A vineyard mindset

This year I’ve been spending the occasional day volunteering at a local, family-run vineyard — one that produces some of England’s best sparkling wine.

Now with winter upon us it’s time to prune the vines - cold, peaceful, and mindful work.

Armed with a pair of secateurs and guidance from Alex, the estate manager, I‘ve learned the basics of the double Guyot method. It’s a system that shapes both the vine’s present and its future. On each side of the vine you select two canes from the mass of last year's growth:

• The first is for the future: a spur that sits on the underside of the vine and is shortened to two buds which will produce the fruiting cane and spur for the following year.

• The second is for the present: a fruiting cane whose length is cut to suit the vigour of the vine and is the one that will bear fruit for the coming year.

What struck me wasn’t just the technique, but the thinking behind it. Each decision balances immediate yield with long-term health. Something that resonates with the challenge of managing long sales cycles - because what you harvest next year depends almost entirely on the work you’re doing right now.

Many leadership teams only care about the current year’s number. Pipeline reviews, deal clinics, forecast calls — they all point to the same goal: closing this year strong, fair enough it’s important. But if your sales cycle runs nine months or longer, most of the revenue that will show up this year was already set in motion last year — in prospecting, establishing connections, relationship building and shapinng your customers’ thinking with proactive proposals.

Yet companies fail to balance both time horizons. Teams get consumed with the fruiting cane — this year’s deals — and neglect the spur, the smaller and arguably more important work that will become the foundation for future growth. The result is a feast-and-famine pattern. Lumpy pipeline followed by inevitable self-harm: unnecessary discounting and strained relationships from attempting to accelerate deals. To break the cycle, today’s activity needs to be as much about next year’s harvest as about this year’s results.

Alex — who has spent years working these vines — makes her cuts quickly with quiet confidence. “Prioritise finding a good spur,” she said. “one in line with natural sap flow. Then choose your fruiting cane, cutting it to a manageable number of buds or you will exhaust the vine.”

The same holds true in business development. Companies that focus on squeezing the yield out of what’s in front of them risk compromising future growth. They chase every opportunity, diverting resources from prospecting and nurturing. The vine — your market presence — becomes overworked and unbalanced.

Healthy growth requires the discipline to invest in both: allowing the spur to have direct access to resources and then tending to a sufficiently strong fruiting cane. The latter brings the immediate results; the former ensures renewal and continuity. Too often, companies don’t see that balance until it’s too late. They exit their Q1 with an anaemic pipeline and wonder why the rest of the year already feels uncertain.

If you’ve ever walked through a vineyard in winter, the vines look bare and unpromising. Yet that’s when some of the most important work happens — the choices that will impact next year’s quality and volume. Business development is no different. The quiet background activity of nurturing prospects, developing business cases, and investing in relationships feel laborious and lacks immediacy, but it’s precisely where next year’s success is born.

The double Guyot method isn’t complicated — it asks only that each cut is chosen with next season in mind. You cut with an understanding of both the immediate and the future. A fruiting cane for this year, and a spur for next. It’s a small act of care — an acceptance that nature, like business, rewards balance more than bias toward the present.