How to Turn Relationship-Building into a Trackable Metric
When companies are disciplined, they grow—provided they’re disciplined about the right things.
In the commercial painting company I own, our sales team and project managers are extremely disciplined about three things:
- Beer
- Lunch
- Dinner
Yep, going out to eat is our primary marketing strategy. We track it as one of the top metrics on our senior level scorecard.
It’s called the BDL.
***
The BDL (or CDL, if you prefer—coffee is a perfectly acceptable substitute for grabbing a beer) is a touchpoint between one of our team members and our network.
These are the folks who buy from us. They’re contractors, facilities managers, etc. The BDL strategy is based on a very specific guiding policy: people buy from people they like.
And they like you better if they get to know you. The free meal doesn’t hurt.
Here are the parameters for a BDL in our business:
- Must be a relevant party (prospect, current client, referral partner)
- Must be an in-person meeting (NO virtual)
- If you’re doing a dropoff and have a good, thorough chat, it counts
- Must be an hour long
- Should be 1:1; if you meet with multiple people, it still counts as 1 BDL
- You pay. Always.
By defining a BDL, we have turned it into something we can track. And we set targets for BDLs at the individual and company level each quarter.
***
BDLs drive results in our business. At least, we believe they do.
The thing is, in our space, BDLs don’t have ROI. I can’t say that for every dollar we spend buying somebody lunch we make back two.
It’s more nuanced than that.
By and large, we win business by bidding on projects. But those relationships help us get a foot in the door to even be considered. In some cases, a BDL during a proposal process can get the deal done.
So we track BDLs fanatically, but we can’t tie them directly to revenue.
What we can see is broader trends. When we hit our BDL targets, we tend to hit our revenue targets, too. When we slack on BDLs, we win less business.
But being able to see those trends requires commitment to a strategy for a long period of time—long enough that the information you gather is actually meaningful.
***
BDLs are hard work. If you’ve ever had to actively go out and network, you know it’s true.
So we do a couple of things to make the process easier.
First, we don’t leave it to chance. We generate lists of folks we would like to meet with during the quarter, then work against that list. Not every meeting happens, but it gives our team a roadmap to work from.
Second, we don’t have budget limits. There is no set entertainment budget, although we do keep an eye on spending. But we’ve paid for golf club memberships, big bar tabs, and plenty of expensive dinners without asking our team to justify their expenses.
We want to reduce friction as much as possible. Getting the BDLs done is more important than anything else.
***
I have evidence that BDLs work. CE Painting has been on the Inc 5000 list for the last 3 years.
And… when we aren’t as disciplined as we need to be… business slows down accordingly…
Three things that might apply to your business:
- If you have a relational business, consider doing BDLs - and tracking them
- BDLs are a leading indicator of success, so watch for trends and don’t expect immediate ROI
- Make it as easy as possible for your team to get these done
What looks like our team members out having a good time is actually part of a carefully orchestrated strategy to grow our business.
And they’re also having a good time.
And we’re taking care of our customers (and future customers), which is one of the things that matters most to us!
If you need help designing your growth strategy, let us know.
