As I worked from firm to firm over the years, one thing remained remarkably consistent.
Every business development meeting looked almost exactly the same. Someone would open the CRM. We’d review the pipeline. We’d discuss opportunities. We’d update pursuit statuses. We’d talk about proposal schedules, interview dates, win probabilities, and projected revenue.
To be clear, all of that is important.
Opportunities need to be managed. Pursuits need attention. Forecasting matters.
But after sitting through countless BD meetings, I found myself asking the same question over and over again:
**What about all the work that happened before something entered the pipeline?**
Opportunities don’t just magically appear in a CRM. Before there was a lead, there was a relationship. Before there was a pursuit, there was trust. Before there was an opportunity, there was visibility, credibility, and often years of investment.
Someone stayed in touch.
Someone made an introduction.
Someone shared an insight.
Someone helped solve a problem.
Someone consistently showed up long enough to become trusted.
Yet when we sit down to review business development performance, very little of that conversation makes it onto the screen. We review the outcomes. Rarely do we review what created them. I think that’s where many firms have a blind spot.
Why Business Development Feels So Hard
One thing I’ve learned is that most people don’t struggle with business development because they dislike relationships. Most people struggle with business development because they don’t know how success is measured.
If you’re a project manager, success can be measured through schedule, budget, quality, and client satisfaction.
If you’re a principal, success may be measured through profitability, growth, and staff development.
If you’re an engineer, architect, or construction professional, success is often tied to solving problems and delivering work.
Business development is different. The outcomes are often delayed. The path isn’t always obvious. And the activities that create results don’t always fit neatly into a spreadsheet. That’s why so many technical professionals find business development frustrating. The connection between effort and outcome isn’t always immediate.
You can spend months building a relationship and see nothing happen. Then three years later that same relationship turns into a project. How do you measure that? How do you reward it? How do you coach someone to do more of it? Most firms don’t have a good answer.
The Problem with Activity Metrics
Because trust is difficult to measure, many firms default to measuring activity.
How many meetings did you attend?
How many clients did you call?
How many events did you go to?
How many lunches did you schedule?
How many emails did you send?
And before anyone tells me that attending events and golfing with clients is business development, let me challenge that idea.
Activity is not impact. Showing up is not relationship building. Visibility is not trust.
We’ve all met people who attend every conference, every networking event, every happy hour, and every golf tournament. Some create tremendous opportunity. Others create very little. The difference isn’t the activity. The difference is what happens because of the activity.
Did the relationship deepen?
Did trust increase?
Did the client share something they wouldn’t have shared before?
Did you gain insight into a future challenge?
Did you become a resource instead of a vendor?
Did you create an advocate?
Those are the things that matter.
The event was simply the vehicle.
The Question Nobody Can Answer
Here’s the question I ask business developers, principals, and seller-doers all the time:
How do you prove you’re effective at business development?
Most people immediately point to revenue. Or wins. Or backlog. Or proposals submitted. But those are all lagging indicators.
A project awarded today may have started with a relationship built five years ago. The opportunity may have emerged from dozens of conversations that never appeared in a CRM. The trust that helped win the project may have been established long before procurement even began. So if revenue is the outcome, what are the leading indicators?
What are the things happening today that increase the probability of opportunity tomorrow?
That’s the question that interests me.
If we can’t identify what creates opportunity, how can we intentionally create more of it?
What If We Measured Trust?
I’m not suggesting we create some artificial trust score. Relationships are far more nuanced than that. But I do think firms should become more intentional about measuring the things that create trust.
Questions like:
Who are our strongest client advocates?
Which relationships are growing?
Who consistently opens doors for us?
Which clients seek our advice before they seek our proposal?
Where are we being invited into conversations before procurement begins?
Who refers us to others?
Where are we becoming trusted advisors instead of service providers?
Those aren’t pursuit metrics. They’re relationship metrics. And they may tell us more about the future health of our business than the pipeline itself. Every pursuit starts somewhere. Every opportunity has an origin story. And more often than not, that story begins with trust.
Maybe We’re Measuring the Wrong Thing
Most firms track pursuits. Some firms track opportunities. Very few firms track what creates them. That’s why so many people struggle with business development. We’re asking people to do something that we haven’t clearly defined, consistently measured, or adequately rewarded.
We tell project managers to build relationships. We tell principals to be visible. We tell seller-doers to get involved earlier. But we rarely explain what success actually looks like before an opportunity exists. What is their metric for success?
I feel that this next evolution of business development. Not simply managing the pipeline but understanding what happens before it. Understanding how relationships become trust and how trust becomes opportunity. And how opportunity eventually becomes revenue. Projects do not magically appear in a CRM. They emerge from years of conversations, experiences, insights, introductions, and relationships.
The irony is that the most important work in business development often happens long before anyone calls it business development.
A Few Questions for You
If your firm’s pipeline disappeared tomorrow, what evidence would you have that future opportunities are still being created?
How would you measure the strength of your relationships?
How would you prove the trust you’ve built?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
How do you measure business development in your firm today? And more importantly, are you measuring what creates the opportunity, or only what happens after it appears?
Thank you for reading!
Business development is one of the most important functions in a firm, yet it remains one of the least understood and most difficult to measure. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do think we’re asking the right questions.
If this topic resonates with you, I’d love for you to join me on this journey. Subscribe to my Substack for conversations about business development, leadership, trust, visibility, and the relationships that ultimately create opportunity.
And if you have thoughts on this topic, I’d genuinely love to hear them. How does your firm measure business development? What have you found works well? What are we getting wrong?
Drop a comment below and let’s continue the conversation.
BD for the last week
Last week I clocked over 60 hours of business development. I was at the NW Indian Gaming Conference (photo attached) for the first three days. Then was at a Seattle Mariners game that our company hosted. Bookended my week with breakfasts, lunches, and a happy hour enjoying the PNW sunshine. Check my Linkedin to read all about these events.
#relationshiptoroi #beforethepipeline #trustleadstorevenue #businessdevelopment
