Planning

Successful Business Development: Mastering Your Daily Routine

By Tom on October 27, 2023

Next to purpose, consistency is one of the most important aspects of the successful business developer. One crucial aspect of this journey is mastering a daily business development routine, where you actively engage with your customers, stay aligned with your goals, and maintain a consistent rhythm of progress. In this post, I explore how to create a daily business development routine that can elevate your company’s success. Let’s dive in.

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Schedule time every morning

Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Regularly connecting with them not only strengthens your relationships but also keeps you informed about their evolving needs and preferences. The best way to accomplish this is by dedicating a specific time each morning to reach out to your customers.

Start Your Day with Customer Engagement: Consider setting aside the first 30 minutes or hour of your workday for customer-related activities. This could include sending personalized emails, making follow-up calls, or even hosting virtual meetings. The key is to prioritize these interactions and make them a non-negotiable part of your daily routine.

Use Management Tools: Using a Tactical Action Plan (TAP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be a valuable asset in this endeavor. These systems help you organize customer data, track interactions, and automate tasks, making it easier to manage your customer relationships efficiently. They also give you a prompt on who you should be contacting next. Effectively taking away the micro-decision making and letting you get straight into the action.

By consistently reaching out to your customers, you not only maintain their trust but also gain valuable insights that can inform your strategic decisions.

Set time aside every morning for your daily business development routine

Keep activity focused

Every successful daily business development routine should be grounded in a well-thought-out operational business development plan. This plan outlines your short-term and long-term objectives, target markets, and the specific activities required to achieve your goals. To ensure your daily business development routine is effective, it’s essential to stay aligned with this plan.

Prioritize Tasks: Review your operational plan regularly, identifying the most critical tasks needing attention. These might include lead generation, market research, product development, or marketing campaigns. By focusing on these priorities, you ensure that your daily efforts contribute directly to your business’s growth.

Set SMART Goals: Within your operational plan, establish Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals for each day. These goals should guide your daily activities and help you track progress effectively.

Consistency is key

One of the most significant mistakes in business development is conducting frantic sporadic efforts. Irregular bursts of activity might provide short-term results, but they often lead to burnout and inconsistency. Instead, prioritizing daily consistency in your business development routine will yield long-term success.

Short Daily Action Matters: Consistent, focused daily action, even if it’s just for a short period, can yield remarkable results over time. It’s better to spend 30 minutes every day engaging with customers or working on high-priority tasks than to have occasional marathon work sessions that leave you exhausted.

Build a Habit: Forming a daily business development routine is about creating a habit. Start small, with a manageable amount of daily work, and gradually increase it as you become more comfortable with the routine. Over time, it will become second nature.

Final thoughts on building a daily business development routine

I hope you agree, mastering daily business development is crucial for sustainable growth and success. By following these three principles, you can create a routine that ensures you stay connected with your customers, align your activities with your strategic goals, and maintain the consistency needed for long-term success. Remember, start small, but make it a daily habit, and you’ll be on the path to achieving purposeful, consistent and long-term business growth.

daily business development routine

For more help with starting your business development journey download my quick start guide. This gives a series of simple activities to quickly get you on the right path.

For a definition of business development you can check out my take in this post here.

If you are getting value out of my weekly free content I’d ask that you consider buying my book. It’s a simple yet comprehensive framework to base your business development activity around. Full of practical advice to get you started now. It is available to order on Amazon now.

Business development and farming

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Three Secrets the A-Team Taught Me About Business Development Planning

By Tom on December 16, 2022

A bit of a fun post this week on the lead up to Christmas and a big nostalgia trip for me too. The hit 80’s TV show the A-Team and business development planning, how does that fit? Let me explain.

As a child of the 80’s I was a mad fan of the A-Team. The action, chases, and do-good adventures were a real thrill. I couldn’t wait to see the next crazy instalment of Hannibal, BA, Face and Murdoch’s escapades. Recently I went on a massive nostalgia trip and treated myself to a couple of boxed sets. Sitting down with my kids I was a little worried that the series may not have aged well. I needn’t have worried, this team of well intentioned mercenaries still delivered the goods. My kids and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

For those of you who don’t know the shows premise let me explain. The A-team were a crack commando squad framed for a crime they didn’t commit. They now work as guns-for-hire in the Los Angeles underground, protecting the downtrodden. The writers knmew what they were doing and the episodes generally followed a similar formula:

Bad guys bullying someone
A-Team hired in an unconventional way
Hannibal (the leader) makes a plan
The plan is ruined and the team suffer a setback
The bad guys get their butts kicked
Hannibal claims that it was his plan all along.

The A-Team racing to foil some bad guys!

How does this tie in with business development? Planning! Funnily enough the A-Team planning cycle mirrors that of my business development triple A framework: assess, aim & action.

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“I Have a Plan”

Once the A-Team are hired they go about assessing their situation. Exploring the neighborhood and the stakeholders that live in it is a crucial part of the process. Additionally their customers problem is investigated in more detail. Finally on of the team will scope out the competition and report back.

This neatly mirrors business development. You must assess the market, stakeholders, customers and competitors before you can proceed with planning your future effort.

Once Hannibal has a handle on all these things he lights his cigar and states, “I can feel a plan coming on”.

One thing the A-Team did well was complete the assess phase quickly. Of course this is television and laboring over this could get boring fast. But there is a grain of truth here. Getting bogged down in over-planning can lead to inaction and a lot of work with limited return.

Instead you need to test your plan quickly by going out into the market, talking to stakeholders and customers and learning from them. You will get much more value out these conversations than sitting in front of the computer planning.

This is what the A-Team do next.

Importance of Feedback

Hannibal inevitably leads the team into their first foray against the enemy. Resulting in everything going wrong. The bad guys seemingly get the upper hand. With a dispirited team on hand Hannibal smiles secretively and acts as if everything is going just the way he wanted.

What has Hannibal actually done. He’s used the triple A framework by assessing his situation, aiming his effort (making a plan) and taking action (testing his plan). The feedback gleaned from taking action allows for adjustment and follow up.

This approach works well in the business development setting too. Taking action by talking to existing and prospective customers and testing your assumptions on how they operate. Asking questions and listening to the answers prepares you to pivot. Remember:

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy”.

You must listen, adapt and act on the feedback you receive.

Business development planning done right!

“I Love it When a Plan Comes Together”

Back to the A-Team. Based on the knowledge gained from their earlier encounters the team enact their final plan, usually with some crazy innovation built from left over scrap. The bad guys are soundly beaten and good prevails. Hannibal then proclaims “I Love it When a Plan Comes Together!”

Listening to the feedback gleaned from client meetings and market intelligence is good. Making meaningful change based on the information is better. Most importantly taking what you’ve learned and making small adjustments to your plan will keep you relevant and current with your customers.

Next Action

When you are thinking about your business development planning remember the A-Team. Assess your situation, aim your effort through a preliminary plan and take action. Feeding back information learned while taking action is critical. Consequently looping this back into the assess and aim phases allows you to adjust as needed. This will keep you relevant with your customer base and makes sure that you don’t get disrupted by changes in the market. Remember if you’re stuck, ask yourself:

What would the A-Team do?

Business development planning

Are looking to begin your Business Development journey but are not quite sure where to start? Download my business development guide below. This gives a list of actions and activities to set you on the right path.

For a comprehensive and practical framework to base your business development activity around I recommend checking out my new book Business Development Begins Here. It is available to order on Amazon. Visit the link to reserve your copy now.

If you want a more proactive and personal approach to your business development I am available to help. Through face to face video calls I’ll set you on the right path and keep you accountable to future activity. I currently have space on my 1on1 personalized coaching program. To learn more click the button below.

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Must Know Your Team’s Intent

By Tom on February 11, 2022

Continuing with the Assess Phase of the Triple A Framework today we will be looking at the intent of the individual business unit or team. Once the strategic intent is understood at an organizational level, it is time to determine how this relates to the specific business division, product line or team. This may be obvious, but if this is not sit down with the team and work it out together. A few questions to consider include:

How does the Business unit work towards the Organization’s vision?
What are the key aspirations of the team?
What are the niche differentiators in-house and, in the marketplace?
What are the short-and-long-term objectives?
What resources are available?

Business Unit Planning Hierarchy

Once you have the team objective in place it use the Planning Hierarchy above to start shaping your plan. Starting with the business objective in mind, the hierarchy establishes the projects and jobs that your company wants to undertake. This in turn determines the customers that must be pursued to get them. This allows a rudimentary road map to be drawn of the direction and growth of the business unit over time. Having this hierarchy mapped and understood by the team, forms an excellent compass for where the business development effort should be pointed.

Getting the answers to the five questions above and developing a resource planning hierarchy, will provide clarity around the strategic intent at the organizational, business unit and team levels. This will keep the business development effort aligned with the outcomes of the organization as a whole.

Call to Action

Grab a piece of paper and answer the questions above. What is the objective of your team? Next write the three headings of the Planning Hierarchy and see what appears. This is a great first step in determining who you should be pursuing. It will form the basis of the more detailed planning in the Aim phase later.

Once you’ve tried the exercise please let me know how you found it. Was it useful? Is there something else you would add. Leave a comment or touch base via LinkedIn or the contact page.