Thanks for all the replies I got to this week’s emails – it’s easy to see that we are all experiencing similar challenges!

One reply to Thursday’s email about eliminating business development follow-up was worth noting. It said,

Most people, me included, lie to themselves about why things don’t work out in biz dev… self-blame, not worthy, not good enough… feeding insecurity in self-serving ways. In reality, we aren’t trained to see that the sale wasn’t happening, EVER!

Becoming aware of that behavior and breaking that habit is like breaking your own arm.

Not all activity is good activity.

When we chase after ghosts, leads that are not ready to buy, or opportunities for which we don’t have a unique ability to make a difference, it creates the appearance of business development activity.

Then, when those deals don’t close, there are many places to lay blame. We can talk about how hard we are working and how difficult the economy is. We can navel gaze at our sales process. All of that is a self-perpetuating cycle; we still have no new business.

Your business development process works well when you can consistently create new opportunities with ideal clients and ignore or drop conversations where there’s not a well-defined need that you are uniquely qualified to fill.

Focus on that, more good leads.

It might save you a broken arm!