Only 20% of professionals on the partnership track do something every day to implement their Business Development Plan.
This episode is about how to become one of them — not through willpower, but through habit.
Using real examples from Poised for Partnership, this episode covers why business development gets deprioritised even by talented, motivated professionals, and what it actually takes to make it happen consistently.
In this episode you will learn:
- Why Sales Leadership is what your partners are assessing — and what that actually means day to day
- The identity barrier that stops most professionals from embracing business development, and how to reframe it
- Why motivation is an unreliable strategy, and why habit is the only thing that works long term
- The 5Ps model: Plan, Prospect list, Prioritise, Pace, Push down — and how to use it to make time for business development however busy you are
- How Diego’s daily habit protected his practice for years — and what happened when he stopped
Take the Partnership Readiness Assessment
Free to complete, 10–15 minutes, personalised report across all 12 key indicators: https://www.howtomakepartner.com/partnership-readiness-assessment/
Download the Business Development Habit Chapter from Poised for Partnership (free)
Buy Poised for Partnership
To buy a copy of Poised for Partnership, click here.
What help is out there for you to progress your career in the professions?
The Progress to Partner Academy is curated by key indicator. If Business Development Habit is where you need to focus, you’ll find everything in one place, including:
How to Make Time for Business Development — tackles the real barriers and helps you build a routine that holds
How to Create Your Business Development Plan — helps you turn good intentions into a clear, focused plan that supports your progression
Game Plan: How to Start Winning Clients When You Don’t Know Where to Start — gives you practical first steps if business development feels overwhelming or unclear
PLUS Video Hub advice including:
- Getting Serious About Business Development
- Making Time for Business Development
- How to Generate a Lead and Get Prospects Over the Line
- Winning Work from LinkedIn
- How to Always Make Time for Business Development
These resources will help you stop leaving business development until there is spare time, and start building the habits, structure and confidence to make it part of how you work.
If Business Development Habit is where you need to focus, this section of Progress to Partner will help you make time for the activity that builds your future business case, not just your current workload.
Use code PODCAST10 for 10% off annual membership: https://www.howtomakepartner.com/get-progress-to-partner/
Books mentioned
Poised for Partnership by Heather Townsend – https://amzn.to/3ETEYk3
How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life by Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie – https://amzn.to/4iLxugM
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Diego made partner through sheer discipline. Every single day, without fail, he did something to move his pipeline forward. His mantra was simple: always put stuff in at the top of the hopper. It made him one of the most consistent work winners in his firm.
Then the pandemic hit. His routine slipped. He leant on a core group of clients and stopped filling the top of that hopper. When several of those clients stopped using his services, his portfolio began to shrink. Fast.
The habit had protected him for years. Losing it nearly cost him everything.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. This is episode eight in our series on the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness. Today we are talking about Business Development Habit.
New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss one.
Here is the stat that should stop you in your tracks.
Only 20% of professionals who have completed our Partnership Readiness Assessment have a Business Development Plan they look at each week and do something every day to implement. Just one in five.
The other 80% know they should be doing business development. They intend to. They just aren’t doing it consistently. And inconsistency, in this game, is the same as not doing it at all. Winning work is a long-term investment. You cannot sprint at it for two weeks, stop for a month, and expect results.
Your partners are not looking for someone who does business development when they have a quiet patch. They are looking for Sales Leaders — people who own a revenue target, have a plan to hit it, and do something every single day to make it happen, however full their client workload is.
So why does business development keep getting pushed to the bottom of the pile? Because the reasons are real you are probably struggling with the same reasons.
Most senior professionals in mid to large firms have at most one hour a day for non-chargeable activity. That hour also has to cover timesheets, management responsibilities, learning and development. Business development is competing for scraps of time with everything else.
And then there is the identity problem. The day you decided to become a lawyer, accountant or consultant, the job description did not include “become a salesperson.” Most of us were drawn to the professions because we wanted to be excellent at a technical craft. Being asked to sell feels like a different job. A job we did not sign up for, and perhaps one we quietly look down on.
So business development gets avoided. Or started and abandoned. Or relegated to a vague intention that lives in the diary as a recurring block that keeps getting moved. I call this Diary Jenga. The time slot exists. It just keeps on being moved around when client work takes precedent. Then in the end it becomes more of a hope rather than a block of time you spend on business development.
The solution is not motivation. Motivation is unreliable. The solution is habit.
Your brain can only make a finite number of decisions each day. The more tired you are, the fewer good decisions you have left. This is why, by the end of a heavy client day, the likelihood of doing anything proactive about business development is close to zero. You default to the familiar. The inbox. The client matter. The path of least resistance.
The only way to reliably get business development done is to make it so routine that it does not require a decision. It just happens. The same way you make a coffee when you arrive at your desk, or check your emails first thing. You do not decide to do those things. You just do them.
Priya did this better than almost anyone I have worked with. She kept a spreadsheet of every business development activity: every enquiry, its source, whether it converted, its value. She tracked referrals she had generated for colleagues too. Over time, that data told her which introducers were responsible for over 80% of her work. She stopped spreading her effort across everyone and focused on those key relationships. At any point, she could accurately predict how much work she would win over the next three to six months. That is what a habit, combined with a plan, actually produces.
To make the habit stick, there are five things to get right. The 5Ps.
Plan. Prospect list. Prioritise. Pace. Push down.
Plan first. Without one, you are guessing what to do each day, and guessing is exhausting. A plan removes the decision. It tells you: this is what today’s business development looks like. Even ten minutes of LinkedIn activity counts, if it is intentional and consistent.
Prospect list. Know who you are trying to get in front of. Vague business development — attending events with no particular aim, connecting with people on LinkedIn without a clear reason — produces vague results. A clear list of the right people to reach focuses every action.
Prioritise. You will rarely have a full thirty minutes. Ask yourself: if I only have time for one thing today, what moves the needle most? That question alone will save you from the trap of filling your business development time with low-value activity because the high-value stuff feels too hard.
Pace yourself. You do not need to do everything. You do not need to join every network, run three webinars a month, and write weekly articles. You need to do a small number of things, consistently, in a way that fits your life. Two things done every day beats ten things done occasionally, every time.
And Push down. You cannot fill the top of the hopper if you are still doing work someone else could be doing. Pushing technical work down to your team is not just about delegation — it is the prerequisite for having time to develop business at all. If you missed episode five on delegation, go back and listen.
Your action for this week. Identify one business development activity — one — that you can do every day for the next five working days. Something small enough that it survives a busy day. Put it at the top of your to-do list, not the bottom. Do it before you open your email if you can. At the end of the week, notice what happened.
That is how the habit starts.
If you want to understand how your Business Development Habit scores — and where you sit across all 12 key indicators — the Partnership Readiness Assessment is the place to begin. Free to complete, 10–15 minutes, and gives you a personalised report. The link is in the show notes.
Inside our Progress to Partner Academy, the resources are curated by key indicator. If Business Development Habit is where you need to focus, you will find our course How to Make Time for Business Development, which tackles exactly the barriers this episode has covered and helps you build a routine that holds. And if delegation is your issue, then our delegate like a pro course is a quick course that you can do in 90 minutes that has been described as a gamechanger.
Use code PODCAST10 for 10% off annual membership: https://www.howtomakepartner.com/get-progress-to-partner/
If you have enjoyed this episode please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. It helps us reach more people who need this. Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode.
Thanks for listening!
Links
Complete my FREE Partnership Readiness Assessment – to see where you have gaps in your own development – you’ll get a personalised report with actions for what progress your career forward
Connect with me on LinkedIn
Join Progress To Partner Academy and use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off 12 months of premium annual membership.
Buy your hard copy of Poised for Partnership or buy the Ebook here
Buy your copy of How To Make Partner And Still Have A Life
Buy your copy of The Go To Expert
Buy your copy of The Financial Times Guide To Business Networking
Join my Progress To Partner Academy and access all my courses and use the code PODCASTBP10 to get 10% off 12 months of premium annual membership.
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