Every fractional consultant knows the eternal challenge of balancing business development with client work. No matter how busy you are with the latter, you never want to completely drop the former. To do so is to risk letting your pipeline dry up. 

The key is to focus on high-impact activities that you can sustain– which is where the one-hour-a-week strategy comes in. An hour doesn’t seem like a lot of time on its own, but that’s why consistency is the real key. Over a year that hour a week adds up in big ways that matter most to your business. 

So block out an hour, set a timer, and see how much business you can build using this strategy. 

What you can accomplish in one hour per week 

There will be seasons throughout your career as a fractional consultant where you concentrate more on business development vs. executing client work, which is why we’re thinking of the one-hour strategy as an average. It’s the pace you can sustain even during your busiest times while giving you a framework to expand on when your client workload is lower. 

In one hour per week you can do at least three of the following:

• Set up an automated outreach campaign: there are tools you can use for this so it’s not as big of a lift as trying to do it manually; find the one that makes the most sense for your business and your budget. 
• Send personalized notes: are you leveraging LinkedIn to its fullest extent? On top of your automated outreach, make it a priority to reach out to five contacts in your existing network and 15 new contacts (see item below on adding new connections). 
• Ask for new introductions: after reaching out to existing contacts in your network, ask them to introduce you to one or two other people in their networks that make sense for you to know. Take advantage of any recommended connections through LinkedIn, too. 
• Ask for client referrals: let your existing clients know you’re always interested in referrals, reach out to old clients regularly to keep in touch and include an ask for referrals, and post on LinkedIn to ask your network for referrals. 
• Write 2-3 posts for LinkedIn: pull from existing longer-form content you have (newsletters, blogs, etc) or set a time each week to write several posts you can schedule out; remember that consistency is key here too! 
• Add 100 new connections on LinkedIn: you can manually search and add new connections or use automated tools to do this for you while you sleep.  
• Analyze the results from last week’s numbers: while never the most glamorous of tasks, analyzing performance lets you know what your highest-impact tasks are over time. 

Some of these activities naturally feed into or follow one another, so you can seamlessly move from one to the next on your one-hour biz dev to-do list. Rotate through a few of them each week to keep your pipeline filled with a variety of prospects from your target audience. Regularly posting on LinkedIn will help your network keep you top-of-mind. Don’t worry about flooding your feed with thought leadership either; most people will only catch the occasional post, so even repeat-posting an updated version of something from a few months ago is a great strategy to employ when you’re running low on time or ideas. 

If you have more time to devote, consider email outreach in tandem with your LinkedIn activity. Let your audience engage with you in the place they most prefer, be that their inbox or DMs. Some will want to follow you in both places, so be sure you’re providing value everywhere you’re doing outreach and thought leadership and tweaking it for that specific platform. 

What this could look like in practice

If you’re not sure where to start with this strategy, we put together a quick breakdown of what this could look like in action. For example, if reviewing metrics isn’t your favorite thing to do, put that first and make it as painless as possible by doing it in small, consistent chunks. 

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Here’s one approach to try: 

• Review metrics from last week (5 min)
• Put Mylance leads or sales navigator leads into Expandi (15 min)
• Follow-up on previous notes (15 min)
• Write 2 LinkedIn posts for the week (25 min)

It might take you more or less time for each of these tasks, so you can tweak your approach as needed and rotate through each task from the longer list so you see which activities are having the most impact on your business development over time. 

This method also allows you to see which tasks are consistently taking up a disproportionate amount of your time and energy vs. their impact, so you can look into outsourcing them. Keep your focus on the high-impact activities- the “needle-movers”- that launched your business and can keep it moving higher, especially with a personalized touch. Outsource or downgrade in importance the rest. 

How to get over “putting yourself out there”

One of the hardest hurdles in running your own business is consistently putting yourself out there. It can feel awkward or overwhelming and intimidating to put your thoughts out there for public consumption (and the inevitable feedback) or to repeatedly reach out to your network. 

Keep in mind that everyone is busy and consumed with their own pursuits, so they will most likely only see a few of your posts or genuinely welcome reminders to schedule a check-in with you. That’s especially true if they’re old colleagues or other personal connections and you aren’t coming out of the gate with a big ask– just looking to catch up and expand your network. 

Breaking the process down into smaller chunks is one way to keep it from becoming overwhelming. Finding a consistent process is more crucial than how big the process actually is. It’s more important to get started, track your time and impact, and iterate over time. 

That hour a week will add up to big results! 

Mylance

This value-added article was written by Mylance. Mylance specializes in identifying the highest quality, most curated leads for your fractional business. We use 5 different criteria to identify companies and decision-makers who are likely to need your expertise:

1. Matches your niche / unique expertise.
2. Likely to have the budget.
3. Gaps on their team in your function.
4. Are fractional-friendly.
5. Have warm connections from your network.

To apply for access, submit an application and we'll evaluate your fit for the service. If you’re not ready for lead generation, we also have a free, vetted community for top fractional talent that includes workshops, a rates database, networking, and a lot of free resources to support your fractional business.