Has business development started to feel a little dull? All those mixers, networking meetings, and lunches spent getting to know “business acquaintances” you don’t really care about. Be honest - if you knew for a fact that your referral sources would never refer you another new piece of business, would you ever talk to them again? [...]

Since you probably have nothing better to do today, why not fill your time with a lot of business development busywork. Write a daily blog, tweet it to your Twitter followers, add another dozen virtual strangers to your LinkedIn community, post a new discussion to one of your groups, then fill next week’s calendar with [...]

I know, it would be so much easier if people just gave us what we wanted without having to be asked. Clients would refer their colleagues, referral sources would introduce us to all of their clients, our significant others would anticipate our every need, and telemarketers would simply lose our phone numbers. Instead, we find ourselves in [...]

There’s a reason 99 cent pricing is so ubiquitous. Our decision to buy something is based on a combination of logical and budgetary considerations driven by the fact that most of us are risk-averse, frugal, and bad at math. Consider 99 cent stores. Their business model relies on our emotional reasoning that 99 cents is [...]

Your mother was right. If you don’t brush your teeth, you’ll get cavities, and too much television will turn your brain into mush. But there is one piece of advice that you’re better off disregarding, because you absolutely should talk to strangers. Your future success is predicated on relationships you have not yet made. And if [...]

It may not bring the fame that comes with an Oscar, but winning a professional award can contribute to your business development success. It provides instant credibility, garners recognition from your peers, and boosts your self-confidence. Even if you are jaded about the value of the various awards in your industry, consider that your prospects [...]

You got plenty of it in school. It’s part of what made you so smart—the evaluative and often corrective feedback you received from your professors (when you weren’t partying). So, what’s making you smarter now? The moment we tell ourselves that our learning curve has flattened out, we become blind to our shortcomings and short-sighted [...]

It is much harder to acquire a new client than it is to keep an existing one. That’s why it’s critical to do everything you can to improve the loyalty of your clients. Some would argue that providing quality service is sufficient to ensure retention. But in today’s competitive landscape, your clients are being wooed [...]

Anyone who takes business development seriously has a list of names. Perhaps it consists of referral sources, perhaps it includes key clients and prospects. Maybe it’s a combination of the three. It lives on a legal pad in your briefcase or in your CRM or somewhere among the icons on your desktop. Hopefully you reference [...]

Most of us have it backwards. We tell ourselves some version of this story: “Once I make enough money or find that perfect mate or land that institutional client, I’ll be happy.” We believe that outer success will naturally lead to personal satisfaction. But the tabloids remind us that this is a myth every time they provide a glimpse [...]