How to Develop Business When You're Really Busy

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By Mo Bunnell

 

Hi, this is Mo Bunnell, your business development expert and author of "The Snowball System: How to Win more Business and Turn Clients into Raving Fans". Have you ever wanted to do more business development, but you're so busy you don't feel like you can get to it? You get so much delivery going on that you wanna get to all these great ideas in "The Snowball System", and you just can't quite get to the BD activities.

Well, what we're gonna do in this video is I'm gonna show you a way that you can do business development, even if you're working a hundred hours a week. Even if you're ridiculously busy. And at the end of this video, I'll give you a little tip on how you can think about business development in a way that will let you do that more.

So here's the deal. When you are deep in delivery, let's say you're starting a project. You're starting work. Maybe you've got a dozen clients you're working with and you're super busy. No matter how busy you are, the strength that you have at that moment, in that time when you're exceptionally busy and you don't have a second to think of anything else, the incredible strength you have is access.

You're communicating with your clients a ton. You have trust. You're working with them already. You are face to face. Recent research came out of Cornell and Western university that Dr. Vanessa Bowes led where people where have a much higher chance of getting a yes when they're in person than over email, to the tune of 34 times more likely to get a yes in person than over email. So we have super powers of getting yes's when we're in person. So here we are with information. Insight. We have access. We have superpowers of being face to face. So when we are in heavy delivery mode, we have these superpowers.

So the way that you can think about business development is to think about it as integrated with delivery, not a separate thing. So when people think, "Oh man, I'm so busy, I don't have time for business development". No, what you need to do is think, "I'm so busy. I have super powers to do business development."

So a real simple way you can put this into action is when you're super busy, just think six months out, think of all the projects you've got going on. Write down the names of people that you would like to have a better relationship with at the end of this six months. Write down the opportunities that you would like to advance forward in the next six months. In other words, what things does this organization need your organization's help with. Maybe not yours, but your organizations.

And then once a week, take five minutes. No longer than that. Take a quick scan of the relationships you'd like to develop. Integrate that into the meetings you've already got. "Hey, Sue. Love to get to know you and hear about what your insight is for me or your advice is for this project that we're working on, so that it's successful and it gets what you need out of it. Would you like to go to lunch? I'd love to hear from your unique perspective on this project that we're starting."

Well, you can just integrate that lunch around the things that you're doing for the project in addition to BD. So now when you're at lunch with Sue, you can say something like, "Gosh, it sounds like you've also got these other priorities in addition to what I'm working on in this project. Would it be helpful if I introduce you to James?  He's flying over from London in about a month. Maybe I can see if he can swing by Dallas, where we're at now, and meet with you for lunch and talk about and be willing to share with you his insights around this other priority of yours. That way I'm not getting bogged down by it. You two can meet without me, but I think you're gonna love him. And he's got some unique perspectives that are gonna help you succeed with that other priority you just mentioned to me."

So what you do is you take a look at your relationships. Take a look at your opportunities. Set some goals for those six months out. It takes 10 minutes or so. And then once a week, spend five minutes looking at the week you've got coming up and thinking through, "how do I integrate business development in the things I've already got going on?" That's your keyword. That's the mindset I want you to think of. Integration, delivery, and BD are not separate things when you're super busy. They're the same thing.

So if you enjoyed this video, please share with others. That's how people find out about us. And as always, we hope these help you help your clients succeed.

Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much for watching. For more content like this, check out my most recent video and be sure to like them so other people can find out about us. But make sure you subscribe. That's how you'll be automatically alerted to the great content that we put out. And if you want access to a comprehensive system for business development, then just buy my book.

"The Snowball System" at Amazon, the link is in the description below. Thanks again