Ok - I've reached a milestone event - 20 years helping professionals win business. Here's what I know…

Here's a simple idea to help anyone involved in a strategic planning session this year. It will get everyone's input and ensure you reach a consensus more quickly.

So where should you look to find the easiest, most convenient source of new work?

So enough about the Oscars, already. I'm shocked by what's happening in the world right now, but want to ask - How many of us have taken true stock of the impact of the pandemic? I can only address it here in simple terms, with a BD focus, but boy....we have a lot to process.

Everyone is tired right now. But the end of lockdowns in Australia's biggest cities is here. So take a breath. Take a well-earned break too. And reflect on what happens next. It might just be the tonic you need.

Why every meeting is enhanced by taking a second person with you.

You need to be able to raise your concentration levels for a BD meeting. You need to be in the ‘flow’. How do you find it and get in the zone?

How much quality time goes into preparing for your next client or prospect call? Given how busy everyone is these days, isn’t it crucial to extract maximum value from each hour spent on BD?

Here’s 4 things to consider doing as we emerge from lockdown.

If there's ever been a need for BD skills, it's now. But the skills have to match the phases we're moving through. What are they and what should you be doing?

Okay. So you've got the corner of the third bedroom rigged with a desk and some wifi. You've put a lock on the door to keep the kids at bay. You've bought a powerboard to deal with all the new cables snaking their way across the floor. And you have figured out how to login and work from home. Now what?

What should you be doing as the holidays approach?

What’s the best way to construct a conversation where you can feel comfortable asking for the business? It just takes a little thought.

I recently had a coaching client who remarked on his supervisor's success in drawing on his old school alumni network to bring in work. This got me thinking...how much can you rely on the networks from your old school being useful in a business context?

My experience says its value is …..

How often do you need to be out having BD meetings? What is enough? And what is important? I get asked this a lot and provide some guidance here to help you get it right including an offer to access a simple tool to assist.

Apart from hanging on, and making sure you always peed downriver (!), what else did I learn that might be useful on a whitewater rafting trip?

I’ve been doing some exciting things recently which got me thinking about their BD applications. Here’s a few more tips.

I'm about to head off on some leave, so here's the few tips I'm implementing before I go.

I've posted ideas you could implement at the end of a week to keep your BD pipeline fresh. Here's some tips to kick off the week on the right note. The actions to set things going should take no more than 10 minutes

The last article with the same title proved there's a bit of an appetite for this, so here's a handful more BD tips to end your week on an upbeat note.

So you’re trying to finish the week on a high. Here’s some end-of-the-week BD tips to do that, and to set you up just right for next week too.

The all time easiest way to win work has been for someone else to give it to you....willingly, frequently and happily. And I'm not only talking about repeat clients here. I'm thinking of internal referrers.

If you compete on price alone, you will lose customers. That's irrefutable. Here's a story about how NOT to handle the price inquiry, and what you could do to BE BETTER PREPARED.

Some thought-provoking do’s and don’ts about how to value the BD and Marketing people when contemplating a merger or integrating post-merger.

What are the best questions to ask a client or prospective client that can lead to client intimacy? What questions gradually deepen the mutual understanding between relative strangers in a business context? What questions make you think more deeply and share more fully? What takes the conversation from a chat about the weekend's sporting or family pursuits, to a genuine exchange about business-related important matters?

Being 'liked' is not anywhere near the same as being 'valued'. Not in the same universe, actually. On a very personal level, think about how many people in your life 'like' you, versus the number that truly 'value' you. It's inner circle stuff, right? In your personal life knowing who values you gives you deep roots, doesn't it?

So if you are a card-carrying professional, if a choice was to be made, which would you rather be - liked or valued? And how do you make it so?

I have previously spoken about the most common concern raised in my training and coaching over the years – how to ask for the business. The second most common concern I hear is ‘how do I go from being a friend to being a provider?’  I colloquially call this turning caffeine into cash. And I don’t mean that in a cynical, one-way, sense. I think it goes both ways.  How do the two people at the coffee meeting make sense of their needs in order to derive a fee for the provider, and a commercial, profit generating/risk mitigating outcome for the client?

Many professionals seem to get caught in the trap of an endless series of ‘rapport building’ over coffee without getting to the real underlying reason people are at work – to provide a service to meet a need. 

What should you do to make a difference, to improve your success rates? Here’s my top five tips…