LawVision INSIGHTS Blog

Business Development for Lawyers: Take a Systematic Approach As You Develop The Art

By LawVision on June 20, 2013

To be successful at Business Development, much like developing any personal relationship, takes work. There really isn’t a lot of magic to it and it doesn’t have to be terribly complicated. Despite the fact that there are some particular techniques that need to be employed, such as understanding your clients’ business, looking at the world through your clients’ eyes, knowing when to ‘push’ and when to ‘pull’ in any given BD setting, effective questioning and listening, asking for the businesses, among others, these techniques are generally more art than science.

As with many things, it’s easy to over-complicate the process of Business Development making it more challenging than it needs to be. Mastering the art of business development simply takes practice. That said, perhaps more important than any fancy technique, is the simple need for taking a systematic approach to business development.

First, it is wise to establish a framework. Setting attainable goals, prioritizing your contacts with whom you need to stay top-of-mind, aligning your business development activities with the goals that you’ve set, scheduling business development time in a formal fashion every week, etc. are all of fundamental importance to this framework as you set out to develop business relationships.

This basic blocking-and-tackling will serve you well during the ‘practice’ period as you hone the ‘art’ of business development. A simple, systematic approach followed with some level of discipline, over time, will deliver the business development results that you seek with minimal pain and suffering. For those of you seeking success with your personal relationships, I submit to you that if a similar path is taken, similar results will be achieved as offered above, but that is a blog for another time. Good luck developing the BD ‘artist’ that exists within each of you!