There’s no question about it: making time for business development can be difficult. The billable hour business model, still the legal industry standard, consistently challenges lawyers to make BD activities part of their daily practice. Lawyers typically respond to the challenge in ways that might sound familiar:
“I want to do business development; I just don’t have an extra three-plus hours each week to do it.”
“If the firm wants us to do this, it should give us credit for our business development hours.”
“Other people do it, it just doesn’t work for me because…”
We know that most lawyers crave the power, flexibility, independence and fulfillment of generating their own book of business. If you are in this camp, below are five ideas that, when put into action, can position you for successful business development in no time.
1. Clarify Your Goals – Know what you want and define it in full detail. What exactly is your strategy and plan for achieving it? Think about it; it’s hard to put a puzzle together if you don’t know what the completed picture looks like before you start.
2. Prioritize Activities – Determining high value activities helps you focus on actions that have the most impact. Continuing with the puzzle analogy, some puzzle pieces are more distinctive and help the puzzle come together better than others.
3. Consistently Schedule Time – Don’t be limited by the fallacy that business development requires X hours of your time. Determine how much time you do have, put in on your calendar and consistently take action.
4. Use Available Resources – Business development doesn’t need to be a solo endeavor. Think about who can help and enlist their support. Need research? Enlist marketing people, associates or a bright and capable administrative person. Share what you want to accomplish. You may be surprised who can help.
5. Break it Down – The old adage, “eat an elephant one bite at a time” works for business development too. Start a list of things you can do in five minutes, such as making a list of clients you want to contact, or sending one email to a former client, or searching for one law school buddy on LinkedIn, or Google a target client. You get the picture. It all adds up. Think of activities you can do in small time increments, list them and do them when your schedule allows.
Business Development doesn’t have to be perfectly timed and executed, but it does have to be focused, organized and consistent. Many of our coaching clients are surprised about how momentum yields unexpected results once they develop consistent habits.
Start from where you are, follow these guidelines, and work successfully in small, strategic steps. You can do it in no time!