If you’ve never owned a dog you’re familiar with the temperament: easily diverted, always looking for the next bird/rabbit/lawnmower to chase, all fun, but no focus. Is this your business development model to generate leads? Are you randomly chasing prospects?

Hard wired to be on the hunt, dogs have no game plan to entertain themselves (well, they are dogs). For them, the hunt is the fun, who cares if they catch anything? We see clients doing the same thing.

How can you stop chasing the wrong kinds of prospects?

• Get real about the kind of clients you want. What industry is this client in? How big are their sales?  Are the kinds of prospects who hired you a year ago much different this year?

• Qualify early. We ran a sales campaign for an accounting firm client to identify prospects for a specific service. Low and behold, we identified a handful right away with one in particular who wanted to meet immediately. After investing an afternoon of prepping (researching the prospect), the sales meeting happened.  A couple of days later, the prospect asked the client if they would come down on fees to closely match their current firm’s fees. In other words, they were price shopping.

• Learn to say ‘no’. Or in dog training terms, DROP IT. It’s occasionally a good idea to just tell an interested prospect that you can’t take on the project right up front. Just be honest. If your feel structure won’t work or if you don’t have the right staff to serve them, just say no. And be prepared to refer them to a firm that can help them.

Sure, the chase is essentially the fun part. Just be sure you have a lead generation strategy in place first.