The 4-Week Business Turnaround

The 4-Week Business Turnaround

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 237 of the Business Development Podcast, and today we're talking all about the four week business turnaround. This show is for business owners who can't afford to wait. If your pipeline is dry, your revenue has stalled, or you feel like the wheels are coming off. You are in the right place.

Today we're gonna talk about a four week playbook to stabilize, rebuild, and get opportunities flowing again, fast. Stick with us. You are not gonna wanna miss this episode.

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

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 237 of the Business Development Podcast. My gosh, 237 episodes 250 coming around the corner, and of course, more incredible expert guests and more great business development advice for my rock stars out there.

Thank you so much for tuning in and joining us week over week, month over month and year over year. We appreciate you immensely. Today's episode is 150% for my entrepreneurs out there, my business developers, my companies who might be struggling with business development growth. Today is a very special episode.

We are talking all about the four week business turnaround. If you've been struggling with business development with growth stagnation. This episode will hopefully get you guys back on track and give you a four week roadmap back to prosperity. I'm very excited about it. I hope you get a ton of value from it, and it is different than the typical business development advice that I give.

Typically what we talk about is business development is about consistency over time. It's slow and steady, but I get it, that doesn't always work for people. Sometimes we need to dive in headfirst, light a fire and get things moving forward. And if that is you. Today's episode is for you. Before we dive deep into today's episode, I wanted to talk about a brand new challenge with the help of expert guest Gordon Sheppard.

I'm very, very excited to invite you to this challenge, and our challenge is called the Read Your Reviews Challenge. You've worked hard, you've earned the praise, and now it's time to share it loud and proud. The Read Your Reviews Challenge is about. Celebrating your impact and inspiring others to do the same.

Here is how to play. Number one, go live or record. Read three reviews you or your business have received on LinkedIn, Google your website, your podcast, whatever platforms you have. Read three reviews live. Number two, 100%. Be real. Share what those reviews meant to you and how they reflect the work you've done.

Authenticity will win the day on this one. Number three, post it. Upload your video on LinkedIn, Instagram, or anywhere else using the hashtag. Read your Reviews Challenge. And of course, if you could tag the Business Development Podcast. Lastly, tag 10 fellow business owners, leaders or professionals, and challenge them to step up to the read your reviews challenge, and then share, share, share.

Get your network to watch, comment, and share your video. The more we share, the more we amplify the incredible work happening all around us. And why would we do this? Because most people never hear about the amazing feedback that you are getting. It is your time to shine. This is your chance to confidently showcase your value and celebrate the clients and community who believe in you.

You deserve it. Let's celebrate together. I have already done mine. It is on YouTube. It is on LinkedIn. Come on over to the Business Development podcast page and see it if you need some inspiration. Thank you again to Gordon Sheppard, the Executive Wins podcast for pushing me to move forward with this. He really was the catalyst for this whole thing.

I'd love to say that it was my idea, but it really wasn't. Gordon Sheppard stepped up and was like, Kelly, I know this feels cringe, but just go for it. And yeah, here we are. We're doing it, and I hope this becomes a thing because you deserve it. Thanks for sticking with us. I hope you all take me up on this.

I hope you go for it. I know it's cringe. I know it's hard. Believe me, I've already done it. I've been there, done that. Got the t-shirt. It is your turn to do the same. Please, if you do this challenge, tag me in it. I want to see the incredible work you guys are doing. My Rockstar Community. You are all amazing.

Alright, let's just get into it. This week I want to speak to my business owners and developers who are struggling with growth and stagnation in their business. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Business development is a long game. It is incredibly hard to rush the process because time is a critical factor in all business development.

But what if time is simply not on your side? Well, then this episode is for you. Buckle up. This episode is not for the faint of heart. If you have what it takes and you're willing to put in the effort, it might just save your business. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, guys. Today's episode is not a typical business development podcast episode.

Today's episode is for people who need to turn things around immediately. It is gonna require more effort. In an incredibly rapid, rapid pace. But listen, if your business is struggling, this doesn't have to be the end of it. We can turn things around, but we have to take action and we have to dive deep, and we have to start moving forward today.

This is gonna be a four week process. It has been a challenge for me to put this together, but I hope that it is beneficial for you if you have questions about this. Please feel free. Reach out over LinkedIn if you're struggling. If your business is having challenges right now and you need some advice reach out to me on LinkedIn.

If I can help, I absolutely will. Let's just get into it. Week one, foundations urgency and goal setting. We have to first do a deep dive discovery of our company challenges and current risks. What is going on? Why are you struggling? Is it your marketing materials? Is it your proposals? Is it the lack of business development outreach?

Is it the lack of an ideal customer profile? We have to start to dive deep and try to understand where we are at. How much money do you have in the bank? How long can you continue at this pace? We need to know. Everything we need to know where we are at as a business and where we need to go. The next thing you have to come to as well is how much money do you need to generate each month, because this is going to be critical to digging ourselves out, right?

Maybe we just need enough money to get us through this next couple of months. Great. Make that the initial goal, and we can always move on from there at the end of our plan. But right now, we need to save your business. We need to dig you out of this hole. Figure out where you're at. Understand, you know, what are the challenges you're facing?

What are the current risks? How much money do you have? Can you make it another month, two months, three months? How much money do you need to make each month to get by? Let's try to have all of these numbers understood before we move forward. Next, we have to define urgent survival and success goals for the next 30 days, right?

This comes down to how many new clients do we have to achieve? What do we need as far as materials? We're gonna get into that shortly, but what do we need as far as materials in order to achieve these new clients? Can we actually keep up with our current client load? Can we sell our products and services effectively underneath our current situation?

Okay. Let's try to understand where we're at. Let's define what survival and success goals look like for the next 30 days. Next, we have to outline a turnaround roadmap of needs and expectations. What do you need? What do you need? How many new clients do you need? How much revenue do you need? Have this laid out.

Have every single dollar and cent accounted for. Make sure you have enough to cover your employee costs, your bills, and obviously the cost of providing your products and services. Figure out what those numbers are and make sure that they're listed out on a turnaround roadmap of your needs and expectations.

We have to make sure that we know where we are going and what we need before we move forward. And you have to make sure that everything is accounted for, not just your revenue goals, but can you make payroll, can you pay all of your expenses and still turn a profit in this time? Next, we must take immediate action.

Assess all of your active lead and opportunities, your open proposals, any quick wins that you can take and start to reach back out to these people immediately. We need a quick win as soon as humanly possible. So take a look at everything you have open, take a look at all the people you've met with in the past couple of months.

Take a look at every opportunity to provide an RFP. Maybe you can sharpen your pencil and land it quicker. Figure out what you can do to get revenue coming in the door as quickly as humanly possible. We can get into the new business development after, but if you already have opportunities on the door that are ready, that you've sent RFPs to, that you're waiting to follow up, maybe you haven't followed up.

Now is the time to dive deep. Now is the time to reach out to all these people. Book a follow-up meeting and start to negotiate in person, right? Everything closes faster, face-to-face. If you haven't had a meeting with these open proposals in a minute, book another meeting. Start that conversation. See if you can't lock something down immediately.

Guaranteed. There's something that's close. Get on it. Don't let it slip through your fingers, especially not right now. And last but not least, in week one, assign individual accountability for rapid action. Make sure that if there's somebody who's in charge of business development, they know what they're in charge of.

They know how many meetings they need to book. They know what is expected of them. Make sure every single member of your team knows what is expected of them in this next month, that it's going to be wild, but you need them to step up and you need them to own it. Make sure everybody understands without any doubt what is expected of them, what their role is, and what you need from them in this coming time.

Week two, marketing materials, audit and passive lead generation. Number one, review and optimize all marketing materials for maximum impact and clarity. Websites, brochures, visual appeal is absolutely critical. Remember, you're marketing to millennials at this point. Millennials and Gen Z millennials have an attention span of 12 seconds, gen Z, eight seconds.

You have to make sure that your marketing materials are beautiful, well laid out, not too wordy. They speak to your values, they speak to your services, and they speak to why your customer would want to buy them. You have to speak to them in terms that they understand. Make sure that all marketing materials are speaking to your ideal customers in a way that they will understand.

If you're selling passenger car tires, speak to them. As if they are an individual buying passenger car tires. If you're selling commercial tires, speak to the business and why your tires make sense for them. If you're selling to the mining industry, let's call it mining tires, speak to them on why your mining tires are best for their trucks, okay?

You have to speak to people in ways that they understand and are relevant to their industry. It is absolutely critical, so try to make sure that all marketing materials are speaking to your ideal customers in a way that they will understand. In a way that they will see value and in terminology that is relevant to the industry, also absolutely critical that we are not using too many words.

If you open a brochure and it is like three pages of words, you're gonna immediately close that brochure. Like, I don't care who you are. Nobody cares that much to read. You know, four pages of words. Use only as much wording as you have to to convey your message. Use graphics, images, video where possible.

To do that work for you, you have to make sure that all of your compelling selling points are in big, bold, beautiful letters. Use strong language, use powerful hooks. Try to find ways to say what you are going to say as short and sweet as humanly possible, and you will have more success building interest, because with marketing materials, the whole job at the end of the day is to build interest that leads to a face-to-face meeting.

Where you can handle the hard questions and build trust in person. Marketing materials do not sell people. Sell. Use the marketing materials to get you to that face-to-face in-person meeting. Always remember to speak to your target buyers by industry. We talked about this really briefly, but make sure that all of your marketing materials, if you market to multiple industries, that you have marketing materials that speak to each one specifically.

Like I said before, if you sell to civilian. Have marketing materials that sell to individuals. If you're selling commercially or to industry, make sure that you have marketing materials that speak to each industry, whether it be oil and gas, forestry, manufacturing. Speak to each one like they're an independent person, like they matter, and in terminology that makes sense for that industry and location.

We have to market to people in terms that they understand. It will not work properly if you cannot speak to people in terms that are relevant to the industry that they work in. So make sure that the images are specific to the industry. Make sure that the wording and terminology is specific to the industry, and if this means you have to have multiple brochures.

Then yes, you have to have multiple brochures and you should be getting on it immediately. It will have much harder and better impact for you and convert way better. Take the time, make multiple brochures if you have to, and speak to each industry like they are your only industry, okay? It will be powerful, powerful, powerful for you and your business.

Your brochures and websites are absolutely critical to building interest. Once again, your brochures and websites, especially if you're in B2B, they're not selling shit. They're not selling anything. Remember that they are not supposed to. What your brochures and websites are supposed to do. Are this build enough interest so that when a real person reaches out and asks for a meeting, says, I can't wait to introduce our company to you because I think we're gonna be super valuable.

Can we set this up? When they review your website, when they see the brochures, they say, wow, this looks super interesting. I would love to learn more. That is it. That is it. Don't. Don't forget what the whole point of your marketing materials are for. They are not to sell. This is not B2C. Okay. And B2C. Yes, they are to sell.

But in B2B, it's about building interest to lead to a face-to-face meeting. And once trust is established, you will be offered an opportunity to create an RFP or a proposal. Okay? But you have to do this in order. Your marketing materials are to build interest. Do not forget that. Use them properly and make sure that if you look at your marketing materials, you say, wow, this is cool.

This would make me interested. I would book a meeting from this. If that is the case, you are on the right track. Start your passive lead generation strategies immediately to create inbound opportunities and brand recognitions fast. Now is the time to do your website updates if you have to, to create the new brochures.

To make sure that you're posting on social media with regards to your company with the changes you're making. Keep people in, keep people informed. Don't be afraid to say, Hey, we're going through major changes. Would you like to learn more? Let us update you along the way. Use social media posts, use group posts, use personal posts to start to build brand recognition as well as interest.

In your products and services. Okay, now is the time to start those passive lead generation strategies. If you have budget for it, don't be afraid to do some advertising campaigns during this time on LinkedIn, on Instagram, whatever works best for your organization. But now is the time to start to activate those passive strategies to get interest, to get eyes on your products and services, and to start building some passive brand recognition.

Email sequences are great at this time, reaching out to all past clients if you have not done so already. Absolutely critical. Keep them informed of the changes. Keep them informed of your products and services. Keep them informed that you would love to continue to work with them, and if there are any opportunities to do so, you would love to book a meeting.

Now is the time to start to reach out to everyone you've ever worked with. Everyone who's ever shown interest, as well as build brand recognition utilizing passive strategies like LinkedIn posts, like group posts and websites and brochures, things along those lines. So let's dive deep week two into our marketing materials.

Make sure that they're on point. Make sure we are also reaching out to all possible past clients, as well as opportunities that could be easily converted. Week three, targeting CRM and pipeline build out. This might be one of the most important steps that we work on today, and that is identifying our ideal customer profiles.

Ideal customer profiles are the right people who understand our products and services are in the right industry to need them, and who will actually know what it is you do and what you sell and why it's important to the company when you reach out to them. This is the most critical task in making sure that business development is successful and leads to a meeting, which will hopefully lead to revenue for your companies over time.

And this is also the spot where a lot of companies run into trouble because they're not quite confident on who at the organization they wanna work for actually buys the products and services. So you have to do the detective work on this. And the more detective work you do, and the better you understand your customer, the more successful you are going to be, period.

Mark my words on this. It makes all of the difference, and most of the companies that I work at once they realize this, they're like, holy cow, we should have been doing this the whole time. So in week three, we must create or refine our ideal customer profiles. We have to fast build hyper targeted outreach lists.

We have to make sure that we know the buying positions for our products and services. Is it the procurement manager? Is it. The field superintendent, is it the project manager? Is it the health and safety director? Is it the CEO? Is it the founder? Is it the owner who buys our products and services and who understands why our product and service is valuable to their organization?

And remember, this can be different positions in different industries. What works for oil and gas will not necessarily work for forestry, and what works for forestry will not work in industrial manufacturing. And what works in car manufacturing won't work in. In retail, right? We have to understand each industry and the buying positions for our products and services in each industry in order to do this, right?

But if you nail this, if you get this right, it is going to make everything easier for you. The cool thing about this is once we understand the buying positions at the relevant industries, it makes it super, super easy. Like never been easier. To connect with the right people and introduce our products and services and book meetings.

You can literally search on LinkedIn, the buying position. Title, procurement manager, supply chain manager, director of operations, founder owner, CEO. In a location and start to pick out the relevant contacts for you to reach out to and introduce your products and services to. And we can connect with 100 of these people each week individually over LinkedIn.

So as you can imagine, this is gonna be a major part of your strategy. As we move forward into this next section, it's time to implement our CRM systems. So now is the time. If you have not done so already, if you're still working from Excel spreadsheets, we are about to change your world. Today we are hopping into starting our CRM, our customer relationship management software.

2025, we have some of the best CRM systems on planet Earth. It is no longer good enough to just have business cards strung all over your desk to be utilizing Excel. There are much, much better programs to do so at this point. We have to be utilizing CRMs. I personally use Pipedrive CRM.

It is probably not the best, but it is the one that we picked early on to just say we needed one. To utilize to standardize across all capital business development and capital business development client systems. So we chose Pipedrive. You might choose Salesforce, you might choose HubSpot. You might choose a myriad of other CRM systems.

No problem. My only rule with CRMs is make sure you use a dedicated one. Don't just use one because it's part of your ERP system. If it's part of an ERP system, very likely it was an afterthought and it's not going to be fast. It's gonna be slow and clunky. These other ones, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, they are designed to be fast to assist your business development reps.

To make sure that everything is being done as quickly, efficiently, and with as many AI tools for them as possible. Okay. Utilize a dedicated CRM. That is my one rule with this. Also, the way that you lay out your CRM is absolutely critical as well. Make sure that the flow is set up as follows. Always have the first stage of your CRM system, your digital introductions.

What does this mean? These are people that you have reached out to over LinkedIn, over Instagram, and you've just introduced your company. You've attached a couple brochures, you've connected with them. What we are trying to do with this is create warm leads. So these are gonna be people that you have connected with on LinkedIn.

You've introduced yourself personally, you've attached a brochure for your products and services, and you've said I'd love to connect with you at a later time. These are now moved into the digital introduction stage of your CRM for future contact tracking and follow up. The next stage is contact made.

These are all the people in your weekly follow up stage. What this assumes is you have found direct contact information for these people. You either have their direct work emails or their direct work phone numbers or cell phone numbers. You have a way to reach out to them weekly and you know for a fact you have one the right person and two their right contact details.

Contact made stage, we're following up once per week until we either disqualify them or book the meeting. Very simple. The next stage is back burner. These are people who've told you to go pound sand. These are not good opportunities. However, we don't want to just delete them because you wanna make it easy to check in the future.

You don't want, for instance, your teams to be following up with the same people over and over and over again if they're not interested. Have a back burner stage. Your next stage is called future opportunities. These are the people that you've reached out to. They've said, you know what? Not right now, but maybe in six months, great.

Move them to the future opportunity stage. Make sure that you put in there when you need to follow up and follow up with them appropriately at that time. The next stage after future opportunity is the one we all care about meeting booked. Great. Everything we do is to get to the meeting book stage. Once you have a meeting scheduled with them, move it to meeting booked.

Okay. Once again, the whole goal is to move people from the contact made stage into the meeting book stage as often as humanly possible. The stage after meeting booked is called Next Steps. Why? Because at the end of every single meeting we have to be asking the five magic words. What are the next steps?

Are there RFPs coming? Can we get on a vendor list? Are there any upcoming jobs for us? Should we have a follow-up meeting? What are the next steps? Make sure that you clarify that in the meeting itself. Move them to next steps, and then make sure that you're tracking in there what you need to be doing to keep this deal moving forward for you after next steps.

Real simple. Current customer. Once you've gotten an RFP, you've submitted a proposal. Hopefully you've won. Move them to current customer and make sure that at this point they are being account managed by an account manager within your organization. Account management and business development, they're very different.

I've talked about it many times on the show. There's lots of episodes on it. If you just search that. At the end of the day, they're two very separate positions and need to be treated. As such, make sure that all current customers are being account managed at least quarterly. Now, make sure that once you have people in the weekly follow-up stage, that you are using direct outreach efforts.

Phone and email are absolutely critical. You have to track these things down. It is not that hard to track down phone and email information, most people, if you look at their location on LinkedIn, you call that office and you ask to speak with them. Nine times outta 10, you're going to be able to get passed through to them, or they're going to be able to give you the correct contact information.

We have to be directly contacting our ideal customers. In order to get those meetings, make sure that you are utilizing direct contact methods, direct phone number, direct email. After this guys, we have to be doing daily active marketing. Active marketing means just that we are physically reaching out ahead of a need to introduce ourselves, introduce our companies in direct ways.

Phone, email, or LinkedIn. Dm, phone and email are still the most powerful on their own. So wherever possible, use phone, if not possible, use email. And then last but not least, use LinkedIn direct message in order to follow up with these people on a weekly basis, asking for what you want, which is a face to face meeting, or a teams or virtual meeting.

Okay, we have to get the meeting. Everything we do is to get to the meeting. Why? Because the meeting is where trust is established. And once trust and credibility are established, opportunities tend to follow. So what do I want you guys to do? This is the part where it's gonna get maybe a little different than what I would normally teach.

We now have to hammer this really hard. We're assuming your organization is in trouble. We're assuming we need a quick win and we need it fast. I don't know how many people you have on your team. So I want you to assume that this is for one individual at a time. If you have a team of five, that's five people doing this.

I want you to start by making 20 direct calls per day to potential opportunities. This is not the same people 20 times. This is 20 different people each day. Only following up again after one week. Okay? We don't wanna piss people off. We don't wanna annoy them. Once per week falls under the radar. So what does this mean?

This means a hundred people per week. If you are on this five days a week, it's a hundred people. Different people every single week. I want you to do 20 calls or direct emails, and I want you to do 20 digital introductions over LinkedIn each day. So that's 100 each. That's a hundred calls or emails. And 100 digital introductions each week where possible.

Okay? This means that you can be doing it through connections that you've connected with or through InMails if they're available to you. InMails are less effective, but if you have them, use them. And the next thing I want you guys to remember, this might sound like a lot, but 20 calls does not actually take that long, especially once you hit a cold call.

Cadence, you guys should be able to make 20 calls in an hour. No problem. It's always hard to get rolling with cold calls. I get it. I still run into the exact same problems. I still do it at Capital Business Development. The first five are tough. After five, you hit a cold call cadence and the remaining 15 are like that.

They'll go by like snap of fingers. It's called a cold call Cadence, and it's absolutely powerful, so I get it. It's hard to make cold calls. It feels that way, but once you make five, I. The remaining are easy, and once again, you don't have to stop at 20. If you're on a roll and you wanna do 40, do 40, remember you're in trouble.

You gotta dig yourself out. You gotta lock down meetings. You do whatever it takes. I'm just suggesting that 20 is a great pace for each day. If you're doing this five days a week to get out of a hole. But if you feel like you can do more, great. What I would say is this is a short-term measure, not a long-term solution.

We are trying to dig ourselves out of a hole. This is not sustainable. Very unlikely, but. If you gotta do this short term to win, you do it. I also want you guys to start sending 100 LinkedIn invites every single week on your personal LinkedIn accounts. You can send 100 invites per week to ideal customer profiles.

This is non-negotiable, guys. We have to be sending our 100 invites a week from this point forward, even after you dig yourself outta this mess and you're doing great. This is absolutely part of our weekly LinkedIn strategy. From this point forward, we send 100 invites a week to ideal customer profiles, which we've outlined at the beginning of this section.

Once we've identified the buying positions, we can search those positions on LinkedIn. We can then search the locations that are ideal for us, and we can start connecting with those people on a mass level. What's the point of this? The point of this is to create connections, digital introductions, add these people to the digital introduction stage of our CRM to find contact details and start to reach out directly.

But the cool thing about this is, is all of these people who you've now connected with are going to see your posts, okay? They're gonna see your personal posts, they're gonna see your corporate posts, and they're gonna start to build brand recognition, not just with you, your personal brand, but your corporate brand as well, which is super, super powerful.

We'll start to build trust and brand recognition over time, making it easier for you when you reach out to them directly to ask for that face-to-face meeting, to do a proper introduction to book that meeting, and hopefully close that business in the future. Okay. 100 invites a week. If you don't use 'em, you lose 'em.

You have to take advantage of this. The other thing that you get as well is if you have a company page, you get 250 invites per month, make sure that you are using them as well. Once again, if you do not use them, you lose them. Make sure that as you are following up with these people, you're making the calls, you're sending the emails, you're asking for what you want, you have to ask for the meeting.

All of this work you're doing, it's all to get you to a meeting. Why? Because in the meeting is where trust is established. A relationship is created and an opportunity can be asked for. All the business development work we are doing is to get you to that meeting. Don't forget the goal. Keep your eyes on the prize, and the prize is the meeting.

Make sure all of these people you're connecting with on LinkedIn, that you're sending an introduction of yourself, you're attaching a brochure to those introductions. That you are adding them to the digital introduction stage of your CRM. We have to be consistently weekly populating our digital introduction stage of our CRM so that we have warm leads to reach out to in person and ask for that face-to-face meeting and that opportunity as we go.

Remember to always find the direct contact details for these people. It's, it's easier than you think. There's lots of tools available to you, if you like, but I always find it's pretty easy just to call the mainline office at the location that it says they're at, at LinkedIn. Don't be afraid to call the main line.

Just ask to speak with them or ask for their contact details. I think you'll find more often than not, you will get it. A lot of people as well also leave their contact details on LinkedIn, so once you connect with them, click the contact details and just see is there direct email there? Is there direct phone number there?

You might find that it is, and that saves you an absolute ton of time if you would like. There are incredible, incredible programs now that you can use. One of them is called Surf, S-U-R-F-E. What it is is a LinkedIn CRM system integrator. It connects LinkedIn with your CRM, so you can add contact details really easy.

You can add projects really easy. And it actually has a feature as well to help you find contact information if need be. I only use it if I need to. I try to do things old school, but you do you, if it works for you, great. You can find their contact details utilizing a program like Surf. It's the one I would recommend.

Okay. Let me first off, just like. Acknowledge. Yes. This is intense. We are talking about a life and death scenario for your business, okay? This is very intense. This is not typical business development. This is assuming that you guys are in some serious trouble, okay? 20 contacts every single day. A hundred contacts a week, a hundred phone calls, or a hundred emails a week alongside a hundred Digital introductions is a lot.

I get it. But we are in a life and death situation. We are trying to turn your business around in four weeks. Business development is not fast. First off, it is a long game normally, right? But if we need to have results and we need to have results quick, we need to talk to a lot of people quick because you are kind of looking for a needle in a haystack at this point.

You're looking for the people who need your services today. Okay? Business development is typically a long game. Typically takes six to eight months before you start to get real traction or real opportunities coming in the door, right? You gotta reach out to people, you gotta get 'em ahead of the need, and you gotta wait for that need to materialize.

What you were trying to do with this is talk to so many people. That somebody has that need today. Okay, so we're trying to kind of get ahead of the need with this, but understand that yes, this is intense. Yes. This is not sustainable long term. Yes. This is a short term strategy to get you out of a whole and transition into a better.

Business development strategy as we move forward. So I get it. I can already hear you guys saying, holy crap, this is a lot. Yes, it is a lot. Because what we are talking about right now is a life and death situation for your business. I'm trying to save your business in four weeks. It is going to take a lot of effort on your part.

This is not for the faint of heart, but this is for people who do not want to lose, okay? I would put in this time, so understand. I get it. I can already see you guys pushing back on this. I would be pushing back on this, but I also understand it's a life and death situation. We need to dig you out of a hole, and I think this could do it.

Alright, week four, LinkedIn active outreach and program synthesis. Okay, so like I talked before, we have to be mastering LinkedIn for fast warm connections and inbound leads. We have to start utilizing LinkedIn for the incredible, incredible tool that it is. You can't even do business development properly anymore, guys, without utilizing LinkedIn.

So just take that for what it is. You need LinkedIn and you gotta be utilizing it weekly to start generating leads for your business. So we have to be sending our 100 invites every single week. We have to make sure that our LinkedIn profiles are completed fully. Our recommendation section, we're asking for recommendations from past clients.

Our featured section is featuring our website, any programs we might have on any coaching programs or whatever else you do. Make sure that you have links to it in your featured section, and make sure that every part of your LinkedIn profile that can be completed is from the banner image all the way down to your profile.

Make sure that every part of your LinkedIn speaks to you, your business, what you stand for, from your banner to your profile photo to your description. To your services. Make sure everything in there is completed, filled out, and leads your potential customer, your potential client, on a journey to why they want to meet with you, why you are valuable for their organization.

You sell in every part of your LinkedIn from your banner image down to your recommendation section. Okay? Once our profile is completed, we are going to start to utilize LinkedIn properly. We are gonna be posting two to three times per week mixing business. And personal posts. Talk about your wins. Talk about your challenges.

Talk about life, talk about balance and how it's challenging. Talk about massive wins you've had at your business. Talk about your employees, and of course, pepper in corporate posts talking about your current services. Talking about your current projects you're working on. But remember, your corporate posts will get way less engagement than your personal posts, and what you're trying to do is draw eyes to your page.

So make sure that you are peppering in one corporate post to every two to three personal posts to start to get more eyes on your page. Remember too, you are adding 100 potential customers every single week, so not just new people. But all of the people that you've added in the past are gonna start to see your posts and start to connect with you on both a personal, professional, and company level.

This is valuable and this is the future of business. We have to have to have to be utilizing social media. To our advantage. Okay? I want you guys, like I said before, if you have a corporate page, make sure that you're sending your 250 corporate page invites per month. Most people I talk to don't even know they have this.

You can invite people to your corporate page 250 per month. Start doing it. Start inviting potential customers to your pages. Make sure that you're sending your 100 personal connections every single week. To ideal customers, we have to be making sure that we are constantly filling our funnels with people who can buy our products and services and see our posts.

Not to mention we're adding these people to the digital introduction stage of our CRMs for future direct. Contact. This is our funnel guys. This is the funnel we're utilizing LinkedIn warm introductions to build that funnel. Also, whenever you introduce yourself over LinkedIn and you send, you know a message to a new connection, attach a brochure and let your brochure do the selling.

You introduce yourself, who you are, what you do in a personal kind way. Let that brochure do the talking and guess what? Nine times outta 10, even if they don't respond to you, they will open your brochure and they'll look at at least the first or second page. Okay, this is valuable. What did it do? It warmed up that contact for when you reach out in person, even if they didn't respond, it warmed them up so they know who you are and they know what your company is.

This is extremely, extremely valuable when it comes to booking the meeting. One other thing that I talk about pretty heavily guys, is utilizing LinkedIn groups to expand your reach exponentially. Listen, I don't care what company you are, you probably don't have more than 10,000 followers to your page.

Almost every single LinkedIn group has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people following it, and you can do 20 group posts every single week. Post in these individually. You can do the same post multiple times, but don't reshare it. Post in each group like it's the very first time. Copy the post, paste it in there, attach the image, attach the video, whatever it is.

But I want you guys to start doing 20 group posts every single week in groups that are relevant to your business. So if you're in oil and gas, start posting in the oil and gas groups. If you're in forestry, start posting in forestry groups, things like that. But start to post in up to 20 different groups each week.

Measure them for impressions, see which ones are giving you lots of impressions. Double down in those, delete the groups that aren't giving you anything and add in other groups, but start to maximize your reach. I want each and every one of you guys to start to aim for at least 5,000 impressions per week in your group posts.

This is a great place to aim for, and then obviously as you hit that up the target by another 5,000 up the target by another 5,000. I think in time you guys will be able to consistently break 10,000 impressions every single week, getting new eyes on your company, on your products and services, and most importantly, on you and your personal brands as you start to build them.

And last but not least, on week four guys. Double down on anything that is leading you to meetings. Double down on all strategies that are leading to meetings. We must measure success right now in meetings. Meetings lead to relationships, RFPs, RFQs, and new business and new revenue for you and your organization over time.

And right now it is critical. Meetings are everything. If phone calls are leading to meetings, which I'm pretty confident, they will be double down on them. If email campaigns are leading to meetings, double down on them. If your LinkedIn messages are just incredible and they're leading to meetings, double down on them. Anything that is leading to meetings right now, double down on it. Make sure that we are getting meetings. They are everything when we are in trouble. Meetings always lead to opportunity, whether right now in the moment or down the line, book the meetings, establish the relationships, build the trust, and the revenue will come.

Now, hopefully by this point we have dug you out of the hole that you are in, and I get it. It's a lot. You're probably exhausted. Your team is probably exhausted, but great. You made it out. You are great. You're gonna survive now, what? Week? Five and beyond. We've been crushing it. But listen, this isn't the end.

You just dug yourself out. But this is not the end. You might be outta the fire, but you are still up shit creek. Okay? We have to get outta the woods here. Continue all high level efforts until you are at capacity. Or are comfortable again. Okay? You need at least one more month of this level of performance, okay?

If you've dug yourself out, great. Keep at this, everything you've done to dig yourself out. Keep at it for at least another 30 days. We need to get ahead of this. We need to get out of Shit Creek and up onto the top of the mountain again. Then we can slow it down and we can reevaluate and we can build a better plan.

Initiate a sustainable weekly cadence that support your meeting requirements. Obviously, you've been doing everything you should know at this point how many meetings you need to get to start closing business. You'll start to learn. What is your closure rate on meetings? Are you closing 50% of the time?

Are you closing 80% of the time? You'll be able to start to see, okay, I need to get X amount of meetings per month to sustain my current level of performance. Okay? Figure out what that is and initiate a sustainable weekly cadence that supports your new meeting requirements. You must start tracking and measuring your results weekly.

Okay. I do a weekly report every single week for both myself and for all my clients, stating how many digital introductions did I make? How many people did I connect with on LinkedIn? How many invites did I send? How many phone calls did I make? How many emails did I send? How many new contacts are added to the CRM?

Who did I meet with this week? What were the results of those meetings? We have to be tracking? Everything because over time these weekly results, these weekly reports are going to give you statistics on your organization. How many phone calls does it take on average to book a meeting? How many emails does it take on average to book a meeting?

These are going to be very valuable for you and your organization to either refine and get better, or just start to understand what does it actually take to grow your business? Weekly reports are valuable and every single business development representative of your organization should be completing them.

Lastly, we have to know our revenue targets, our closure rates in order to understand how many meetings we have to attain, and then we have to hold people accountable to those meeting goals per month. Okay? We have to measure success in meetings. Meetings are everything. I have lots of shows on this. If you wanna go back, there's lots of information where I'm talking about measuring success in meetings.

But we have to measure success in meetings because meetings are everything. Meetings are what drive business growth, period. Remember, no matter how you found this episode, things are scariest right before you take action. Action has a funny way of showing you light at the end of the tunnel. Chin up. Don't quit.

You got this. Thanks for sticking with us guys. I wanted to also introduce you to something pretty cool at Capital. We've been working behind the scenes to create an initiative that would be absolutely incredible for most businesses. And I know many of you listening today might be facing the exact challenge that we're talking about in this episode.

Stalled growth, inconsistent results, or just a lack of direction when it comes to business development, and that's why I'm excited to introduce you guys today to Capital Catalyst. Capital Catalyst is an affordable, yet incredibly powerful monthly program that gives you access to senior level business development, strategy, leadership, and execution support without the cost of a full-time executive.

It's about building a business development engine inside your company so that your team can drive consistent, measurable growth with clarity and confidence. And if that sounds like something that you might need, please reach out to me directly. You can connect with me on LinkedIn at Kelly Kennedy, or just send me an email at podcast@capitalbd.ca and I'd love to have a conversation with you and show you how we can help get your business development back on track.

Thanks for tuning in guys. I hope this episode was powerful for you. I hope we were able to dig you out of a hole, and I very much look forward to chatting with you down the line. Shout outs this week. Vijayan Swaminathan, Jamar Jones, Gary Noseworthy, Andrew Z. Brown, Mike Hayes, Kapil Kalra, Alinnette Casiano, Iza Montalvo,

Shannon Smith, Nadir Ali, Oliver Ramirez, Faraz Hussain Buriro, Victor Pech, Trystan Keller, Jack Dyer, Tami Crea, Naman Toshniwal, Colin Harms, John Pelley, Rodney Lover, and Cruz Gamboa. Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in. Sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.