If you want to bring more money and business to your consulting practice, there's something even more important than managing relationships and opportunities. It's learning how to manage yourself.
Business development is the project that never ends - you will need to practice and improve its related skills for as long as you lead your business. Relying on motivational tricks or sheer force of will is not enough. You need to make this a habit.
Luckily, the science behind starting and cultivating habits is vast. Behavioral psychology research on the topic has repeatedly shown, during the last decades, the importance of:
- Designing your future actions;
- Breaking down complex tasks to make them more achievable;
- Attaching new habits to existing ones to facilitate adoption;
- Making the rewards of taking action (and consequences of procrastination) more immediate.
And much more.
Once we fully adopt a habit, we need very little energy and motivation to perform it. It's automatic, like rolling downhill at the top of a bicycle. What consultants must understand is that you can (and should) create a system to ensure you (1) learn how to cycle, and (2) manage to do the not-so-fun work of cycling uphill.
That's exactly the opposite of what most consultants do. When your plate is full and you're crazy busy, you put 100% of your focus on delivery. Once those projects are done, you find yourself with an empty pipeline and start doing whatever you can (and sometimes shouldn't) for new work.
That's neither sustainable nor enjoyable. Very few partners I know would prefer living in this roller-coaster, rather than calmly rolling down a long road. More control, more peace of mind.
It's up to you to pick your ride.
By Danilo Kreimer
January 19, 2022