Whether you are a business owner, or responsible for bringing in new business, finding the time to fit business development into your week can be difficult.
Often we find when things aren’t a standard practice, they are the action items that fall off the list, and sit low in priority.
By engaging in regular business development activity and making it an intrinsic part of your weeks schedule will find you becoming more comfortable with the activity of doing.
There are a number of tactics to help you find your flow with Business development.
- Identify some key networking groups that you wish to attend, knowing who it is your wish to network with. Don’t just attend all networking functions, as you’ll find this time consuming with little return. Find those that have the markets/groups of people that are those who you can see working with your business, or introducing you to potential clients.
- If you are coming up blank with networking functions, look at your own network of people and see who is a good networker. Ask them to take you along to a session they attend and introduce you to people there. This can help you to break the intimidation you may feel at attending a networking event on your own.
- Book out in your calendar when these events occur – so you are prepared in time. While you’re at it, book in when you are going to make follow up calls, and coffee catch ups with referrers.
- While you are blocking out your calendar, block out 2 hours per week where you can focus on marketing. During this time consider business development activities such as; scheduling coffee/lunch catch ups with your referrers, sending a follow up email, writing a thank you card to a referrer for recent work, making a follow up call on proposals you have sent, writing a blog post, or researching a new potential client. All of the activities are ones that aid in keeping your business development happening.
With these simple steps added into your week you will find that over time business development becomes a natural and important part of your weeks schedule and your efforts will start to pay off. Mostly remember that it’s about consistency and relationships. Keeping those two elements as the focus on your business development activity and you’ll enjoy the rewards from your effort.
