Do you work on business development every day? You’re missing a trick if not! The head of talent at a magic circle law firm stressed the importance of business development in choosing candidates for partner. She said “if you want to make partner, you have to see business development as part of your day job. If you don’t have that mindset, we know you’re not ready for partnership.” In other words, you need a business development daily routine. With business development being so essential, it’s time to stop putting it off and finally making it a part of our daily routine. Here’s how.
First, you’ve got to make time for a business development daily routine.
We’ve all got the same problem, we “don’t have the time.” I bet we’ve all said at some point, “there’s just not enough hours in the day.” But you know what? As busy as we all feel sometimes, there are always ways that we can make more time. Just look at the five Ps below. If you are implementing these in your day you are on your way to a business development daily routine:
- Plan – You must have a plan for your business development daily routine. If you don’t have a plan you’ll get overwhelmed and try to do everything (probably badly). Or you’ll get overloaded and end up doing nothing at all.
- Prioritise – use your plan to prioritise and get the most valuable tasks done first as part of your business development daily routine. What’s going to give you the biggest bang for your buck if you focus on it now?
- Prospects – make a target or introducer list and use this to focus your efforts. If you always have your target or ideal client in mind, every decision you make will move you closer to your goal.
- Pace – Don’t worry you’re not expected to go from not winning work to bringing in one million pound contracts overnight. Just keep focussed. If you plan, prioritise and know who your prospects are, you won’t waste your time on no-hopers.
- Push down – delegate those tasks that others can do and keep the ones that only you can do. How much time would this free up for you?
I created the Progress to Partner Academy to make this as easy as possible. There are guides, 14 self-study courses, useful videos, Quick Win advice and workbooks waiting for you – everything you need to know about how to make partner all in one place! There’s even a course on “how to make the time for business development”.
If you’re not doing these in your day to day life, now is the time to start. You might just be surprised how much time you actually do have. (3 ways to stop wasting time with your business development)
Second, you’ve got to create a daily habit
Now that you have the time, it’s time to start making business development a part of your daily routine and the easiest way to do this is to make it a habit. Here are a few things that you can do to create effective business development habits.
Start working on your own career progression. Why not sign up to receive my weekly tips here and you’ll find out what you need to be working on in your career development (and how to make the time for your career development) to progress your career in your firm.
Create the mindset shift
Mindset is everything when it comes to forming habits and it is essential to making your efforts effective. If you think of business development as a chore, it is most likely to be at the end of your list, a task that never gets done or done very well because it’s always pushed back to tomorrow. If you shift this mindset into a more positive one, seeing it as part of your job, an element that’s key to your career progression, then you’ll soon find that it will become easier, you will do it better, and it will actually be a task that gets ticked off. (Get maximum effectiveness with your business development)
Keep yourself accountable
Some people find that accountability helps to get things done, so tell people what you’re going to do. Whether it’s just asking your significant other to check in with you at the end of the day, working with a mentor in your firm or an external coach, find what works for you to keep yourself accountable to deadlines.
Schedule it in your diary
If you’re a highly structured person, putting everything in your diary will work incredibly well for you. If you’re not, try it, stick with it, and it should really help you to make business development part of your daily routine. Try to schedule in time for business development in your diary, even if it’s just 10 minutes on LinkedIn at the end of your workday. Once it’s in your diary, you may find that it gets done more often than not.
Use association as a reminder
We all do this without realising so it may just work for reminding you to work on your business development. I’m an asthmatic and in order to remind myself to take my asthma inhaler in the morning, I link it to another habit of mine: brushing my teeth. It’s very simple, I keep my inhaler by my toothbrush so that when I go into the bathroom in the morning, I take my nasal spray, then my brown inhaler, and then I clean my teeth. It’s all linked to the habit of cleaning my teeth. Try adding business development on to the end of something else that you do every day without fail and it will soon become a habit and part of your daily routine.
Measure and monitor your progress
You don’t know what’s going well if you don’t measure it, so make sure that you are monitoring your progress. Just like after Christmas, when we’re trying to lose those few extra pounds, we need to measure our weight and monitor it over time to see our success and to keep us motivated to keep going. The same goes for your business development. If you’re seeing progress with your business development then it will be much easier to keep it up as part of a daily routine. If you’re not seeing progress, what can you do differently? (Look out for these 10 red flags)
Set yourself targets
Targets help you to keep improving and keep you on track. Set daily, weekly, monthly, even yearly targets and reward yourself when you’ve hit them. Whatever motivates you to continue to put in the effort with your business development, make sure you use it.
Take a look at how your Progress to Partner Academy can help even the most reluctant networker to build a partner-sized client portfolio – Progress to Partner & Business Development
Know your why and reflect on it regularly
Why are you putting yourself through this pain? What’s in it for you if you work on business development daily? Take a few moments to really understand why you are doing this. You might not want to do it, but knowing that it’s crucial to you getting partner may be enough for you to keep going. Remind yourself of this every day so that you keep positive.
Start working on your own career progression. Why not sign up to receive my weekly tips here and you’ll find out what you need to be working on in your career development (and how to make the time for your career development) to progress your career in your firm.
Make time and use it wisely
Using the five Ps, you can make more time for yourself during your day to focus on a business development daily routine. Just make sure to use it wisely, keep yourself accountable, and remember to think of it as the part of your job that is essential for getting you where you want to be.
We have a great course in our subscriber-only site Progress to Partner called “How to Truly Commit to Moving your Career Forward”. It’s a game-changer and will get you focussed and help you to create the time and space to work a little on your career plan every.single.week.
Find out how to a Progress to Partner membership can help you with your business development, networking and building your client portfolio (click here!)
