The Approval Procedure Strategy

Published on 15 January 2025

So one of the things I want to talk about today is finding out the approval procedures or the vetting procedures from a prospect. One of the questions that has come up frequently particularly by younger attorneys and other professionals who are uncomfortable with the process of business development, specifically in this area of asking for the business, is that it feels so direct, it feels so bold, to ask somebody for business. It feels like you’re imposing on them. And I think there’s the risk of rejection.

So people are uncomfortable with this. And one of the goals of business development is to reveal the fact that you’re interested in doing business with someone. Because you could be friends, you could be friends for a very long time, and still the issue of getting business may never come up. I’ve known people who are in organizations for years and knew people and worked with people on committees, people who could have been prospects or referral sources, but never referred anything because it just never occurred to them. You have to put it in someone’s mind that you’re looking for business. That will increase the chances that somebody will offer to do business with you.

So how do you raise the issue? That’s the question. If you have a personality that feels awkward about asking for business, or you just feel that it’s something too bold. You feel embarrassed or feel like you’re imposing.

What do you do? The answer is to ask for the approval procedures. Ask for the vetting procedures. Every company that you will do business with has some kind of vetting Process. It may be very informal, or it may be extremely formal. They may actually have specific things that are written down in the form of a manual. This is what you need to do to get approved to do business with our company. But even if it’s informal, where they don’t have something written down, everybody’s got some process in mind about how they make a decision to do business to hire a vendor.

So the goal then becomes to find out what those approval procedures are. And then once you learn what those procedures are, you can then do those things. And it feels so much more comfortable, so much less awkward asking for the approval procedures than asking for the business.

Instead of saying, gee, I’d like you to send me business. You could say, I’d like to find out what the approval procedures are for doing business with your company. It has occurred to me that you do business with companies like ours, you hire companies like ours, and you probably have relationships. You may have several relationships that you’re very happy with, but there are conflicts of interest from time to time. And I would like to explore the possibility of getting on that approved list. So perhaps if you feel comfortable, you could help me find out what the approval procedures are to getting on that list.

And I think you’ll find that this is a much more comfortable and effective way of getting business from the people that you know.

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