Years ago, I was sitting around a fire with a group of friends on a cold evening. The fire had been going for hours, and by that point it was throwing off enough heat that everyone had settled in comfortably.
Someone looked at the stack of firewood and said, “We probably don’t need to put any more on. It’s plenty warm.”
For a while, they were right.
The fire kept burning. The coals were glowing. Everyone stayed warm. It looked like we had more than enough heat to carry us through the evening.
But the warmth we were enjoying wasn’t coming from what we were doing at that moment. It was the result of all the wood that had been added earlier.
Eventually the flames got smaller. The coals cooled. And when we finally decided we needed more heat, we couldn’t just throw one log on and expect the fire to immediately come roaring back.
We had let the momentum die.
Business development can work exactly the same way.
This time of year, a lot of companies are enjoying the results of work that started months ago. Projects are underway. Clients are keeping the team busy. Revenue may be coming in exactly as planned.
Because everyone is busy, sales activity can begin to feel a little less urgent.
Then October becomes November. Thanksgiving is around the corner. A prospect says, “Let’s reconnect after the first of the year.” A sales meeting gets moved because there is client work to finish. Someone you meant to follow up with gets pushed to next week.
None of those decisions feels particularly important on its own.
But little by little, we stop adding wood to the fire.
Then January arrives. The new revenue goal is on the board, everyone is ready to have a great year, and suddenly we realize the pipeline is not nearly as strong as we thought it was.
That is why this is a good time to ask a very simple question:
Where are your next five clients coming from?
Can you name them? Do you know where those relationships stand today? Does someone own the next step? Is there a date for the next conversation?
If you cannot answer those questions, the problem may not be a lack of opportunity. You may simply need a better process for creating and moving those opportunities forward.
We see this often in growing businesses. The owner still carries much of the business development effort. They know who needs a phone call, who they met six months ago, which former client might be ready to talk again, and which prospect said to check back later.
That knowledge is valuable, but it is not yet a process.
A process means the opportunities are visible. The next steps are clear. Someone is responsible for making them happen. And the team talks about them often enough that business development does not disappear when everyone gets busy.
Then there is accountability.
It is easy to agree that someone should make a call. It is different to come back a week later and ask whether the call happened.
That is where good intentions become execution.
The final months of the year are not the time to let up. In fact, they may be some of the most important months for building the year ahead.
If someone tells you to call them in January, call them in January. Put it on the calendar now.
But keep making calls in October, November, and December too. Reconnect with an old client. Follow up with the person who told you the timing was not right earlier this year. Ask for the introduction. Have the business development meeting even when everyone feels busy.
You do not need every conversation to turn into a client tomorrow.
You need to keep feeding the fire.
At MasterThink, we work with business owners to take goals like “we want to grow next year” and build the strategy, process, and accountability required to actually make that growth happen.
Before the year gets away from you, sit down with your team and ask:
Where are our next five clients coming from?
If the answer is not clear, now is a good time to start the conversation.
If you would like another set of eyes on your business and the process behind your growth goals, give us a call. We would be glad to talk through it with you.
Today’s MasterThought
The pipeline you want in January is built by the conversations you keep having in October, November, and December.
