More time for business development: where to start

Key takeaways

When outsourcing gives your team time for business development, start where the odds are best: follow up existing leads faster, review your top accounts and work two or three referral sources properly. Cold outreach comes later. Give each activity a weekly hour budget, an owner and a simple measure, and review it monthly.

• Start with warm leads: faster, fuller follow-up wins more than new volume.
• Then existing accounts: reviews with your top 20 customers.
• Then partners: two or three referral sources worked properly.
• Cold outreach last, and within UK PECR rules for electronic marketing.

What should business development time be spent on first?

Business development time should go first to the opportunities closest to revenue: leads you already have, customers who already buy and contacts who already refer. These convert faster and more reliably than new outreach. A team that has been too busy usually has a backlog of half-followed leads and unreviewed accounts worth more than any new campaign.

Business development here means the planned work of finding and growing commercial relationships, as distinct from routine sales administration, which is often what outsourcing removes.

• How outsourcing gives your internal team time for growth
• Grow existing accounts with the hours admin took

How many hours does business development need?

Set a weekly budget per person and protect it. A useful starting point for a small team is 4 to 8 hours a week for each person with a commercial role, in two or three blocks rather than scattered half-hours.

• Lead follow-up: 1 to 2 hours a week, same day where possible.
• Account reviews: 2 to 3 hours a week across the top accounts.
• Partner work: 1 to 2 hours a week on two or three partners.
• Measure: meetings held, proposals sent and revenue from each.

• Growth time blocks: put freed hours in the diary
• Strategic partnerships need time: make room for them

What rules apply to outreach?

New outreach by email or text to individuals is covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), and the rules differ for individual subscribers and corporate addresses. Check the ICO guidance before starting any campaign. Warm follow-up and account reviews avoid most of these questions.

• Raise your win rate with time for better pitches

When is business development time wasted?

It is wasted when it has no target list and no measure. An afternoon of networking without a follow-up plan, or a long list of cold contacts with no offer, uses the hours without moving revenue. Decide who you are trying to reach and why before the time is spent.

• Judge growth work by outcomes, not busy diaries

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: a services firm moves quote preparation and CRM updates to a managed team, freeing its director 6 hours a week. Half goes to same-day lead follow-up and half to quarterly reviews with 15 key clients. Within two quarters, conversion and repeat work both rise.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Business development time checklist

• List open leads not followed up in the last month.
• List your top 20 accounts and when you last reviewed each.
• Choose two or three referral partners.
• Set a weekly hour budget per person.
• Track meetings, proposals and revenue monthly.

• Mistakes that stop outsourcing freeing growth time
• Grow existing accounts with the hours admin took

Next step

Spend the first freed block on your open leads: call or email every one not contacted in 30 days. It is the fastest return on business development time.