From Transactions to Trust: The Strategic Shift in Business DevelopmentFrom Transactions to Trust: The Strategic Shift in Business Development

From Transactions to Trust: The Strategic Shift in Business Development Transcript:

Announcer: You’re listening to The Kula Ring, a podcast made for manufacturing marketers. Here are Carman Pirie and Jeff White. 

Jeff White: Welcome to the Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how are you doing, sir?

Carman Pirie: All is well, all is well, and you?

Jeff White: I’m doing great. Yeah. Happy to be recording with you again. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. Yeah. And look, today’s conversation, I think promises to be yet another good one. I’m excited. It’s always nice when we can have, an old guest back on the show talking about something completely new. And I don’t think this subject is one that we’ve covered on the podcast before, or it’s not in this way.

Jeff White: Not in this way. Certainly. It’s been part of what a lot of, what a lot of folks do, but not necessarily in this context. Yeah. Now we’re being all mysterious. So rejoining us today on The Kula Ring is Adam Kimmel. Adam is the principal and founder of ASK Consulting Solutions. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Adam.

Adam Kimmel: Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. 

Carman Pirie: Adam, it’s awesome to have you on the show again, and for the listeners that maybe didn’t catch you the first time around, can you maybe introduce yourself a bit more fully and tell us what ASK does? 

Adam Kimmel: Sure. Three years ago, when we chatted last time, it was a little different charter, so I was at the time, pivoting from engineering. I was an engineer for about 15 years at that time, chemical and mechanical mainly in the automotive space and industrial manufacturing as well. And a little bit of renewable energy. So I was doing content writing thought leadership for that segment. Since then I’ve added content strategy and now, I’m doing fractional growth and business development for my client partners.

So it’s. It’s been an exciting evolution from content only to a more engaged, relationship with them. 

Jeff White: How did you make that transition? Was it with existing clients that you were already working with and helping move more into that business development space, or was it the kind of thing that you saw the potential for a new type of offering and went after some new clients?

Adam Kimmel: Both to take the easy answer. But no, I think I got the idea from existing clients who, when we would do content engagements. One of the natural first steps is what should we write about. And that quickly goes into all right what’s your content strategy? And a lot of times they would say we have one, but it was like best people or best technology or best cup of coffee, that kind of stuff.

So I said I think we could do a little better than that. So I started doing some more detailed discovery to get the content strategy piece down. A few of the first questions were what’s your right to win? What’s your unique value proposition on this stuff? And they didn’t really have that brushed up either.

So it was moving forward in, to start to get into some of the business goals and objectives of why the company exists in the first place. And what I found was if they didn’t have a differentiator, they were struggling with growth because they were a, me too. With their competitors, larger companies, and more established brands. So the first thing they needed to do was figure out what they should talk about in a way that made them stand out. So that light bulb went off about a year ago for me to say, before we get into content and start cranking out thought leadership articles, why don’t we make sure that we’re talking to the right audience about the right things about your right to win and really refining what those are.

Carman Pirie: And you’ve, I know the term gets thrown around a lot people mean different things when they say the term business development, but you’re really seeing that offering as basically a new type of business development. That you, well you contrast with the old type, you say business development has changed and you also contrast it with the traditional view of sales unpack that a bit more for us.

Adam Kimmel: Yeah. And that’s really the shift that I’ve seen. So when people historically have thought and said of business development, it was around outbound sales for new customers. And or new business dreams and existing customers. It was like a pavement-pounding growth engine. So there’d be a quota where you would have X number of calls to make X number of new account contacts to record. It was real metrics driven from that perspective, where I see it changing is from a more tactical one to a more strategic approach where, you really join the customer or client or prospect as a partner to understand, okay, what problems are you actually trying to solve? Why are you solving them? Does the market want you to solve them? And really then understanding are there existing solutions and how happy is the market with those? Those are strategic questions and things that really force some internal dialogue with clients. And a lot of times, I get. As clients will ask me, they’ll thank me after the discovery sessions to go. We’ve needed to have this conversation and couldn’t figure out where the gaps are. Thank you for this because it really forced us to look in the mirror and say What is it that we actually do differently? And so I think that this shift or the pivot has become from a more transactional or tactical number of calls to a strategy of how we should grow where, what segments, what types of companies we should target and then really which ones we shouldn’t target because of, efficiencies and resource limitations.

Jeff White: I have to think too, if somebody’s never done that kind of voice of the customer work and had discovery sessions with their customers, it’s going to be pretty eyeopening. For them for sure with the manufacturers that you’re working with on this who is participating on the manufacturer side And what has their experience been, in doing this voice of the customer work?

Adam Kimmel: Yeah. There are a few different types of clients that I work with. Some of them are bigger enterprises or larger, approaching a billion dollars and more revenue, end of things, but mainly it’s been the small to midsize manufacturers where the SME is also the founder and also the, everything, right?

There’s kind of one, expert there and, they have a point of view and some expertise that they’ve gotten positive feedback that people like, but then when it’s time to scale, that’s the question because they know a very specific use case where their offer works, they have a small roster of clients that they can nurture into existing or expanding business or continued business, but they don’t really know where to go from there. And so the shift is tried, it’s, what I’ve seen is. That persona comes into the engagements very set on a track. The hardest thing to do is shake them out of that and make them see how what they’ve done in one vein could be applied elsewhere and what the potential benefits might be.

An example of that is someone who does optimization work or lean manufacturing. Can that mentality be applied to, a non-traditional industrial process, like engineering design, or mechanical drawings? Can you apply a methodology somebody would do for process optimization to another task within the product development process and have them look at things differently?

Hey, this works here, but could it work over here? Could unlock a whole segment of customers for them. And there’s been a lot of kind of blowback moments when that mindset is presented to them. But they have to be open to hearing it as well. That’s the caveat.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. I think when you paint the picture of those types of organizations that have a kind of a strong and still very active founder, and a lot of the early successes have been driven by that individual and in large part I would say that the thing that kind of. I can often envision alongside that if they do have a bit of a sales organization if they have, probably not that large, but if they do have one, they’re probably pretty ingrained in that point of view as well. I’m curious, who do you find it harder to to get singing from this new song sheet, is it harder for the dug-in founders or harder for the sales team?

Adam Kimmel: Usually it’s the sales team that’s more difficult. The reason for that is founders tend to be a little more visionary, a little more strategic, and higher level thinking day-to-day sales has a quota to meet. So they’re in the work and getting them to look at things differently can be a challenge.

So I think getting the buy-in of the founder is a nice motivator, to the team that reports to them or her to do that work. The other thing I would say is the sales team has come to appreciate this approach when they see it in practice. So if a business development partner joins on a sales call, and maybe there’s some content that’s created that captures a lot of this voice, the customer data, when that’s fed back to contacts that the sales team talks to. They’re really. It really is a credibility adder because they see and hear their point of view coming back to them and then extend it in a way that solves their problem. So when done right, the business developer can collect that voice of customers and craft that into compelling content.

Working with sales to play it back to their customers, to position their point of view is the best way to solve that problem. And it’s really a collaboration because the customer is involved in solving the problem. It isn’t just, here’s my solution. How many do you need? It’s this is what I heard. This is our point of view on the subject. And here’s a solution that we think will work with you. And here are a few other companies that we’ve seen that work for. 

Carman Pirie: I want to probe further into that change management process because what you just articulated to me was, you can basically, you’re developed, you’re developing those relationships with sales, your, those proof points that, that are showing them a brighter future ahead in different ways of doing it. And, it feels to me, I just, I guess I’m wondering how much can that scale. Because you’re just one guy. Do you find that it takes a lot of that kind of hand-holding? Or is there a for larger teams how can they maybe take advantage of these same approaches?

Adam Kimmel: There are different ways to engage, I think. And when I do, my approach is more of a content-driven business development. So like leveraging the content that I’ve been doing, adding this voice of customer, and then the active partnering with sales, it’s really an inbound plus an outbound approach. So while I’m just one person, it’s so strategic, for example, if I uncover through the discovery work, an entire segment.

That the client or prospect isn’t working in. That’s a ton of work for teams of people to do. And so what I have a lot of my larger customers do is to have me train their sales team and or younger business development people on this methodology. How do I go about making a segment that had never heard of us before, not only aware of us but excited about our solution? So pure strategy, I would say, when. When a new segment is uncovered, so minimal work, what you need is the expertise to know where to look for a new segment and what the potential extension could be, but then executing it is where you would need a lot more resources. So, some of the benefits too, of an external person doing this versus an internal is that fresh perspective from the market. So if somebody who specializes in manufacturing or automotive or renewable energy, as I do, I’ve got 20 years of points of view, working with companies multiple different companies, not just one company or even one segment. So it’s a way to get fresh perspectives, which founders and leaders tend to always like they hire consultants to bring these outside points of view in there, through consulting firms like Gardner or others. But what I’ve found is somebody that’s been in the role. Has a pretty, a little bit deeper and more unique perspective than a consulting kind of think tank might. And then in addition to that, the team gets extended. So business development work is done by an external person. So the internal team can focus on either product development management or marketing while that business development plan is being created for them. So in addition to extending the team, there’s then a process that’s created and given to the team that they can then take, train other people on and use. And maybe I guess the last point of why the external path is so impactful is the cost. To hire somebody full-time with the kind of experience and things that someone like me brings is a multiple six-figure kind of thing when you consider salary, benefits, bonus, all of those things.

When you bring in a fractional, it’s really a partnership, but the only cost is the engagement. So you’re getting the benefit of ongoing, consistent, growth with the team skills without the price tag of what the full-time hire would need to be. 

Jeff White: You mentioned building plans that leverage both inbounds, which obviously harkens back to your content creation and kind of engineering focus around that. And how you bring that to life and provide those resources that attract people to you. What are you seeing that’s working on the outbound side? With the manufacturers that you’re working with, what is, what’s really hitting the mark now? 

Adam Kimmel: To dodge the question a little bit, I think what’s hitting the mark is the combination of the two.

So many manufacturers are starting to get more active on LinkedIn and other virtual channels. So what doesn’t seem to work is the pavement pound, just an out-of-the-blue reach out. Sometimes it works, but the hit rate is so low that then you have to do that a bunch of times before you get the pipeline filled up.

So if you can start a relationship. Based on, someplace they go for information. If you can show up there, then at least that’s one touch point. So that when the reach-out happens, you can reference it. Hey, we interacted here, or there’s some connection to a colleague of theirs, an interaction, that networking element that really warms them up to receive the outbound request. The hit rate is, I would say 10 to one doing it that way versus the traditional way. So that’s a way that outbound gets more effective. And another way is in terms of engaging on Things like podcasts. Doing this has been a way that, I’ve gotten this message out to clients who’ve come back and said, Hey, that really resonated with me. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Do you think that could help us? And so it’s more of, an invite to an outbound, I wouldn’t necessarily call it inbound, but it’s some, again, connection on a place they went for information to have them be more receptive to an outbound connection. 

Carman Pirie: I like that question, Jeff, because it’s inherent in it. I think a lot of people want to ask that question. They’re looking for the, is there a new silver bullet that I haven’t heard of yet? That’s really working. 

Jeff White: Special way of dialling the phone. Maybe. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. And I wish I could find a tweet. I saw, I guess I was supposed to say post on X, but it’ll be Twitter forever for me.

But that was, some B2B marketer who had spent a career in B2C beforehand was just lamenting that they had done all of basically the entire B2B playbook, anything that we might imagine. They’ve just seen zero pipeline growth. They feel like a complete failure. No lever that they’re pulling seems to be working.

I think anybody that any of us that have worked in B2B especially B2B in niche categories with long sales cycles, that we understand that attribution challenge. And we understand that there’s the real answer to, is there a magic silver bullet that we haven’t heard of yet?  Is no.

I like that was kind of your answer. You’re like, yeah, no, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. And frankly, a lot of the things that you mentioned aren’t things that necessarily are going to scale predictably either, they’re going to have successes. But. They’re not, that doesn’t mean that success scales predictably, does it?

Adam Kimmel: Yeah, it’s a good point. And I think that what I would say to that is the traditional playbook worked really well for about, I don’t know, five or so years, like the past five or so, and it maybe ended in about 2022 where we were really into the digital, into the SEO I don’t know. Algorithm hacking is a term I’ve used before where you can really, I think You know, people set the ideal state is what if I just write the perfect blog that’s SEO dialled in, then the leads just come flooding in.

And as ridiculous as that sounds. Now, I think people really went for that outcome and to some degree it worked, but as the algorithms change. I think the good news for those who are skilled in business development and in actual, growing companies is that the algorithms are changing to prioritize proper business fundamentals. So maybe the silver bullet is just us remembering what’s worked forever. What’s likely to work? It’s human-to-human education, teaching each other and making sure that it’s clear how you can help them and why you’re well suited to win. And then also coupling that with really good active listening. What is it that your problem is versus here’s a product, here’s a feature? If I tell them enough features, they’ll have to buy one. Again, Ridiculous. It’s got to focus on what their problem is. And I think we got a little bit too comfortable with trying to digitally hack our way to success versus doing the hard work of forming relationships, understanding the pain points and really drilling into solving the right problems.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I tend to very much agree with that sentiment that we’ve tried to hack our way to success too much. 

Jeff White: Yeah. Often with disastrous backfiring consequences. 

Carman Pirie: You would have thought just back in the old days about, black hat SEO or whatever. People started getting busted for that. That would have been enough, marketers are, and salespeople, both are a weird bunch. Like we can’t find anything that we don’t want to ruin. Look at LinkedIn these days you see so many people playing by the LinkedIn playbook and is to the point now where, yeah, there’s just so many people playing by it that nobody wants to go near the damn platform anymore, it seems or at least it’s not, again, it’s not a license to print money either.

It’s not it’s a guaranteed success story. The second you go and act up that kind of LinkedIn playbook. 

Adam Kimmel: Yeah. How does the experience feel to a user? That’s always a good benchmark. I always look at, am I? Looking to log into LinkedIn or am I looking to procrastinate from having to go into LinkedIn? And I think the latter is certainly the way it’s gone over the last year or so. But I think my point of view on why it’s changed is maybe this overreliance on attribution. There’s such a focus on ROI these days. It feels like if you can’t tie a dollar to its return, there’s this then we shouldn’t be spending it. And I think. It’s a misaligned goal at that point. You’re going to identify some KPIs that are more intermediate. The true measure is growth. And that’s why I say my fractional title is head of organic growth because it’s really growth that you’re after from an organic perspective. So not paid, but, doing this and doing the hard work to grow the business manually. And I think an overreliance on attribution is maybe what caused that, where we were so worried about the ROI that we just ran away from things if we couldn’t immediately see the return, versus, if there’s a great piece of content that someone saw or heard someone talk about and then shared it to someone, you’ll never be able to trace that back, but the overall, content program was effective if a sale came in.

So it’s, it really needs to be, marketing dollars spent in total to sales growth in total. And if it, if you change something, then it’s just variable minimization. So if you change one variable, what did that do while giving it enough time to work its way through the system? For organic things, I’ve seen content take about three to four months before inbound leads start repeatedly coming in. Do people have three to four months to wait? Doesn’t feel like they do now. And so then I think it’s a question of what’s really the goal? Do you want immediate push-button growth? If you find out what that is, let me know. But I think this commitment to doing things and doing the hard work leads to more high-quality relationships and a trust-based customer/provider relationship that lasts longer than a more transactional one. 

Jeff White: I think the quick and dirty easy button is paid search. But once you’re doing that, what is it? 

Adam Kimmel: Yeah, I look at paid search as a laser though. Are you sure that the laser is pointed in the right direction? Cause you could fire away, but if you’re missing the target. What are you doing? You’re just burning cash at that point. So that’s the reason I wonder, are people that are leaning so heavily into that, getting the right signals, the way I look at paid versus organic is, organic can start to give you indicators of where you should be playing and then double down with paid into channels that you’re getting the positive signals and feedback in, so maybe that’s not news, but that’s, I don’t know, I think some, You’re right though, Jeff. A lot of people go, all right, it’s just pay. We just need organic. It’s a pay-for-play, just dump for 4k a month at it. And we should see the return. And oftentimes they don’t. 

Jeff White: Yeah. But boy, the SERP is dominated now, by pay-to-play. The organic isn’t even visible anymore. 

Adam Kimmel: Yeah. I guess my view on that is high-intent keywords. So I still think SEO has a place and I use it a lot. I target keywords that have hundreds of monthly search volumes but like no competition. One of the ones I wanted to own was fractional business development. That’s, why I have a page on my site with a pillar article that basically outlines this point of view. And I ranked on the first page of Google in one day. So again, Business didn’t, people aren’t lining up outside the door, but you could win a targeted niche term still pretty quickly. So I’m, I guess I’m still a little bit of a believer in that approach where targeted high-intent keywords still have their place.

Jeff White: Oh, I don’t disagree. I didn’t mean to sound like I was disagreeing. I’m just saying it does make it that much harder when the SERP is dominated by paid positions. 

Adam Kimmel: Well, fair enough. So my article was below three sponsors and a lot of the other paids are bombarding it. You’re right. I agree

Carman Pirie: But we do certainly worship at the altar of high intent, low volume, low competition keywords. I hear what you’re saying there. Something something you won’t hear the Google reps talk too much about, however. 

Jeff White: But you could spend more, Carman. Have you tried spending more?

Adam Kimmel: Just open the valve a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s part of the fun too, right? If what we’re doing isn’t any fun, it just gets to be a trudge situation trudging through. And I think if we can beat Google by outsmarting it or by not outsmarting it, but by giving it what they really say they want, which is more expertise-based, authoritative kind of thought leadership content, that EBAT acronym Then it’ll still work. And so I like the challenge of trying to do that, trying to execute that, and then showing the client, Hey, by the way, this philosophy and point of view that we have, it’s worked. And here are some metrics and numbers to show why, and then, doing that, strengthening that muscle over a few months, get some leads dripping in, and then the stream gets a little bit more consistent and, a nice compound growth curve, usually results. So it’s been fun to see some of those results. 

Carman Pirie: Adam, I think you articulated reasonably well the benefits from a fractional BD kind of relationship, bringing in that external perspective that has a view of the broader market and combined with some depth of expertise. What’s the shadow side to that? What’s the one thing where you’re, that you see as a fractional BD that you’re like, Oh, yeah. Pretty hard for me to impact this as a fractional. I could only really impact that if I was there full time and I’m just not willing to do that. I feel that most fractional folks that I meet, experience that tension at some point where there’s more impact that they feel that they could have with that client that they care a lot about. But they also have to keep their external perspective. 

Adam Kimmel: Yeah. I think that sense of ownership is certainly there. The objection or the concern with external is always what’s the commitment to the company’s success? By nature, you’re not as committed to it as if your whole income or job depended on it. 

I almost view it a little differently. I’ve worked in enough companies where I see people who were as uncommitted as anybody I’ve ever seen as full-time employees who kind of rested back on knowing that income was coming no matter what. For me, with any kind of fractional or contract type of work, the objective is consistent ongoing income. So the best way I’ve found to generate that is just by over-delivering and being great. So the better I do, the more likely that income becomes consistent. So I really see that as a flip from perspective versus reality. In terms of that, you see your quiet quitting and things like this, where people feel underappreciated and valued.

Someone that’s fractional has a little bit more control over who they work with. So they’re going to work with people they like, with companies they support and respect. So, why wouldn’t you want to get up and run after that opportunity then every day? And I think the other one I get that maybe the shadow side is if the leadership team or the perspective of the company really don’t know what their value proposition is, and as crazy as that sounds, having somebody articulate their value, proposition, and positioning has been the hardest. It’s the first step, right? In any discovery interview, it’s the hardest thing to get. Cause people don’t know really, if you push them, why they should win. And, if they’re not open to your idea, it makes the work a lot harder because they’re only willing to budge so far. And they just want to talk about the product, talk about the product.

Carman Pirie: I’m glad you brought that back up because, I guess I’m curious. Do you find that it that they deep down do know why they should win and just can’t wrap their tongues around the words to say it in a compelling way? Or alternatively, do you find that they just have not given it any thought and they’re riding on kind of…

Jeff White: They truly do think you have the best quality people and service?

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I don’t know like I was just riding on reputation and relationships.

Adam Kimmel: Brand equity has certainly a lot to do with that. If people have heard of you that covers a lot of sins, I’ll say with regard to positioning. I think, to answer it, Carman directly, it’s both.

I think a lot of people know why they exist and what they’re trying to do, but. But really wrapping their heads around it. And how do you communicate that back to the market? It’s a challenge. That’s why I existed as a content person because that was something that was a, it was a skill for technical brands that, it’s usually engineering-driven and engineers. And I get to say this, ’cause I was one for many years. We’re not good at, historically, articulating those kinds of things, explaining the complex, or simplifying a complex topic for a broad audience. I’ll hear a lot of our technology or our people are just the best.

If you don’t think that, I think that’s a bigger problem. That’s crazy to me but it’s something that they… It comes from a place, a good place, right? Cause they trust their team. They love their team. They respect their horsepower, the technical horsepower they have. So it’s great that they feel that way, but the market doesn’t care. The market expects that’s a table stake. So you’ve got to come back with how this great team help your customer win? It’s gotta be about them, not you. And I think that really when you’re insulated and you don’t have external expertise, you can talk yourself into these tracks of we absolutely deserve to win. And we all agree. There’s nobody to really offer a counterpoint to that because why would they, there’s really no motivation to do that. So an external person can come with the view of I talked to a similar company and here’s the, here’s an objection I heard. How would you answer that? And a lot of times there’s this, chin rubbing and I’m not sure how we would, maybe we should talk about that and think about it. 

Jeff White: I love the idea that in order for you to win, you have to assume that everybody else’s people are completely useless. Like how many businesses are going to market thinking that is actually the case.

Adam Kimmel: Cause many businesses have similar technology, especially within an industry, right? If it’s automation, if it’s, whatever, an automotive part or something, these pieces aren’t going to be different. So what is it about, okay, you have better service. What does that look like? How did that service help a customer? Do better than they did before. And what were some of the outcomes that the service delivered? It’s not the thing, it’s what the thing did. So I think again, that’s where content comes in because you have that point of view and you get the richness, the gold nuggets from these interviews. And then somebody that’s skilled at, having that perspective and the strategy behind it can craft that into a message that enforces that to the market so that they really understand why that matters for them, not what it is. You can hear I’m passionate about it. It’s something that really I’ve seen a lot. And I’ve seen a lot of people who really should be winning a lot more aren’t because they just didn’t get this right. And it’s something that, that’s why I like helping them do it. 

Carman Pirie: Adam, I think we could probably kick this around for another four hours, this has been a fascinating conversation. I really enjoyed just discussing how kind of firms navigate this challenge, and how you assist them in that. And it’s been an interesting and insightful half-hour. Thank you for joining us on the show again today. 

Adam Kimmel: Thanks so much for having me. I’ll see you again in three years or so.

Jeff White: Sounds good. Hope the offering continues to evolve this way. It’s pretty great. Thanks a lot. 

Adam Kimmel: Thank you. 

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