- Hey everyone, I’m here with Jon Mak from Making Better Bids and by no surprise, he helps small businesses make better bids, specifically winning more government contracts. So I wanted to talk a little bit more to Jon, learn about his experience on using LinkedIn, the B2B Lead Machine, working together, and tell us a bit more about his company and who he helps. Welcome, Jon.

– Thank you very much, Ryan.

– No worries. Well, why don’t you start by telling us a little bit more about your business.

– So I started my business in 2020, and what I do is I help companies basically make better bids exactly as the name sounds. So, I help them.

– Its a brilliant idea that one. Thank you. I help them like review a request for proposal that typically from governments, Canadian governments often, but sort of wherever, review the procurements helps them understand what they’re going to get into and how to structure a bid and get the best result they possibly can and hopefully win the work at the end of the day.

– Yeah. Yeah and your background is actually on the other side of the fence, is that right?

– Yeah. I spent about 12 years or so as a consultant helping government like training them how to evaluate bids or writing RFPs for government and then also working directly in the government. Again, writing requests for proposals and evaluating bids and training people and things like that. So I spent a long time doing that on the government side. And after doing that for so long I thought it would be useful to switch sides because I saw there were definitely instances where people could just use to learn more like they weren’t doing as well as they could because they didn’t understand the process and they didn’t necessarily understand that they didn’t understand. So that’s why I decided to do what I do today.

– Yeah, definitely. I love that, like you said, there are often times right contracts that just never saw the light of day for administrative purposes and just little things like you notice from working from the inside. So yeah, definitely a good weapon to have for business is someone like yourself, someone who knows the process. So, yeah, I’m excited to dive into this a little bit more, but I guess my next question is how did you first find out about B2Bleads.com?

– Honestly and ironically through a Facebook ad. This is where I came across and it’s interesting because I think I mentioned to you when we started going that I followed your link and I investigated what you do a little bit. And then I got, you know, 10 to 20 more everything I got on Facebook was similar businesses. So it was pretty funny that that’s the way that happened, but yeah, through Facebook is where I found you.

– Yeah. Yeah. I was running Facebook for a little while last year, but I’ve really brought my focus back to, back to LinkedIn. It’s a funny platform – Facebook and yeah, it was a good experiment, but yeah, LinkedIn is definitely where it’s at and I’m definitely investing more into LinkedIn at the moment, but yeah, I mean, like I tell people I’m not married to LinkedIn. It’s just, it works really well and that’s why I promote it. But as soon as it, you know something else is better. B2B leads is about B2B leads, not LinkedIn. So we’ll move as soon as it moves. All right. And what was your situation before starting? I know starting a business in 2020 is always kind of a interesting. It’s an interesting time to start a business. Yeah, where we’re actively working together.

– Well, basically I was starting through, I was trying to start with like the content marketing and trying to do LinkedIn marketing a little bit, because I figured that would be a place to start. I tried sort of content marketing through the websites. Did this word of mouth as much as I could in you know 2020 when you’re locked inside and you can’t talk to anybody in person. And I had extremely minimal success in most of that even the LinkedIn stuff, I did try sales navigator for their free trial when it, when I started looking into these things, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it applicable to what I do because it seemed to be all about your target market. And best I could tell was that my target market was sort of anybody. And so, I didn’t know, I didn’t know how to make that work for me, because I didn’t know how to narrow down who I was looking for.

– Yeah.

– So that led me to look for alternative solutions.

– Awesome. In steps it’ll be late .

– It was, it made a lot of sense to me at that time, right. Because this is the kind of thing I was looking to do to begin with.

– Yeah. And here I am.

– Yeah. Well, what would you say added the most value to you from the program? Coming from where you were with struggling to make progress with content marketing or use sales navigator?

– Oh gosh. There’s, there’s at least two big things that I think were super. The whole, the whole thing I have to admit the whole thing was, was pretty useful. I mean, starting off with the, the marketing and basics sort of at the beginning, the course, which is something I was always afraid of and I didn’t know much about which is why I was always afraid to start my own company. Cause I didn’t understand, but I found that super helpful. It’s sort of a good lead into everything else. But then, uhm sort of reading through all the tools that you’ve got to make things so much easier was the whole super useful. So I could understand how to get things going. And now I have things going and I don’t have to really think about how it all works, now that it works. So I love it from that perspective

– Awesome. Now. Yeah. I mean, what would you say as well has helped you stand out on LinkedIn? Now, I know you’ve had a really good response, you solved very good niche problem. But what would you say has helped you stand out on LinkedIn?

– That’s a good question. I think in my case, my offering is particularly unique in in Canada in particular. I know there are a few more companies in Australia and the United States and sort of throughout the EU that that do the kind of work that I do. But in Canada there are some, but they’re, they’re not a lot. And those that exist are usually little guys like myself. Just a shop with one or two people maybe, doing a little bit of work. So a lot of the companies I reached out to they didn’t necessarily know that this kind of help existed or one in particular I remember starting off with, they were working with a big giant accounting firm that was helping them with all sorts of things. And they didn’t know that there were people that were very much more specialized than an accounting firm on this sort of work. So they didn’t even know that they didn’t have to go to a giant shop to try and, and get their help that they could get it from someone more specialized. So I think just my my expertise is what’s helping me stand out a little bit.

– Yeah. And what I love is and I tell people this all the time, when it comes to B2B marketing, it’s really how what’s the bottom line? How can you tie this to in most cases, money. And your offer is very closely linked to money. It’s, it’s winning more contracts, getting more you know, I mean, that’s the lifeblood of the businesses is getting more contracts. So it’s very obvious why you can help them. And, and yeah, I think that really helps to get more conversation started. Now, if, if you’re happy to share what have been some of your results on, from working on the program together?

– Well, I actually managed to get results moving along fairly quickly. And I was quite surprised because I didn’t really know is that I didn’t know how to get to my target. And so when we worked together to get this first campaign running I didn’t think it would necessarily come along so quick. But in my, my first month, my first month was running my campaign was December, which is maybe not the best months

– Definitely But I did get a lot of conversations going. I had as at least two to three conversations potentially booked almost every day. I think there were some days I only had one conversation booked with people. I had a lot of people just saying, you know “Thanks, We’ll talk later”. And I know one of the other useful things you provided is scripts to help with these sorts of situations. But for me, I’ve had so many people interested in actually having conversations and follow-ups and things like this. I haven’t really moved things along when people are just like.”Thanks, maybe we’ll talk”. And I was like, okay, maybe we’ll talk. And I don’t even have to worry about those people because, so many other people that are interested in actually talking right off the bat that I just I just booked with them. And I’ve actually had to, I’m starting again in January. I’ve had to slow my machine down a little bit because I can’t afford to have, you know, four or five hours of conversations potentially booked all day long. I don’t necessarily have five hours of conversations but you know, I have people tentatively booked maybe a week in advance or so. So I like things get solid And I just can’t deal with that many calls.

– Yeah. It’s a good place to be when you’re overbooked.

– Yeah. It’s fantastic. You’ve got a few contracts that are in the line now. A few more butts out. Sounds like things are doing pretty well?

– Yeah. I’ve got a, like I have two or three contracts signed just, just in January. maybe another one or two lined up already for next month and still look at the machine is still working. So I still have conversations and leads coming in the door.

– That’s fantastic. That’s what we like to hear. Might have to hire someone to help you help you manage all the conversations and calls soon.

– I have thought about it already, yes. I’ve thought about doing that. But the thing is I love, I don’t love marketing. I think I may have mentioned this before. I’m not a huge fan of marketing. I’m terrified about it but I do like having the conversations. I like this part of it. It’s what I do. It’s more, it’s more personal but the marketing myths of it scares me greatly.

– Yeah. Marketing. So yeah, it sounds like you love the sales side and and sales is a lot of people. Yeah. It’s the conversation side. So sales is often associated with, you know trying to trick people, but sales is an introvert’s haven because a good sales person listens and presents a solution that is actually what the person wants. But yeah, marketing, I mean my background is in, is engineering. So I can definitely relate to the I guess the fear of marketing or even the distaste towards marketing, but yeah. I mean, marketing makes the world go round. It, it fuels businesses. It fuels growth. It fuels jobs. It’s it’s necessary. It’s and it’s yeah. It’s so I, I understand, but yeah it’s absolutely so critical for businesses to understand.

– No, one’s no, one’s going to know what I do unless I find a way to tell people what I do. So they’re never going to come and find me if I don’t let them know that I’m here.

– Yeah. I’ve experienced this first hand on multiple occasions. So it’s nice to be helping people not have to go through that as well. Awesome. Well, that’s all the questions I had for you today, Jon. So I just want to take the time to say obviously thank you for joining me. Thank you for sharing your experience. I know you’re a business owner as well. Your time is very valuable and I really appreciate that. And yeah, thanks so much.

– Thank you. Its been a pleasure.

– No worries. Have a great day and, and no doubt we’ll talk soon.

– No doubt.

– Cheers