What would you do with ten found minutes during your work day? If your answer isn't an activity that will help you get business, try again. What business development activity would you do with ten found minutes?

In practice you probably answer this question several times a week. You finish a task ten minutes before you are scheduled to call a client. A colleague is late for a meeting. You arrive early at a client site. A meeting finishes early. What do you do at moments like these?

A rainmaker almost certainly calls a member of her network or sends one a quick email. She can do this, because she knows who she wants to reach out to and she recognizes the found time as an opportunity to do so. She has built the calling habit over the years.

Most people don't have this habit, so the found minutes get spent on responding to an internal email or something else that won't help them develop business.

If you want to develop the habit, try the following: Take twenty minutes once a week, preferably on Friday afternoon, Sunday or early Monday, and review your contact list. Make a new list of people you will try to reach that week. Just twenty minutes. Then when you find ten unexpected minutes in your calendar, reach for the list.