Stop Wasting Money on Marketing Until You Fix This First with Trystan Keller

Marketing is just word of mouth amplified.

That's it.

Until you can earn the right of word of mouth, you don't deserve marketing.

I'm sorry, you just don't deserve it.

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.

In 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.

Hello, welcome to episode 328 of the Business Development Podcast and today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Tristan Keller.

Tristan is a proven sales strategist known for his raw results driven approach and refreshing candor.

With a track record of building high performing multimillion dollar sales teams and training thousands of professionals across Canada, Tristan focuses on what actually works.

From doubling memberships in just two months to cutting marketing spend in half while driving record breaking revenue.

His playbook is simple, strategic and built for impact.

As the founder of Sales Link Strategies, he helps businesses construct commission only sales teams, implement actionable sales systems and grow fast without the fluff.

Tristan is also the creator of Messed Up Mondays, an initiative built around honest conversations about failure, growth and the real journey of entrepreneurship.

He brings a bold mix of execution, clarity and no BS insight to every challenge.

He's not here to pitch theory, he's here to build from the ground up.

With his sleeves rolled and targets crushed, Tristan Keller delivers where it counts.

Tristan, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thanks Kelly.

Super happy to be here.

I feel like that's what every guest should say.

Honestly, it's a privilege to be on this side too, right?

Like all of you guys are incredible.

You all have incredible bios for a reason because you're out there doing really cool stuff and you all have lessons, you all have your experts in your fields, you have lessons to teach people and so honestly it's a privilege for me, not, not necessarily the other side around, right?

Like at this point having you on, you know, I've had to have interviewed like around 180 people.

Like we are getting up there by now and every single time I'm in awe.

Every Single time.

I love it, man.

I absolutely love it.

And so the privilege is mine.

Thank you for coming.

And today I can't wait to, like, dive deep into sales strategy with you because believe it or not, even though it's the business development podcast, we get very little, very little experts in the sales specific strategy.

And you have, like, you have built that world, You've cut your teeth in that world, you've grown up in that world.

So, yeah, I'm really pumped to have this conversation with you.

But before we do that, Tristan, I want you to take me back to the beginning, man.

Like, you've done cool things.

You're still doing cool things.

You were just talking before the show.

You just got this, like, really cool publicly traded company gig, which is amazing.

But take us back, man.

How did you end up on this path?

Yeah, I think it always starts with anybody.

Doing anything is a point at which it's actually your weakest.

And I was telling you this kind of bit before the podcast.

I was in elementary and I actually got pulled over into the special ed class.

And they're like, yeah, like, you probably shouldn't learn how to type or write or these kinds of things.

So I missed out a lot of time.

Like, I didn't know how to type on a keyboard effectively and these kinds of things.

And this kind of started to well up and become a challenge.

I went through elementary school, junior high, high school.

Everyone's saying, like, hey, this is.

You probably should never be a writer or you should probably never do anything.

Like, communication wise, it's just like, it's not the right fit.

And by the time I graduated high school, I was kind of a, you know, I was like, doing drugs all the time, drinking all the time, hanging out with shitty people.

And I got my first sales job, which is door to door.

And the whole reason that I had to go and get this job in Door to Door was because I'm like, I'm about to lose my apartment and if I don't go make like a couple hundred dollars, like by next week, I'm going to get kicked out.

And I went did this door to door sales job, as in landscaping with Canadian property stars.

And that's where I cut my teeth on sales.

And that's what really helped throw me and propel me into this world of like, commission sales business and marketing.

And it was really wild.

And from there, that's actually where I read my very first book.

I'd never really actually read a book cover.

It was always like, graphic novels, comic books, that kind of stuff.

And by the end of it, in that first year, I'd read the very first book, Jeffrey Gittamer's A Little Red Book of Selling.

And that's really what helped me connect these dots on the self learning experience and propel.

So when you say you're grateful to be on that side, I'm like, yeah, because of all the work that you had to do and all the education that no one will ever comprehend unless they go through it themselves.

And every journey is different.

And that's really where everything started for me.

That was the whole catalyst.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's, it's true, man.

Like, it doesn't really matter what side of this mic you end up on.

It ends up being a privilege.

And, you know, the longer that I'm in service through this show, the more I kind of realize it's like you're really lucky to be here.

You're really lucky to have an audience that people even care.

Right.

Like, it's so funny.

I look back to, I look back to the launch of this show back in 2023, and I remember I was like, my original studio was in my basement.

It's in my new basement too, but it was in my old place, the basement.

So literally I was just talking to my wall and I remember thinking, I was like, who in the world is actually listening to me talking to my wall here?

Right?

And it's like, it's super discouraging in the beginning because it takes a long time to get like listeners, right?

Like, it's not an easy.

It's still not easy, frankly.

It's growing.

A podcast is challenging.

Getting a listenership in anything is challenging, whether you have a YouTube channel or whatever else.

But it's simply just dedication and consistency over time.

Right.

It doesn't really matter what you're doing, whether it's business development, sales, a podcast, a YouTube channel.

Yeah, it's sticking in it, Right.

It's just, you just have to be there longer than everybody else and the longer that you stick it out, the better you're get at it over time.

And you know, as a fellow high school to another,.

It's.

It's pretty incredible that I'm where I'm at.

Let's just call it that.

Oh, yeah.

I'm surprised I'm alive.

Like, wow, it's so crazy because I think it's this.

And I was reflecting on this because I was talking to.

I did a seminar with a city group, Citi, and it was talking to some of these.

I say Seminars, more of like a speaking engagement.

And I was talking to all these people who are wanting to get jobs in this space.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember how difficult it was to just go find a job, especially in the tech space.

Cause that's where they are.

And it's like, how do you just get out of this cycle?

And so I, I, I've been like this big, like, pattern disruptor.

That's kind of been my main focus is I'm like, how do you break that cycle?

Because you had that experience at some point where something someone said or something that happened just kind of clicked and you're like.

And then you neglected it and ignored it.

Yeah.

Everyone's like, it's always this magical linchpin where like, you have this big epiphany.

And I'm like, no, it's not.

It's five years of this same message being drilled into your head and you ignoring it every single time.

And then suddenly you're like, oh, yeah, I should probably listen to this.

Yeah.

And that's kind of that connection point is like, I had to do this big pattern disrupt where I just had to very bluntly say, like, hey, the way that you're trying to get hired, or the way you're trying to do this consulting gig, no one's going to hire you.

Yeah, well, I think it's such a, it's, it's shitty that, like, as a kid, somebody told you what you weren't going to do.

Right?

Like, I think, like, as teachers or as educators, as anybody, don't ever tell somebody what they can or cannot do.

You know what I mean?

I look back to junior high and high school, they wouldn't let us use calculators on the test.

Why?

Because we're never going to carry calculators in our pocket.

Right?

No.

Now we carry a superhuman AI in our pocket.

What is this shit?

Like, literally, I just got a new S25 Ultra.

The thing literally has Google Gemini AI built into it.

I can hold a button, I can start talking to my phone and it will answer me.

For goodness sakes.

Do not tell people what they will or will not be able to do.

Because guess what?

The world will always prove you wrong.

Totally.

I think this is from my side.

I actually was lucky enough to meet some people who are way more intensive and fanatical than I am around this space.

But for the last, like, I don't know, five, six years, I've been just like, in the deep dive of what AI is in terms of, like, the daily usage and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And I think the crazy part is we think that it's a disability to use AI.

Cause it's like, oh, well, you're not thinking creatively.

And it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

Like we don't understand.

Like this is ultimately a better way for us to spend more time actually connecting on a human to human level.

Yes.

And it's, it's really just going to start eradicating all these different barriers that we have to make that possible.

I'm like, it's really just a streamlined tool and it's a search engine.

Yeah.

Me and, me and Shelby had like a rough Sunday about two weeks ago.

We were sitting down and, and, and we'd gotten on the AI conversation.

I was like, well, growing.

So I, I just dived deep into it.

I ended up doing a show on it the week after.

But I ended up starting to dive deep onto AI.

And what I learned was AI is doubling in power every six months.

Every six months is doubling in power.

Which basically meant that if AI number one version one was 2023, which is what I just say it is, because that's chat GBT version 1.0 basically.

Right.

2028 Is 1000 times more powerful than, than chat GPT 1.0.

We can't even comprehend what a thousand times more powerful AI is.

Actually.

I asked it, I was like, can you show me what a world looks like?

And it's like some of the stuff that it was like, kind of like idealizing.

It's like, holy.

Like we are about right now.

Like it's 2026.

The people are hearing this.

You are two years or less away from a world of a thousand times more powerful AI.

And I can already guarantee you that you're seeing the changes.

The world is going to be completely different in almost every way imaginable.

Yeah.

I have some quick predictions that I'll throw out for where I think this goes.

One, salespeople are going to continue to exist.

They're not going to disappear.

I think the use of using AI calling agents will start to increase once it gets more and more effective.

I think that that's going to put more stressors on Canadian, North American, but mostly Western culture in terms of like, how we're utilizing the labor force.

And then I think it's going to be almost a slurry of all these different tools and bots and agents and different things like that.

I think people kind of forget what agents actually are.

And it's really just, you're creating software.

So we're back into this big software play and there is going to be another.com boom and crash that is around the AI.

Because think of how many people are investing into tools and software that already shouldn't be business owners or startup companies that are trying to do stuff.

So I see probably next year or two years from now a lot of those kind of facades that are up around companies that should never exist or never effective people stuff that no one ever wants, they're going to start to collapse.

So those are some predictions.

Yeah, that's a, that's a good one.

That's a good one.

Actually I was super, super impressed.

One of my friends operates Sadwell.

I actually do a co.

He's a co host of mine on Authentic Hustle.

Vijayan, I'm not sure if you know him, but they create custom software and some of the software they create is AI agent type software, right?

Yes.

And so I got a chance to actually like have a conversation with one of his AI agents that was trying to book a meeting with me.

Yeah.

And dude, I was really impressed.

Like it's still very much in its infancy.

They still make mistakes.

But like dude, like three years ago that wouldn't have even been possible.

Right.

Like three years from now it's going to be perfect.

Yes, I think it's a pathway.

We're going to have people that are training these bots on a regular basis.

Here's the reality though, with all the AI hype around sales and business development and stuff is you still need human input.

Yeah, it does not have a connection to human input yet.

The closest that we have right now in terms of human input is these AI agents that can go and then gather and collect data and information.

However, the worse the data information is, the more that it'll continue to spin off and average out what we believe a sales call should look like.

So it's actually going to open up the pathway for people that have hit the ground running, that have done like the boots on the ground approach, picking up the phone and actually calling and dialing.

The rate at which humans can get insights compared to that of models.

It is non comparative.

I don't think it ever really will be.

I think that's really the limitation.

We think that it's this giant big genius brain.

Unfortunately there is a lot of gaps and limitations with it.

Maybe one supercomputers come out, I don't know more information.

But I think when you have a set purpose and function and you can train it on that standard Operating procedure or sop, like the system of how you do something, that's where it becomes powerful.

Well, I think, you know, I, I don't know about your world, but my world is very much B2B.

Right.

And I think in B2B it's about relationships and relationships are still generated and created by people.

And it doesn't matter whether you have a great AI robot or not.

It's not going to be able to go for lunch with that person.

It's not going to be able to, you know, follow up and build a real human to human relationship.

At least maybe not yet, who knows?

I don't want to say never because God knows.

Right.

But yeah, too far.

But as of right now, you know, it's about building relationships, it's about establishing trust.

And those are human characteristics.

Right?

Like those are things that robots cannot do, at least not yet.

Yeah.

And so in my mind, business development will always be best done by people.

However, you know where I see the application of this, this AI sales and marketing really being powerful?

B2C, we already see that.

Right.

There's no comparison.

Social media, things like that are still the best ways to sell.

We add AI bots and agents to this, it's only going to make it more powerful.

It's going to be able to predict exactly what you want.

Like hell, Amazon's already there.

Yeah, totally zealous.

Figured this shit out back in the early 2000s when they were sending magazines out to pregnant pre pregnancy tests, pregnant women, they didn't even know that they were pregnant yet.

And they were sending them brochures and guides because they started trending out all the things that they were buying and they're like, wait, this works too.

Well of course this information and data exists.

It's been existing for 20 years.

It's just a different way of accessing it.

And you know, I think what you said is like more of this human connection is actually going to be more important.

It's in an imperative.

I think this whole wave of like get AI to do everything for you is going to disappear.

I think it's going to cut out a lot of the people that are trying to do like cold emails just by ChatGPT and Stuff.

Yeah, the people that are creating content, just using AI generated stuff already.

I'm talking to people who aren't in the AI realm or in the software space and they're starting to pick up like, oh yeah, I could tell, like someone made us a video script at a chat GPT and it's like yes, yeah, it's gonna die off.

That's the thing, right?

So it gets scary.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah.

Like, basically what you're saying is that we're gonna get so good at recognizing it that at the end of the day, if you want to stand out, you're gonna have to be authentic because people are just.

It's just going to fall into the.

I think we're already there, man.

We're already there with like LinkedIn and stuff.

You can automatically call out what is strictly an AI generated post.

Right.

And be like, whatever, and then be able to connect very authentically with that hand type story.

Like I actually say whenever possible.

And I get.

It's like hard and a lot of people don't want to do it, but like, just hand type your own post.

I know we live in this time where we don't want to do it, but especially when it's your personal post, especially when you're talking about your kids, your family, or what you did on the weekend, type that shit up.

You're gonna get like three to five times the engagement.

Yeah, totally.

I think that's a big part.

And when I look at.

And maybe this gets into more of like, the sales side is I see a lot of founders and business owners trying to leverage information and not knowing where it's gonna lead.

And this starts to become the kind of blind leading the blind.

And this becomes a very scary part because, you know, you have people that are like, build me a sales and marketing strategy.

It's like, great and like, it could spit you out something that looks absolutely beautiful.

But ultimately, and this is maybe my curse is I'm a sales guy that learned marketing.

Yeah.

And then that kind of me up.

See, I just look at marketing from sales.

I'm like, oh.

I'm like, where does this marketing convert?

And for some reason, marketing companies have a hard time explaining that part is like, ultimately, if you have these playbooks, these strategies, these ideas or whatever, this looks like it's like, that's all good, but you have to do something with it.

But before you even do anything, it's like, can you go talk to every single one of your customers?

Can you get an idea of exactly why these people are buying from you?

What are you needing to say to them?

That is this magical formula, these words so that you say to someone and someone's like, oh, my God.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

I didn't know that something like this existed.

Then you've earned the right to go and do marketing because now you know, the language.

Otherwise you're just hypothetically producing something.

I call it the mental masturbation of business.

Because you're just kind of like, oh, if I keep massaging this, it's going to magically work.

And it's like, no, what works is actually going out there talking to people.

That human connection.

If you can't do that, like it's.

You're going to have a really hard time.

Right?

Yeah.

And I love that.

And actually I think that's a really good lead into what makes them different.

Because I think, you know, whenever I talk to an organization, many of them don't know what business development is.

Many of them don't really understand what marketing is or sales.

They think they're all the same thing.

And so, like a lot of me, when I'm going in and I'm doing coaching, I always start with a little definition of business development.

And I'll give it right now, and this is one that I actually wrote, and it is.

Business development is the strategic process of identifying and pursuing opportunities that drive new business growth by building relationships, generating interest and creating partnerships.

It involves researching and targeting the right customers, reviewing marketing materials to ensure that they're effective, and engaging in proactive outreach through cold calls and emails to generate leads, known as active marketing.

Business development must always focus on new opportunities for an organization.

If you stop focusing on new opportunities, your funnels inevitably dry up.

And instead, business development specialists act as champions of the company, driving interest and connecting the business to potential clients and strategic partners to secure new business.

But the main thing here that I want everyone to take away is that business development is always focused on the new right.

It is not repeat business.

It's not calling the same customer or building account management.

And you know, while marketing is a part of business development and having good marketing materials is a part of that, it's still separate from that as well.

And I was hoping today that you could really level set for our listeners what the difference is between sales and marketing.

Because I think they get that confused too.

Cool.

Yeah.

Here's the simple thing.

Marketing is just word of mouth amplified.

That's it.

Whatever people are talking about, you're just amplifying it.

Sales is just taking people, talking about it and getting them to do something.

Okay, that's it.

So, so people think.

People think.

And I'm like, let's level set here.

People think that if they put an ad out, if they do, let's call it an Instagram ad or a Spotify ad or a LinkedIn ad.

And they market their material that people are just going to buy it.

Is this happening?

Are people actually buying things from these posts?

If you're lucky, that's.

Yeah.

If you're delusional enough and you believe you know, you have a pretty good chance.

The reality is like there's stages to anything and everything.

So most people start at marketing.

And I, I look at this as a wave of all these business gurus who are actually really good at what they do and pushing this out.

And I've seen more marketing companies pop into existence over the last few years than I've ever seen any kind of.

It's insane.

I get every networking event and there's 10 of them crawling all over.

That's right.

Yeah.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

It's just what is at the heart of marketing.

And I think that's been lost.

Marketing to me was like watching Mad Men and putting up a poster and having that thing like hit someone in the face and it's impactful and gets them to do something.

And I feel like that's a missing part.

Is like, okay, what, what is social media content?

What is management?

What are all these things?

And it's like, well, it's just a way to get attention and interest.

Okay, now, now you have attention and interest.

What the hell do you do with it?

It's like, well, okay, you should probably get them to do something.

This is the call to action.

Okay, you get them to do something.

Maybe it's sign up for a newsletter.

Maybe it's to just click on the ad and say, okay, I want to buy this right now.

Or maybe it's like book a free call.

Okay, well then now you have to get into the sales territory and see the, the often disconnect is what needs to actually happen is sales and marketing has to be influencing each other.

Sales is looking at that conversion or the outbound reach in person to person or phone calls or emails, whatever that is, to then turn those people into potential clients.

So yeah, marketing, get people in sales.

Get those people to pay you money.

That's it.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's.

And they're very different, right?

Like people have to remember these are very different positions.

A good salesperson is worth, you know, a thousand times what you pay them.

Believe me.

Um, business development, people kind of forget what that is.

And I always, I always level set people and I always say, look, business development does not guarantee a sale.

What we're doing is we are essentially marketing your company.

We're shouting it from the rooftops we're building, we're using tools made by marketers or by ourselves to build interest in the product enough to get to a face to face interaction.

What we're always trying to do is establish a relationship ahead of a need because we never want to get people when they need us.

We want to get them ahead.

We want to establish a relationship so we have an unfair advantage.

That's what business development is all about.

However, while sure, you know, we can do business development and that might lead to an RFP or an order or something like that, it's technically not sales.

It's very different.

It's a very different skill set.

You're not sitting down and saying, are you going to take something?

We're saying, if you need something in the future, here it is.

Come hang out with us, we'll look after you, we'll help you, we'll account manage you.

But then it gets handed off.

So like when my job's done, typically after the first meeting, my job is over.

I've then, you know, effectively handed that off to an account manager, said, look after these people, bug them, ask them for business, they're more the salespeople side of it.

And then we go back to the beginning and we do that over and over and over again.

Right.

But you're absolutely right.

Marketing does not lead to sales.

Business development does not lead to sales.

You need somebody like you, like Tristan to get in there and push it over the edge.

And I would love for you, you know, to give us a masterclass today on how to do that because I know plenty of us entrepreneurs, business development people, marketers, you know, we're, we might be really good at what we do, but many of us struggle with closing and actually acquiring that customer, getting them to transact with us, you know, their hard earned dollars, which are only getting harder and harder to get from people.

Yeah, Here is the part where I mentioned how I'm like a sales guy that learned marketing.

If for the people listening to this, I'm going to break it down from the beginning.

First thing is go talk to a ton of people, figure out what you're actually trying to sell because you probably don't know what you're actually trying to sell if you know what you sell.

Awesome.

Okay, we can move on to this next step.

You need to talk to everybody and figure out why they want to buy from you.

So on this side and this side, there's a gap.

The gap could be really long, the gap could be very, very close, and the gap could be Very short, but also very long.

This is what I call the pit of despair, the pit of pain.

On this side you have people that have problems and they're walking up to this ledge.

There's an unaware traveler that has no idea they're about to walk into this pit.

You have the edge dweller that's sitting right here realizing, oh shit, there's a pit right there, I'm probably going to fall in pretty soon.

And then you have the person that's just stuck in the pit.

Now your goal is to get them over to where the goals are.

Their alignment of what they see, their future self, their potential.

My favorite part about understanding someone's goals is they don't exist in reality.

Otherwise they'd be called something known as achievements because they achieved the goal.

Right?

So you have pain, you have problems.

Over here you have the goals.

You need to build a bridge over top of that for them and then take a vehicle and drive that across the bridge for them.

So you have a lot of pieces to figure out.

Now the first thing out of everything is figure out what is their goal, what are they trying to accomplish, what is the reason that they can't get there.

Okay, so let's talk about T shirts.

I'm going to use T shirts as an example.

So if you are someone that's trying to sell T shirts, look at, I think it's called True Tees or something like that.

I'm going to use their company as an example.

They realize some like heavier set dad bod dudes that are maybe like, maybe they are actually very muscular, maybe they're not.

Either way, T shirts just don't hang on them correctly.

They identified this as a problem.

What they then said is like, listen, we'll help you look better.

This is the goal side.

We'll help you look better, increase self confidence, whatever that stuff is, by just making T shirts that fit your body type better.

Yeah, that's it.

As soon as they did that, they then started telling people, hey, this is what we do.

Try out the T shirts.

We'll give you some for free.

Get the word of mouth out there.

Then that started building up.

Then more and more people actually were like, oh wow, these T shirts are really good.

Then it sparked more reviews.

Then they could start taking these things and funneling it back into marketing to then start attracting more people.

Marketing is about attracting sales, is about reaching out.

So you have to go and reach out.

In order to be able to attract, you have to be the magnet and how you charge that magnet and how to make that magnet stronger is you running as quick as you can for as long as you can.

It's an endurance race.

Then you earn the right to go to the store and buy a bunch of magnets.

Depending on how good your magnets are, you.

You need more money.

Yeah.

So that's really the default, is figure out why people have this problem, what you can do to bridge that gap, and then you can reflect that.

I love it.

You touched on something.

You mentioned feelings.

And I think, you know, I've spent a little time in sales.

Right.

I get it.

I know at the end of the day, it's about emotion and feelings.

Those are the way.

Those are the reasons people buy.

Right.

Typically, it's not because they've weighed every option and picked the best one because on paper it looks the best.

No.

It's typically because they felt one way or another about a certain product or another product and they bought based on their feeling.

And, you know, the, the example you gave was based on the T shirts that fit people better.

Well, these people don't really care whether or not their T shirt fits them better.

What they care about is do they look good.

Right.

Because why?

Because if you look good, you feel good, and if you feel good, you're going to do better in pretty much everything you do.

So how do we do that, Tristan?

How do we understand the feeling or how do we market better?

Is it marketing?

Am I talking about the right thing here?

Are we talking marketing here?

How do I make people buy my products and services based on their feelings?

Good.

I love that question so much.

I'm going to tell you about a story.

It's called the drill bit.

We're going to do this experiment and Kelly, you might have done this before.

Probably not.

It's going to be super awkward.

It's not going to make a lot of sense, and you're going to be like, Tristan, what the are we doing right now?

But this is just going to demonstrate this part and it's going to start to rework some of the.

The listeners brains as well.

Cool.

So we have a drill bit.

Okay.

Why does somebody want to buy a drill bit?

Because they need a hole.

Yes, absolutely.

They need a hole.

Okay.

We're now going to do the exercise that a lot of people haven't done, which was actually the genesis of that whole statement.

Okay.

All the marketers are like, oh, my God, I got it right.

Yes.

Great.

That's like 5% of it.

Then the 95% is this stuff here.

Okay.

So they need a Hole.

Okay.

Why do they need a hole?

Because likely they're doing something greater and a hole is a part of their problem.

Sure.

So let's pretend that they're maybe putting a picture frame together.

Yeah.

Okay.

So why are they putting a picture frame together?

Because they took beautiful family photos and they make them feel good and they want to put those.

Those photos up so they can see them all the time.

Awesome.

So why.

Why do they care about putting those photos out of their family?

Because it makes them feel good.

Why does it make them feel good?

Because it's their family.

Why do they care about feeling good about their family?

Because they love their family.

Why do they care about loving their family?

Now, this is the part where you're like, tristan, what the.

Yeah.

Trust the process.

Because they're good people.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, they're good.

They're good people.

Yeah.

They were raised right.

They were raised right.

Yeah, totally.

So we're gonna go down a couple more layers here is it.

And this is where it starts getting like in the weeds a bit.

But this is actually the part that gets really important.

So, dude, you gotta be.

You know what's really crazy?

And I'm just gonna mention something.

Synchronicity.

I you not.

I just did this exact five wise experiment with the.

Just like the exact last interview I had not an hour ago.

This is how synchronicity and the universe throws at you twice.

And it's so unfortunate, like, because if you know, if you know the reasons why you start getting deeper and deeper on this.

Yeah.

Ultimately the most things that people have a hard time with marketing in the sales front and having this understanding so that they can ask these questions is like the.

I'll use exemplific as an example.

Well, example could say like, yeah, lose weight.

Drop fat.

Just one line.

Lose weight.

It actually might work.

That actually might work.

Yeah.

Know what?

I'm gonna put a pin in this.

So I'm gonna call them real quick like, hey, got your new ad.

So there's this generic stuff, right?

But then underneath it's kind of this middle ground a little bit more like deep tissue.

And then you get down to the real nitty gritty.

When I run through this experiment and I did this with every single client when I bring them onto onboarding is like, by the end, they have such hyper clarity by the end of this that they're like, oh, shit.

And we do this exercise for like 15 minutes.

I'm.

I'm relentless.

You're brutal.

I need you to be like, I don't know what you want me to say anymore.

It's like, great, we got there.

We got there.

But when you get into the deep tissue of like, why does someone want a picture frame?

I'd say a majority of the people that are my clients that we run through this is like, the reason why that they want a picture frame is they want something that looks good.

The second reason that they want it to look good is that people are going to look by, and it's like, okay, why do people care about that?

And it's like, well, the family cares about them.

Okay, why does the family care?

Okay, well, the family cares about them because, you know, you're a father figure and you're, like, helping, you know, care about them.

This is your demonstration of care.

Why do you care about them?

It's like, the whole reason I care about them is it helps me feel more complete.

Why does that help you make you feel more complete?

It's like, oh, because if I lost my family, that would lose a part of me.

Okay, why is that?

It's like, oh, my family matters so much to me that I would do anything for them.

So therefore, you being able to buy a drill bit, put a hole in the wall, build a picture frame, put that together, take the photo, print that photo, put it inside of a picture frame, and hang it up on a wall is just so that you can feel whole and complete with your family.

So once you start selling and marketing on that level, it becomes a completely different ball game.

And when you have this kind of a conversation with someone, you end up having these questions that you can develop to pull out these answers.

So, you know, if I'm selling T shirts again, we can go to this example.

It's like, how many times have you tried to wear a T shirt?

And you realize that it actually makes you feel worse.

What is your thought process when you're going to the clothing store and you're trying to figure out what shirt you need to buy?

Yeah, honestly.

And I love that.

I want to pause you there.

Yeah.

Because you're absolutely right.

Like, if I put on a T shirt and it's tight and it's uncomfortable, I'm not buying that T shirt.

And you're right.

It has completely everything to do with how it makes me feel, not how it looks.

Totally.

And this comes down to the questions.

So questions are actually my superpower in terms of understanding a client's needs and directing them in a conversation.

And that's where the sales and marketing comes in together, is like, when you Ask questions.

In a sales conversation, you can get down to the actual heart of it.

And I say this all the time, is like, if you can figure out what questions to ask someone where they could actually be so open that they can cry with you in a sales conversation, you know you've hit the right questions.

That's what you want.

If you're getting that level of emotion.

Absolutely.

They're invested totally.

You know, some of the stuff like, you know, if.

If you're trying to build kitchens, and this is where it starts to get from the emotional side to more than sightful side, so they can see this future version of themselves.

It's like when you're.

When you're having your kitchen right now and you have people over, what area do people tend to linger in when they're saying, hey, let me try and help you prepare dinner?

Yeah.

They're chilling in your kitchen.

Right.

Like, where is that section?

Okay.

Yeah.

Where do you find, like, you're always doubling back to do something that you routinely are doing.

Okay.

When you're in a hurry to go and cook dinner and you're doing those quick, cheap meals and stuff, what is the most frequently used thing that you.

In your kitchen?

And you start to map out how the customer sees and understands them.

Yeah.

And when they start to see and understand themselves, they have a better understanding of how you can get them to that goal.

And suddenly you can put together a proposal or a quote, or you can start designing the entire kitchen significantly more efficiently because it's in heart of exactly what does the customer care about?

What is exactly the customer want?

And this is how, like, I cheat the system and get people the results is like, okay, we can cut down our, like, sales and quoting timeline significantly because we're not doubling back on, like, what does the customer actually want?

That's actually how we close and do sales.

At least on my side in that lens.

Okay, you know what?

I learned, and I did a series very early on the BDP, I want to say, like around episode 72, somewhere in there, for people listening, if you want to check it out.

But I did a series called Proposal Playbook.

And this was lessons that I learned the hard way, trying to market my own company.

And one of the things that I learned pretty early on, Tristan, was that I needed to tie the results of my service to dollars and cents because I needed to speak to a company in a way that they could understand.

And companies understand money.

Right.

If you can show them how you're going to make them money or save them money or you can show them how they can accomplish their growth goals in a revenue dollars and cents factor.

It's a lot easier to justify your price with them.

And so like, one of the factors we used when I was originally marketing capital was we would show them how to based on X amount of meetings that we needed to calculate for them based on a calculation we did early on, we could help them accomplish their revenue growth goals for the year statistically based on their averages.

Right.

So we used math to tie it in, gave them real numbers to work from, and showed us that, hey, our value makes sense because we're considerably less than that revenue goal that we're going to help you with.

Right.

And so that worked for us, I guess, where what I'm kind of wondering here is how do we do that?

Well, first off, was that the right way to do it?

Second half, was there a better way for me to be doing it?

Because great, maybe I need to do a new proposal playbook.

And two, yeah, how do we tie that to like product sales, for instance, where maybe it's kind of intangible or very hard to show people what the dollars and cents is?

Yeah, totally.

Okay, so I'm going to deconstruct that.

So the first thing is I don't think you did anything wrong because your learned experience is inherently like priceless.

No one can take that part away because it's learned experience.

No different than like the conversations that I have when I'm actually going down and like, okay, let's go and sign the documents and stuff.

Totally.

Yeah.

It's like, okay, what's the number?

What does this get you back?

How many zeros can we add back into your company?

Absolutely.

So that's definitely a part of it.

But understanding when you're trying to build that proposal together, when you start to sparkle in, you know, five, 10 of these, like really impactful questions that helps draw out the answers themselves that they might not have.

And then they start to think about it.

I was listening to Robert Rodriguez, the Robert Rodriguez, and he's was being interviewed by Lex Friedman, then did another one with Joe Rogan.

And he was talking about how he does creativity and how he creates movies.

And he always starts with questions because he already has answers.

Everybody has the answers.

Everyone knows what the they should be doing to get more sales and marketing.

But it's the questions that help them to understand themselves and how they play into that.

So that's more of that lens.

It's not the crutch that you rest on for the whole thing.

But it is definitely the thing that helps you keep moving forward.

Does that answer that part?

Yeah, I think so.

I. I just.

I get this all the time.

People always reach out and they're like, how do we sell more?

Business is hard.

I'm genuinely struggling at selling my services, at marketing my products and services and getting myself out there.

Right.

Nine times out of ten, I'll sit down and be like, how many people did you talk to last week?

And they'll be like, none.

And I'll be like, well, there's.

That's part of your problem.

Right?

But I guess one of the questions that I had for you today was if you're talking, if that's a business, right?

If they're listening right now and somebody's listening and they're saying, I am really, I have an incredible product, right?

My service is great.

My product is great, and I'm not selling any of them.

Um, we're trying.

We're marketing.

You know, we're.

We're.

We have social media ads up.

We put stuff on LinkedIn, we put stuff on Instagram, and just nothing's happening.

Yeah, let's give them, like, a little 101.

You know, let's give them the Tristan Keller treatment.

Cool.

Okay.

Yeah.

Tristan Keller treatment of if.

Okay, I'm gonna talk real because I've seen several hundred startup companies pitch.

I wrote an article for Nate around, I think it was like, 80 some companies that were, you know, students and stuff like that, talking about their pitch and, like, having stuff go off the ground.

So I'm kind of an expert in this space now.

The three main reasons that I see every company kind of fumbling in terms of the marketing piece is, number one, it's disconnected with that, do you actually understand your customer?

If you don't, you need to start that red way.

Okay.

If you do understand your customer and you're moving on to the second stage, which is like, getting the word out there, you need to actually start by going and talking to as many people.

Find places where you can get a room full of your type of customer.

Until you can do that, in my opinion, and this may be a little crass, but you don't deserve to do marketing because you can't get bodies to show up in a room.

If you can't get bodies to show up in a room, then you can't do marketing yet.

Doesn't make sense.

Now, once you can get bodies in the room and people want to show up to anything, it could be like, hey, just come Try out our product.

We'll do it for free.

You can then use all that information, all the feedback, all the reviews, all the testimonials, everything, including photos, snapshots, like all of that.

Now you deserve the right to do marketing and you can go and put it out there.

So no different than like, you know, if I'm running my own stuff for Mess Up Monday, it's like, yeah, it started by me picking up the phone and talking to 250 people.

For those of you that don't know, Messed Up Monday is a, it's a, it's a place where authentic business mistakes and mess ups can be actually explained and connected.

Entrepreneurship is super lonely and it's just a better place for everyone to actually talk about how hard it is.

So it feels a little bit less lonely.

So we have panel guest speakers that come up, usually have run successful businesses and then they talk about their own business problems.

Then people can ask some questions in that kind of authentic space.

And so Edmonton business owners.

Yeah, it's struggling and lonely.

Yeah.

Messed Up Mondays.

If you're lonely and desperate.

If you have nowhere else to be.

Hot single business owners in your area.

Oh goodness.

We will, we will have a link for Messed Up Mondays along with the post for this.

So if you're looking for it, you'll be able to find it on link.

Yeah, yeah.

It'll be fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I, I think that's like the, the real big part is like if you're, if your marketing campaign isn't working, it's probably because you don't understand your customer enough.

If you don't understand your customer enough, you're probably selling them something that they don't understand.

It's just, that's it.

I, I love it.

And I want to go back to that though because I think a lot of people are marketing.

What they're not doing is a crucial missing step.

Right.

So like for instance, let's say that I created the most beautiful BDP ad there is out there.

Like it is compelling as shit.

Everybody should come and listen to this show.

Total.

But I market that out there.

Yeah.

That doesn't mean people will actually listen to the show.

Even if they, even if they are like, oh, that's cool, that's cool.

Doesn't make people buy, doesn't make people subscribe.

Right.

No.

There's a missing step.

Am I correct?

Yeah.

You didn't get permission from them.

And how you get permission is understanding someone.

Think about if you're.

I use dating as an example A lot.

Are you going to go have sex with that person on the first date?

Maybe.

Probably not.

When do you.

When you have an understanding of who they are and when they have a better understanding of who you are.

And then you can start to foster that.

You know, it's like, can you get the one night stand?

Totally.

And I see a lot of businesses going for that one night stand.

And you know, I'm, I'm doing this with myself.

I'm literally, I'm going and doing.

I was like doing my own social experiments and my own market testing to just be like, hey, I did it.

I just did it last week.

Here's the proof.

Cause I did it.

And I'm running this session at the time of this recording.

It's called Sales Park Sessions.

And it's just like a Monday Q and A where business owners come on hang out and just ask me questions and just kind of run through different stuff.

Yeah.

And I'm like, how do I go and get this thing up and running as soon as possible?

I'm like, great, I'm gonna go talk to a bunch of people and be like, hey, would you show up for this?

Got a better understanding of what are they struggling with?

It's like a lot of the same stuff you were mentioning, right?

Like, how do I do this?

How do I interact with this?

I have questions around this space like, am I saying my script wrong?

And then what I did is I invited 10 people.

Three of them showed up.

Out of those three had testimonials like people saying like, hey, you summed up what I was thinking about for the last few years in five minutes.

Yeah.

Now I can take all that.

And because I've gained the permission, I can now make content to be like, you should show up to the next one.

And so I don't know what it's at now, but it's kicking off next week, Monday at, at noon.

That's when I'm hosting them.

So every Monday, noon to 1pm and with the sales spark session, it went from 10 people registered to three people show up 30%.

That's a pretty good show up rate.

If you get 30 to 50%, you're doing good.

Anything less, you need to check what's going wrong the next one, it's now like 86 people registered.

Wow.

It's just because I got permission because I understood where people are dealing with and then I showed them that there is a path.

So again, if you're trying to figure out like, why isn't this working?

You probably haven't understood your customer and you probably don't know what the path is.

And in my mind, that is how I sell.

That is how I understand how to do sales.

And that ripples out into marketing.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, the reality is what I've learned with my clients over time, they can have the greatest website, they can have the most beautiful marketing material.

There still needs to be that connection established, which is why frankly, I've existed as long as I have, because that's what my whole job has been, right?

It's facilitate from the marketing material and a prospect into a legit real connection and relationship that can be fostered over time.

Right.

We never go in business development guns drawn, saying, give us the sale, right?

Like, where's your money?

We are never in there asking for that.

It's usually, hey, man, we just want to put a face to the name.

We want to introduce our products and services.

Want to learn more about your company and if there's a fit, great, right?

Like, yeah.

The secret to being good at business development is to not sell shit.

You're not selling anything, you're selling yourself.

Sure.

But like, there's no real money exchanging hands.

That, that's for later on, right?

Like, that's, that's the next step.

In the beginning, it's about just fostering a relationship, building trust, building reputation, showing you actually know what you're talking about.

You have a product and service that people might actually care about.

And then when that opportunity presents itself down the line, they will reach out to you and ask you for that proposal, ask you for that rfp, ask you to be a vendor.

Right?

But we have to, there needs to be a step there.

And I think a lot of companies think they can just throw all the passive marketing materials out to the world.

They're like, oh, I'm spending $10,000 a month on Instagram ads is doing nothing.

And it's like, yeah, because you're still missing that very crucial part.

And what's funny, listenership, it's the same thing for like, for advertising a show, right?

Yeah.

Word of mouth, somebody telling somebody about a show is a thousand times more powerful than them seeing a cover art image of the BDP on Instagram.

Right?

Like, do we do it?

Yeah, because you have to do something.

But honestly, getting our listeners to say, hey, did you check out last week's show or did you see Tristan's show?

That is way more powerful than literally anything else.

You need somebody who is in a trusted position to be able to say, you gotta Check these guys out.

The more you can do that, the more successful you're gonna be.

Totally.

And that goes back to my previous statement.

And maybe this clicks for some people that it didn't.

And this can be this little moment.

So I ask you, just be open to this is marketing is just word of mouth amplified.

That's it.

Love that.

Until you can earn the right of word of mouth, you don't deserve marketing.

I'm sorry, you just don't deserve it.

Or it just doesn't work.

It's like unless you can have somebody who's already.

What you're kind of talking about as well is brand reputation, right?

Oh, yeah.

Like, what you're kind of saying is that if your brand isn't reputable, if people aren't already talking about it and you're out there marketing, sure, you got to get brand awareness, but at the same time, that doesn't mean it's going to convert to anything.

And maybe there is a stage, Tristan, where it just doesn't convert to anything.

Like, every company starts from nothing.

Right.

Maybe in the beginning there is just a point where brand recognition is all that you can do and it's just the step you're at.

Right.

But yeah, I love the part.

I love the part where you said that it marketing is not sales.

And I think maybe that's the important thing to take away from this show is that they are very different.

You're missing a step if you want to do sales.

Yeah.

And to your point earlier of like, what if it isn't just working great?

You're in the role of business development, like, that's what you're doing.

I. I've talked to.

So.

And I'll give you a good example of this.

I've talked to so many financial advisors that are coming to me to help them get more sales and convert because each sale is worth a ton of money to them.

Right.

And I'm like, everything that you need to do is not you posting on social media.

Yeah, you can go and do that.

What you need to do is you need to get bodies inside of an event, show them and demonstrate to them, like, what you're capable of doing, how much you understand their problems and display that for them.

Put every.

Lay it all out under the table.

And if you can do that, then you can start making sales.

I'm like, it doesn't matter what you think you can do on social media and stuff.

And I, I've had a lot of people come to me.

I, I've done a lot of consulting work for marketing and branding companies because they need more sales.

Yeah.

So to me, brand.

I love that.

I love that, by the way.

Hold on.

What?

All right, let's.

Let's go do some bd.

So.

And it comes down to is like, again, really reinforcing the same messages.

You need to understand who you're talking to and get that relationship built.

So if.

And if you can't do, you know, paid marketing, okay, great.

Now you're doing in person visits.

If you can't do in person visits, maybe you're calling people.

If you can't call people, can you email them?

If you can't email them, can you literally stand outside on one of these rooftops right here with a sign and scream, I don't know.

Worked for salesforce.

They generated billions of dollars in one year by staging a fake protest.

So, like, it doesn't matter.

It's like, can you go and do shit and if it doesn't work okay, then stop doing it and think about it in a different way.

But it ultimately comes down to the whole genesis.

The whole core of it is like, do you understand who your customer service?

And if you don't, you need to start there before you do anything else.

Yeah, yeah.

If there's a company right now and they sell products and services and, you know, maybe they're doing okay, but, you know, I mean, like, they're not stealing market share.

They're not really growing.

They're just maintaining status quo.

They don't really know how to do this thing better.

What would be, let's call it, you know, give me as many as you want, but let's call it, like, between two and three things that maybe they could start doing that would start turning things around for them.

Is there something they could start doing tomorrow that would result in more sales over time?

100%.

So I'll give you the three things.

Number one is pick up the phone and call every single previous client that you've ever had.

Ask them questions.

What did you like?

What did you not like?

What do you think we could have done better?

Talk to every single person.

Put that all inside of a document.

You now take that document, you go through, and you spend as much time as humanly possible understanding what is working and what isn't working.

Then from there, you can now create the strategy and the game plan of, like, what do we need to do different?

Maybe you find out that the reason why people aren't buying your product is because they.

They didn't get a delivery notification.

What if the whole reason is like as simple as like, oh, they just didn't understand what we were actually doing.

So they bought it thinking it was one thing and then they got it into something different.

It'll give you a lot more clarity of what you need to go and do now that you have that plan.

So that's the second thing is go and go through this thing and analyze like what do I need to be doing?

The third step is actually just go and start doing it.

For one company, it's a product based company, wrote a simple like email marketing campaign and it was like three days, three days of sending emails to all the past people.

It generated four figure, a mid four figure amount in revenue back to the company.

Wow.

So it, it's really just like, hey, can we just interact and talk with people?

Can we do this in a certain way?

And then put your own lens on it.

That's your brand.

The way that you think about your customers and the way your customers interact with you is your brand.

So in that it's simple, talk to your past customers.

If you have none, go find some do for free if you need to.

That's fun in the beginning.

Yeah, yeah, you need it, right?

So go talk to your customers, figure out why they like you or why they don't like you, and then go and start taking action on why they like you and why they don't like you.

Put that together and go out and talk to more people like that.

I love it.

Three easy steps.

What about, I know we're running short on time here, but what about pricing?

Like I know a lot of companies struggle with setting their prices, especially service companies.

Right.

Because it's really hard to tell sometimes what the value of your product or service is even worth when you're going in.

I imagine that this is a conversation with probably every single company you work with.

How do you help them settle on a price for their products and services?

Yeah, there's so many different ways to like break it apart if you're a product based company.

I always think about how can you either sit in the market and then just be more profitable in terms of like reducing your expenses because then your price doesn't matter or being the most expensive one in the market.

So that's my kind of lens.

I never really talk about like being the cheapest one just doesn't really work.

Then on the service side it's really like, okay, how do you do stuff?

Like service base is so, so huge.

Yeah.

So much stuff in it.

So on the service based side it's like, I just take a look at, like, what have we been pricing stuff at right now?

How have we been selling it?

And then look at the margins.

Because this comes down to almost like an accounting level is like, are you making enough margin?

Are you making enough profit to actually grow?

If you're like a salesperson or, you know, you're like a business development person, it's like.

And you have free roam over price.

It's like, what is an appropriate price?

You have to sit more in the market.

You can't be inappropriate about it.

If you're the business owner, the market, you could just say whatever you want.

You just might convert less people.

So when it comes down to figuring out an actual number, the easiest way that I found to do this is you just go and talk to people and you actually go through this process of asking them very detailed questions.

Again, it comes down to understanding them.

Figure out what the problem is, figure out where they want to go.

And then you just ask them, like, how much do you think this is costing you per year?

And if you can get a number, it's like, great.

If this comes in at like 10% of whatever this is costing you per year, just pay me 10% of whatever costs you in a year.

Yeah, right.

The other thing, too is that markets have their price, right?

Especially for services.

And people forget this, right?

Unless you have a massive differentiator or you lead the entire space, sure, at that point, you can probably charge what you want.

But if you don't, if you're new to an area or if you're in a highly competitive area, you do need to find a way to stay competitive.

So, like, for me, what I would always suggest in that case is call like 5 to 10 of your competitors, pretend to be someone else, and just ask them for rate guides.

Most people will send them to you, and then at least you have an idea.

Okay.

The range is, you know, anywhere between a hundred thousand a year and 200,000 a year.

And now I can.

I know as long as I'm within that range, I'm in a fair, reasonable range.

The other thing for consultants that I always think they have to consider is that most people did not go out to be consultants, to just become employees in their own business.

Yeah, yeah.

And a lot of them don't understand, and that's fair.

Right?

Like you, let's say that you worked at an organization or you've been an employee a long time.

You're like, oh, I can do this job as a consultant.

You don't factor in your overhead costs.

You don't factor in you're not going to be working 12 months of the year.

There's a lot of things you have to start factoring in.

Most consultants are only working between 800 and 900 hours a year.

It's about a quarter or, well, a little more than half of what they probably worked before.

So now making 50 bucks an hour doing what you did doesn't make any sense.

You need to charge $100 an hour.

Oh, but you haven't factored in now your taxes and your overhead costs and the cost of your computer, your Internet, your truck.

Yes.

Now you're another 50,000.

Right.

It's not uncommon that I see like consultant rates that are like under a hundred bucks an hour.

And I'm thinking, what in the world are you doing?

You're going to go broke.

Yeah, totally, totally.

So, and I think that's a really good point that you brought up around like getting people's like rate sheets and stuff because that can kind of, it can kind of help you craft the offer.

And I think that's what you identified is actually the real big problem that a lot of people have is like crafting the offer.

And it's like people don't understand where they see themselves and where they sit in the market.

So they don't know how to price, like price it because they don't see where they sit themselves in the market.

I'm always a big fan of like starting low and then working your way up.

So taking on the first.

Yeah, it's easy to increase prices.

It's really hard to reduce them.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, listen, I know the last 10 clients I have were $10,000 a month, but you're only three and you're like what?

That's right, yeah.

Or the, the giant, like I've seen this before and you know what, it works.

So I can't knock it.

Actually it does work.

Is like, hey, this is a ten thousand dollar program and then a bunch of like big Fred X's through.

Now it's only two,.

You know, so that, that does work.

I'm not the biggest fan of it.

I've used it before and it does work.

But I, I think it, it really depends on like what kind of space is your customer used to seeing it that way?

So again, I always like to kind of cheat the system and it's like, can we do something in a way where it's like someone doesn't understand or doesn't see it in the Same light as everyone else.

And then it.

That alone makes it unique.

Right.

Where it's.

If you can make that deal, where it's like someone's like, hey, you know, normally, like, a consultant is going to charge you $4,500 a month for this.

The way that we're going to do it is like you're going to pay up $2,000.

This is going to get you onboarded, trained, and like, okay, we're now running the program, but on the back half of it, we can do a commission split.

Now, jokingly, it's like, okay, well, if you don't do your homework, I'm going to charge you triple.

So if you don't get me all the stuff that you said you were going to do, I'm going to charge you three times that amount of money that month.

And, yes, you're going to give me your credit card.

So if you don't do it, I'm going to charge you more.

So there's a lot of different ways that you can kind of get creative with pricing.

Yeah.

Ultimately, and this is a hard one that I've dealt with, is like, you just have to go and test it.

You have to go and talk to people.

You have to test it.

You have to get the feedback.

I'm with you 100%.

And I would say most people.

And I'm just going to make this argument, most people getting into business are charging too little.

Yeah.

The reality is you can probably charge more than what you're charging today.

Right?

5%?

I don't know.

Yeah.

All.

But you do need to just be able to show your value.

The more, the better value you can show.

Once again, it's about what can you show?

Because people make buying decisions based on emotion.

Yes.

Which is what we've talked about the whole time.

But part of that, too, especially for a business, is, is this going to make me money or save me money?

If you can show them how it's going to make the money and save them money.

And I'm sure if you dive deep enough through the five whys experiment, Tristan, we'll get to you.

It's because they want to live on a beach in Malibu.

But it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day, if they see that your service is going to make them money or save them money, they're going to be in very likely.

Yeah, totally.

And then you just show them, like, hey, I've done this before with them.

And then actually do it.

Actually do that thing.

Do that thing.

You Say you can do.

Thanks for the money.

Important.

Really important.

You can actually perform it.

Yeah.

I'm going on that trip.

I promise you.

Thank you.

I'm taking the money, and I'm going to Malibu.

Oh, my God.

Dude, this has been amazing.

Please take us into sales link strategies for the people listening.

Yeah.

So sales link strategies.

I've realized, like, a lot of companies and stuff like that there's a lot of different things around, like sales and marketing and strategies and stuff.

So I really wanted a company where it's, like, it's authentic around, like, how to sell, how to market and stuff like that.

Really, it's just a place where people can come together, and then what we can do is we can just figure out how to link the sales together, hence the name Sales Link Strategies.

So a lot of the stuff that I do with clients is in and around.

Okay, let's actually put together a strategy, and then how quickly do we execute?

You know, a lot of people come to me like, hey, I need to hire salespeople.

What does this look like?

It's like, well, how ready do we need to be in order to hire salespeople?

So really, it's about, like, the systemization of what we have in place, going through that step by step, and then from there, it's actually getting the founder to be very okay with selling.

And if the founder's not okay with selling, I typically actually don't take them on as clients.

I'm very selective.

I only really work with maybe 25% of the people that come to me just because I'm like, I just can't do it.

I want to sprint.

If you're not ready to sprint, I'm not into it.

So.

Yeah, all the way from customer understanding.

You know, how do you get that customer intelligence going through that down to, you know, how do we build up a strategy and execute on it and then get people built into the company to be able to continue that execution.

Amazing.

Amazing.

And you operate in Edmonton, but obviously, can you work across Canada?

Do you work in the States?

What's the.

What's there?

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Yeah, I've done work for companies across Canada.

I've done some stuff with global companies.

Like, it's.

No.

Yeah, there's no limit to it.

If there's people and it makes sense, then it's awesome.

If it doesn't, again, like, I'd refer them to you or someone else that, you know, that's.

Don't send me your leftovers.

Yeah, listen, don't tell me the Crap.

That you don't want.

I don't want that.

Kelly, here's the trash.

It's okay.

I know it's.

I don't want them.

Kelly will take.

Kelly takes anything.

Listen, I know they don't have budget, but.

No, but it's more of like, if.

If I'm at a.

If I'm at a cafe, let's say.

And then the.

The server brings out, like, a key lime pie, and I'm like, oh, I'm not actually a huge fan of key lime pie.

And then Kelly's, like, drilling key lime pie.

Like, what, am I gonna eat it in front of me?

Do you take the key lime pie?

I'm not eating it.

You know, I think that's such, like, a.

It's such a taboo in the business world of, like, oh, they're my competition.

And I'm like, no, you idiot.

They're your collaborator.

That's right.

Yeah, I'm the.

I learned early on, especially in this space.

Honestly.

Come on.

Every business needs sales.

Every business needs business development.

Every business needs an accountant.

There is not enough people on earth to service all the businesses, period.

There's also, like, again, like, there's a lot of people where it's like, hey, I actually don't know how to do that.

Kelly does.

That's right, Kelly.

You're way better at building up pricing models than I am.

I, I.

My default answer is like, hey, have you talked to your accountant?

Okay, you need to make here.

Yeah.

Like, we could go do some market tests.

You go, like, man, you talk to your accountant, what they say, they're probably like, it needs to be 30% higher.

Yeah.

But, like, it's different ranges, and there's different overlaps, and there's always interesting stuff that can be done.

You know, I partner with so many different marketing companies to say, like, hey, listen, my client doesn't know how to convert stuff.

Yeah, we need to figure out how to convert it.

So can you come in, help us convert?

Great.

Awesome.

Let's go build someone into the company to then help them do the conversion side.

Dude, what you're doing is so, so valuable.

And I hope our listeners.

That's what they're getting today, is that, like, marketing and business development, they're part of the puzzle.

Right?

But having somebody who can actually close those deals for you, who can take that from somebody who's interested to somebody who's actually going to exchange dollars and cents for your product and service, that's what it's all about.

And honestly, Tristan, you're doing an incredible job at it.

Thank you.

Yeah, appreciate it.

I'll say this one thing, if that's cool, is there was someone and they may be listening to this.

So I hope there's some offense because we just need to understand how this is spitting in the face of marketers.

And I see this all the time.

If you have 70 plus leads or you get any kind of leads and each lead is worth a lot of money to you, some of these leads for this person was five figures.

If you are not staying up late talking to as many of those possible leads as humanly possible to turn them into something, you're wasting your time, you're wasting your life, and you're wasting your effort.

And I mean this sincerely because that is your revenue.

If you have 10 leads in each lead, if you close them, is worth $10,000.

That's a hundred.

That's a lot of money sitting there on the table.

And your willingness to go and go after them will tell you everything about the business.

And if you don't have the time, you need to make the time as a founder or as a salesperson to go and hit those leads as soon as they come in.

No less than an hour.

It needs to be like 10 minutes now.

The level of people wanting to be interacted with is so high.

Yeah.

So that's my piece on that.

Don't disrespect people.

Yeah.

Call.

Call people.

Pick up your phones.

Yes.

And I'll tell you what, in business development, same thing, man.

Like we, we live in a world where your phone is still your most powerful weapon.

Use that voice God gave you.

It's like I'm afraid of the phone.

It's like you're afraid of business.

Okay.

Yeah, well.

And I get it.

And I lot of people do struggle with it and you know, hand way up.

I struggled with it too.

But here's the thing.

What I realized was, is that there's never going to be a perfect pitch.

There's never going to be the perfect moment.

And the thing standing in the way of you right now is probably you.

So the sooner you can get out of your own way, you can face that fear, the sooner you're going to start closing those customers.

Totally.

I literally recorded a video while I was in the waiting room of me talking about like, oh yeah, there's always like pre call anxiety.

Yep.

I'm like, always.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't go away either.

No, it doesn't.

It's like I even said on the video, I'm like, damn it.

Like, it's the same thing every single time, dude.

Every time I sit down to do my calls, it probably still takes me like a solid like 30 minutes before I pick up the down phone and make the calls.

Right.

I'm still there.

I'm still right there.

Right.

But here's the thing.

I always make my calls.

Yes, because you do that 30 minutes.

That's right.

Because I do that 30 minutes.

Totally.

Justin, this has been incredible, brother.

Thank you so much for having or.

Sorry.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah, you're.

I'm on your show today.

Thank you.

You can sponsor it if you want.

Holy cow, has it been a long Friday.

Thank you so much for coming on the show.

If people want to connect with you, what's the best way to do so?

For sure, go look up LinkedIn.

Tristan Keller T R Y S T A N Keller K E L L E R I should be the first person that pops up on the feed.

Just follow, connect, send me a message.

I try.

I really, really, really try to message and connect with every single comment, every single message that someone sends me.

It's just really at the core of me staying connected with people and getting a finger on the pulse and understanding what you know and giving support where I can.

So it's the easiest way to go and find me no matter what.

I'm doing amazing.

Thank you so much for this conversation.

Dude.

I had a really great time with you.

It was better than I could have imagined.

Let's call it that.

I really enjoyed chatting with you today.

It's awesome, Kelly.

I know.

We'll corporately stalk each other.

Random networking events.

That's right.

We're both in Edmonton.

I'll have to come check out that sweet view you have one of these days.

Oh, yeah, totally.

Yeah.

We'll kick off a boardroom for some reason for nothing.

Yeah.

That's a tax write off, right?

Don't listen to that.

Yeah.

Until next time.

You've been listening to the business development podcast and we will catch you on 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 at www.capitalbd.ca.

See you next time on the business development podcast.