Written by Eloise Barbier

How to make time for sales when you are not a salesperson

25th February, 2025   •   5 mins

One of the challenges we hear a lot from clients is prioritising time to do business development (BD) when you are not in a sales role, but are expected to have a commercial mindset and uncover opportunities.

While this can feel like an additional challenge to your already busy schedule, developing your BD capability can be a valuable opportunity to accelerate your career growth, develop new skills and potentially discover new strengths.

When sales isn’t your primary role, it’s likely that any activity around it will often be deprioritised, which can lead to us not doing anything at all.

If you find yourself in this situation, it is valuable to reflect on your working habits and evaluate how you can approach them better.  Read on for some strategies and approaches to help you do this, and to more effectively prioritise BD activity.


What does “BD activity” mean?

What constitutes “BD” will vary based on your role and environment. Generally, there are two main types of activity that will fall under the BD umbrella:

1. Farming: developing relationships and uncovering opportunities with pre-existing clients
2. Hunting: sourcing new prospects and clients, winning new business

Do you know which of these you should be prioritising in your role? Or both?

If you are unsure about expectations and where to focus around these two types of activity, it could be useful to speak to your manager.

What mistakes do we often make around our BD activity?

• Not having a defined rhythm or cadence for it
• Not having a proper plan of what to do and where to prioritise
• Trying to squeeze it as the last thing at the end of the day, when your brain is tired and you have low energy
• Not having any systems of accountability and goals around it 

Are you making any of these mistakes with BD activity at the moment? 

If you recognise these mistakes, don’t worry – there’s a solution. By creating a structured BD working rhythm, you can ensure consistent progress without feeling overwhelmed.

Fundamentally, we want to avoid being a “busy fool”, and instead spend our time and energy as efficiently as possible.

To help you bring more thought and structure around your BD activity, we recommend setting up a BD cadence –  a working rhythm that is realistic, and that you will be able to hold yourself accountable to throughout the year.

For example, we recently worked with a client who knew BD was important but never got around to doing it. They decided to block out 30 minutes every Wednesday morning for BD, focusing on client catch-ups and asking for referrals. After three months, they secured two new clients—without significantly increasing their  workload. For them, sticking to simple, short bursts of BD activity on a regular (weekly) basis allowed them to build a sustainable habit.



Another client preferred to block out longer blocks of headspace to plan and do BD activity. They set themselves a cadence of half a day blocked out every 2 months, which they could more easily integrate within their pre-existing working rhythm – they have been able to consistently uphold that cadence over the past year.


Here is a three part process to help you build your personal BD cadence:


1. Block out focus time for BD activity

The main mistake we can make around our BD activity is not doing it at all! To help ensure that we do, it is useful to schedule dedicated time for this.

Having dedicated headspace to plan and do BD activity can help you be more efficient and maximise the time you do have available for it.

Ask yourself: How much time can I realistically schedule on a regular basis around BD?

Whether it is half an hour every week, 1 hour every month, or even every quarter: what does an ideal and realistic rhythm work for you?

Once you have defined this cadence, schedule it.

Looking at your calendar, when could you regularly schedule that regular BD cadence that you have defined?

Can you schedule it at a time of day where you know you will be productive? I.e. not doing it at the end of the day when your brain is tired and it will take you three times longer to do anything.

After setting this rhythm and time, schedule it as a recurring event in your calendar to hold yourself accountable. To prevent yourself from overriding the event or continually postponing it, can you share this planned cadence with a colleague or your manager?



2. Plan your activity 

Picture this: you have blocked out BD focus time in your calendar, and the time is now here. The issue is that you have no idea where to get started, and end up spending half of your focus time flitting from one thing to the next, and trying to remember what you should be doing.

Planning your BD focus time and having a framework to remind you of what activity you could be doing will help prevent this.

As previously mentioned, what activity you will prioritise during your dedicated focus time will vary on your role. Below are some prompts and suggested activity around farming and hunting. You could add these prompts to your calendar invite, to have them as a recurring agenda and reminder.


Farming activity

• Define your key clients (top 20%) – more guidance on this here
  • Do you have a communication plan and regular touchpoints with those clients? Who should you be focusing more on?
  • Organise an in-person catch up with someone in your top 20% client base
  • Create a stakeholder map for those key clients : Who can you build a relationship with to improve the strength of a current key client? 
• Review your clients more broadly: who have you not spoken to recently? How could you get in touch?
• Connect with clients on LinkedIn and engage with their content

Hunting activity

Use the prospecting pyramid to understand the range of different prospecting activity you can be doing.

• Where do you have opportunities in your network? What hook(s) can you use to get in touch?
  • Any target client types or industries 
  • Any contacts in your network that have changed role and who you could get in touch with 
• Who can you ask for a referral from? 
  • Any key clients that you have a strong relationship with, and could easily ask?
  • Do you have a target industry/client that someone in your network could help facilitate an introduction to?
  • Plan how you will ask – use strategies to make your ask more specific and conversational
• Find an event to attend in the next 3 months e.g. a seminar or networking event
• Identify a dream client and create a cold contact plan – remember that it takes on average 6 follow ups before getting a response from a prospect
• Write a LinkedIn post and develop your thought leadership
   

We suggest that you start by selecting a few of the activities listed above and prioritise those, rather than trying to do everything at once. Over the longer-term, as you figure out your personal rhythm around BD, you could set yourself a cadence with different touchpoints – or break down the activity into weekly, monthly or quarterly focus areas. 



Example of what a more complex BD cadence could look like:

3. Set goals and focus areas for your BD activity

This can help enhance the momentum and accountability of your BD cadence. Breaking down big goals into quarterly or even monthly ones can give you clearer direction and purpose, and realign you to the longer-term benefit and impact of your BD activity.

Some prompts to help you build effective goals around BD:

Identify focus areas

• What is going well with my BD activity at the moment? What should I keep doing/prioritising?
• Have there been any missed opportunities? Anything I should be doing more of?
• What are my strengths around BD activity? What do I enjoy doing?
• Can I identify any skill gaps?
• What are the benefits to myself and the team of achieving this goal? 

Set goals and systems of accountability

• Is the goal specific and actionable? Are there clear deliverables?
• What does success look like? How will I know when I have achieved the goal?
• Does the goal have a realistic and motivating deadline?
• What are the barriers to me achieving this? How will I overcome these?
• How am I going to start? What are your actions? 
• What help do I need and from who, to achieve this goal? Who can hold me accountable?

It can be useful to review these questions every quarter. By doing this, you ensure your BD cadence and goals are still relevant and valuable.


Three key takeaways

1. Clarify expectations around BD activity in your role, and where you should be focusing within “farming” or “hunting”
2. Define your personal BD cadence: a working rhythm that is realistic, and that you will be able to hold yourself accountable to throughout the year
3. Create systems of accountability: plan out your BD activity ahead of time and set yourself goals around BD

At Higson, we support teams to enhance their business development approach, win new business and become trusted advisors to clients. If you are interested in learning more, please get in touch.