Win Business Development Plan

---
name: win-business-development-plan
description: Builds a 90-day Business Development Plan from your own numbers, with one goal, a warm-first channel mix, 2 or 3 weekly actions you control and a stop list. Use for "run win-business-development-plan", "business development plan", "feast or famine", "where will the next client come from", "plan my selling for the quarter", "how many conversations do I need", "I have no pipeline after this project", "make a new business plan I can keep", part of the Claude Guide for Finding Clients Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Business Development Plan

## When To Use
One month the calendar is full, the next you wonder where the work will come from. Use this at the start of a quarter, or the week you see the gap coming, to answer one question: what do I need to do every week, in the time I really have, to have the work I want in 90 days?

## When Not To Use
If you already have a plan and selling simply stops when delivery peaks, run Weekly Business Development Hour instead. If the trouble is deals that sit and never move, run Pipeline Review first.

## Inputs
- Your goal for the quarter in your own unit: signed clients or revenue
- Your numbers: average engagement size, usual time from first conversation to signature, and roughly how many conversations turned into work last time
- The hours you can give selling in your busiest delivery week
- Where your last few clients came from (past client, referral, partner, network, event, cold)
If you have none of this, I start from the goal alone, leave every other number as a [placeholder] and mark the plan as a first draft.

## Approach
The plan uses lead and lag measures from FranklinCovey's 4 Disciplines of Execution (franklincovey.com): one lag measure you want (the result), and 2 or 3 lead measures you control and can count every week. The judgment is in choosing leads that are truly yours. "Get three meetings a week" fails the first busy week, because the other person decides; "write three reconnect messages a week" does not. The channel order is warm first, because surveys of firms that sell expertise put referrals and past clients well ahead of cold outreach. Claude Docs (beta) suits a plan you will reopen weekly; a plain chat works too.

## Workflow
1. Ask at most three questions: your goal for the quarter, your numbers (engagement size, lead time, past conversion), and the hours you can give in your worst week, not your best.
2. Set one lag measure. Work it back with your figures: work needed, divided by average engagement size, gives clients needed; your lead time tells you how many of them must start their first conversation in the first weeks of the quarter. Claude does the arithmetic and shows it; every figure stays yours. One goal, not five.
3. Lay out the channel mix in this order: past and current clients, referrals and partners, your warm network, events, then one-person outreach on a real trigger. You set the share of time per channel; where your own history says a channel works, weight it.
4. Choose 2 or 3 lead measures you control and can count weekly: reconnects written, referral asks made, conversations started, proof shared. Reject any that depend on someone else saying yes.
5. Run the capacity check: total the weekly time the lead measures need and compare it with your worst-week hours. If it does not fit, cut a lead measure; the plan must survive the heavy week.
6. Write the stop list: what you will stop doing to free that time (a channel that has not brought work, a meeting that sells nothing).
7. Set up the scoreboard: a weekly tally of each lead measure that the weekly hour fills in.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Business Development Plan
Quarter: [dates] · Hours a week in my busiest week: [hours]
## Goal for 90 days (lag measure)
[Clients or revenue] = [work needed] / [average engagement size]; lead time [weeks], so first conversations by [date]
## Channel mix
| Channel | Why it fits me | Share of my time |
|---|---|---|
| Past and current clients | [from my history] | [share] |
| Referrals and partners | [from my history] | [share] |
## Weekly actions I control (lead measures)
| Action | Weekly target | Time it takes |
|---|---|---|
| [action] | [number I set] | [minutes] |
## What I will stop
- [activity] to free [time]
## Scoreboard
| Week | [Lead 1] | [Lead 2] | [Lead 3] |
|---|---|---|---|
## Decision
[Your name] confirms the goal and the weekly actions by [date] and books the weekly hour in their calendar.
```

## Done When
- One goal, worked back from your own numbers, with the arithmetic shown
- Every lead measure is an action you control and can count weekly
- The weekly actions fit inside your worst-week hours
- The stop list names at least one real thing you will stop

## Quality Bar
- No benchmark, conversion rate or target appears unless you gave it
- Warm channels come before cold ones, and cold means one person on one real trigger
- No targets for named people; the plan counts your actions, never anyone else
- Every number in the plan is yours; Claude does the arithmetic and you set the goal.

## Next
Run win-weekly-bd-hour (Weekly Business Development Hour) to turn the plan into a fixed weekly slot.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).