Business Builders Podcast

How To Improve Your BD Game with Bill Caskey

September 17, 2022 Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian Season 2 Episode 28
Business Builders Podcast
How To Improve Your BD Game with Bill Caskey
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Becoming a high achiever takes focus, commitment, and curiosity, which drives us to learn. Today our hosts Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian are talking with guest Bill Caskey about his advice on becoming a high-achieving business development professional. Bill has been training sales teams and executives since 1990. He is also a co-host of the wildly successful Advanced Selling Podcast, the top sales training podcast in the world with over 12 million downloads. The advice he shares is real-world and can be put into practice in our organisations immediately.

The topics we cover in this episode are: 

  • The difference between sales and business development
  • The best attributes of great business development people
  • Do salespeople make good business development people
  • What pitfalls do business development people fall into, and how do they get unstuck
  • The number one thing business development people can do to improve their performance
  • Is the old saying, always be closing, a good mindset for modern business development
  • Advice for business owners, execs and managers to help their business development people succeed
  • What to do if you don't have any sales or business development people


Be sure to check out Bill Caskey's podcast, the Advanced Selling Podcast.

Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Brenton Gowland:

Today on The Business Builders podcast, we're talking with Bill Caskey, co host of the world's top sales training podcast, which has over 12 million downloads. Bill is sharing his advice with us about how we can become high achieving business development professionals from his more than 30 years experience in training sales teams and executives. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And Ron, it's great. We've got a guest here from the US today with us.

Ron Tomlian:

I'm really looking forward to that.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, absolutely. So if you've just started listening, we've been doing a series on driving business development. We started about seven episodes ago looking at when we should get serious about business development. And then we dove in with how to create a business development plan, managing your pipeline, running BD meetings and how to win as a team. Then we spoke with a high performing business development professional about their process. And in our last episode, we explored the business development mindset, which brings us to today, where our guest will be speaking with us about how to improve your business development results. But before we introduce our guest, Ron, we should probably talk about our sponsors.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, of course, there's the business builders, SA Business Builders networking group.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes, and we've got another event coming up this week.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. I'm looking forward to that too.

Brenton Gowland:

Indeed. And then there's Adapt_CO, which is me. So I help business owners and companies take control of their marketing, making myself redundant in the process. So my job is to ensure businesses build an effective marketing function that gets long term results. So that's just a quick overview of our sponsors this week, because we want to give our guest as much time as possible to share his expertise. And on that our guest today is Bill Caskey. He's a sales development leader and experimenter who's been improving B2B sales teams and executives since 1990. His philosophies and strategies have fueled explosive growth in sales and profits for his clients. And Bill is passionate about sharing his ideas about selling, business life, money and meaning. But his work expands beyond business to business and individual training and coaching. He's also an author, and the books he's written include; Same Game New Rules, Rewire The Sales Mind, The Sales Playbook, and Email It. Now Bill, also co hosts the advanced selling podcast, which is on iTunes. It's a weekly podcast counselling sales forces and leaders all over the globe to seek to improve their businesses. Now this programme is the top sales podcast in the world with wait for it. Over 150,000 downloads a month.

Ron Tomlian:

Wow. Wow!

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, well, that beats us, Ron. And they've got 12 million downloads in 16 years. I hope we get to a million downloads, but that will probably take us a few years. So that's really impressive. Now Bill is also the creator of the High Achiever mentoring programme, a small group coaching experience for high income sales professionals. And he also blogs extensively at www.billcaskey.com. What a bio! Now I came across Bill through listening to the Advanced Selling Podcast. One of my mentors recommended the podcast to me seven years ago, and I've been listening ever since. I've found it extremely useful in helping me develop sales strategies to improve my business development skills. So I've also gone on to join the sales coaching programme that Bill runs called the ASP Insider Programme, where people from all around the globe come together once a month for Group Sales coaching. Now, these are great sessions and we all learn a whole lot so I can testify, Bill has a lot of experience to share. So hello, Bill. It's a pleasure to have you join us today.

Bill Caskey:

Brenton. Thank you for inviting me on. Ron, I appreciate it. And congratulations to you guys for the podcast. You know, a lot of times people say I need to do a podcast, I should do a podcast, I want to do a podcast. But you guys are doing it. So way to go.

Ron Tomlian:

Thank you.

Brenton Gowland:

Thank you. Actually, to be truthful, the inspiration came from listening to the Advanced Selling Podcast, I thought we had to get cracking and do something similar. So you've inspired us really. So there you go.

Bill Caskey:

Well, I can tell you guys have the nack. You guys have the gift of, the gift of gab. So you'll do fine with it. And I'm happy to help any way I can today.

Brenton Gowland:

Excellent. So we really want to learn from your experience today because I know that you and Bryan Neale, who you host the Advanced Selling Podcast with have published more than 700 episodes just on sales. So it's a huge topic. And we've probably seven episodes on business development and only just scratched the surface. So we want to apply your expertise to the topic and we want to start the ball rolling with a question we come across a whole bunch.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay. Yeah, I'd like to. It's something that people talk to me about and something I'm always interested in. What's the difference between sales and business development from your perspective?

Bill Caskey:

Well, that's a good way to start. I'm not you know, everybody has an opinion about that. And I did some research before we recorded today and everybody has a different perspective of the difference between business development and sales. I would say that my sense is that business development is a little bit higher level strategic marketing. It includes, you know, partnerships and opening up new markets, and how are we going to go to market it's more of a go to market scene, I think, than the sales to me, the salesperson or sales team is responsible for generating revenue, harvesting the leads that maybe business development creates, but I think there are two distinct differences. However, in the US, a lot of people just call it the same. They just say, yeah, he's in BD. And what they really mean is he's a salesperson, or she's a salesperson.

Ron Tomlian:

So that's pretty much the same experience. Yeah.

Bill Caskey:

I've had same experience. Yeah. Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

Cool. So based on your experience, as well, what are the best attributes of great BD people?

Bill Caskey:

I think one attribute that business development people have, and that is the ability to look out longer term. I think sales, we get stuck in this 30 day, quarter year mentality. And I think a business development person probably has a longer view. So I think that's one attribute of a BD person is to be able to look and say, where are we going, as a company? We want to get from 10 million to 20 million in the next three years. How are we going to develop our customer base, develop strategic partnerships, develop referral sources? How are we going to develop this plan? So that leads will be frequent and consistent, and there'll be coming into our sales team? So I think number one is just the ability to look longer term, and be a little bit more strategic instead of tactical?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah.

Bill Caskey:

I think the salesperson says, How am I going to land this client? The BD person says, How are we going to approach all clients in this in this industry or in this niche? So I think I think that's number one is attributes. And the number two thing, and as I was planning out some of my remarks here, I think the business development people need to be better at asking themselves the question, how is this going to work? How is this going to work? And what I mean by that is, I hear a lot of times a company will come to me and say, Yeah, we have a business development person who's developing referral sources or developing partnerships in our market. And when I say, well, how's that working? Most of the time, they say, it's really not, and they go out and they land the, they land the strategic partner, and then it ends, and they go off and find the next strategic partner. In the meantime, I think strategic partnerships generally are under leveraged, I don't think we do a good job at leveraging those relationships that we're out there trying to build. So you guys may disagree with that. But I'm a big fan of asking the question. Well, how's that gonna work? I ask that of politicians. We're going to spend 20 billion on this wastewater treatment. Okay, how's that going to work? Well, I don't know. I haven't developed a plan. So you want 20 billion of my money, but you don't really have a sense of how it's all going to work. And I think those that's a very simple question that BD people can ask, salespeople can ask, BD leaders can ask. Okay, we get this partner on online and on stream, how is it all going to work? And if you ask that question, I think it's a great attribute to be curious about that. Because a lot of times I don't think we really think through how things are going to work.

Brenton Gowland:

It's really great to hear you say that, actually, because one of the things and Ron pushes this all the time is that great BD people need to be curious. So you're really speaking our language.

Bill Caskey:

Yeah, I talk to, I've got a client in the business to business accounting world, and they do about 50 million a year, they've got seven or eight offices around the Midwest. And they're always because they hate to sell accountants, they're always looking for partnerships, a partnership with a banker, a partnership with a lawyer, a partnership with a consultant, with a financial planner, because they feel like that's a source of leads. But usually, they have a partnership with a bank, but they don't do anything to nurture it. And so, you know, to me, this is part of that, how's it all going to work? Because I think BD people need to be very marketing conscious. And you can, I'm sure you can speak to that both of you. But I just feel like a lot of times it's under leveraged, that's probably the best word I can come up with.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it's interesting that oftentimes, BD people are chosen because of their apparent hunger and interest in going out and speaking to people. But I think it's also about the capacity to develop and nurture relationships as you discussed, because it's not just about landing, a relationship or a partnership. It's about making that work for the organisation. And that takes a longer term perspective.

Bill Caskey:

Yeah, I think another attribute I'll just finish up this question with one more, if I can have another minute is, I think BD people need to be good project managers. I think There's a project management attribute that if you're just going to promote somebody from sales and say, Man, they are awesome at sales, surely they can do business development. I think BD requires a project management approach. Because there are a lot of loose ends, there's a lot of how are we going to get from where we are to where we want to be? And to me, every one of those is a project. So I think project management is not something we typically teach sales professionals. But I do think it's an attribute that BD people should have.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's really great, because there's so many moving parts when you're looking at bringing other businesses into your business. So that makes a lot of sense actually.

Ron Tomlian:

It also begs the slight deviation question, is do salespeople make good business development people?

Brenton Gowland:

Interesting?

Ron Tomlian:

I don't have the answer to that question. But it's certainly, as Bill stated, it's certainly something that I've seen is that people naturally assume that if you're a good salesperson, you'd make a good BD person.

Bill Caskey:

Correct.

Ron Tomlian:

I'm not so sure that that's the case.

Bill Caskey:

I'm not sure either. I think the attributes are different, the skill sets are different, doesn't mean they couldn't do it. But I think they have to rewire their brain a little bit when they go from sales to BD. Because the sale is different. It's a whole different kind of sale. And if you just take the product or the engagement skills and try to move them into BD, I don't think your partnerships are as strong. So I would agree, I'm not sure there is. I'm sure there are people who have done that, and done it well. But if you're a leader of a company, and you're looking to promote somebody make darn sure that they have some of these other attributes that we're talking about before you bring them in and expect big things.

Ron Tomlian:

That could be another book for you Bill. Rewire the sales mind to BD.

Bill Caskey:

True. That's what I need Ron is one more book on the horizon. I'm looking at my list here, I've got three. So I'll add that one. See what I can come up with. I'll start tonight.

Ron Tomlian:

Alright, that's gonna lead me into the next question. What pitfalls have you seen BD people fall into and how do they get unstuck?

Bill Caskey:

Well, the number one is just the whole idea of understanding how it works. Number two, I think is, I think, a lot of times, especially if you promote somebody from sales. And if it's a salesperson who thinks everybody's a prospect, which I don't believe everybody's a prospect, I think the same thing goes for BD. I don't think everybody's a good partner. Not every strategic relationship is a good one. And I think that goes back to why some are under leveraged because they never should have been partners in the first place. Now, I'm speaking of this, you know, mode as a partnership creator. That's not always what it is either, if you're going to end up going into a new market, and you're going to open up a state and you've got to go out and define the market and define the buying habits and things like that you may not need partnerships. But generally, I think that business development people fall into the same trap salespeople do like any partners, a good partner. And we know that's not true. And I think BD people have to be judicious about who they bring on as partners. And sometimes when we're too optimistic, we can think it's a great partnership. And it really isn't, because it because it never was, it was destined for failure from the beginning. So I think that idea of understanding a perfect fit between your company and the partner is a critical pitfall that people drop into, and it creates chaos. And sometimes it just creates frustration for everybody, not just the company, but also the partner.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, it's a good point. Because that strategic fit, you know, when when people are talking about mergers and acquisitions, and so on, they'll often talk about the fit between two companies, even down to the culture of the two companies.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think that's often lost.

Bill Caskey:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

In the the idea of partnership in a business development sense. There's a lot to be learned, I suppose from the corporate world of management in the business development sense.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, absolutely.

Bill Caskey:

I've got one more here that I think kind of ties a couple of loose ends together. And that is marketing. I think, I think a pitfall is not understanding marketing. And the business development person goes out launches an initiative. Finds a couple of strategic partners. But you still have to market to them. And I'm using my accounting firm as an example. They have great relationships with banks. But when you ask them, how many referrals do you get from banks? Basically, it's none. Well, and then you ask, well, what kind of marketing do you do? How do you keep in touch with these bankers and these savings and loans, these people? And they say, well, we they're on our email list. Well, you need to create a new email list just for partners so that you can stay top of mind with them because their needs are very different than a Direct to Consumer, Direct to business need.

Ron Tomlian:

Yep.

Bill Caskey:

And so this is where I know you guys, you come in Brenton and Ron to an extent is how do we market to our to our strategic partners. Don't forget about that just because they're, they've engaged and they've signed on the line doesn't mean they're going to send people your way. And again, I'm speaking of it as if it's a referral source. And I know that's not the only.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Bill Caskey:

The only thing we're talking about here, but I think you have to depend on marketing.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. And that kind of speaks to the fact that BD people, I've seen organisations where the relationship between the marketing people and the salespeople or the BD people are really good. And that's where what I think you're talking about works really well, where they bounce off of each other, and so forth. Because I think that whole marketing kind of side of things requires there to be a bit of brainstorming about how we go about these things, how we utilise technology, how we kind of develop these lists, etc, etc. So it's, it's having those relationships with marketers that will help BD people.

Bill Caskey:

I've seen the opposite too, where marketing and sales are the enemies in the organisation.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh I've seen that.

Bill Caskey:

Oh, yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

It doesn't work so well. I've certainly, in terms of longer term. Certainly in terms of developing relationships outside the organisation, it's a recipe for disaster.

Brenton Gowland:

The nirvana is in the business kind of aligning itself so everyone works together, which is kind of what we preach.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes. So what's the number one thing, Bill that you believe business development people can do to improve their performance in business development?

Bill Caskey:

Okay, I'm gonna come out of nowhere with this one, you guy's ready.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Bill Caskey:

All right. This is out of nowhere. I think that everybody in the organisation from sales to BD to sales executives need to be more funnel conscious. Funnel conscious simply means here's an example. I've got a client who says they want to do outreach to strategic partners, an actual live client. And they want to do webinars, they want to do a webinar series where they're inviting their strategic partners, so that then their strategic partners will invite their clients who they're really after anyway.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Bill Caskey:

And I say, Okay, awesome. That's a great idea webinars or online events, whatever you want to call them, it's a great idea. And people still aren't getting together. So digital is a good option. And then my next question is, okay, how's that going to work? And they said, well, we'll we'll send out an email to, you know, our 50 strategic partners, and we'll populate the webinar. And I say, do you guys know how hard it is to get an executive on a webinar for a half hour to an hour today? During COVID it was fine, because everybody was sitting around looking for webinars. Not so today. So are you going to run ads? Well, we'll probably run some ads, but we've got a pretty good list. Okay, so how are you going to entice them to be there? Well, we're just going to tell them we have a webinar. Really, you guys pretty proud of yourself, just having a webinar is going to cause people to stop what they're doing. You need to entice them, you need to have an offer you need to. And so again, it's part of that thinking funnel? How are we going to take people from attending the webinar to doing business with us? If it's the right thing? And we don't, we may or may not be? What's the what's the cadence? What's the process? What are you going to give? What are you going to get? Is there a survey? Is there? Is there a recorded audio of it? Are you going to follow up personally, you're going to visit them at their home? What's the process? And and I just use the term funnel conscious. I don't think we're nearly funnel conscious enough. And by funnel, I just mean, what are all the things that have to happen for them to become a client?

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, from lead through to client and then advocate and so forth? You know, what are the stages? No, that's really, really good. And I think a very, very valid point.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And I have to admit that I see a lot of people, maybe they're not called business development people, but they don't think about their funnels at all. No, they don't think that all they're worried about is the end, not how people make that journey to the end.

Bill Caskey:

Correct.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. And I think really good use of the funnel is when you actually educate other people within the business about the funnel and include them in the stages.

Ron Tomlian:

Yep.

Bill Caskey:

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Bill Caskey:

Because marketing, everybody can have something to add. And, but if we don't think about it, or don't see it as a vital instrument to closing business, we will just jump to the closing of business. And then we'll be calling on people who are not ready to buy I saw a stat the other day in the internet marketing world where a person is not going to buy until they consume five to seven hours of your content. And this has been a very specific market. And if we're going to go into go from an ad to trying to book a call, with no with nothing, no education at all, is a really hard ask. I mean, I don't care how good you are. People don't get on the phone with people they don't know until they've been warmed up. And they've seen some video they've heard some audio. I mean, when, Brenton, I know you're an avid listener to the Advanced Selling Podcast. When we get a call or an email in that says, hey, I've got a conference coming up in November. I've been listening to your podcast for five years or twelve years or whatever. There's not a whole lot of selling there. I mean, they kind of know what they're getting if they get Bryan or i at their event, but so they're warmed up, that market is warmed up. But if it's a cold, cold book a call, or you're asking for a strategy call for somebody that doesn't know you. I think that's a big ask.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. 100%. So what do you think of that old saying, always be closing? Because there's a lot of pressure on salespeople and BD people to get the job done and get it over the line and kind of always be in that on position, rather than thinking of those different funnel positions that you're talking about. What do you think of that statement? Always be closing?

Bill Caskey:

What do you think I'd think of it?

Brenton Gowland:

I think you think it's rubbish.

Bill Caskey:

I think it's rubbish. I think it's rubbish. And I know where it came from. It came from look, be confident, you know, ask for the order. Always be closing comes from I think it comes from a movie or I don't know where it came from. But so but here's my, here's my belief. I don't like the concept of selling somebody who's not ready to be sold. And I think a lot of times in sales we fall back and think are magic words, and how we string those sentences together and how I brush my hair. And what I wear is going to be the magic that brings that prospect over the line. And we know that's rubbish. We know that's just not true. And I think at least I'm starting to see trends, where if a person calls me tomorrow and says, hey, look, I'm starting a company, we're going to be in the business to business space.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Bill Caskey:

How many salespeople should I hire? I would say none. Hire no salespeople, get your funnel working.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Bill Caskey:

You close the first dozen pieces of business, learn how to do it.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Bill Caskey:

Then bring on, bring on four or five marketing people and hire Brenton to help on the digital side. So that leads come in. And now you're you're not having to do the heavy lifting of trying to convince people to buy when they're not even prospects. So there's there's always going to be room for salesperson. But I think today it's very different with the Internet. I think a lot of companies are saying do I really want to hire $100,000 US person, five of them to go out and harvest leads when I can do it on LinkedIn for basically nothing. And let them be the closers don't make them be the lead generators, because salespeople typically are not very good at that. Anyway, let technology do that for you.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. And that's where marketing comes in to generate those leads. with you. That brings us on to a really interesting point. So a lot of the drive, the thing that causes people to fall into these pitfalls and in the BD space and to have that over exuberance to always be closing or selling comes from management, or the boss or someone who puts that pressure on them. So a big part of what we're about is talking to CEOs. So what would be the number one thing that you would recommend to business owners, execs or managers of salespeople to help their business development people succeed?

Bill Caskey:

Well, I think. To help business development people succeed? Well we've talked about a few of those, I think, I think your business development people need to be skilled in, need to be skilled in marketing. They don't have to become professional marketers, but they need to understand how people make decisions.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Bill Caskey:

Because that's really what a lot of marketing is, is understanding the journey, understanding psychology, buyer preferences, buyer psychology. Understanding that people need to see something before they engage, what is that thing they need to see, I think BD people and leaders need to enforce. We need to be out there on social media. We need to be educating, like you said earlier, Brenton. We need to be educating this market. I think those things are, and there's a lot of tools for those things. But the BD person has to embrace social selling.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Bill Caskey:

They have to embrace it. And I still find that a lot of people don't. I mean, 80% don't really and you think about the, I'm going off on a tangent here. But we have been given this gift called the Internet, and called social media. And like it or not, you can not like Facebook, you can say that it's evil and all that. Okay. But your customers are there. And so you can talk all you want to about how evil Mark Zuckerberg is. But he has command. He has commanded the attention of some of your customers. So.....

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Bill Caskey:

You've got to ask yourself, what can I be putting out on social media, this educational? That helps my customers realise they have a problem, not solve it, but realise they even have it. And you've got to get in the game. Your competitors are in the game. And if you're not in the game, and you're going to resort to cold calling, or cold direct mail, or cold emailing, I just think the odds are stacked against you.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, and I think it works less than less than this world where we're used to having, you know, cold calls from other countries or you know, wherever else and it's always just, you know, people are just trained to hang up now so it's just just not an avenue. And on you point, you know, I come across a lot of BD people and I think probably 15, maybe 10%, do what you're talking about and get online. And.....

Bill Caskey:

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

And you know, people use LinkedIn, but they don't necessarily publish a bunch of content. So it is a very underutilised thing in today's world.

Ron Tomlian:

I think I think the other thing too, that often happens when people get involved in an organisation, they start to, as the saying goes, drink their Kool Aid. They start to see things from the perspective of that organisation. Now, having started my career, in the electricity industry, when it was still a monopoly utility, I can tell you, there's not many people who are interested. And especially in those days, in electricity distribution, it just didn't come into everyday conversations. But the people in that organisation thought it was the most interesting thing in the world, and that everybody was fascinated with it. And I think there's an interesting point that you make there is that you really need to understand the perspective of your customers. Where it fits in their daily life. And the fact that if you want them to pay attention to you, you've got to have something that's attention worthy.

Bill Caskey:

That's right.

Ron Tomlian:

And that states well before somebody knocks on their door, or sends them an email, or gives them a phone call.

Bill Caskey:

That's right. I just heard Gary Vaynerchuk, who's an American digital entrepreneur, you probably know who Gary Vee is. He was talking about that very thing. He talked about creative. He says, you know, I'm all for publishing every day on LinkedIn and publishing, you know, he has some kind of wild things like you need to publish 80 things a month. It's like.

Brenton Gowland:

That's a lot.

Bill Caskey:

But he's right. But he also says, the creative has to be there. You can't just publish crap, you've got to, you've got to think, what is the creative? What is the graphic image? What is the brand? What's the, you know, when we're shooting video? Is the video really well done? Or does it look like you're in your backseat of your car, you know, shooting video. So I think all those things are important. One thing you did say, I sometimes when I'm talking to like a VP of sales, because I get the call from VP of sales a lot. And I say, I find out how old they are. Cuz you really can't ask that question. So I discover, like when'd you go to college, when'd you graduate? If they're over 50, I know that they are not enforcing social media for their people.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Bill Caskey:

Doesn't mean they're not, the people aren't doing it. And this goes for BD or sales. I just know that they didn't grow up in that era, but and they're probably not enforcing it. I heard a guy that a couple days or probably a week ago, he said, Yeah, I've asked all our people to be on LinkedIn, but they're not really doing much. So I guess, I guess that's not going to work. And I'm like, You're going to let them get away with not doing anything. You want to scale your business to 50 million or whatever, and you're going to let them run the camp? No! If you want them to be on social media, you have to instruct them how to do it, how often to do it, when to do it. Why to do it. They'll do it because you say to do it. But if you're going to make it optional, it's easy I'll opt out. You know.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's really interesting, too, because that puts an onus on the actual people who are leading businesses to actually be there themselves or to have a really good understanding of it.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think that comes back to answering the question, to some extent is that the best thing executives can do. And I know this isn't Bill's idea, necessarily. But the best thing that executives do is be interested in business development, and not have it as well, we've got that box ticked because we've got this guy, and he's doing something I don't quite know what it is. Dan Wurttemberg, who was a TEC chair in the United States often talked about this idea that there are three roles of the CEO, chief salesperson, RE business development, chief strategist and chief team builder, and any always put chief salesperson purse because that person has to be interested in marketing and sales.

Brenton Gowland:

And if you look at Steve Jobs, he spent most of his time in the marketing department.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah,

Bill Caskey:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

They have to champion the idea that we are out there doing good work for people because we have a solution that they need. You know, that's the marketing credo. And if you're not the one doing that as a chief executive or a senior executive, then you're letting your BD people down.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. I'm hearing a real theme here. And that's a real push to get BD people, sales people online and really publishing content and really thinking about marketing, because when it comes down to it, what you're talking about Bill, you know, being online is actually marketing yourselves getting that message because marketing is a conversation. And where are we having those conversations? It's online. So look, I'd like to start wrapping up because we've come to about 30 minutes. So are there any final thoughts that you have bill that you'd like to share based on what we've been talking about?

Bill Caskey:

Well, I think the last topic is is a good one. And that is if if you're a VP of sales or CEO, and you're looking to you know, to to either hire a business development person or you have one that's not working out, I think you have to ask yourself some of the questions we've talked about today. And one question that I always have for people is, if you didn't have salespeople, or if you didn't have a business development person, how would you go to market? Take the take the human being out of the, I'm not saying fire them. I'm saying, if you didn't have a salesperson or a sales team, or a business development team, how would you go to market? And however you would do that, that's your answer. Then you populate your team with people who can handle the leads, handle the calls, further the relationships. But this, this is a digital play. And sometimes I'll ask VPs of sales that question this, oh, we couldn't do it without a sales team. I said, No, you didn't hear the question. You don't have a sales team. Now, what are you going to do? And pretty soon they start saying, well, we would, we would have to have an online survey, we would have to educate, we would have to capture people's email address so that our marketing people could send out invitations so yeah, all that's there. But if you have a sales and BD team, I think you tend to rely on them instead of relying on the digital technology and automated technologies. And I just think that it's a long road when you're don't use the technology that we've all been gifted.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. That's great. Look, thank you so much, Bill for coming along. And joining us, that was really interesting. And I think that's a really important thing that Ron and I haven't necessarily focused on yet. So I really think that digital world is where people need to be, and people need to be extending themselves and getting out there and being part of it and putting content out into the world to make sure that they're finding the right people to actually talk to about developing their businesses. So just in wrapping up, I would highly recommend that if you've enjoyed today that you check out the Advanced Selling Podcast by Bill Caskey, and Bryan Neale, and get along and have a listen, and maybe even getting involved in one of Bill's programmes. Very valuable information. And I think you can all hear that from the information that bill's been sharing with us today. I think you've got what, 720 episodes or something, Bill?

Bill Caskey:

Oh, we got about 1100 of ASP and then I've got about 300 of Bill Caskey. So there's plenty of content, plenty of content. Whenever somebody says can you send me some more information on your company? I say there's a 1300 episodes have at it, baby.

Brenton Gowland:

No worries.

Bill Caskey:

Thank you guys for inviting me. I appreciate it and keep it up. Keep up the good work. You guys are good. And this will be good for your constituents and your listeners. And I really congratulate you guys for doing this.

Ron Tomlian:

Thank you.

Brenton Gowland:

Thanks very much. And if you've been listening that's bye from me.

Ron Tomlian:

And bye from me.

Introduction
The difference between sales and business development
The best attributes of great business development people
Do salespeople make good business development people
What pitfalls do business development people fall into, and how do they get unstuck
The number one thing business development people can do to improve their performance
Is the old saying, always be closing, a good mindset for modern business development
Advice for business owners, execs and managers to help their business development people succeed
Closing advice, what to do if you don't have any sales or business development people
Wrapping up