You know that developing new business is essential to grow your firm and your practice. But you don’t. Why? How could something so important be so neglected? Here are three reasons.

1. Your firm doesn’t prioritize it. Finding new clients isn’t high on the agenda of regular meetings. Strategizing, executing and monitoring progress isn’t a consistent focus. You don’t celebrate when someone lands a new client. Instead, everyone accepts your excuse that you’re too busy working because your firm expects, monitors and rewards doing the work over getting the work. So you say, “I’ll just crank out the hours.”

2. You aren’t as familiar or comfortable with it. It’s so much easier to stay with what you know. Since you began your career, your firm had committed time and resources to equip you to be a strong technician. You’re comfortable in that world because of your exposure to it. However, because you haven’t had the same focus on learning to generate new work, of course it is less familiar and of course it is less comfortable. So you say, “Oh, forget it. I’ll sit behind my desk and crank out the work.”

3. You have no guarantee that it will pay off.  Developing new business isn’t an exact science and often feels like a waste of time. You think, “I could be meeting my billed hour budget, but here I am doing something that may be useless. I’ll just go back to my desk and work.”

As a professional, you have to rise above these barriers and take a step outside your comfort zone to learn, put forth effort and be coached to develop the same proficiency in growing your firm as you have in technical competence. And that doesn’t happen behind your desk.