To do or not to do
One of the biggest issues around effective business development isn’t actually deciding what to do, it’s doing it. In fact, most people will find they have some success by doing just about anything which is different from what they normally do simply because it means they have to adopt a new focus and exhibit different behaviours.
Nevertheless, most people tend to concentrate their efforts (particularly at this time of year) on resolving to do more of some things rather than less of others. In fact this tends to be a self-defeating approach because in practice there are always 101 reasons/excuses why you don’t achieve what you set out to do. For example, you decide you should keep in more regular contact with your clients. You focus on that, write it down on your “to do” list, and then beat yourself up when you don’t achieve it. But you don’t achieve it because you haven’t addressed those things that prevented you from doing so in the first place – such as lack of time, lack of understanding of the benefits, or even just lack of confidence that they’d appreciate hearing from you.
So – to make it happen you first need to focus on, say, spending less time on non-essential emails and phone calls which will free up maybe half an hour a day. You can then spend that time initially focusing on what you want to achieve in measurable outputs, how you’re going to go about it in a way that doesn’t make you uncomfortable, and thereafter, only then, on actually doing it.
It’s a far more pragmatic and results-focused approach than the usual “I should…” method and it actually works. Why not try it?
