giving client gifts at Christmas. I love nice products that I can give away to my clients and people that I care about because I think it's just the way. of humans. It's the way of humanity. We like to, we like to have things given to us. We like physical things that we can hold in our hands. It's like this tangible reality.

Everything digital, it can be as pretty as possible, but there's something about having something in your hand. And we're going to get into that today and what I've used in my business development career and why I continue with Capital to use physical products with every single one of my clients. Okay.

What are the things that you need? In my opinion, what you definitely need is a physical brochure to accompany your digital brochure, business cards, both physical and digital if you so desire, and you need promo items. and client gifts for Christmas. The way that I've always looked at it is you're going around doing marketing, right?

Whether you do business development, whether you do sales, you're probably going or ending up with clients face to face on some level, either when you're prospecting and trying to find information for clients, or when you're going to client meetings. And I've always lived with the motto, you should give something if you are going to ask for something.

Give something to get something. I think that that's just a really fair interaction and exchange that needs to happen in business development or in any type of interaction that's going to be face to face. And so my opinion is you should always aim to have a physical brochure and business cards at every single meeting or when you're out prospecting.

Like, when I used to go out and do physical prospecting, and yes, it's not as common as it used to be, but it's still incredibly, incredibly effective. If you know who you're after at a certain organization, it never hurts to just swing by that organization, especially if it's local, and just ask for the business card for that person, or ask for the contact for the person in quality control, or in operations, so that you can just grab that card.

And it's always a great habit to either leave a brochure, or leave a physical business card at that location when you do it. That. That exchange, right? And one of the really cool things that happens from this exchange or in meetings, right? Is that they hold on to these things. People will hold your business card.

They'll put them in their wallets. They'll put their brochures on the corner of their desk and they'll sit there and yeah, things will pile up on them until they need it. But guess what? When they need it, they know exactly where it is. They remember once upon a time, somebody left them an absolutely beautiful brochure and it is sitting on their desk and now's the time and they need it.

And I've actually had this happen. I've had a client call me and say, Kelly, I've had your brochure sitting on my desk now for two years, and I didn't need it until today, but today I need it. And you're the brochure on my desk and let's have that conversation. So they are not dead. They are still incredibly, incredibly relevant, and they can be incredibly, incredibly powerful to your marketing moving forward.

So I've said that you guys need brochures. I've said you need business cards. I've said you need notepads. I've said you should give client gifts and you should have nice promo items. What should they look like? So this is really the key. They are 100 percent relevant, but they need to be updated. Okay. So while physical things are still important, while they're still critical, they have changed.

What people will look at has changed. And so we have to just shift our perspectives a little bit. In the old days, you could just make a boring ass brochure and you can put it out there. You have a little trifold boring thing full of wording and somebody would read it. Okay. Those times are changing.

They're very much changing. And so let's talk a little bit for a second about how we design brochures at Capital. When, when we're working with a new client and we need to update or redesign a brochure, I'll walk you through the process of the things that we consider when we're doing it to help you guys create much better marketing materials.

And keep in mind too, I'm talking about physical materials today. Why? Because almost all digital products, especially digital print products or brochures or flyers or whatever else you guys are doing, can also be printed. And so, in some ways, while we're talking about these physical brochures and how we design them, we are also talking about the digital brochures.

Because yes, I use them evenly. I probably use digital brochures actually a little more even than I use my physical brochures, but it does not negate the need to have at least a few physical brochures for when you guys are having those face to face interactions so that you can have something beautiful and tangible to physically hand over to your prospect and say, Hey, Here's why here's our why's.

Here's what's awesome. Here's what we're doing. Check out this beautiful, amazing brochure that we've created on our products and services with a compelling about us and a compelling why, and our business card is right there as well. For when you want to get ahold of us, they are just as important. And yet they kind of are one in the same.

If you create one great digital product. It's also very likely a great print product. And so just think about it from two sides, even if you are leaning more towards the digital side, create everything in a way that if you needed to print it, you could so that you can have those physical copies on hand, but put it this way, I've been doing business development an incredibly, incredibly long time, over 13 years at this point, and I still bring physical brochures to every single face to face meeting.

I still bring a notepad to every single face to face meeting. I still have business cards at every face to face meeting. They are that important. And no, they are not dead. And they are not going anywhere. And really, If your competition is not doing this, you're going to stand out by continuing to do it.

So either way, it is great for you to continue to take on physical products, to have brochures with you, to have business cards with you, to maybe have some awesome client swag that you can hand out and say, you know, we appreciate you check this out. It is going to help your organizations over time. It is going to keep you memorable and it is going to give Your prospects, something tangible to take back with them, whether they're going home or to their office that will sit somewhere.

Yes, but if it's done right, will come out at the time of need. Let's talk about it. What should a digital brochure or a physical brochure look like today? Number one, they need to be visually compelling. This has never, ever been more important than today, period. I remember when I first got into business development, brochures were not visually compelling, especially in industrial space.

They were boring. They maybe had pictures most of the time they just had a graphic design behind the behind the logo. There wasn't much going on there wasn't much visually compelling you'd open them up they would be top to bottom the whole thing right full of wording like just word vomit everywhere and there was nothing engaging about it the only reason you would even read these things was just because you absolutely needed that service and you had to read it because they made this gigantic word vomit thing so That has changed.

That has changed. So while people may be saying that brochures are dead, what they're saying to you isn't that brochures are dead. What they're saying is the old way we did brochures is dead. There's a modern way. There's a better way. And so that's what we'll talk about today. There is a better way to do brochures and first off front cover.

That's where we're starting. The front cover needs to be boom. It needs to be explosive. It needs to look that you need to be able to have that front cover so visually compelling that people are like, wow, that looks absolutely amazing. I'm going to keep this for its artistic value, let alone the content that's inside of it.

We need that because right now you're marketing to millennials and I am a millennial and we have very short attention spans. Take it from me. You probably got three seconds. To win us over or to lose us. And so you really need that front cover to be visually appealing. Cause if it is not, we will never ever open it.

It's going to take a lot for us to open these things. And so the visual appeal of a front cover is huge. And so what I always say is keep it visually compelling and keep it short and concise. The front cover should just be beautiful background image, your logo. Maybe a one liner, something very compelling, just one tagline or one, you know, hero line, something that's just going to like wrap you in, but keep it very short.

Keep it very sweet. Have maybe logo, beautiful image, one liner. That should be your front cover. If you have any like certifications, those are cool pictures to usually put on the bottom of the front cover just for like a compelling graphic image. But once again, everything with the front cover should be done with the idea of I need to make this as visually amazing or as visually explosive as we can, because I need to wrap somebody in about three seconds.

Not to mention, if it's visually appealing, they're probably going to keep it on their desk just because it's kind of cool to look at sometimes. So there you go. Look at it from two standpoints. Yes, the brochures are going to need to be relevant. They're going to need to be short, concise to the point, but they need to be very, very visually appealing.

This is a big difference from how things were 10 or 15 years ago. It is never been more important to have a very, very visually compelling front cover on your brochure. Let's open this brochure up. What I like to have on that like initial half page when you open it up. Is maybe like a really cool graphic picture with like a very short about us.

And I mean, like, keep it to a paragraph, maybe two. You don't need to tell your whole business story. Just tell enough of the story to make you guys interesting. Remember, everything we do with marketing materials is to generate interest. You can have these conversations in person. You can go in depth. In person.

Do not try to go and tell your whole life story on page one of your brochure, okay? These are for in person. Think about it from this standpoint. Everything in your brochure should have a purpose. And that purpose should be generate enough interest that they want to have a further conversation, explain a little bit about what services that they can expect, and give them a way to get a hold of us.

But everything should be done from a standpoint of, Is this driving value. Is this doing what I wanted to do? Is it creating interest? Is it making a compelling pitch? Is it giving them enough reason to reach out to me so that we can have this face to face discussion and have this conversation in person, which leads to an RFP RFQ in the future?

Remember, you do not sell through your brochures. You do not sell through your marketing material. Marketing material should be all of it to build curiosity, to build brand recognition to shout your name from the rooftops, but allow you to have that conversation in person to really go in depth and put a person to it, to put a feeling to it, to put a relationship to the company.

Right? Everything we do is to get in front of somebody and build a relationship, which leads to mutually beneficial exchange. Right? So the first part should be a big, beautiful cover, right? Visually appealing, wrapping, not a lot of wording on it. Like a logo and a one liner. Open that page up. What I like to have in there is kind of your about us, right?

Who is your company? But keep it short and sweet, like I said. One, two paragraphs, somewhere in there, keep it really short and sweet, and then go into services, start to explain a little bit of what services or products that you offer, talk a little bit to each if you need to it never hurts to do that, lead into a why us, right, what is it that's compelling about your company, what is your company's value proposition, this is the big part, if you can narrow down what your company's value proposition is, why you, That should be somewhere in the first one or two pages when you open up the brochure, right?

And then the back page should usually just be your contact details. If there's a little bit more information, you can definitely have that in there, but I want to go a little more in depth even than that. Most of you have products and services. They can support multiple industries. Okay. An example I like to use is tires, right?

You can have tires that support cars. You have tires that support gigantic mining equipment, or you can have tires that support heavy duty applications. Okay. A tire isn't a tire, isn't a tire. And if you have a company that sells car tires, And heavy machinery tires, you should make sure that you have inserts that explain that, Hey, not only do we sell car tires, we also sell, you know, heavy duty industrial machinery tires.

And here's the applications. Here's what we provide. What I like to do in this case is I like to have a separate cut sheet inside for Each type of industry that we can serve, whether it be light duty trucks and cars, heavy duty mining equipment, or just, you know, heavy duty tractor trailers, something like that.

But if you have multiple services or like multiple products, you should have an insert or a cut page for Each product and you can make brochures that have a little tiny insert inside of them so that you can put as many of these cut sheets in as you need to, to explain each of your specific products.

You always want to make sure that you are selling to the industry, that you are being as clear and concise as possible. So there's no room for error. You don't want your customer, your potential customer to look at your brochure and say, Oh yeah, we need tires, but we really need heavy duty tires. And all they got on this brochure is cars, right?

You don't want that because they will make that assumption. So don't allow them to make that assumption. If you have products and services that serve multiple industries, make an individual sheet one sided or two sided that explains how you service, you know, The mining industry, how you service commercial trucking, how you service light duty cars and trucks.

If that's the, you know, the example we're giving have three sheets that explain all the different industries that you guys can serve and what products that you have for each of them so that there's no room for error on your prospect side. Remember, if there's room for error on your prospect's side, error is going to happen.

Make sure that you take the time and really, really narrow it down so that it's clear, it's concise, what industries you serve, what products you have that serve those industries, and why. So that there's no room for error so that they can just say, yep, they provide industrial mining equipment, tires, light duty automotive tires and heavy duty tractor trailer tires.

We're good. They got it all. There's no room for error here. And we use this in almost every single industry that I've served in business development. So it's not unusual for me to build a brochure for a company and then have multiple inserts created for each one of their industries. You know, additional products and services that they sell and what applications is good for.

The reason this works is you're probably marketing this brochure to multiple industries, right? And it's just not always going to be relevant. Like if you're marketing the automotive one to a mining company. Yeah, like, They might pick it up and be like, yeah, they can service our light duty trucks. But you know, we have lots of applications.

So you're leaving room on the table if you don't, if you don't send the appropriate brochure to the right industry, they're going to get confused or you're going to leave opportunity on the table and the mining company might say, Oh yeah, like we do need somebody for light duty trucks, so we'll use them.

And they never once consider you for all their mining equipment, which would be probably the bigger value for your organization. Right? So. Make sure that when you're marketing to a mining company, that you're putting the mining attachment, that you're, you're putting the mining insert into that marketing material.

Or if you're marketing to the light duty truck company, that that's the one you're sending them. You're sending the one that's talking about automotive tires, not mining tires, right? Make sure that your brochures are designed for the end user. They're designed for the end company, the person who you will be selling to.

Speak to them. Brochures. need to speak to the prospect, which means that you do need to narrow them down. And yes, I am telling you, you probably need multiple brochures. That is probably what that is what I'm telling you. However, this can be accomplished very cost effectively in the way that I'm telling you have that general brochure, use that brochure design that I'm telling you about, and put the pockets in it so that you can then send the general one, which kind of goes over the overview.

Yeah, we service automotive mining, you know, heavy duty, and here's the applications and then have those cut sheets that really get into depth on what you do for mining, what you do for forestry, what you do for heavy duty, what you do for oil and gas, whatever the industry is that you can service, have a cut sheet or something that speaks specifically to them and make sure that you are attaching that or putting that inside of the general brochure every time so that you speak to the industry.

the person you're selling to so that you can speak to your prospect directly, which makes you much more relevant. All right. What about business cards? Okay. Well, business cards are fun. Have fun with them, man. I've seen so many boring business cards and yeah, they work. Okay. They work, but. Why? Why? It's like 50 bucks more tops to make a really, really compelling, beautiful business card.

I've seen them made out of metal. I've seen them made out of metal. I've seen them have saw teeth on them. I've seen them with gloss and like, pop and I forget what they call it, but it actually like comes out of the card a little bit. Like it's raised. My gosh, it's so, so cool. The next time that you're designing your business cards, make them neat, make them memorable, make them something people want to hold, make them something people want to hold on to.

It doesn't cost that much more to do it really well. And to stand out a little bit. And so if you were to see any of my business cards, whether they be for capital or for the podcast, they're freaking cool. Yeah. They're really cool and it doesn't cost me that much more to do it. And let's get real for how many you're handing out.

What does it matter? What does it matter? If you spend another 50 bucks on a box to make a really beautiful standout business card that people are going to be like, wow, that's cool, right? It does not hurt. So take the time, make beautiful business cards that people actually want to hold on to. Trust me. It will work better than just having those standard card stock and you're not really saving that much anyway.

Like the cost of printing, especially with business cards is not that different. To go from the basic boring ass card stock to something that's really, really cool, something that's really memorable. And you know, I'm talking to, I'm talking to my fabrication companies too, right? I'm talking to my people with like industrial lasers.

You guys could probably make your own super cool metal cards and it would go a long way and people will hold onto them. So. Just an idea. There's lots of options out there and business cards are not dead. You still need them at every single meeting. You need them whenever you're going to ask somebody for a business card.

Because what do I say? If you're going to ask for something, you have to give something. Give something to get something. So make sure you're printing great business cards. Ones that people are going to want to hold on to. Ones that are visually compelling, right? We talk about visual appeal. Make them awesome.

Make them feel nice. Make them look nice. You know, it represents who you are. How do you want to be represented? Think about that next time you're making business cards. And don't forget your notepad. How many of you Oh my gosh, I can't tell you how many people that I've met with who have said, Oh, Kelly, I don't use a notepad anymore.

I just use my phone or we just write on an iPad. And I know I got people right now who are like, Yeah, Kelly, that's what I do. Okay. Okay. I get it. I get it. It's simple. You have your phone on you all the time. I get it. But there is a feeling we get when we see people at a meeting bust out their phone. And it's not a good one.

Okay? It's not a good one. Good etiquette at any meeting, whether it be a business meeting, a lunch, is to get rid of your damn phone. So if you get rid of your damn phone, you get rid of your iPad, well, what do you got? You got a notepad and you should have a notepad. My gosh, I shout notepads from the rooftops.

I keep a notepad with me all times, whether I'm doing just my day to day business tasks, whether I'm planning this podcast, whether I'm in a meeting, taking notes, I am taking notes. All the freaking time. And I was not a big fan of writing. So let me just tell you straight off, I have shitty writing. I hate writing for the most part.

But I love taking notes. I love taking notes. And I take notes with everything. And I have a special layout that I use every single week. When I'm taking down notes for work that I'm doing. So I always track my things to do this week. Right? Things to do this week. I always put down things to do this week for a client, things to do this week for capital, and I actually keep two of them.

And typically what I'll write down is, you know, my top five or my top, you know, six or seven things that I need to do that week that are absolutely critical to my success that week. I typically write them out from things that I don't want to do to things that are fairly easy so that my week actually gets easier.

easier as I go. I track all my digital contacts, you know, all my LinkedIn connections that I made that week that I've sent messages to you. I write them down and I add them to my CRM later. I write down all the phone calls that I've had. I write down my meetings. I write down my wins, right? Write down everything.

Also, When you're at a meeting, it is good form to just take notes when you're talking to people. It shows that you're listening. You actually retain the information much, much better. You have full notes that you can go back and enter into your CRMs later if you need to. And I like to just keep notes, right?

I like to write notes all the time. I have notes for every show whenever I have a meeting. Like if I meet with you because you're going to come on the BDP. You're going to notice that in our conversation, I'm taking lots of notes about our conversation because I want to make sure that I am doing my due diligence to give you the best interview possible, not just for you, but for my amazing listeners.

So, notes are important. Notebooks are important. They're not dead. If you do not use weekly notebooks, I would highly recommend that you do. Highly recommend. And I am going to tell each and every one of you, we are working on something behind the scenes here at the BDP at Capital Business Development, and I'm very, very excited.

I'll tell you guys all about it when we're closer to development, but something cool is coming on that front. And you guys are going to absolutely. Absolutely love it. So don't forget your notepad. They are not dead. They are awesome. They are awesome. They will change your world. If you are not using a notepad on a daily basis to track those things that I talked about, and you start doing that, you start writing your top 10 or top five things you need to do today.

You're tracking your digital introductions. You're tracking your phone calls. You're tracking your meetings booked. You're taking notes at the meetings. It is going to change your organization. So if you just take a couple of things from today's show, make beautiful brochures and business cards and start using a notepad, start doing your top five, top 10 things to do this week.

Start tracking your calls, start tracking your digital introductions, start tracking your meeting notes and watch your world change. change. And then I wanted to just take a minute and chat about gift items and swag. Okay. I've seen a lot of crap gift items and swag. I have, I've just been around too long.

I've seen the junk coming out of, you know, who knows where that's just absolute garbage. The only thing I'm going to say on this front is if you give something away for your business, if you are going to say, make pens or make anything that you're going to put your logo onto, okay. And give to. a future client.

Give to your employees. I want you to think about just for a second, how does this reflect on you and what you value and the quality standards that you hold yourself to? Because if you are willing to give your client junk, you are going to be perceived as someone who does not care about quality, who does not care about doing a great job.

The perception is going to come through. That you, you don't care. You don't care, and you're okay with just giving away junk to clients. And my recommendation is, the next time that you're buying swag, the next time that you're buying anything that you're going to put your logo on, ask yourself, is this something that I would be proud to be given?

If the answer is no, don't get it. Come on, don't give people junk with your logo on it. They don't need more junk, they need, the world needs more high quality, right? We need high quality, we need dependability, we need companies that we can, that we can value, that we can get behind, that we can believe in, and who believe in themselves, and the quality of the swag that you give out, whether it be to clients at Christmas, whether it be just on a day to day, think about it.

We don't give away anything at Capital that I'm not proud of. Period. And I hope that you guys will do the same. I personally pick out every single Christmas gift that I give to clients and I give them relevant gifts. Gifts that I think will be valuable and add value to their organizations. If I create anything at Capital, I'm creating it so that it adds value to an organization, so it adds value to my employees.

I'm not going to give them something that I would not be proud to be given. And I think that that's a great measure as you buy swag, as you do things within your organization. Think about the quality of it, because quality does matter. Perception does matter. And I think that we all need to care a little bit more about the things that we do.

We need to take more intention in the things that we do, especially when it comes down to what we are willing to put our logos onto. Alright, so remember, everything you give is a reflection of your business. Take your time, produce high quality physical items, and stand out while others fade away.

Shoutouts this week, Rodney Lover, Shawn Neels Aaron Haberman, Monte Pedersen, Brandon Fuchs, Chris Taylor, Gregory Martignoni, Carmen Leibel, Mike Mack, Jamie Larson, Colin Harms, Tatsiana Zametalina, Thomas Hayes, Danielle Dufour, Roxanne Kasianchuk, John Prata, Sheldon Hunt, Jenny Hembree, Mindy Kay McRae Broadbent.

Thank you so much for supporting the Business Development Podcast. I appreciate each and every one of you. This has been episode 117 of the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the next one. The flip side, this has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation. And business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.