In this blog post I look at what causes the feast and famine cycle of new client work, and how you can avoid this with your practice.
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner – and when you get there, stay there. Here are 5 ways to work with me.
I’m in danger of getting into a feast and famine cycle
Today is a strange day for me. I’ve started off the day by blogging and setting the blog post to go live immediately. That probably doesn’t sound strange at all to most people. However, I tend to normally have 3 months of blog posts scheduled to go out. But, at the moment there is nothing scheduled. Nada. None. I could have just left it and not worried about my blog not being updated for 2 weeks (or probably more). However, I didn’t as I want to avoid the pain of the feast and famine cycle in my business.
I’ve got behind on my marketing
The reality is I have got behind with my marketing. Typically, during the school holidays I tend to get ahead with my blogging. Well, I didn’t over Easter. Not that I was having a swinging time somewhere. I was catching up with some pieces of client work. I’m pretty sure that most of us can relate to my predicament. The client work ramps up, and very often it’s our business development activities that take the hit. However, I’ve been here many times in the past and seen the impact of taking my foot off the marketing pedal. Yes, the leads will dry up in 3-6 months time.
Only doing business development when your client work is low is the best way to move into a ‘feast and famine’ type pattern with your client work.
Trust me on this one!
What is the best frequency for your business development activities?
The best frequency is one which you can keep up with, even when you are busy with client work. Now, being pragmatic there are often two activity levels for your business development, the non-negotiable activity level, i.e. I can not go below this amount, and the normal activity level.
The non-negotiable business development activity level
This is a business development routine that you can still maintain even if you are crazy busy with client work. It’s the lowest you can go to whilst still being confident you will achieve your new business wins targets 6-12 months from now. This level of business development activity doesn’t need to be the big stuff. After all, small and consistent is the best type of business development activity anyway. If you are interested, for me this is:
- Blogging weekly on How To Make Partner
- Monthly webinar
- A consistent level of social media activity (often pre-scheduled)
- Go into Twitter and LinkedIn daily
That’s it. Those 4 activities are enough to keep things ticking over, even when I’m really busy. If you want to avoid the pain of the feast and famine cycle with your pipeline of new work, identify a non-negotiable level of business development activity that you can commit to, regardless of how much client work you have on at anyone time.
Why a Business Development Habit is so Important
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.
Listen to this How to Make Partner Podcast episode (here) where I talk about 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
Read more:
How can I save time with social media?
The 5 Ps that always give time for business development How can I get out of the rut of delivering?
I’m Hea
ther Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner – and when you get there, stay there. Here are 5 ways to work with me.
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