Blake Premer

Nice to meet you. My name is Blake and I've done business development at an advertising agency for years. And right now I'm in Tampa, Florida, working remotely for a company.

Yeah, so business development manager. The exciting part of it is you're truly on the front lines of growth for your company. So you're really like the focal point for thinking through ways that you're gonna help your business grow by generating more revenue for it.

And the thing that I love about it is it really comes down to relationships. Building those relationships with partners and things like that. So being on the forefront of thinking through how I'm gonna help the business grow by bringing in new business to the company.

So a typical day starts with organization. You definitely wanna be organised because the first thing you'll do when I start my day is looking at my leads and kind of going through the pipeline. So you know, kind of like seeing, okay, who have I spoke to this week? Or who do I need to speak to? Who do I need to reach out to?

And if you're not familiar with sales pipeline, that really is the key to business. So it's really a funnel. So you want to generate new business to bring those new prospects in. Then you want to nurture those prospects by reaching out to them, making sure you're in touch with them, and then closing them is the ultimate of really closing the deal.

So really looking at that pipeline daily and that's really how I start my morning. It's a really good way to start it, to understand, okay, what do I want to give attention to because a really healthy business development manager has a nice pipeline, has a lot of great leads coming in and is able to really set up an infrastructure that you're able to close deals but also not allow yourself to not have new deals upcoming.

So it's a really nice flow and you kind of get into a groove.

How do I work with other people? Well, I'd say the key first is they're people first and so that's a really great piece of advice: really treating people like people, like you're genuinely curious about them. You want to get to know them, they're not just a business number, they're not just "What's the bottom line?"

It's a really amazing thing about working with people is you generally, I'd say the number one word for me is curiosity. I'm so curious who you are. You know, what, what do you like? Like who you are as a person. And that's first off.

Secondly, you really want to be an expert in what you're talking about, and people respect you more if you truly know what you're talking about. And so for me, being in business development for advertising is truly understanding the advertising space and how my knowledge can help grow someone's business.

And so it's like I have the curiosity of who someone is and then that knowledge that my knowledge is really gonna help them grow. And kind of like having a little bit of like that teacher element of here's what I know and here's how I can teach someone so they can really, really trust you and understand you're really good for them as well.

The best thing about being a business development manager is definitely the impact it can have on the broader team. It's such a cool feeling when you close a big sale. You tell everyone in the company, like, we got this partner. And you can just see the effect it has. It's really an amazing thing 'cause that affects the creative team, who now has a new client that they can make creative for. It affects the account team who has its new beautiful account manager.

So it really is like the best feeling that your work makes an impact on so many others and can have such a big, large impact on the overall company. It's a really amazing feeling.

So the worst thing about a business development manager is definitely some of the cold outreach. So cold outreach is someone who may not know who you are and you're reaching out to. It's just part of sales and business development in general, I think, is you're gonna reach out to people who maybe don't know who you are and maybe don't understand the value you have.

So you may hear a no from time to time. Obviously it's never the greatest feeling to hear a no but it's okay because when you get that one yes, it's so overrides that no. I would say just the amount of times you have to reach out to people who may not be as receptive, it is something you have to learn to deal with over time. It's nothing personal, it's just business.

So why did I wanna become a business development manager? I'd say, first off, it's just I love people. I genuinely love meeting new people and getting to know individuals. So for me, my journey was like I worked at an advertising agency and was doing more the account management. So that's just like kind of with our own accounts and kind of making sure they're healthy.

But I noticed I would gravitate more towards going out to events in the city and meeting new people. And I noticed I gravitated more to like the relationship aspect. And so, yeah, I just kind of like, felt like it was almost my destiny to be in a role that I could be more, you know, meeting new people and more in front of people rather than like in charge of like one account.

I was like "No, I need to be out there meeting as many people as I can." It just fit my personality.

So my journey to business development manager started, started actually at Samsung. In anything in life, you're gonna go on a path of, you're gonna go on a journey. And so I started first in support, for a small company called SmartThings, and the startup got acquired and they moved us all out to the west coast and I initially was just doing support, so helping people with technical issues.

I started to like the product. So I'd say that's a key for any success, whatever company you're gonna work for, whatever you're gonna do, make sure you become the truth. And when I say become the truth, make sure you know the product well. Make sure you know the benefits of that product, what it's doing well.

And starting in support helped me recognise that like I had to become an expert. 'cause I was literally teaching people who are having maybe some issues of how to best use the product.

But that really influenced me 'cause I was like, okay, becoming a really product expert pays such dividends. So that was kind of like the start and through becoming a product expert, then I started doing demos. I was able to like go across the country and do demos and then eventually because I could do demos that led me to marketing, because I knew how to talk about the product.

So it's like I went to then marketing which is really cool. It's like probably the most creative field. If you like being creative and you just like thinking up new ideas, marketing's incredible. That was a really fun experience for me. After I knew how to speak about a product, now I can think of how to market it and make sure whatever I was saying was true. And because I had the product knowledge, I never said anything that was like over-hyped.

Then ultimately, even while I was doing marketing, I craved meeting people and really having that personal contact and having days that were more spent, not in meeting rooms, but in, you know, going out to lunches or being on calls or being with people. So it was like, that was my trajectory of like, I just knew I really wanted to be more people focused and more relationship focused.

And that was kind of like my journey. But it all played a role into ultimately getting here. If that makes sense.

So my education definitely played a role in my business development manager journey. I went to college, I got a degree in finance from American University, in Washington DC. So definitely that gave me some great foundational pieces, that helped me.

Then, that was a great building block for me. And then of course, real world experience is really what took it to the next level. But having that foundational educational piece was important.

So some memorable moments from my career, definitely.

So there's a super cool client, I'm not gonna say who they were, super cool client that I was like, they would be so incredible to work with for our agency. They had no idea who we were. So I thought up an idea of filming a video, going through their website, literally I came up with some ad ideas. I was like, Hey, here's your site. Here's some ideas that would knock it out of the park.

I literally went the extra mile, kind of came up with some concepts of like what would work for them and like sent them a video, of this, and then they saw the video. They're like, that's interesting. Do you wanna hop on a call shirt? Hopped on a call.

Next step, you know, we could talk to them over like a month and we closed the deal. And it was just like the best feeling, 'cause it was the ultimate showing of you don't necessarily have to know anyone if you can make something happen outta nothing.

We had no relationships with this company. I just like, loved their product and I was just really passionate about working with them. And I took it that extra mile by making like a video, even making some advertising, you know, campaigns for them. So I did a lot of work. I didn't know if it would have any return, but I just like believed it would be a great fit.

And then when we actually closed the deal, everyone at the company was like, I was like a hero. It was like the coolest feeling because like, how did you get this company? No one? I'm like, I just reached out. Like, people were like, wow, that's like so cool. So that was one of my most favorite moments for sure.

Wow. One piece of advice someone told me growing up, I would say, I would say definitely thinking about what you want to be is like really important for sure. And I would say I had no idea how many times I would be able to kind of change what I'm doing as I've grown older, which has been a beautiful thing.

I kind of thought growing up that I would have to pick one piece of life and stick with it. Whether that be I was gonna have to be a finance person or if I would have to be a real estate developer. And what I've uncovered in real life is you can make pivots and change, which is really cool.

So my advice, when I'm younger, I would say like, actually try a whole bunch of different things and see what you like. You really can try so many different, you know, see what finance is like, see what real estate's like. See what all these different sectors are like. And just know that you have the opportunity to change as you get older.

You're not gonna just have to pick one, but yet you can, like, you can diversify and you don't have to know exactly what you're doing right now and you can have a very open mind, which has been amazing.