This is how to fight back against constant demands from partners and clients stopping you getting to your Business Development actions and plans.
Does your week ever feel like a game of Diary Jenga? Do you keep telling yourself you’ll focus on business development “when things quiet down”?
You carve out time, but then an urgent client request or a last-minute partner demand comes in, and your good intentions remain just that, intentions. The reality for successful professionals is that the quiet time rarely arrives, and relying on it means your business development will simply not happen. In this episode of the How to Make Partner podcast, I explain how to stop waiting for time and start making time.
Listen to this episode to discover:
- Why partners are looking for Sales Leaders who make time for business development every single day, regardless of their workload.
- How to form a Business Development Habit that becomes automatic, stopping the voices of doubt and fear from getting in the way.
- The 5Ps model: a strategic framework to help you PLAN, build a PROSPECT list, PRIORITISE, PACE yourself, and PUSH DOWN work.
- The single question you must ask yourself to prioritise your daily actions for the biggest impact.
- Why delegating technical work is a critical and non-negotiable step to free you up for higher value, strategic activities..
Tune in to find out how to bust the myth of the “quiet period” and build the habits you need to move your career forward.
Listen to my podcast on ‘How to always make time for Business Development’.
I’ve put the transcription below if you’d prefer to read the advice.
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello and welcome!
Does your week ever feel like a game of Diary Jenga?
You carve out time to work on your career or your business development and you put time in your diary for that. But then the urgent client or partner request comes in and you move that block of time.
And then another request comes in and you move that block again. Before you know it, your intention to work on business development has just remained as just that, an intention.
Do you keep telling yourself, I’m going to focus on business development and things quieten down? But the reality for successful professionals in practice, those that make it through to partner, is that the quiet time rarely arrives. You know, relying on it means your business development will simply not happen.
So how do you make time? Well, let’s be frank, you have no time.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend, the author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life.
In this podcast, I’ll be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress to Partner Academy. New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
Right. Let’s bust the myth of the quiet period.
The truth is partners are looking for sales leaders and sales leaders don’t wait for a gap in their diary. They make time for business development every single day, regardless of how much work they have on. They do this by forming a business development habit.
When an activity is a habit, it becomes automatic. Your brain doesn’t have to make a decision. You just do it like having your morning coffee.
This stops the voice of doubt or fear from getting in the way to build this habit you need to stop playing diary jenga you need to kind of go what needs to go into my diary when do i put it and how do i put it so it doesn’t get moved around now in chapter eight of Poised for Partnership I introduced the Five P’s model to help you do just that.
The first thing is you need a plan, now a lot of people will have a plan, but actually, that plan needs to be written down, not just in your head. That’s just a wish list.
And that plan then needs to be translated into your diary every week so that you are answering, “What am I going to do today on business development?”
And without those two actions, having the plan and translating it into your diary, you don’t have a plan. You just have a wish list. You have an intention.
The next thing is you need a prospect list. So this could be people you want to get in touch with, it could be introducers, it could be your existing clients. Once you have a clear idea of who you want to get in touch with, it becomes much easier to take focused action. And this prospect list should be part of your plan.
Then you need to prioritise. You know, you only have a certain amount of time each day.
Ask yourself, if I only have time for one thing today for 5, 10 or 15 minutes, what is it? And focus on the activities that give you the biggest bang for your buck.
You know, I was speaking with a group of lawyers on the Path to Partnership group coaching call, and one of them said, “you know, I do loads of networking.” I said, “right, OK, you need to prioritise. Who do you really need to spend time with?” She said, “you’re right. 80% of the work is coming from 20% of the people I’m actually networking with. I need to focus on that 20%.” And then pace yourself.
You know, one of the biggest reasons professionals are reluctant to do business development is that they think they need to do everything at once. This is not true. You don’t need to go to three networking events in a week, write five articles and send 100 LinkedIn requests each month.
And often the reason why so many people get disheartened with what they’re doing is they try to do too much. If you have no time for business development at the moment, you’re not going to have find eight hours a week.
Start with the 15 minutes. Start with one coffee event a week.
But the key is that you create a plan that works for you and that you can stick to consistently.
And then you’ve got to push down work. This is critical. No matter how good a technician you are, you won’t make it to partner if you don’t have people doing the lower level work.
You’ve got to delegate that technical, chargeable client work to free you up to focus on higher value strategic activities, the type that are going to make your case for partnership. And in fact, I was talking with a lawyer on this How to Make Partner programme, and they said they literally plan work for their lawyers that are either on vacation, summer scheme work, that are on internship. They literally plan some of their content. For those people to write, for example, they wanted an A to Z of something to do with real estate.
And it was a perfect activity for their juniors to do. And by applying this five-piece model, you move from being reactive to being proactive. After all, if you’re going to make partner, you need to take ownership of what you’re doing.
You have to start to make the time for business development.
And building a daily business development habit is the antidote to a chaotic diary. It’s the antidote to making sure that your business development happens. And actually, as soon as you get past manager or associate or managing consultant, it’s the single most effective way to ensure you are consistently taking the actions that will be a big part of moving your career forward towards partnership.
Of course, knowing what to do and actually doing it are two different things. If you know that you’d benefit from some structure, guidance and accountability to put these habits in place, we can help.
The course How to Make Time for Business Development in our Progress to Partner Academy provides a structured process for building the time management habits needed to prioritise business development. And it’s going to help you build your own business development plan that will form your partner track plan that’s going to put you in control.
Now, I popped a link to buy the How to Make Time for Business Development course directly in the show notes for the episode. And this course is just one of the 12 courses in our Progress to Partner Academy.
Also in the show notes, you’ll find links to my books, Poised for Partnership, How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life, The Go-To Expert and the Financial Times Guide to Business Networking, so you can easily find them on Amazon.
And as a thank you for listening, there’s also a link for a 10% discount on annual membership for our Progress to Partner Academy.
Now, that’s all for this episode of the How To Make Partner podcast.
And it’s time for you to think about what you are going to do? What is one maybe five minute, 10 minute business development task you could schedule in your diary for tomorrow morning before you even open your emails?
Start there. Start small.
Now, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. This helps get the word out to others who may need this advice, too.
Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode.
Thank you for listening.
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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