Blog Index
81 AI Won’t Replace Relationships, But It Will Expose The Weak Ones
This post explores how AI will expose client relationships built primarily on routine advice and inaccessible information, and offers five questions to assess whether clients genuinely value your judgement, commercial understanding and contribution to better decisions.
80 Become the Person Who Connects the Dots
This post develops the idea of “Connector Influence” and explores how connecting people, ideas, problems and opportunities can help professionals become more commercially valuable and trusted advisers.
79 Your BD Pipeline Health Check: 5 Questions Every Lawyer Should Ask Regularly
This post explores five practical questions every lawyer should ask regularly to assess the quality, balance and momentum of their business development pipeline—and identify where greater attention or action is required.
78 The “Three Conversations a Week” Rule
This post explores how three purposeful conversations each week can provide a simple and sustainable way to strengthen relationships, create opportunities and build consistent business development momentum.
77 What Would You Put in Your Business Development Room 101?
This post explores the business development habits, behaviours and clichés that professionals would happily banish forever—from meaningless networking and generic client updates to overcomplicated BD plans—and considers what more effective approaches should replace them.
76 What can you do to help make sure your star recruits don’t misfire?
This post explores how effective onboarding, integration and business development support can help lateral hires succeed and ensure firms achieve a return on their recruitment investment.
75 The “Give First” Rule Of Business Development
This post explores how creating value before asking for work can build trust, strengthen client relationships and generate long-term business development opportunities.
74 Business Development Is A Confidence Game
This post explores why confidence is critical to business development success and how consistent practice helps professionals communicate value, discuss fees, build trust and win more work.
73 The Problem Isn’t The Ask. It's The Way You Ask
This post explores how professionals can ask for referrals more naturally by choosing the right moment, focusing on client problems and making introductions easy and pressure-free.
72 Do You Know When Your Client’s End Of Financial Year Is?
This post explores how understanding a client’s financial year and budgeting cycle can help professionals time their business development activity to match when clients are most ready to buy.
71 The Most Underused Business Development Tactic: Walk and Talk Meetings
This post explores how walk-and-talk meetings can create more open conversations, uncover deeper commercial insights and build stronger, more trusted client relationships.
This post explores why capable professionals and firms still lose work when the market cannot clearly see their value, and how closing this “visibility gap” can drive growth.
69 The Friday Afternoon Business Development Review Routine
This post explores how a structured Friday afternoon business development review can improve pipeline visibility, strengthen accountability and create clear priorities for the week ahead.
68 With AI, Clients Won’t Buy Big: They’ll Buy Better
This post explores how AI is shifting pricing power away from firm size and towards specialised expertise, superior client experience, outcome certainty and more flexible ways of buying professional services.
67 Why Anticipating Your Client’s Next Problem Is Good Business Development
This post explores how anticipating a client’s next problem can deepen trust, uncover natural opportunities for future work and position professionals as proactive, commercially aware trusted advisers.
This post explores why modern CVs, online biographies and LinkedIn profiles remain vital credibility tools for demonstrating relevant experience, building client trust and influencing purchasing decisions.
65 Shared Experiences Build Stronger Client Relationships
This post explores how shared experiences can strengthen client relationships by encouraging authentic conversations, demonstrating how teams work and creating memorable moments that build trust.
64 How Your Gardening Skills Can Help Develop Your Business Development Skills
This post explores what gardening can teach professionals about business development, including the importance of patience, strong foundations, strategic focus, diversification and consistently nurturing relationships.
63 The Importance of Anticipating Common Client Objections
This post explores how anticipating common client objections around pricing, timing, quality, competitors and trust can reduce perceived risk and improve the likelihood of winning work.
62 Having Strong Project Management Skills Will Enhance Your Business Development Performance
This post explores how strong project management skills can make business development more structured, repeatable and scalable while improving scoping, pricing, risk control and client confidence.
61 Conversations, not presentations: where business development really happens
This post explores why meaningful conversations outperform polished presentations in business development by helping professionals listen, understand client needs, build trust and create momentum.
This post explores five Japanese concepts that can improve business development through continuous improvement, curiosity, purposeful alignment, careful preparation and distinctive positioning.
59 Don’t Try to Eat the Business Development Elephant in One Meal
This post explores how breaking business development goals into small, consistent and repeatable actions can reduce overwhelm, build momentum and produce sustainable long-term growth.
58 Business Development Requires That You Be Informed
This post explores why staying informed about clients, markets and emerging trends helps professionals identify opportunities earlier, make better decisions and become more valuable trusted advisers.
57 Slow Down To Get Better Business Development Results
This post explores how slowing down and acting with greater intention can improve business development by enabling better conversations, smarter opportunity selection, consistent routines and stronger client relationships.
This post explores how reframing failure as feedback can help professionals overcome hesitation, take consistent action and build momentum through experimentation and continuous learning.
55 How Dependencies Limit Your Business Development Efforts (and How to Overcome Them)
This post explores how dependencies on people, systems and clients can stall business development efforts, and the practical steps professionals can take to regain control and build consistent growth.
54 What An Accountable BD System Looks Like
This post explores the five essential components of an accountable business development system that creates clarity, establishes a consistent rhythm and assigns ownership for achieving measurable growth.
53 Tips on breaking out of the worker bee mentality
This post explores four ways professionals can break free from the “worker bee” mentality by developing commercial awareness, building capable teams and thinking and acting like entrepreneurial business owners.
52 C.R.E.A.M
This post explores the C.R.E.A.M. framework and its five essential principles for creating clearer, more relevant and persuasive business development communications.
51 Two ears, one mouth: To win new work, you need to be listening
This post explores why active listening is one of the most important business development skills for building trust, understanding client needs and uncovering valuable new opportunities.
50 Do Metrics Actually Matter In Measuring Your Business Development Efforts?
This post explores why business development metrics matter, which measures provide meaningful insight, and how firms can balance activity, outcomes and long-term relationship building.
49 AI's role in procurement: Some suggestions on how to respond to the new way buyers buy
This post explores how AI is transforming procurement and tender evaluation, and what professional services firms must do to improve compliance, demonstrate measurable value and remain competitive.
48 The importance of client retention
This post explores seven practical strategies for improving client retention by building trust, delivering consistent value, personalising the client experience and focusing on long-term relationships and outcomes.
47 Why You Need Engaged Mentors to Help with Your Business Development Strategy
This post explores how engaged mentors can strengthen business development by providing strategic guidance, accountability, confidence, practical experience and access to valuable networks.
46 Toolbox: The 3-3-3 Method of Time Management to Super-boost your Business Development Efforts
This post explores how the 3-3-3 Method can help professionals structure their day, balance client work and meetings, and make consistent time for personal and business development.
45 Why your firm needs a Client Charter
This post explores how a Client Charter can clarify expectations, strengthen accountability and build more transparent, consistent and trusted client relationships.
44 Toolbox: How the Pomodoro Technique Can Transform Your Business Development Productivity
This post explores how the Pomodoro Technique can improve business development productivity by using focused work intervals and regular breaks to reduce procrastination, maintain concentration and build consistent progress.
43 Commercial Imposter Syndrome - The Need To Understand Your Own Value
This post explores how overcoming “commercial imposter syndrome” and understanding your true value can strengthen pricing confidence, improve opportunity selection and attract better-aligned clients.
42 Not all competitors are obvious. Some are hiding in plain sight
This post explores the five types of competitors facing professional services firms and why the greatest threats may come from clients, colleagues, technology and alternative providers rather than traditional rivals.
41 Tips on How to Reframe Your Business Development Efforts
This post explores nine practical ways to reframe business development by aligning it with firm strategy, prioritising relationships and value, and embedding it into everyday work to achieve sustainable growth.
40 The Silent Killer of Profit - Saying "Yes" to Everything
This post looks at why profitable firms need the discipline to say “no” to unsuitable opportunities and focus on work that aligns with their strengths, pricing and long-term goals.
39 The Silent Killer of Profit – Pricing Against Yourself
This post explores some of the common pitfall of discounting services pre-emptively before the client even questions the price. It highlights how undercutting your own value erodes trust, credibility and future pricing leverage.
38 It’s okay to acknowledge your limitations
This post champions honesty and self-awareness as a competitive advantage in building lasting client trust.
37 Why business development lunches don’t work!
This post is a refreshed take on the lunch topic — focusing again on alternatives with more value and stronger follow-through.
This post presents 5 practical tips to stay motivated on your business development efforts.
35 BD is a Game of Failure (like Baseball)
This post compares the similarities between baseball and your business development efforts – you are not always going to win, but that doesn’t mean you give up!
34 Stop. Look. Listen. BD Safety Tips
This post applies classic pedestrian safety rules to your business development efforts: Pause, Observe, and really Listen before jumping into outreach.
33 Is your Business Development looking a little like Little Miss Helpful?
This post looks at how your business development efforts can start to look a little like Little Miss Helpful and what you need to be doing to avoid this arising!
This post shares 20 quick business development tasks to move the needle — ideal for time-poor professionals.
31 The 3P Framework for Pricing Strategy
This post looks at how you can reframe your pricing strategy using Positioning, Pipeline and Partnerships: reinforcing confidence and brand perception.
30 Business Development in Tough Times
This post outlines seven BD strategies for surviving economic downturns—especially relationship-first, value-led approaches.
29 Why Lawyers Need a Business Development Sherpa
This post makes the case for hiring a strategic business development coach or consultant to help lawyers navigate today’s complex environment.
28 Why Client Testimonials Matter
This post breaks down five compelling reasons to collect client testimonials to build trust, credibility and visibility.
27 Timeblocking: Mastering your day
This post provides an overview of Timeblocking as a way to control your calendar, reduce stress and build focused BD time.
26 Build trust by delivering real value
This post emphasises how consistent value-delivery enhances relationships and credibility in professional services.
25 Understanding your client’s ‘Why’
This post explores how to use surveys, reviews, and behaviour data to understand client motivations and improve BD outcomes.
This post applies a productivity rule—never skip BD for more than two days—to build sustainable habits and momentum.
23 The importance of being seen as a Thought Leader
This post defines what thought leadership is and provides content marketing suggestions to build authority and trust.
22 Legal Directories or Legal Awards?
This post weighs up the pros and cons of submitting to directories vs. awards and how they actually support different brand goals.
21 How can we win more Government work?
This post outlines five things needed to win government contracts, including understanding procurement, compliance and referees.
20 The P | A | S approach to building trust
This post shares a storytelling framework: Problem → Articulate the issue → Solution. Especially useful for content and proposals.
This post encourages professionals to prioritise client needs and redefine success through empathetic and collaborative BD approaches.
18 Why the ‘So What?’ test matters
This post teaches the importance of clear messaging by ensuring business development proposals pass the “So What?” relevance test.
This post applies Seth Godin’s advice and introduces the D.N.A model (Decision Maker, Naysayer, Advocate) for strategic BD targeting.
16 Add the personal touch with a handwritten Christmas card
This post makes the case for sending handwritten holiday cards to key clients and referrers as a genuine relationship-builder.
This post applies the THINK acronym (True, Helpful, Interesting, Necessary, Kind) to analysing client feedback in Voice of the Customer initiatives.
14 Standing out from the crowd
This post introduces the ‘3R Test’ (Respectful, Responsible, Resilient) to evaluate whether a differentiator is actually meaningful.
13 Toolkit: The Ivy Lee Method
This post introduces a five-step productivity technique to prioritise six critical tasks per day and stay on track with BD execution.
12 Why being credible is critical to the success of your business development efforts
This post outlines five key “Bs” to build BD credibility: Be ahead, transparent, reliable, honest, and committed.
11 Why having a watercooler in your office is critical for Business Development
This post highlights how casual chats and informal networking build relationships and seed BD ideas—especially in SME settings.
10 Use the GROW model to grow your book of business
This post applies the GROW coaching framework (Goal, Reality, Obstacles/Options, Way forward) to BD planning and mindset.
9 Useful tool: The Eisenhower Task Matrix
This post adapts the classic matrix to prioritise BD activities based on urgency and importance for better strategic focus.
8 Answer these 3 questions and you'll super charge your business development
This post identifies three critical questions: Who buys? What are their priorities? How do they buy? which are key to targeting and winning new work.
7 Using Outlook and To Do to supercharge your Business Development efforts!
This post offers practical time-management advice using Microsoft tools to build strong BD habits and stay connected.
6 Do you know where your next piece of work is coming from?
This post explores four revenue streams—existing, former, referrer, and prospective clients—and how to focus business development time effectively.
5 Knowing your point of difference
This post highlights two tools (Feature Comparison Table and Client Value Matrix) to help firms identify and leverage their competitive advantage.
4 Is your firm's pricing too low?
This post introduces Daniel Langer’s 4E Framework (Emotion, Experience, Engagement, Exclusivity) to assess premium pricing strategies in PSFs.
3 The Six Steps of Business Development
This post outlines a structured process (Identify → Qualify → Engage → Pitch → Close → Perform) to demystify business development for professionals.
This post breaks down 15 critical financial metrics for professional services firms and highlights how financial literacy supports BD success.
1 Resell before you Cross-sell
This post encourages prioritizing reselling over cross-selling, introducing a “Resell Matrix” to identify existing clients who could benefit from additional services you already offer.