Since you probably have nothing
better to do today, why not fill your time with a lot of business development busywork.
Write a daily blog, tweet it to your Twitter followers, add another dozen virtual strangers to your LinkedIn community, post a new discussion to one of your groups, then fill next week's calendar with networking lunches. Oh look, it's 5pm and all you've done today is market yourself.
Don't get me wrong—such activities are important, but given that you have clients to attend to, it's unlikely you'll always find the time to take the actions necessary to generate new opportunities. And if you're assessing your business development effectiveness according to the amount of time you have for it, you may feel overwhelmed or inadequate (or both).
Now, it's good to have a business development plan. It's even better to follow one. But during exceptionally busy periods, a simple business development theme (or BD theme) is more manageable.
Your BD theme serves as a mission statement—a concept that focuses your thoughts and efforts in a positive direction. Here are a few examples:
- Get to know your clients' businesses better
- Spend more quality time with your top referral sources
- Be more responsive to your social media community
- Ask for referrals and introductions
- Reinforce your unique brand in your conversations with others
- Be more proactive in your business development
As you can see, these are more like subjective guidelines to live by rather than measurable goals to achieve. To that end, they are less likely to overwhelm during the busy periods when you just can't bear the idea of adding another task to your "should've-done" list.
