Building strong business communication in your professional relationships may seem daunting. Once you start thinking about the time investment on your part, you may find yourself caught in engagement paralysis instead of finding motivation to take action. Here are 4 quick steps to take for better communication practices.
- Maintain current contact information
Contact information routinely changes. Your contacts may change jobs, get a new position, change to a new office space, or acquire a new telephone number. You need to be actively seeking this information because the business professional you want to work with may not have had the time to notify you yet. Checking in once a quarter to make sure all your contact information is current is key in maintaining good relationships. Simultaneously, it is essential to send a quick note when you discover any new contact information.
- Schedule event based communication
Event based communication is one of the easiest ways to communicate in your professional relationships. Birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays are easy ways to connect. You can also make a more personal connection by learning more about your connections and interacting during events that matter to them, such as Veterans Day or Grandparent’s Day.
- Talk to other attorneys in your community
You may not want to spend time interacting at professional meetings, but the reason for making these connections is clear. You get business from other lawyers. There are two types of lawyers you’re interacting with at these functions – the ones who don’t do what you do and the ones who do. You need to be meeting and stay top of mind with the attorneys who need you as a go-to referral when they’re contacted by someone who needs your services. Don’t disregard the fact that attorneys in your practice area need you too. They will have times when they can’t or don’t want to take a case and need someone they trust to refer the case to.
- Plan to mass engage (and add a personal touch)
Not every communication you make has to be one-on-one. You can still make an impact when you’re meeting multiple business professionals at an event. The key here is to make contact at the event and to follow up after. A quick note post-meeting is a great way to let the person know you enjoyed seeing them and to make a large scale environment personal.
What steps do you take in your business? What do you find are the best ways to motivate yourself to action and stay up-to-date? No matter what you do, get and stay involved with your business network. Use these 4 quick steps to enhance your communication practices and continue to grow your reach this year.
Last week the person sitting next to me at a lunch meeting made an interesting observation about starting a new business.
She said that every time you take on a new position or start a new job you meet you between 200 to 400 people. She estimated she’s had five career starts and transitions that have generated over 2,000 business contacts. Over time she’s found that all of those contacts in her network are connected to each other in various ways. In her opinion, the key to career success was to be able to maintain each relationship over time.
She’s exactly right. Our conversation got me thinking about maintaining communication for the long run. What are the best ways to keep relationships going for the duration? What tools can we use to gain and keep momentum? How do we keep our relationship building top of mind when we have so many other things to do?
When it comes to relationship building there are two things you have to do: effectively capture information and stay top of mind with your new contacts. Consistency and timely execution of both tasks will increase your relationship network and generate new business.
There are two tools that can help us with capturing information. I think of them as today’s rolodex. First is Evernote. The project management app that instantly captures business card information and turns the information into a searchable media file in your Evernote database. Second is using the LinkedIn platform to connect to the professional. Luckily, these two integrate so you can set up your Evernote account to automatically integrate with LinkedIn.
When it comes to keeping my relationship building campaigns top of mind during my busy day, I schedule my plan for interaction. I need visual reminders and audio ticklers to remind me of what I need to be doing. I utilize Evernote and the Cloze app to schedule a series of tasks to make sure I am consistently reaching out to both new and existing relationships. I add reminders to our Evernote team dashboard and in my Google calendar when there’s a touch I need to complete that involves more than just me.
Over time our contact lists do expand. Think of all the people you met during the year and how you maintain your relationships with them. What did you do in 2015 and what will you do in 2016 to create even stronger relationships? Your commitment to communication through relationship building is a driving force behind the success of your business.
