Business development: set time aside.

1 Set time aside for business development

The excuses for putting off doing some business development are plentiful – client meetings, reports to write, service enhancements to discuss… the list goes on. Business is a balancing act and, to be successful, you must make business development a priority (assuming it falls within your remit – Ed).

Make a start by blocking off time for business development tasks in hour-long chunks – each and every week. You need to set aside long enough to build momentum but not so much that you get stale. Many people find this is best done in the morning when you are fresh.

Avoid distractions at all costs during the time you have set aside. If you find yourself starting to become dragged into in anything that doesn’t involve having a conversation with a prospect or writing a proposal, stop.

Focus.

2 Stop thinking and start doing

We’ve talked about procrastination before – ‘procrastination is the thief of time’ ‘a job never started takes the longest to finish’ and all those good old sayings….

3 Stay organised

To help make your valuable business development time as effective as possible, it pays to use technology to help keep track of all of your sales conversations. A good CRM (customer relationship management) system can help here – but you don’t need all the whistles and bells, just one that’s easy to use.

Take good notes of each conversation with a prospect, and always set a reminder to follow up with the individual. Schedule these follow-up tasks for yourself during the business development time you have already set aside; then, when the alarm goes off, make sure you lift the phone.

4 Delegate whenever possible

Husband your resources: we live in a time-poor culture. Must it be you writing that specific proposal, or can a colleague sit in on the sales meeting for the first draft? Do you actually need to write all the follow-ups after a conference or exhibition, or can you pass the list of attendees over to a marketing colleague to craft individual emails and set the appointment for you to go in and meet with them?

Delegate wherever possible.

Good delegation has a number of advantages: you get more done for your clients; junior colleagues get the opportunity of learning more quickly; and you create more personal time to focus on important tasks and relationship-building at a senior level – in short, everybody benefits and achieves more.

5 Prioritise

We all know the expression ‘first things first’, but how do we gauge what should be a priority? One way is to focus on work that seems less immediately urgent but more important to your long-term goals, instead of focusing on work that is clamouring for immediate attention, but less important to your long-term goals – avoid just fire-fighting if you possibly can.

As you approach each block of set-aside business-development time, you need to know whom you are going to contact and where the highest potential lies. Focus your efforts and scarce time on your top-tier prospects.

6 Beware burn-out

Successful salespeople are often ‘tortoises’ (as opposed to ‘hares’) – that way they can keep going over the long term. Balance is the key here. Not only do you need to balance your seller-doer roles, you also need a good work-life balance. Without this, and with all of the different priorities pulling you in different directions, you will burn yourself out.

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