Archive for month: June, 2023

How often do you lift your attention from the day-to-day to check your Business Development progress toward your goals? I often see well-intended, focused lawyers who develop a solid BD plan in December and don’t revisit that plan until the next December. And I get it: balancing billable work, practice-focused nonbillable work, and other commitments can be tough.

But here’s the thing: if you fail to check your Business Development plan, it’s easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day that you lose sight of the bigger picture. You don’t get the opportunity to adjust your plan according to your actual results and you lose the chance to evaluate how new activity you’ve added fits into your plan. As a result, you can be busy with BD activity and not discover that your efforts aren’t paying off until you’ve invested a lot of time. Nobody can afford that error.

Take this month to check your Business Development progress. Questions to ask include:

• Have I brought in new business? If so, what’s the source? Can I trace that business to something on my BD plan, and if so, do I need to change or refocus to take advantage of a trend I’m seeing?
• What progress have I made on building or expanding my professional platform? Review your plans for writing, speaking, teaching, etc. Have you kept to the frequency you’d set for those activities? Are you reaching the audiences you’ve intended to reach? What results are you seeing? What new opportunities exist now?
  • On platform building results: don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this activity is unproductive if it hasn’t produced new business. Platform-building activity is designed to build your professional credibility. It’s important that you reach the right audiences, but in most cases, new business won’t be traced directly to your one-to-many outreach.
• How well am I keeping in touch with my network? This is the time to review your A/B/C lists, ensure that the right people are on each list, and confirm that you’re keeping in touch as often as you intended. For your A list, consider too the balance between requests to meet, sending information relevant to your contact with some kind of personal comment, and outreach on topics more personally interesting to your contact.
• Am I meeting new people to add to my contact list? If you’ve been networking, are you meeting the kinds of people you’d identified in your Business Development plan? Are you going beyond first meetings to develop relationships? If you’ve been involved in a group for a substantial chunk of time (four to six months), are you seeing results in terms of beneficial new relationships, introductions, referrals, invitations to professional opportunities, or new business? How’s your LinkedIn activity working?

Finally, do the Traffic Light exercise. Based on your Business Development plan and review, list your green lights (productive activities you want to continue), yellow lights (activities that aren’t producing the results you’d hoped but that may benefit from more time or refreshed effort), and red lights (activities to discontinue because they’re unproductive or so unenjoyable that you aren’t giving them the effort necessary to see results). Wrap up by looking for new lanes: avenues, activities, or relationships that aren’t on your BD plan that seem attractive. Determine which you might add to your plan, with a careful eye toward balancing the activities you’re removing with those you’re adding.

This review shouldn’t take more than an hour or two, in most instances. Investing that time will help you to ensure that you’ll put the next six months to good use so that 2023 will be a year of Business Development success for you.

If you need help conducting this review (evaluating your results, for example, or identifying missing pieces in your Business Development plan), please reply to this e-mail. I’ve set aside three spots for limited BD plan review and refresh, plus one spot for a new client to begin work this month. I’ll be happy to arrange a 30-minute complimentary consultation to see how I might help.