My business development strategy is a combination of blogging (obviously), public speaking, and networking (and luck). My least favorite of the mix is networking. It’s time-consuming, its results are unreliable, and it often feels like a bad blind date. I have, on several occasions, considered eliminating it from my life altogether. Certainly there have been days when, on my way to a networking lunch, I have thought to myself, “I wish I could just cancel.” Ironically, it’s usually those meetings that are the most productive. They remind me that 90% of success is just showing up. After all, I can’t expect to be in the right place at the right time if I don’t show up in the first place.

So, to those of you who are tired of networking; who miss the good old days when people didn’t constantly need to be reminded that you’re still open for business; who wish that being memorable meant being remembered—I urge you to consider that life is a contact sport. Get in front of the key people in your network and stay in front of them. Don’t expect them to find you on LinkedIn. Don’t expect them to keep you in mind. There’s a good chance they won’t. Keep showing up, in spite of the implied tedium, and expect to be pleasantly surprised.

But this week I’m recommending a course of inaction. Because I’m finding that all of this doing comes at a heavy price.

That’s not to say that a busy life has no value. I am fully dedicated to the progress and profit of my business, and to the fulfillment of a personal mission that includes helping people. But while that all sounds sensible and noble, it’s completely exhausting, and on some level, meaningless.

Yesterday, I experienced something extraordinary. After learning that my lunch meeting had been cancelled, I didn’t go back to my office and work; I didn’t take the extra hour to clear out my in-box; and I didn’t wedge in a blog-writing session. I went to a park and did nothing. I’m not sure why I did it. Perhaps it was because I had worked through the weekend and was yearning for downtime. Perhaps I was overwhelmed by the horrifying notion that my life was rushing by and I was missing it. Regardless, I left my phone in the car and sat in the grass for a while. I watched people eat their lunches. Joggers passed by. Some odd breed of bird squawked in the tree above me. I closed my eyes, and for a few minutes, I touched on a level of fulfillment that was far deeper than the satisfaction of an empty in-box or a shorter to-do list or a signed engagement letter. How ironic that an intangible experience could have so much more value than the tangible results I chase all day long.

I wish I could tell you that my business development was impacted in some meaningful way from this experience. It would be more thematically relevant to this blog if I could now segue into a clever strategy for client acquisition. But this week, all I can tell you is that I’m grateful that my lunch was cancelled and that I intend to spend more time in parks. And as strange as that sounds, I’m convinced that doing nothing every once in a while will make me much more effective at what I do.

Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

For more information, visit www.PracticeBoomers.com.

When I first saw it, I had mixed feelings about the article, as it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I called the LABJ and made the pitch. My initial read gave me that same uneasy feeling I have whenever I see myself on a video or hear my voice recorded on a voicemail. Perhaps you know the feeling too. It’s surreal to catch a glimpse of ourselves through someone else’s point of view.

Fortunately, I had enough sense to turn to an expert for some perspective. I shared the article with Sharon Berman, whose PR firm (www.Berbay.com) specializes in service firms. She gave me a lot of great advice, including this gem: “You can control what you say, but you can’t control what appears in print.”  That was a good lesson for me. I set aside my hubris and devised a follow-on strategy that turned the article into a calling card for new business. As a result, I secured meetings with several notable firms who are meeting with me next month to discuss a sales training program for their people.

I want to share Sharon’s expertise with you, as well as the follow-on strategy I just alluded to, so I’m hosting a webinar on the topic of “How to Garner Press.” Sharon and I will co-present and show you:

• How to position your services into a pitch that will appeal to the press
• How to craft your pitch
• How to manage your own expectations
• Follow-on strategies that leverage your article for new business

The webinar will take place on Friday, March 9, from 10-11am Pacific time. Thanks to a sponsorship from Berbay, the program is complimentary to you, but we can only accommodate 200 attendees, so sign up early to reserve your seat.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER and learn how you, too, can garner more press.

When I first met Frank, his law practice was struggling. He had a lot of enthusiasm, but very few clients. “I have a database full of people with business potential,” he had told me, “but I don’t know which ones to focus on.”

I suggested that he identify his Accelerators—people who had already demonstrated the capacity and willingness to help him. He made a list of seven individuals who had either referred business or made useful introductions. He agreed to visit these people every quarter so that he would stay top-of-mind.

The next time I saw Frank it was almost a year later. He had met with his Accelerators regularly, found opportunities to reciprocate their goodwill, and almost doubled his revenues from the previous year. Now he was struggling with a new issue: “I spend all day putting out fires, and I question if I’m making the right business decisions. It’s good to accelerate growth, but what about my ability to manage that growth?”

His question made me realize that there is an important distinction between External and Internal Accelerators. Just as we have people in our lives that accelerate our external circumstances, we also have mentors and advisors who feed our internal growth. They offer counsel, wisdom, and inspiration, challenging us to look more deeply at the choices we’ve made. They help us to become a better version of ourselves. And while they are not necessarily the key to our next business transaction, they are often the people who show us how to become more effective in business. Frank agreed, and pointed out that most people overlook their Internal Accelerators. They focus on the relationships that make them richer and spend very little of their time with those who make them smarter. “Why do you suppose we fixate on catching the next fish when we’re so much better off building a bigger net?” It was an excellent question. Neither Frank nor I had any answers, but we agreed that we would break the pattern by adding a few Internal Accelerators to our quarterly lunches.

Three months later, I received Frank’s email. Apparently, I had made his list of Internal Accelerators. The funny thing is, I had planned to ask him out to lunch that day—he had made mine too.

So, as you go about your networking, I invite you to pursue your Internal Accelerators with the same regularity as you do the Externals. Add them to your CRM, calendar, task-pad or whatever system you use to touch base with key prospects, referral sources, allies, and clients. Your mentors often get lower priority, but for long-term growth, they hold the greater value—because they can help you build a bigger net.

This video lesson is part of Practice Boomers, an online program that answers the question: “What steps should I take to grow my practice effectively and efficiently?” Practice Boomers video lessons provide you with a customized roadmap to grow your book of business. Sign up for a free trial before 5pm on Monday, January 9th and receive the Social Media Prospecting video as a complimentary bonus.

Click here to start your free trial.

I wouldn’t give myself a perfect score for 2011, but adopting these touchstones made me much better off than I’ve been in the past with resolutions like “I’m going to go to the gym 5 days a week” or “I’m going to focus on getting more business from my clients.”

So, this year, my three words are:

1. Trust (this one was really useful last year so I’m recycling)
2. Expand (my thinking, my horizons, my reach)
3. Uni-task (stop multi-tasking and stay focused on whatever I’m doing right now)

What themes are important to you as you look ahead to 2012? Share your three words in the comments section below.

Another question I hear often from blog readers is, “How do you come up with content every week?” Well, in the interest of encouraging you to launch your blog or improve your blog in 2012, here are three tips that helped me pick up momentum:

1. Let your clients be your muse. My clients are an excellent source of inspiration. New blog ideas often occur to me just after I’ve had an interaction with one of them.
2. Push through your writer’s block. It was a challenge to come up with my first few blog topics, but within a couple of months, I started thinking about the blog on a regular basis, at which point ideas flowed more consistently.
3. Delegate as much as possible. I can’t stress this point enough. Every week I send a rough draft of my blog to my copy editor, Leslie. She cleans up the grammar, expands on sentences that need fleshing out, and makes sure the quality of the blog is consistent. She also posts it to my e-mail service so that it finds its way into your in-box. As with any project, delegation is the key to getting it done consistently.

Most of the people I know who have been intending to start or upgrade their blog put it off because they haven’t yet put all the pieces together. Skip the analysis paralysis and jump in. Start by opening a WordPress account so you have a blog template to work with. Send an email with a rough draft or two to Leslie (leshuber@gmail.com). She can do the rest and get you into the blogosphere. But regardless of process, share your voice in 2012. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll find that it gives you something of value that you can send to your network on a regular basis, which increases your chances of getting noticed by the right people.

But in your business, you have an external sales team. You call them referral sources. And while they aren’t on payroll, they are no less critical to your survival.

So take a page out of the widget-maker’s book and make sure your referral sources are educated about your services, especially the under-performers. If they’ve only referred once, or their referrals have been off-target, take them out to lunch and give them a better sense of what they’re promoting. If you have a list of companies or individuals you would like as clients, share those prospects with your referral sources so they can focus their efforts on your behalf. And make sure you’re connected with your referral sources on LinkedIn. It’s the closest thing to a CRM you’re likely to share with them. This may seem like a lot of work (managing a sales team often is), but look on the bright side—you don’t have to send them a year-end bonus check (though a holiday gift basket might not be such a bad idea).

We get so caught up in the day-to-day dealings of our practices that we sometimes forget the people who help to justify its existence. Know your top 10 referral sources in order of performance. Be generous in your acknowledgment of their contribution. And never forget that your competitors will recruit them the moment they start to feel unappreciated.

Add your perspective to the dialogue. How do you reward your sales team?

So, what is it that makes us think that we can ignore our referral sources for days or even weeks when they send us an email, then excuse our non-responsiveness with a “wait, it’s not what you think” explanation about how busy we’ve been and still expect them to send us a client referral at some point? Haven’t we just communicated to them that our responses are unreliable, or at the very least, slow?

I’ve been on both sides of this scenario, and for me, clients get first priority—which means that sometimes other emails sit in my in-box longer than I’d like. But I also know that when I ask a question of one of my colleagues and they take a long time to respond, it erodes my confidence in them. How do I know that when I send them a referral, they won’t be just as flaky with their new client?

The best practice is to respond to all emails within a given time frame (24 hours if possible), even if the response is, “I’m swamped right now but I will get back to you. Please give me a few days to compose a thoughtful response.” If you’re experiencing workload overwhelm to the point where almost all emails sit in your in-box for a while before getting answered, establish an auto-responder with some version of the language I just suggested, then click here to find out how to better manage email overwhelm. But whatever you do, don’t sit on your referral sources’ emails. It only breeds mistrust, and once that’s gone, even your best excuse won’t repair the relationship.

This week’s blog was inspired by a suggestion from Gary Garbowitz. If you have a topic you’d like to see covered in this blog, send me a suggestion at david@ackertadvisory.com.