The Business Development Scoreboard

If you are going to play the business development game, you need to keep score. This concept should appeal to most attorneys, who are often competitive by nature. But in reality, keeping score in business development is less about winning and more about improving your game. If there is no accountability, there is going to be less motivation to push yourself to move to the next level.

How do you keep score in business development? You find a way to track progress and measure results. It can be as simple as calendaring your business development activities and setting reminders to make sure that you follow up on a regular basis. You can track Client and prospect contact and business information and take notes about what is discussed during calls or meetings. If you have access to a CRM system, that can be an excellent tool for keeping up with this type of information. If not, you can make do with the tools on your desktop such as Microsoft Outlook or Word.

Finally, you should track the numbers of calls and meetings you have had and, most importantly, the results. The tool for tracking this type of information is called a pipeline, which is really just fancy sales terminology for a scoreboard. There are plenty of types of software that have been created for exactly this purpose. However, many of them are geared more towards companies than law firms, which can make them difficult and time consuming to use. Most attorneys find that a spreadsheet works just as well. Remember, when it comes to the business development game, it’s not the flashing lights or bells or whistles that really matter. It’s having the winning score…