By now, many of you have come to understand that in order to “make rain,” we need to first build relationships. This has come as a welcome relief to many of our clients who have for years felt uncomfortable with business development because they focused their activities primarily on pitching potential clients. So, “hurray!” for the good news; relationships are the currency of your success as a lawyer in today’s legal profession.
But, what kind of relationships are we talking about? We are talking about sustained,value-based relationships with people who can help you to reach your professional goals. Other articles in the One Minute Rainmaker have focused on the critical need to develop your business development strategy so you have clarity about who can help you to successfully execute it. Once you have that clarity, you can begin to focus on building a network of people with whom you have the kind of relationships that will help you to build your business over time. Make no mistake; this is a long-term proposition that requires repeated, sustained effort, sometimes over many years.
The relationship continuum starts with “contact” and “connection,” that positive first encounter, or contact, in which you make a good first impression on the person you meet. That, in turn, creates a connection and sparks a mutual desire to continue a dialogue to get to know more about each other. Curiosity about the other person and an authentic desire to find ways to help that person are critical elements of turning a first encounter into a connection through which a value-based relationship begins. Curiosity and an attitude of helping/giving can be displayed by the kinds of questions you ask a person, followed by deeply listening to their answers. In other words, in order to build connection with someone, the focus of your conversations needs to be about them, not you! When we meet someone new, we feel the need to be interesting, so we often focus on impressing him/her with who we are and what we have accomplished. Instead, we can make an even better impression by being interested in them and focusing our attention on getting to know them. Through asking intelligent questions and deeply listening to the responses, you will both build that critical connection and be able to use what you have learned to create a bridge to the next conversation.
And the next, and the next…the relationship continuum moves forward through your regular, ongoing, and continuous efforts to get to know another more deeply across all areas of that person’s life, personal and professional, constantly listening for needs and looking for ways to help. If you are making regular efforts to “touch” people and are truly listening to what is going on in their personal and professional lives, you will develop an awareness of their needs and will be able to provide value to them in so many different ways: from introducing them to an important business contact, to writing a recommendation for their son or daughter to help them to get into your alma mater, to sending them an article you’ve read or written about new regulations that can impact their business, to giving them the name of a doctor who can provide treatment to their ill family member.
Over time, this sustained effort broadens and deepens your relationships and moves you toward “professional intimacy,” those critical relationships of trust and value that will inevitably cause people to want to do business with you and to think of you when they have a legal need.