“What you do with your billable time determines your current income, but what you do with your non-billable time determines your future.”
David Maister, True Professionalism: The Course to Care About Your Clients & Career
Not knowing how to find time for business development holds back many great lawyers, accountants, and consultants from progressing in their careers. Too many professionals fall into the trap of focusing on their billable time. If you have ever asked yourself, “How do I become effective at business development without reducing my billable hours?” The answer is, if you do not invest enough time in relationship building, you will not have to worry about billable hours, because you won’t have any.
You can learn all the business strategies and concepts in the world, but ultimately, you have to find time to implement them to gain new clients and keep your business going. Without new clients, you will not have a thriving business.
Business development is determining who your audience, or client is and aligning yourself with the people, the vendors and the groups in order to attract that audience. Like most professional service providers, making the time for business development feels much like being expected to fly the plane while building it at the same time. It may seem impossible when you are busy reaching deadlines and dealing with a host of issues that need your attention, but no matter what area of practice, lawyers struggle with not having enough time. The fact is, there is not enough time unless you make the time to build business development into your regular schedule.
If you do not make the time to connect, then those relationships are not going to develop into opportunities–ultimately resulting in opportunities not presenting themselves at all.
Strategy leads to success. Set pockets of time aside to strategize business development opportunities.
Because non-billable activities do not produce revenue right way, many of us have been trained to think as non-billable time and “non-valuable” time. It is important to understand that doing the work clients pay you for is directly linked to the non-chargeable business activities that keep that work coming in the door.
How do you make time for strategic business development such as staying in touch with prospective clients, attending conferences, or writing articles that position you as a thought leader?
Consider implementing these two tasks each day:
- Start your day by looking over your calendar. Identify where there are five- or ten-minute gaps in your daily schedule. Where those gaps exist, start adding in micro-business development tasks like making a quick call to a prospective client, searching for an upcoming workshop or conference online, and hopping on LinkedIn to interact with and check out updates of key contacts.
- Dedicate a set amount of time each morning or afternoon to focus on tasks related to business development. For example, by carving out just 15-30 minutes you could draft several email messages to some contacts, make a couple of phone calls to schedule a lunch meeting, ask a referral source to have coffee or invite them to attend an upcoming conference with you.
In short, by investing just a single hour or two a week (even in the busiest of times) you can start chipping away at your business development to do list.
Determine who you want your ideal client to be.
Do not waste your time going after business you really have no desire for. Learn what a first-rate client is for you. What does a good lead look like, and how do you get more of them? Different areas of practice take into consideration different factors, but all professional service providers should figure out what a good lead looks like, and more importantly, what a bad lead looks like. Depending on your area of expertise, identify what a good lead looks like by asking specific questions like: Does a good lead need to have X amount of dollars, or more? If you’re a disability attorney, do they need to have documentation or certain paperwork already filled out? If you are a personal injury attorney, do there need to be witnesses? Some attorneys may prefer that there was a witness to the accident at hand, as opposed to hearsay or “someone just said so”.
You’ll learn what the best questions are to ask yourself that will clearly distinguish a good lead from a bad one. The point is to keep an eye out for the good ones and determine what makes them a good one, so that you can use that to target your marketing efforts to get ideal leads. Reflect on past experiences with clients. Doing so will help you recognize what a bad lead looks like, and the more you fine tune your intake process, the better you will be at managing your time to grow your business.
Developing a strong business network does not have to be difficult or feel superficial.
The assumption that using a high-pressure “salesy” approach or pitching yourself like a walking commercial is the only way to successfully build business development is a complete myth. If the marketing or sales aspect of growing your business is not your strength or something you have no interest in, hire somebody. Do not let marketing and sales hold you back from developing relationships. After all, developing relationships and networking can have nothing to do with sales and marketing and have everything to do with connections and building trust. In a nutshell, referrals and sales opportunities develop from good connections. Building trust is critical and comes from having those real and authentic conversations. The fastest way we have found to build trust is by providing value early.
Great conversations begin with knowing how to ask good open-ended questions and preparing for meetings by setting aside a few minutes to do your research. Read the bios, check the LinkedIn profiles, and visit the company websites. Knowing something about the people you are meeting goes a long way towards having better interactions.
Having those trusting relationships with colleagues, clients, and prospects is the best way to develop a strong and solid business network. You do not have to sell anything when building a network, just be yourself, offer some value, and the rest will follow.
The only way to get a consistent pipeline of new clients is through consistent business development.
If you stop when the work is heavy, this habit will only lead to those painful “feast or famine” patterns that all too many professional service providers experience. Make the time to dedicate a non-negotiable amount of business development that you will do every day. Every week. Every month. Always make time for business development and see it as part of your daily job.
While there are countless ways to make time for business development, rewire your brain to recognize that business development not just something to do when workloads are light, but something incorporated into your everyday schedule.
Paloma DeHaan is a freelance writer and designer. She works closely with law firms to provide digital marketing content, ghostwriting, copywriting, and translation services that increases social media attention and search engine visibility. She enjoys motherhood and running a household, while creating content invaluable to professional service providers.