I am always telling my clients to learn what they can about the people they meet. What you learn can be very helpful in staying top of mind.
I sat down to create a checklist that my clients could refer to. I opened a Word document and started typing. Pretty quickly, I realized that this was a great job for AI.
What follows is a dialogue I had with ChatGPT.
This article is intended to educate lawyers about the types of information they could be learning about people in their network. But it is also intended to show the tremendous power of using ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is like a very good intern! If you give it the right instructions, you may end up with a pretty good work product. But you need to check the work. While in this case, I had to ask follow-up prompts to get what I wanted, what follows below is verbatim!
Stephen Seckler (SES): I’m writing an article about ways to build business relationships. I would like to share ideas that will be practical and helpful. One of the things I want to focus on is the types of information that it is useful to learn about people in your network so that you can build your relationship with them. I would also like you to indicate for each item why it is useful to know that fact about the person and what one can do to build the relationship using that information.
Building strong business relationships is crucial for professional success. Here's a list of key information types to learn about people in your network, along with reasons why they're useful and strategies for leveraging this information to strengthen your relationships:
SES: What about values and beliefs, personal challenges, work and personal anniversaries, and career milestones?
Including values and beliefs, personal challenges, work and personal anniversaries, and career milestones in your understanding of someone in your business network can significantly deepen the relationship. Here's how these elements are useful and ways to utilize this information:
SES: Can you add to the list more personal facts like marital status, children, preferred types of music, favorite movies, or books, places where they vacation? Also, please list some of the hobbies that you mentioned above and expand on that as well as interest in sports, theater, music, or other general interests that are not actually hobbies, including politics or civic engagement.
Certainly! Adding more personal facts to your understanding of someone's profile can greatly enrich your business relationships. Here's an expanded list that includes these aspects, along with reasons for their importance and how you can use this information:
SES: Please expand on actions I can take like sending items of interest to people like articles or cartoons. Also, what are events or activities that I can use to build my relationship understanding people’s personal interests?
Expanding on your actions to build relationships through sharing interests and organizing events or activities, you can create more engaging and personal connections. Here are some specific actions and ideas:
SES: Are there any caveats that you would offer about which activities to choose beyond knowing what are someone else’s interests? What about my own interests? Should that be a factor? Can you include in this a discussion of authenticity?
Absolutely, while aligning activities with someone else's interests is important, there are several caveats and considerations to keep in mind, including your own interests and the importance of authenticity. Let's delve into these aspects:
If your interests don’t align perfectly, find a middle ground where both parties can enjoy the experience. This could be trying something new to both of you.
SES: We can gather a lot of this information by speaking with our business network but what are some other ways to gather this information (e.g., social media, Google searches)?
Gathering information about your business network can indeed go beyond direct conversations. Here are some alternative methods:
