Business Development Habits:

What does it mean to you to have successful habits in the business development of your practice or business?

How do you measure your success in business development?

Since success in your professional business development means different things to different professionals…

…as well it should.

But one fact is universal: without building great relationships with the right people, you will never reach real success in your business development activities.

I do not mean to say that you cannot get monetary success without great relationships.

You can. But you will be lonely.

And in my opinion – this is not a REAL success.

The truth is, business development is about leveraging and extending existing relationships.

But what separates the successful professional from those who are not successful in their business development efforts?

To answer this question, I followed for a while professionals and business owners who are very successful in their business development activities.

I learned what they did, when did they do it, what was their motive to do it etc. I gathered their main habits.

More specifically, habits connected to building great relationships as part of their business development activities.

Here are my interesting findings:

Habit #1: Acceptance of criticism or abuse

To be successful in business development you need to be ready to accept criticism or abuse.

I am sure it also happen to you.

One of your clients complain. Your partner or colleague get angry. Your supper criticises you.

What do you do?

Answer back or…

Are you willing to accept the criticism and handling it in your way?

Regardless of who is actually at fault.

This habit: your acceptance of the undeserved criticism, will no doubt help you build stronger relationships for a lifetime.

Habit #2: Check what is really asked

Somebody asks you a question.

Be it your colleague, a client or any other connection.

Do you answer it directly or do you try to think what do they really ask?

You see, often behind a simple question asked there is a larger question that goes unasked.

Answering the unasked question help build the relationships even deeper.

It shows the other person that you really care and pay attention.

Professionals who build great relationships, as part of their business development efforts, think about the other level of the question asked.

In other words, they check what lies underneath so they can answer that question, too.

Habit #3: Help without being asked.

Most professionals I know are willing to help when they’re asked.

But how many of you are willing to offer to help even before you have been asked?

I assume not many (whatever your reason is…)

But here is the interesting point.

When you give attention to your relationships, you can tell their needs and when they need help.

Thus, you can offer to help in very specific ways.

Because you care and genuinely want to help.

And here is the secret:

Most of the time – the little help will make the greatest impact.

And the result:

You build a better and more authentic relationship with your practice or business.

Habit #4: Adapt to every situation and every person.

We all know these people that know to show their enthusiasm and outgoing. They always having fun around them.

But are they there when they need to be serious?

If you want to be a professional who builds great relationships for a lifetime, you need to know when to be serious and when to have fun.

You need to create a habit that helps you to adopt for every situation and to every person.

I am aware that it is difficult and demand of a lot of personal work. But if you did, with no doubt, you will reach success in your business development activities faster.

Habit #5: Take a responsibility

Take full responsibility for your action. Good or bad.

When you learn to take the blame, to apologize and explain why you are sorry (instead of blaming others) – every person want your company.

Treat every mistake as a bump in the road and not as a permanent roadblock.

Learning to insert this habit into your practice will put you way above shoulders of other professionals and will help boost your business development efforts.

Habit #6: Act not only think.

One thing is to think, but it is totally different is to implement and do.

As you know, in my bestselling book – “The Attention switch” I explain at length the power of giving genuine attention in building relationships with your connections.

This is true also when you build your practice business development.

If you want to be successful in building relationships, you need to learn to give sincere and genuine attention to other people.

One of the easy ways to do it is by giving a compliment [read my post on the power of a compliment].

Everyone loves unexpected compliment— no specific reason, no special occasion…just “because”.

Practice it and make it as your business development habit.

How?

Take a little time every day to do something nice for one of your connections, unexpectedly.

I promise, when you do it on a regular basis, magic will come to your business development efforts. You will be supposed how simple it is, but not so easy to a lot of professionals.

Habit #7: Value every message

How much the position or influence of the person advising you to do something in your practice is important while implementing the advice?

I assume to many of you very much.

That’s unfortunate.

If you want to be more successful in your practice business development you need to adopt a new habit – learn to value the message, whoever is the messenger.

You should not discount the message simply because the messenger is discounted. Believe that good advice is good advice, and always be a good advice, regardless of where it comes from.

I assume you agree that there is no link between people ‘received status’ and the fact that they’re good people (or not).

Habit #8: Focus on giving

I declare the obvious but: a great relationship is mutually beneficial.

Unfortunately, many professionals only connect with people that can get them something – maybe a referral, or information, access to knowledge or even connect them to other people.

To reach success in your business development efforts, you need to build relationships by thinking about what you can give to others (vs. What you want).

I will say it again: genuine giving is the best way to establish a real relationship for a lifetime.

This is the shortest and surest way to energize your practice business development.

Habit #9: Value every connection.

Any times when I am a keynote at a large event, I will arrive earlier and network with the participants.

Since most participants do not check the list of speakers before arriving at the event, mostly they do not know I am the keynote speaker (although my real life smile is exactly as my smile on my photos).

This allows us to have a genuine and interesting conversation. A conversation in which we are both equal.

Now, whenever I see these people in future events, they come to say hello and they do not need to wait in the line of people waiting to talk to me after my presentations.

That’s as far as our relationship is likely to go and that’s okay. For a couple of minutes, we transcend the speaker/attendee relationship and become two people brightening each other’s day.

And that’s enough, because every relationship, however minor and coincidental, has value.

Professionals who reach success in their business developments efforts treat every one of their relationships in the same way.

I know that this is a lesson, many professionals need to take to heart more often.

The core of all business development efforts

The building, maintaining and supporting relationships should be at the core of all business development efforts.

The saying you reap what you sow is so true in relationships when it comes to business development.

I firmly believe that if you keep people’s emotions and needs at the core of your strategy, you will be successful.

There are myriad ways to build, maintain and support relationships of all degrees.  But perhaps most importantly, if you keep the interests of other people at the center of your strategy for business development, you will find deep satisfaction on top of success.

What are your business development habits that help you build genuine relationships for a lifetime? Please share.