The Friday Afternoon Business Development Review Routine

“If next week looks exactly like this week, will my pipeline be stronger or weaker?”

Most lawyers treat business development like a series of random acts:

• send a proposal here,

• grab a coffee there,

• maybe do a follow-up email if they remember.

Then Friday rolls around, they’ve won no new instructions and call it a week in the hope next week will be better.

That’s not business development, it’s a prayer.

So, for this BD Tips Wednesday post I’ll be taking a quick look your Friday afternoon business development review routine.

Start In The Real World

Before you plan anything, look at what happened this week. Not what you were meant to do, but what you actually did.

Ask yourself:

• Which conversations moved forward?

• Which opportunities progressed?

• Where did things stall?

• What did I avoid?

This is where most people get uncomfortable, because the gap between intention and execution becomes obvious very quickly.

But this is the most important part of the routine. Because business development is a lagging indicator, if your pipeline feels thin the problem usually started weeks (or months) ago.

Friday business development reviews is where you can catch this early.

Review Your Pipeline

Stop thinking like a technician and start thinking like someone running a business. Go opportunity by opportunity and ask yourself:

• What stage is this actually at?

• What is the next action item?

• Who owns that action?

• When will it happen?

If there’s no clear next step, it’s not an opportunity: it’s just a conversation you’re hoping turns into something.

Be honest here, most pipelines are inflated with “maybes” that will never really convert.

A strong business development review tightens the pipeline, not just updates it.

Check Relationship Depth

This is where most professionals completely miss the point of business development. You don’t win work because you were “busy”, you win work because you are trusted and relevant.

So ask yourself:

• Who did I meaningfully connect with this week?

• Where did I deepen a relationship?

• Where did I add value?

If your week was full of activity but light on meaningful conversations, that’s a warning sign. Next week shouldn’t be “more activity”, it should be better conversations.

Diagnose What’s Getting in the Way

Every stalled opportunity has a reason. A good Friday business development audit will help you identify:

• Is it a timing issue?

• A stakeholder issue?

• A value/pricing issue?

• Or have you simply not driven it forward?

Set 3 to 5 Business Development Priorities for Next Week

This is where the routine and consistency truly pays off. Most people enter Monday reacting. But from your Friday business development review you will be able to identify 3–5 priority moves that will actually shift your pipeline forwards.

For example:

• Re-engage a stalled client with a specific insights,

• Progress a proposal by clarifying scope (not just “checking in”),

• Introduce two contacts who should know each other,

• Have one strategic conversation with a key client.

Remember, if everything is a priority then nothing is!

Lock It Into Your Calendar (Or It Won’t Happen)

This is the simplest step, and the one most people skip. Take your 3 to 5 business development priorities for the week and schedule them into your Outlook calendar.

• When will you do them?

• How long will you need?

• What preparation is required?

If it’s not in your calendar, it’s just intention again.

End With One Simple Question

Before you finish, ask yourself:

“If next week looks exactly like this week, will my pipeline be stronger or weaker?”

If the answer is weaker, or even just “the same”, you already know something needs to change.

Takeaway

Rainmakers aren’t always the best lawyers in the room. What they do well is:

• Pay attention to their pipeline,

• Take ownership of movement,

• Adjust early, not late.

And regular, scheduled, Friday business development reviews is where that discipline shows up.

Further Reading

• What an Accountable BD System Looks Like

• Do Metrics Actually Matter?

• Timeblocking: Mastering your day

• The 15-Minute Business Development Checklist

Need Help With Your Business Development?

Get in touch if you want to talk about any of this. We also offer a very affordable BD Audit and Training package.

How Dependencies Limit Your Business Development Efforts (and How to Overcome Them)

In over 25 years of working with professionals, a reoccurring theme that stalls most of their business development efforts is not of their own doing – it’s relying on dependencies.

So, for this BD Tips Wednesday post I thought I would do a whistle stop tour of what dependencies are in business development, and how you can overcome these.

What Is A Dependency?

If you’ve ever studied project management theory and techniques, you’ll know that a dependency refers to:

“a relationship between two tasks, activities or deliverables where one relies on the completion, initiation or progress of another.”

Simply, a dependency means something must happen before something else can happen.

Now, what on earth does this have to do with business development?

Well, let’s take a simple example:

How often have you heard a partner say to another partner they'll happily introduce them to their client and then do nothing about it for months on end? Bet it’s more times than you’ve had hot dinners! And that is called a 'dependency' – when one partner is reliant on another partner to do something.

3 Types of Dependencies

In essence there are three types of dependencies that are likely narrowing your growth trajectory and leaving your business development efforts exposed to disruption. These are:

1. People dependencies: The aforementioned reliance on others to assist you achieve your business development goals. They get busy, forget to introduce you to their contacts and you miss your business development goals. Your business development is not reliant on your efforts, but the efforts of others.

2. Systems dependencies: This is an all too common one in professional services, where you rely on an outdated CRM to provide you with answers! More often than not, the partners don’t trust the CRM or simply don’t want to share sensitive client information and so don’t update the CRM with staff movements, promotions etc. In no time at all, the CRM is virtually useless. If you then need to rely on that same CRM system to enable your business development goals, you have a problem.

3. Client dependencies: This is probably the most unrecognised one – where you need the client to actually do something for your business development goal to be achieved. An example here: your contact at the client isn’t the decision maker but promises to put you in touch with the decision maker. This never happens and you are reluctant to push the issue because you are afraid of upsetting the client. But, at the end of the day, your business development goal still isn’t being achieved!

The Hidden Cost of Dependencies

The hidden cost of dependencies can be summed up as:

1. Stalled momentum in your business development efforts

2. Reduced motivation to do business development

3. Lower engagement in the business development process

This is particularly prevalent with lateral hires. At the onset there is a lot of excitement around the onboarding of the lateral hire. The lateral hire is very excited because they have been promised the world. But that world is reliant on dependencies. And those who need to deliver don’t. In no time, the lateral hire is frustrated with the whole business development process and culture and starts looking around for a new home. And your firm has just had a very expensive lesson (although most firms don’t learn and just go through the loop time and time again!).

You Can Only Control What You Can Control

To break free of dependencies, you need to remember that you can only control what you can control. To achieve this, you need to:

1. Take control of the process – own it, don’t wait for others. Map your network of dependencies. List those people who are roadblocks and then either avoid them or find a way of working with them where you control the narrative, not them!

2. Take control of the relationships. Build the relationship independent of any dependency involvement.

3. Take control of the rhythm. Create consistent routines (monthly pursuit reviews, pipeline health checks, relationship audits). Routine equals habits. Habits result in success. Get back to boring to go forward.

4. Take control of the systems. Keep your business development skills, templates and client insights in shared systems, not in people’s heads.

Takeaway

Business development thrives on systems, not superheroes. When you identify and dismantle your dependencies, you free yourself from fragility and create a business development engine that is consistent, collective and compounding.

Need Help With Your Business Development?

Get in touch if you want to talk about any of this. We also offer a very affordable BD Audit and Training package.

What An Accountable BD System Looks Like

Business development is not something that is done in isolation, in a window of time. It’s a functional, day-to-day, activity that survives on accountability. What matters is not what is necessarily written down on a piece of paper at a partner conference (although these are important); but the repeatable, visible actions that you take ownership of every day of the year.

In this BD Tips Wednesday post I outline what an ‘Accountable BD System Looks Like’ so you can put this next to that glossy Business Plan that’s holding up your screen monitor.

Five everyday questions

An accountable Business Development system consistently asks - and answers - these five questions:

1. Who am I targeting?

2. What do I offer?

3. How do I engage?

4. Who is responsible?

5. How do I measure success?

Now, let’s break this down in to what this looks like in practice.

1. Who am I targeting?

The starting point for any accountable Business Development system is focus. You can’t pursue every opportunity, every client and every sector at once. A clear segmentation model helps identify where your best opportunities live.

That might mean:

• Defining your Top 20 existing clients by potential growth or alignment with firm strategy.

• Creating a Top 10 target list of new prospects within priority industries.

• Mapping your relationship strength and white-space potential for each key account.

This focus shifts you from “reactive chasing” to “proactive account management.” The goal isn’t more names in a spreadsheet, it’s fewer, better relationships managed more deliberately.

Here is the issue though: While it is important that you have a firmwide plan to guide the future direction of the firm; it is critical that you have an individual business development plan that maps out your personal growth journey.

2. What do I offer?

Business Development isn’t just about finding opportunities, it’s about making it easy for clients to say yes. That means having crystal-clear value propositions and pricing models that reflect what your clients and targets truly value.

An accountable Business Development system ensures these are:

• Visible: documented, accessible, and easy to articulate.

• Evolving: reviewed and refreshed at least annually.

• Aligned: with your clients’ problems and procurement realities.

When you and your team knows exactly what you are selling, and why it matters, Business Development becomes a consistent and trusted process.

3. How do I engage?

Most lawyers don’t suffer from lack of ideas, but from a lack of focus. They start strong, then fade once they get busy on a matter. Then the matter will finish and they process will start all over again. Because there’s no system forcing regular contact, reflection and follow-through, this quickly becomes a Business Development death spiral.

An accountable Business Development system on the other hand operates on a calendar of intentional engagement:

• Quarterly client-review meetings to uncover new needs and cement relationships.

• Monthly marketing or LinkedIn campaigns showcasing expertise and staying visible.

• Annual thought-leadership series (whitepapers, webinars, or industry reports) that open doors with prospects.

This rhythm turns “sporadic Business Development” into a habit. Everyone knows what’s happening, when and how it ties back to the your practice growth goals.

4. Who is responsible?

Even the best system fails without ownership. Accountability is where most Business Development frameworks fall apart, because it’s easy to confuse “shared responsibility” with no responsibility.

Accountability also means celebrating inputs, not just outcomes. You can’t control when a client buys, but you can control how often you show up, share insights, or follow up.

5. How do I measure success?

Finally, an accountable Business Development system has simple, meaningful metrics that tell you whether the system is working.

The key is to measure both activity and impact:

Input Metrics (Leading Indicators):

• Number of client meetings or reviews held

• Proposals submitted

• Campaigns executed

• New relationships initiated

Output Metrics (Lagging Indicators):

• Pipeline value and conversion rates

• Client NPS or satisfaction scores

• Revenue growth by key account

• ROI on proposals (value of wins ÷ cost of bids)

Don’t chase complexity, chase clarity. A handful of metrics, consistently reviewed, beats a dashboard of noise.

Takeaway

When you answer these five questions consistently, you move from ad hoc to accountable.

An accountable Business Development system gives you three enduring advantages:

1. Clarity: everyone knows what success looks like.

2. Rhythm: activity is planned, not sporadic.

3. Ownership: accountability is built in, not bolted on.

When those three things are in place, Business Development stops being an activity and becomes a capability.

And that’s where true competitive advantage begins.

Need Help With Your Business Development?

Get in touch if you want to talk about any of this. We also offer a very affordable BD Audit and Training package.