Fall is here, and the next few months are one of the best times of the year to focus on your marketing and business development. People are back from summer vacations, conferences and events are picking up again, calendars are filling up and there are plenty of opportunities to reconnect with people before the holidays.
This is a good time to look at your brand, your network and your business development efforts and decide where you want to put your energy for the rest of the year. It’s also an opportunity to start laying the groundwork for next year. A conversation you have this fall can lead to an introduction, meeting, new relationship or business opportunity months from now.
You can accomplish a lot by choosing a few activities that make sense for you and doing them consistently. Here are some areas I’d focus on this fall.
Make LinkedIn Part of Your Regular Routine
Start by reviewing your LinkedIn profile and making sure it reflects who you are today. Look at your headline, About section, current role and experience, as well as your profile photo and banner. Your profile is often one of the first places someone goes after meeting you, hearing your name or receiving an introduction, so make sure it tells your professional story and reinforces the areas for which you want to be known.
From there, focus on being active on LinkedIn consistently. Spend 10 or 15 minutes a day engaging with posts from clients, colleagues, referral sources, industry leaders and people you’d like to know better. Leave thoughtful comments that contribute something useful to the conversation and use those interactions as a natural way to stay visible to people in your network.
Also make a habit of connecting with people you’ve recently met. If you attended a conference, spoke on a panel, went to an industry event or had a good meeting with someone, send them a personalized connection request while the interaction is still fresh. Over time, these small actions can significantly expand the number of people with whom you’re regularly interacting.
Take a Closer Look at Your Network
In addition to updating your LinkedIn profile, spend some time looking at the people who make up your network. Think about the industries, companies and roles represented in it, the people with whom you already have strong relationships and the areas where you’d like to expand your connections.
Identify people you’ve lost touch with as well as people you’d like to know better. You may realize that there are former colleagues, clients, alumni, referral sources and other contacts you haven’t spoken with in quite some time. You may also identify companies or industries where you’d like to develop more relationships.
This exercise can help you become much more intentional about networking. Instead of collecting connections, you’re thinking about the people you want to know, the relationships you want to strengthen and where you want to spend your time.
Reconnect With People You Already Know
Some of your best business development opportunities may come from people who are already part of your network. Make a list of clients, former clients, referral sources, former colleagues, alumni and professional contacts you haven’t spoken with recently and choose a few people each week to contact.
Invite someone to coffee or lunch, congratulate them on a new role, send them an article related to something they’re working on or reach out because it’s been a while and you’d like to catch up. LinkedIn can also help you identify natural reasons to reconnect. Promotions, job changes, company announcements, speaking engagements, awards and the content people share can all provide context for reaching out in a personal way.
Keep a simple list of the people you want to reconnect with and make relationship building part of your weekly routine. Staying in touch regularly makes it much easier to maintain relationships over time.
Use Client Conversations to Learn More
Fall is also a good time to check in with clients and learn more about what they’re focused on through the end of the year and into next year. Ask about their priorities, what’s changing within their organizations, what they’re planning for the coming months and what issues are taking up more of their time.
Pay attention to what comes up in these conversations because this is valuable business development and marketing intelligence. You may hear about an upcoming project, a new initiative, a change in leadership, a business challenge or an area where another colleague could be helpful.
These conversations can also give you some of your best content ideas. If several clients are asking similar questions or talking about the same issue, that may be a topic for an article, LinkedIn post, webinar, client alert or presentation. The strongest content often comes directly from understanding what the people you serve actually care about.
Strengthen Relationships Across Your Clients
As you review your client relationships, look at how many people you actually know within each organization. If most of your relationship sits with one person, think about natural ways to get to know others.
You might invite another person to an upcoming meeting, ask your primary contact to include a colleague in a conversation or introduce one of your colleagues whose experience would be useful to the client. You can also look for opportunities to connect with people in different business units, practice areas or geographic locations when it makes sense.
Building multiple relationships gives you a better understanding of the organization and creates more opportunities to be useful. It can also help you identify needs and priorities that may never come up if you’re only speaking with one person.
Make More of In-Person Opportunities
Fall calendars tend to be packed with conferences, client events, association programs, dinners and networking opportunities. Before filling your calendar, think about which events put you in the same room as the people and organizations that matter most to your work.
If an attendee or speaker list is available, review it before you go and identify several people you’d genuinely like to meet. Reach out to people you already know who will be attending and make plans to see them there. You can also engage with speakers or attendees on LinkedIn before the event so that your name is familiar when you meet in person.
When you’re there, focus on having a handful of meaningful conversations. Meeting three new people and having substantive conversations with them can be far more useful than trying to meet everyone in the room.
After the event, connect with the people you met and reference something from your conversation. You can also share useful observations or insights from the program on LinkedIn and engage with posts from speakers and attendees. This allows you to extend the value of an event beyond the day itself and continue the conversations that started there.
Share More of Your Own Perspective
Fall is a great time to become more consistent with your content. Choose a schedule you can realistically maintain and focus on topics connected to your experience, your clients and the conversations happening in your industry.
Your content can take many forms. You might write a monthly article, publish shorter LinkedIn posts, create a video series, host a webinar, contribute to an industry publication or develop content around questions you’re frequently asked by clients and colleagues.
Pay attention to the conversations you’re already having. Think about the questions that come up repeatedly in meetings, developments you’re explaining to clients and topics where you have a useful perspective based on your experience. Keep a running list on your phone so that when you’re ready to create content, you already have ideas waiting for you.
You can also get more mileage from the content you’re already creating. A webinar can become several LinkedIn posts, short videos and an article. An article can become a series of posts. A presentation can become practical tips or a checklist. Repurposing strong ideas helps you stay visible and reach people who prefer to consume information in different ways.
Posting your own content is only one part of LinkedIn. Commenting thoughtfully on other people’s posts can be just as valuable, especially when your goal is to strengthen relationships and become more visible to the people who matter to your business.
Create a list of clients, prospects, referral sources, colleagues and industry leaders whose content you want to follow more closely. When they post something relevant, contribute to the conversation with an observation, an example or additional context.
Comments also give you a way to maintain relationships between meetings, calls and events. When you’re regularly engaging with someone’s ideas and content, you have more natural opportunities to stay connected and continue the relationship.
Spend Time on Your Referral Relationships
Take a closer look at the people who refer business to you and the people to whom you refer opportunities. These relationships are an important part of business development and deserve attention throughout the year.
Think about who has introduced you to clients, invited you into opportunities, recommended you to others or helped expand your network. Reach out to those people and spend time strengthening those relationships. You can also make introductions for them, share useful information and look for opportunities to help them connect with people in your network.
Referral relationships grow through consistent contact and mutual trust. Fall gives you plenty of opportunities to have those conversations before everyone’s calendars become consumed by the holidays.
Look for Ways to Be Helpful
Some of the best relationship-building opportunities come from paying attention to what other people need and what they’re interested in. You might introduce two people who would benefit from knowing each other, send someone an article related to a conversation you had, recommend an event or resource or congratulate someone on a professional milestone.
Pay attention to what people tell you during conversations. Their priorities, interests and challenges give you natural reasons to stay connected. Make notes when appropriate so you can remember those details the next time you speak.
Over time, these interactions help you become someone people know, trust and remember, which is an important part of building strong professional relationships.
Create a Follow-Up System You’ll Actually Use
A simple follow-up system can make a significant difference in your business development efforts. You can use your CRM, a spreadsheet, your calendar or a running list of people you want to contact.
After an important conversation, make a note about what you discussed and anything you promised to send. If you want to reconnect in a month or two, put a reminder on your calendar while the conversation is still fresh. Keep track of introductions you’ve made and people you’ve met at events so those relationships continue after the initial interaction.
Choose a system that fits naturally into the way you already work. Consistency is what will help you stay connected to people and follow through on the things you said you would do.
Start Planning Your Year-End Content Now
November and December will be here quickly, so start thinking now about what you want to publish toward the end of the year and in early January.
There are plenty of useful topics you can plan in advance, including important developments from the past year, lessons you’ve learned, changes you’re seeing in your industry, what clients need to have on their radar and trends that may shape the coming year.
Planning this content in the fall gives you more time to develop your ideas and create useful content during a busy time of year. It also means you can start January with content ready to go and a clearer idea of the topics you want to own in the coming year.
Keep Track of Your Accomplishments
Fall is also a good time to take stock of what you’ve accomplished this year. Create a running list of important matters or projects, client successes, articles, presentations, speaking engagements, media mentions, awards, leadership roles and other professional accomplishments.
Having this information in one place will make it much easier when you need to update your LinkedIn profile or bio, prepare for an annual review, contribute to a pitch, complete an award submission or develop your marketing plan for next year.
As you review the year, look at what generated meaningful conversations and opportunities. Pay attention to which LinkedIn posts resonated, which events led to new relationships, which introductions went somewhere and which activities helped strengthen client relationships. That information can help you decide where to spend more of your time next year.
Start Building Next Year’s Relationships Now
Think about the people you’d like to know better next year and start developing those relationships now. Make a list of clients, prospects, referral sources, industry leaders and other people you’d like to have stronger relationships with by this time next year.
Then identify natural ways to become more connected over the next few months. Follow their content, engage with their posts, introduce yourself at an event, invite them to coffee or find another genuine reason to connect.
Starting now gives those relationships time to develop naturally. When January arrives, you’ll already have conversations underway and relationships that you can continue to build throughout the year.
Put Your Fall Marketing and Business Development Plan on Your Calendar
Choose a manageable number of things you want to accomplish between now and the holidays and put time on your calendar for them. Identify five people you want to reconnect with, three people you’d like to get to know better, several clients or referral sources you want to spend more time with and the events that are most worthwhile for you to attend.
Decide what content you want to create and how often you can realistically publish. Set aside a small amount of time each week for LinkedIn engagement, outreach and follow-up. Also identify the relationships you want to carry into next year and begin investing in them now.
Fall gives you a valuable window to strengthen what you’ve built this year while setting yourself up for the year ahead. The relationships you deepen, people you meet, ideas you share and conversations you start over the next few months can continue creating opportunities long after the season ends. A thoughtful, consistent approach now can help you head into the new year with stronger relationships, greater visibility and a network that you’ve spent real time nurturing.
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