How much do you charge per hour? $300? $500? $800 or more? Now look at your calendar for the last 10 weeks and identify the number of meetings you had that would be called 'business development' meetings. You know the ones - a coffee catch-up, a lunch with an existing client, a networking breakfast or maybe a lunch with a referrer. I encourage people to have at least 1 meeting per week that could legitimately be referred to as a BD meeting. Now if we add up the time invested in each of these interactions over the 10 weeks, including preparation time and time getting there and back, let's assume you've spent, conservatively, 20 hours on BD.

At $300/hr you've just invested $6000 of your own time, $10000 at $500/hr and $16,000 at the upper end. Now just for argument's sake, let's assume you're in a Partnership of 20 Partners, each doing similarly, conservative BD activity. That's $180,000 in 10 weeks invested at least - around $900,000 per year. (And how much do you have to win to make enough profit to pay for this investment?)

What other expense of that size in ANY firm wouldn't be scrutinized within an inch of it's life?

So now let's ask the BIG question - how much of that BD paid off?

Certainly some did. Just being out there is bound to generate some success. But what could you do with the extra hours in your day if it paid off more often? And what do you (or your firm) do to improve your chances of making it pay off more often? When was the last time you invested in upskilling yourself in this most crucial of areas? When did you pick up a book about BD, have a conversation about a skill with an in-house BD expert, spend some extra time preparing or go on a lunchtime BD training session?

'Bad' BD - and by that I mean going unprepared, not having a vision for the meeting, not really knowing why the meeting was called in the first place, not being ready to ask appropriate questions and respond to those expected to be asked of you - costs professional services firms millions of dollars every year.

It may be worth taking a good look at the calendar for the next few weeks and ask yourself - what can I do to reduce my 'bad' BD habits?

[First published on LinkedIn June 15 under the title 'How much is 'bad' BD costing you (and your firm)?']