Posts

On Credible Visibility

/0 Comments/in /by

Are you visible to your referral sources and potential clients?

Are you credibly visible to them?

We all know that in order to land business, you must be known to those who will send you work, either directly or indirectly. That much is obvious. And so in business development we talk about strategies to help us become visible to referral sources and potential clients, such as:

  • Networking
  • Staying in touch with contacts
  • Writing articles
  • Speaking at conferences and CLE meetings
  • Teaching (formally or informally)
  • Blogging/using Substack
  • Podcasting or being a podcast guest

Let’s narrow that field a bit today to ask the critical question: are the business development strategies you’re using to be visible doing so in a way that builds your credibility?

Again with the obvious: you won’t gain anything that’s likely to lead to business if you do these activities with the wrong group of people. If you represent employers on labor and employment issues, you probably won’t get much out of attending a solo entrepreneurs’ networking group. They don’t have employees, and employment law is likely not relevant to them. Sure, you might run into someone who could refer business to you or you might hit it off with someone who will send you business years down the line, but that’s luck, not strategy. Effective business development requires strategy.

When you spend time in the right circles, whether in person, online, or via your writing, you build credible visibility as part of your business development strategy. You become visible in ways that are connected to your practice, ways that will help people recognize you as someone active and knowledgeable in your area of law.

Here are some ways to make sure you’re working in the right business development circles:

  1. Unless you represent lawyers, don’t spend your time with networking with or speaking or writing to them and call it business development work. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve spoken with a lawyer who said they were active with the local bar for business development, I’d have a nice pot of cash. If I had a dollar for every time a lawyer told me that strategy had delivered as they’d hoped, my pot would be close to empty. Yes, you might occasionally get a referral due to a conflict, but that too is luck rather than a business development strategy.Networking with or speaking or writing to your competitors rarely pays off as a business development strategy.
  2. Focus on attending conferences and networking groups populated by people who either (a) work in the same industry or (b) address the same issues you do from another angle. For example, if you represent dentists, you’ll want to move in their circles. If you do IP work for start-ups, you’ll want to network with investors. When you focus on these two ways of defining what’s a right audience for you, you’ll be able to define a good-sized circle of referral sources and clients who share an interest in your area of legal interest. And, of course, as an integral part of your business development strategy, you may consider writing and speaking to these same audiences.
  3. If you’re in a larger firm, try cross-selling. I prefer to think of cross-selling as cross-servicing, since the effort should not be designed simply to sell something to a colleague’s client but rather to identify other legal needs the client has that are not currently being addressed. Focusing on service rather than selling aligns you with the client and removes an “ick” factor that some lawyers feel when contemplating this activity. By engaging with another lawyer who’s addressing different legal issues and helping to spot ways you can help, then following up with your colleague and, if appropriate, with the client to continue to deliver useful information, you can better support both your colleague and the client while working to bring in new business. (Note that success with this business development strategy often depends in large part on firm culture—but that’s a topic for another day.)
  4. Look for unique ways to reach the right people. If you’re active and building credibility through the usual channels (as discussed above), think about new ways to reach out. Could you publish an article in your college alumni magazine or join a targeted alumni group that will include many people who are potential clients or referral sources? Could you join a board of directors for a nonprofit that has some connection to your practice and meet other directors who would be useful business development contacts? Think out of the box but stick to the “relevant to my practice” parameter.

Be sure to distinguish your efforts to build credible visibility from your efforts to develop relationships in your business development strategy. Credible visibility requires you to be centering your attention on issues relevant to your practice while connecting in some way to the audiences who may send you business, directly or indirectly. Building relationships for business development purposes will include business discussions (otherwise, you’re just becoming friends—which is great but not a path to bringing in new business); it will also bring in conversations designed for you to get to know, like, and trust one another.

When you’re having well-focused conversations (spoken or written) about legal issues relevant to your practice with the rights audiences, you’ll raise your professional profile. Your contacts, potential referral sources, and potential and prospective clients will be more likely to know about you and to view you as someone knowledgeable about the issues they need addressed.

Are you credibly visible in your market? If not, lay your plans to shift that using these business development guidelines and suggestions, and get to it. It’s never too early to start. You can make substantial inroads on this in Q4. The wind is at your back.

Trust is the fuel

/0 Comments/in /by

The quality of our relationships often has a significant effect on how satisfied we are with our lives, including our work lives. Relationships are critically important for business development and in day-to-day practice, since they can open the door not just to new business but also to a wide variety of professional opportunities and resources. Who you know frequently influences what you get to do.

I’ve written extensively on relationship-focused topics like internal and external networking, reestablishing relationships, building a peer network, etc. Today, let’s focus on what makes any kind of relationship work, professional or personal: trust.

During the early days of the pandemic when many parts of the country were shut down, I advised client after client to pick up the phone and call their clients and contacts—just to see how they were doing, not to further any business development objective. Those who followed this suggestion often discovered that the people they called appreciated the human-to-human connection. This wasn’t intended to be a slick trick to get more business, just a way to connect, to demonstrate that the lawyer placing the call cared about the person they’d called, not just what that person could do for them. Even so, the calls often paid business dividends. More importantly, they helped to build (or to further) trust.

Trust is the fuel for lasting business relationships with clients and colleagues and pretty much anyone else, too. Think about it this way: whether you’re facing a difficult personal situation, a challenging client matter, or a high-stakes pitch, wouldn’t you prefer to work with someone with whom you’ve developed a relationship of trust? So would most clients.

Being trustworthy requires:

Doing the right thing. And doing things right.

– Don Peppers

Other than personal contacts made in times of crisis, what else builds trust in business? It’s a limitless list, but a few ideas that might serve as a springboard for your own:

  • A sense of partnership. Not “I’m doing this for you,” but “we’re in this together.”
  • Meeting the other party’s preferences, where possible. When you make things easier for a client, whether that’s following their preference for email vs. telephone communication or sending regular reports so they’re always up-to-date on a pending matter, you’re building trust by conveying the message that you’re working to make their experience as friction-free as you can.
  • Avoiding surprises for your client. If an invoice is larger than usual, for example, you might give your client a warning your client before sending the invoice.
  • Inviting your client’s substantive input where appropriate and giving them time to offer their thoughts. Inviting input with a deadline that would require your client to drop everything to respond in time, on the other hand, telegraphs the message that you aren’t aware of (or you don’t care about) their other demands.
  • Letting your client know when they might expect to hear from you when they call or email you and you aren’t immediately available… And then following that timeline.
  • Proactively providing information or suggestions that are useful to your client shows that you’re aware of their needs and on the lookout for helpful resources.

These and other simple steps let your client know that you’re paying attention and worthy of their trust. The same principles apply for non-client contacts and colleagues, as well as others. Relationship- and trust-building is an art of business development that pays numerous dividends.

Your turn: What have you noticed that’s allowed you to develop trust with others? Are there professional relationships that might benefit from additional attention? This is the perfect time to lay your relationship business development plans as we move toward the close of Q3.

Midyear Business Development Check-In

/0 Comments/in /by

How often do you lift your attention from the day-to-day to check your Business Development progress toward your goals? I often see well-intended, focused lawyers who develop a solid BD plan in December and don’t revisit that plan until the next December. And I get it: balancing billable work, practice-focused nonbillable work, and other commitments can be tough.

But here’s the thing: if you fail to check your Business Development plan, it’s easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day that you lose sight of the bigger picture. You don’t get the opportunity to adjust your plan according to your actual results and you lose the chance to evaluate how new activity you’ve added fits into your plan. As a result, you can be busy with BD activity and not discover that your efforts aren’t paying off until you’ve invested a lot of time. Nobody can afford that error.

Take this month to check your Business Development progress. Questions to ask include:

  • Have I brought in new business? If so, what’s the source? Can I trace that business to something on my BD plan, and if so, do I need to change or refocus to take advantage of a trend I’m seeing?
  • What progress have I made on building or expanding my professional platform? Review your plans for writing, speaking, teaching, etc. Have you kept to the frequency you’d set for those activities? Are you reaching the audiences you’ve intended to reach? What results are you seeing? What new opportunities exist now?
    • On platform building results: don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this activity is unproductive if it hasn’t produced new business. Platform-building activity is designed to build your professional credibility. It’s important that you reach the right audiences, but in most cases, new business won’t be traced directly to your one-to-many outreach.
  • How well am I keeping in touch with my network? This is the time to review your A/B/C lists, ensure that the right people are on each list, and confirm that you’re keeping in touch as often as you intended. For your A list, consider too the balance between requests to meet, sending information relevant to your contact with some kind of personal comment, and outreach on topics more personally interesting to your contact.
  • Am I meeting new people to add to my contact list? If you’ve been networking, are you meeting the kinds of people you’d identified in your Business Development plan? Are you going beyond first meetings to develop relationships? If you’ve been involved in a group for a substantial chunk of time (four to six months), are you seeing results in terms of beneficial new relationships, introductions, referrals, invitations to professional opportunities, or new business? How’s your LinkedIn activity working?

Finally, do the Traffic Light exercise. Based on your Business Development plan and review, list your green lights (productive activities you want to continue), yellow lights (activities that aren’t producing the results you’d hoped but that may benefit from more time or refreshed effort), and red lights (activities to discontinue because they’re unproductive or so unenjoyable that you aren’t giving them the effort necessary to see results). Wrap up by looking for new lanes: avenues, activities, or relationships that aren’t on your BD plan that seem attractive. Determine which you might add to your plan, with a careful eye toward balancing the activities you’re removing with those you’re adding.

This review shouldn’t take more than an hour or two, in most instances. Investing that time will help you to ensure that you’ll put the next six months to good use so that 2023 will be a year of Business Development success for you.

If you need help conducting this review (evaluating your results, for example, or identifying missing pieces in your Business Development plan), please reply to this e-mail. I’ve set aside three spots for limited BD plan review and refresh, plus one spot for a new client to begin work this month. I’ll be happy to arrange a 30-minute complimentary consultation to see how I might help.

Three Business Development Steps to Take Right Now

/0 Comments/in /by

Have you accomplished at least 10% of your marketing goals for the year? Now that we’re into February, pause and take stock of what you have and haven’t accomplished from your 2023 business development plan. Give yourself credit for reviewing and/or updating your plan, but look for specific actions that you’ve taken that are likely to lead to business and/or to raise your professional profile.

Even if you haven’t yet landed new business this year, you should be able to identify the actions you’ve taken so far, the results you’ve seen, and what ultimate outcome you’re realistically aiming toward. Stop right now and send yourself an email with that information. If you can’t make a cogent statement of activity and accomplishments, schedule time to review and update your business development plan (if you haven’t) and then calendar specific steps you’ll complete this month.

If you can point to progress you’ve made toward your business development goals since January 1, then take a look at these three steps and add, as appropriate, to your calendared BD activity for the next month.

Complete this relationship circles exercise to grow your network.

While a network’s strength lies in strong, reciprocal relationships, you must consistently be meeting people and growing the scope of your business development network. That will, of course, allow you the opportunity of meeting new people who may deliver business or professional opportunities to you. Moreover, as you grow your network, you’ll put yourself in an ever-better position to make referrals and introductions that benefit key contacts.

If your network pipeline feels a bit dry, try this simple exercise. Using the schematic below:

  1. Select six groups of people you can access easily. These groups might include a professional organization such as AUTM (previously known as the Association of University Technology Managers), a business group such as a Rotary Club, your college or law school group of friends, or the PTA at your child’s school. Write those group identifiers on the lines above each circle. Ensure that there’s a reasonable connection between each group that you identify and your business development plan.
  2. Brainstorm four to six names of people you should contact in each circle. You’ll end up discarding or delaying many of the opportunities you identify, but you’ll come up with at least a handful of relationships that you may be able to cultivate starting now.
  3. Calendar a reminder to contact those people and follow through. This exercise will generate a list of people with whom you might develop a beneficial relationship. Designing a plan to deepen your contacts and implementing that plan is up to you—and the particulars should be defined in a thoughtfully-crafted business development strategy.

You can repeat this exercise as often as you’d like, proving that you have a full supply of useful contacts…or that it’s time to join some new formal or informal groups of people.

Keep your eyes on the economy – your clients certainly are.

Clients almost always appreciate proactive communication. In today’s environment, one topic that nearly every client will be watching is the economy. That has two consequences for you.

  1. Couch your advice with an eye to the economy and the effect your client will likely experience. Tailoring advice based on financial exposure is something that you should always be doing, but when the financial pundits are discussing whether a recession is on the way or already present, that’s more important than ever—even if your clients don’t specifically raise financial considerations. You’ll put yourself in good stead when clients know that you’re conscious of what matters to them and seeking to focus your work accordingly.
  2. Stay current with your billing and collections. Think back to the beginning of the pandemic, and you’ll see how quickly a client’s generous budget can dry up due to a change in external circumstances. Don’t put your practice behind the financial eight-ball by letting billing slide.

Review Denney’s 20 Marketing Maxims.

Having practiced law for some 45 years and then consulting on matters including business development, Bob Denney was recognized as a leader in strategic planning, leadership, and management. He had a talent for providing a great deal of insight in just a few words, and that’s perhaps best demonstrated by his Twenty Marketing Maxims.

You’ll benefit from reviewing these fundamental principles of business development, but don’t stop with just a review: ask yourself whether you’re implementing each maxim and how you might adjust your business development activity to better reflect it.

Getting real about connections

/0 Comments/in /by

He spent the first 45 minutes typing on his phone.

My college friend Helen came to visit me recently, along with her partner of four years whom I’d never met. Tom pulled out his phone as soon as he sat down and kept it out for almost the whole evening. When we tried to draw him into the conversation, he’d respond and then return to his typing, and when Helen prompted him to talk about his work, he pulled out his phone to show us some videos related to his job. Tom has a great smile and friendly eyes, but I didn’t get a feel for who he really is. Technology prevented the connection.

Now, you’d never spend time typing on your phone when you meet someone new for business development purposes, right? But think about these instances in which one might unintentionally let technology block a beneficial connection:

  • You’re attending a conference and you spend breaks checking your email and voicemail to avoid getting too far behind instead of chatting with someone new.
  • You make a new connection on LinkedIn (or other social media) but don’t take the relationship any further.
  • You email a client or contact instead of picking up the telephone—not because you know that the person you’re communicating with prefers email, but because it’s easier for you.
  • You have a follow-up plan in place for new contacts, and it relies primarily on email or social media.
  • You’re so busy processing email during a flight that you don’t even notice the person in the seat next to yours, much less speak to him or her.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these scenarios, but if they repeat frequently, you’re probably missing out on opportunities.

Especially in the early stages of building a business relationship, you’ll benefit from making the effort to interact face-to-face or by voice. Think about the contacts you plan to make this week and ask yourself whether a visit or telephone call would advance the relationship more effectively than an email.

P.S. Mark your calendar for the next installment of the webinar series, Mastering Your Time for Greatest Profit: Blending Year-End Billable Responsibilities and Holiday Relationship Development to Build Your 2021 Foundation.

The webinar will be held on Thursday, November 19 at 1 PM ET/noon CT/10 AM PT.

Click here to register.

What if small talk fails?

/0 Comments/in /by

Relationships are at the heart of business development. That’s true regardless of the length of your sales cycle, meaning the typical amount of time required for a potential client to move from first encountering you to hiring you. It isn’t necessary to build a deep and personal relationship in all cases, but you do have to have enough of a relationship to allow your potential client or referral source to know and trust you.

Whether your potential client first finds you online or offline, one-on-one conversation is where a true connection may bloom. Most commonly, you’ll find that the process of building a connection takes time. (That’s why follow-up is so critically important.)

You’re probably aware that small talk paves the way for follow-up contacts. Through small talk (conversation that meanders through a variety of topics at a relatively surface level), you learn more about your conversational partner. You discover mutual interests and experiences, and you start to build a common bond. Through follow-up, you develop that bond, and over time a relationship flourishes… And you’re off to other business development issues. (If small talk isn’t your strength, you’ll find plenty of resources online that can help you improve your skills and increase your comfort.)

But what about those situations in which small talk fails? Perhaps small talk isn’t culturally accepted or, despite your best efforts, your small-talk skills aren’t creating an easy flow in conversation. In these instances, you’ll need to find ways in addition to small talk to establish and deepen connections.

The Harvard Business Review article Building Relationships in Cultures That Don’t Do Small Talk offers good tips for recognizing a no-small-talk culture (something that you should already know based on your due diligence) and for adapting. The most important two sentences in the article apply to relationship-building generally, not just across cultures:

One essential piece of advice is to take a longer-term perspective on developing relationships. If you assume that relationships and rapport can indeed be developed in a matter of moments, you’ll inevitably be disappointed.

The article goes on to suggest several tactics to use in the absence of small talk, including working to ensure that “your colleagues see you as someone worthy of having a relationship with, even if it’s not going to happen immediately,” finding impersonal topics for conversation, and knowing when it’s acceptable to build personal relationships.

Use these tips when small talk fails you, but also incorporate them into your relationship-building approach even when you get things going with chitchat. The better you are at adapting your approach to your new contact’s style and the more alternatives you have in mind for building a solid foundation for your relationships, the stronger your network will be.

If you haven’t registered yet for the first session of the webinar series, “The Human Touch of Rainmaking”, it’s not too late!

The webinar is TODAY at 5 pm EDT/2 pm PDT so mark your calendar. 

Click here to register. 

What’s your agenda?

/0 Comments/in /by

One of my favorite questions is, “What’s your agenda?” I’ve noticed, however, that we tend not to ask that question of ourselves often enough.

Setting an agenda is a classic time management strategy. If you’re looking to make meetings shorter and more productive, circulate an agenda in advance and expect everyone to come prepared. If you want to make your day more productive, set your own agenda. Of course, other issues may arise in the course of the meeting or the day, but if you set your agenda first, you’ll at least know what you intended to accomplish and you won’t lose track of necessary tasks.

Knowing your agenda is critical for networking. Meeting new people requires you to have a sorting agenda in place: do you want to meet lawyers, bankers, or parents? Are you interested in officers in closely-held businesses, or would you prefer to meet officers in public corporations? Knowing who you want to meet will help you to identify the best groups to investigate and to target the right people for follow-up, which is where the networking magic happens, if at all.

Having an agenda is the difference between effective follow-up meetings and purposeless coffee dates that accomplish nothing. If you have some idea of what you’d like to discuss during a follow-up meeting, you’ll be able to tailor your conversation to be sure that you ask the right questions or offer the right information. It’s easy to wing it for follow-up meetings, but taking a few minutes to think about what you want from the meeting will make you much more effective.

Finally, when you’re talking with someone with whom you’re considering joining forces (for marketing or to form a new practice, for example) ask them directly (or ask yourself) what their agenda is.  Poorly phrased, the question is a bit confrontational, but the more you know or intuit about someone else’s objectives, the better your decisions will be.

Take a few minutes to answer these questions (or others that fit your circumstances):

  • What’s your agenda for today?
  • What’s your agenda for your practice?
  • What’s your client’s agenda?

Book Review: UnMarketing

/0 Comments/in , /by

UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.

“Marketing happens every time you engage (or not) with your past, present and potential customers.  If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.”

Scott Stratten is a marketing consultant who excels in viral, social, and authentic marketing, which he refers to as “unMarketing”. His philosophy is that you can share your knowledge and expertise while engaging with those who are interested in what you do, and that you’ll be top-of-mind when a need for your services arises.  UnMarketing expands on that philosophy.

In 56 short chapters, each of which is freestanding and reads almost like an oversized blog post, you’ll get an overview of “new-school” marketing. While some of the tactics shared with you may be new to you, you’ll probably get the most impact from the book’s overall flavor.  In [very] brief:  don’t lead with a “me” focus, don’t use expensive, scattershot advertising, and don’t market to others in ways you hate to be marketed to.  Instead, learn to build relationships and share your expertise so that others come to trust you.

Stratten’s focus on relationship-building and marketing by sharing useful information (“content marketing”) is appropriate for any professional. One of the most eye-opening lessons in the book comes on page two in the form of a pyramid that illustrates how people make decisions on whom to hire to provide a service.
(You can find the graphic here, on Stratten’s Ryze page.)  If you think marketing or business development primarily means meeting strangers and convincing them to hire you, you’ll experience a seismic shift from this graphic alone — and the rest of the book will show you how to take the next steps.

One of my favorite chapters deals with “new school” networking. Stratten argues that networking is best accomplished when you’re stepping into a room of people you already know, perhaps through social media, so that “[t]he event isn’t the introduction; it’s the escalation of the relationship.”  Stratten identifies the four types of people you’re likely to meet in “old school” networking:

  • The Great One: the consummate networker, who listens, connects with others, and makes sure not to monopolize the conversation.
  • The Awkward One: someone who’s uncomfortable in networking and accordingly does everything by the book.  Because this person is so uncomfortable, they tend to attach themselves to one person, and escape is difficult.
  • The Dude with Scotch: this is the man who uses hard liquor as social lubricant with predictably disastrous effect.
  • The Card Collector: the person whose primary goal for attending a networking event is to make sure that every person in the room receives a card.  Unfortunately for The Card Collector, because there’s no real engagement, no one actually wants to receive a card.

Stratten, a heavy Twitter user, prefers to meet people online before the event so that there’s a pre-existing relationship and a conversation already underway. The best tip from this chapter is to use Twitter (or other social media) to meet people before attending a conference so that you’re among acquaintances (if not friends) by the time you get there.  If you don’t use social media in this way, consider reaching out by telephone instead for a quick “get acquainted” conversation.  You’re limited to establishing pre-meeting contact with those you already know or know of, but it can still be quite effective.

UnMarketing is a delightful read in part because of the humor that Scott weaves into the book. By sheer happenstance, I purchased a hard copy rather than a Kindle version, so glancing at the footnotes scattered throughout was simple.  These are not law review style footnotes (read:  necessary but dull).  These are asides that are fun, funny, and illustrative, the kind of comments that you might imagine being delivered sotto voce as you drink coffee and learn from a regular guy who really knows his stuff but doesn’t take himself too seriously.  This is not a “guru” book, although Stratten could easily qualify as a guru in his field.

Why should lawyers read the book? Lawyers traditionally have little or no knowledge about marketing, and there’s a great deal we can learn from marketers.  Thanks to the rise of content marketing, we can draw analogies from approaches and tactics used by a wide variety of other service providers.  Lawyers are trained to be experts, and one place we often fall short in marketing that expertise is in placing the focus on our clients rather than on our own expertise, and UnMarketing offers an eye-opening perspective on why that’s a fatal mistake and what you should be doing instead.  Plus, it’s fun.  You won’t regret picking up this book, and once you pick it up, you’ll find it difficult to put down.

Weekly Rainmaker Activity 8/17/09

/0 Comments/in , /by

Studies show that a prospective client must be exposed to you 7-9 times before they’re ready to hire you.  (Those statistics are not specific to law, granted, but I have no reason to believe they’re off the mark for lawyers.)  The reasons are simple: most potential clients don’t have a current legal need, are already represented, or aren’t sufficiently familiar with you to entrust you with their current legal matter.

The solution should be clear: continue the conversations with your potential clients and potential referral sources.  That’s how you will become known, liked, and trusted — and it’s how you’ll get clients.

So, here’s your assignment this week: Look at the stack of business cards you’ve been saving (you have the stack, right?  Tucked “somewhere safe,” in a desk drawer, or near your computer?) and select 3-5 people with whom you should follow up.  Then, get in touch with them.  Offer something of value if possible — an article likely to interest them, for example.  Alternatively, just pick up the phone (or perhaps drop an email) and let your contact know you were thinking of her and want to know how she’s been since you last talked.

Some contacts will be dead-ends.  Others will hold promise for future business.  But you’ll never find out which are which unless you continue the conversation.

Renewing lapsed professional relationships

/0 Comments/in , /by

I gave a 1-hour presentation about rainmaking last week in the Chicago office of a large law firm, and following the presentation, a lawyer approached with a question: Is it ever too late to rebuild professional relationships that have languished?

The short answer is that it depends on the relationship. The deeper the relationship, the more likely it can be resurrected.  If, however, you meet once and fail to follow up, or if you follow up only once or twice, the relationship will lack the firm footing necessary to allow it to flourish following a period of silence.  That said, it never hurts to try to rebuild a relationship, particularly if your sole reason for reconnecting is to re-establish communication and not to seek a favor.

So, what can you do to rebuild a connection that has faded? The simplest, and often the most effective, approach is to do precisely what you would do with a friend you haven’t seen in a long time: pick up the phone and say, “I realized it’s been a while since we’ve spoken, and you’ve been on my mind.  Is this a good time to talk for a few minutes? How are things with you?  What’s new?”  If several months have passed since you were in touch with this contact, you may even begin the conversation by re-introducing yourself.  (This is where my recommendation to maintain a database of contacts proves especially helpful: you don’t have to try to remember when and where you met.)  You may experience a few awkward moments as your contact gets back into the connection, but most people will pick up relatively quickly.

If, like many lawyers, you’d rather do nine hours of painstaking document review without a coffee break than pick up with phone, you do have other options. For example, you might consider the following:

  • Send an email to reconnect. You might suggest talking by telephone and either arrange a time or let your contact know you’ll be calling.  While you’ll still have to pick up the phone, you’ve created an expectation that you will call, and chances are good that you’ll avoid an awkward beginning.  If you suggest that you’ll call, though, you absolutely must do so – or run the risk of looking like a flake.
  • Send an article or other resource that will interest your contact. The resource may address a legal or non-legal issue, but it must be tied in some way to a conversation you’ve had with the contact.  Attach a note that says, “I remember talking with you about [topic of resource] at [wherever you had the conversation] and thought of you when I saw this [resource].  Hope it’s useful!”  By doing so, you not only reconnect by offering assistance, but you do so in a way that will bring your conversation back to your contact’s mind and refresh the relationship.
  • Issue an invitation. You might invite your contact to an open house or to attend a CLE or other seminar of interest with you.  Be sure to attach a note, if you deliver an invitation by mail or email, saying that you look forward to reconnecting; this personal touch will indicate to your contact that your interest is genuine.
  • Seek out news about your contact. This may be a more challenging approach if you’re seeking to reconnect than to maintain a relationship, but it’s worth a quick search to see whether your contact has been in the news recently.  You may find news of a professional event (an honor awarded, a trial won, a leadership position attained) or a personal event (a new marriage, a new baby, a recreational or community activity).  Such news offers an ideal reason to get in touch again.

Take a few minutes this week to review your list of contacts. With whom should you reconnect?  Choose three to five people and reach out to them.  Building and maintaining your network is always a valuable activity, and keeping relationships alive will often pay off (often in unexpected ways) over time.