One of the reasons why lawyers, accountants and experts in the professions are SO reluctant to do business development is that they think they need to do everything at once. Let me state this clearly: this is not true.

You don’t need to join all the professional networks AND send 100 Linkedin connection requests AND run three webinars in a month AND write 3 blog articles.

You need to pace yourself and create a plan that works for YOU! For instance, you could break up your week a little differently, and you allocate an hour to a project that has a short deadline, and then instead spend 10 minutes per day on LinkedIn instead of half an hour.

We only have a certain amount of time each day, which is why it’s so important to ask yourself ‘if I only have time for one thing today, 30 minutes, what is it?’ So, you look at your 30 minutes and you decide what the most important thing is, and how you’re going to accomplish it. But, how do you prioritise? What do you do within those 30 minutes? Here is where you think, ‘If I’m going through my messages on LinkedIn takes me 5-10 minutes, then what do I allocate the next 20 to?’

There’s no golden rule on what sort of activities should be prioritised over others, as this will depend on the list of business development efforts you are considering, the time each of them would take you, and the outcome you can expect from them. However, as a general rule of thumb, you should focus on what is going to produce the best results for the least amount of effort from you.