#BusinessMakers — Steve Gravel

Published in

Where Next Happens

3 min readJan 18, 2017

With our feet-on-the ground approach, OCE provides expert advice and guidance through a 40-person team of Business Development (BD) experts deployed regionally in nine locations across the province.

Meet Steve Gravel who works out of Ontario’s Northern region.

What do you enjoy most about your BD role?

Variety. On any given day I could be meeting with industry clients, primary investigators, university and college staff and ecosystem members.
Lots of leash. BDs are given responsibility for a large number of tasks with real metrics. This influences the way we are managed. I enjoy how much independence we are given while still having quantifiable accountability.
Seeing companies move from pre-revenue to orders in hand.

What is your professional background?

My professional experience has been in applied economic development research, business development and applied research and innovation. I also have nearly 10 years of sales experience in the commercial food sector and in the heavy industrial sector.

Describe your areas of specialization?

My areas of specialization are in primary extractive industries such as forestry and mining. In particular, I have a vast knowledge of the supply and service clusters which supply innovative products and technologies to the mining and forestry sectors.

What is your best piece of advice for a start-up or entrepreneur?

Don’t quit your day job (too soon). Many entrepreneurs jump in to an opportunity with both feet and will quit their full-time jobs either out of frustration or excitement. My advice is to stick it out just long enough and to be patient enough for the new business to produce enough revenue to sustain you. This is so you don’t confront an early liquidity crisis that forces you to close your business prematurely.

What do you look for in a company when assessing potential for success?

Do you have a pool of stable buyers for what you’re offering? Is there a clear path to commercialization? My instincts are that if there can be a buying public for what any company is selling, it has a shot for success.

What book or movie would you recommend to a budding entrepreneur and why?

In order to understand the North American business climate in a historical context, Alfred Chandler’s The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. For me that book unlocked why businesses act the way they do in today’s economy.

For a lighter read, Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness by Jeffrey Gitomer.