October 12, 2023

A Weekly BD Routine That Survives Billable Work

Most partners agree that business development matters and then lose the week to client work. A routine only counts if it still happens in the week you are busiest.

Start with a small, fixed block

Ninety minutes a week, at the same time, beats a full day you keep moving. Put it in the calendar as a client meeting, because that is how it will be treated when something urgent appears. Treat the block as the minimum, not the goal.

Be realistic about what fits. A partner with a heavy client load may manage only one block in a bad week, and that is acceptable if the routine returns the week after. The habit matters more than any single session, so resist the urge to make up for a missed week with a marathon.

Decide the agenda before the block starts

The most common way to waste BD time is to spend the first half hour deciding what to do. Keep a short list of open items: people to contact, proposals waiting on you, follow-ups that are overdue. When the block starts, you work the list from the top.

The list should live somewhere the whole team can see it, so a BD lead or an assistant can prepare items in advance.

Split the block into three jobs

A workable split is follow-ups first, new outreach second, and pipeline housekeeping last. Follow-ups come first because they are the cheapest way to move a live opportunity. Housekeeping is last but not optional, since a stale pipeline makes next week's list worse.

If a follow-up feels awkward, write down the single question you want answered before you make contact. A specific question, such as whether a decision date has been set, gives the other person something easy to respond to and keeps the conversation short.

Let preparation happen without you

Partner time is the scarcest input in the routine. Research, drafts of outreach notes and background summaries can be prepared by a coordinator or by an AI-assisted tool before the block begins. What you do in the block is the judgement part: whether to reach out, what to say, and whether the person is worth the call.

A simple test for preparation is whether the partner can start work in the first two minutes. If they still need to look things up, the preparation was incomplete. Ask the coordinator to fix the gap for the following week instead of asking the partner to absorb it.

Track only what you can count

Keep three numbers: conversations held, proposals requested, proposals sent. Any target you set is a rough planning assumption, and it should be adjusted after a quarter of real data rather than copied from another firm. Do not add a fourth number until the first three are reliable.

Numbers help only if they are read. Review the three counts at a monthly partner meeting for five minutes, and ask one question: what did we do differently because of them? If the answer is nothing, simplify the counts or change the routine.

Protect the routine when the week breaks

Some weeks the block will be lost. Agree in advance that a missed block is moved, not skipped, and that a second miss in a row gets raised at the next partner meeting. That small piece of accountability does more than any tool or template.

Small formalities help too. A shared list of blocks kept and blocks missed, visible to all partners, creates gentle pressure without anyone having to remind anyone. Most partners respond well to seeing their own habits laid out plainly.

A note on tone

Partners often feel guilty about BD time, as if it were a distraction from real work. It is real work, and it pays for the next year of client work. Say so plainly in partner meetings so that nobody has to apologize for protecting the block.

New partners in particular need permission. Ask a senior partner to describe how they keep their own routine, including the weeks it fails. Honest stories about imperfect habits are more useful to a new partner than a polished system.

VIPMarketing Editorial