Qualified Liaisons: 4 Government Tricks to Strengthen Your Advertising Good luck!

Discover how to build professional relationships that don’t just open doors, but open them deeply.

Building strong professional relationships is your secret weapon for promoting and advertising good fortune. The right connections can open you up to new ideas, reveal valuable choices, and give you the insights you need to solve difficult problems.

As Kieran and I discuss in a recent episode of Advertising In Opposition to the Grain, alternatively, building impactful relationships requires much more than attending networking events and exchanging business cards.

So how do you find the people who can actually up your game? And how do you actively add value to grow those relationships?

In this post, we delve into 4 strategies to improve your professional relationships. Warning: These are not your typical networking guidelines.

We’re talking about going deep, putting value on the table, and mastering the art of verbal exchange, tailored for industry leaders aiming to create real impact.

Strategies to improve your professional relationships

1. Search conversations 10x.

Kieran and I correspond with a lot of other people. It’s how we deal with problems and learn. Alternatively, here’s the thing: not all conversations are created equal. You need to look for what we call “10x conversations.”

These are the conversations that change your perspective and make you completely change your mind, leaving you with insights that change the way you see your art and even your personal lifestyle.

While you are looking for someone like that, don’t just have a conversation and light it up. Dive deep. Have ten more conversations with that specific person rather than scattering yourself with ten people. The price is in all the depth, not the width.

If you’re not sure how to find other people, here’s what I do: I look for someone who I think is great at what they do, and then I see who They admire. It’s a bit counterintuitive, otherwise agree with me, it really works.

The people everyone else in the company thinks are the most effective? Find out how to spend time with them.

Then, take it a step further: look for the other 5 people those experts let’s assume they’re even higher. That’s where you’ll be looking for the real 10x conversations.

“If you’re able to seek out those other people,” Kieran says, “it’s going to be a real game-changer in your ability to be informed.”

2. Rethink your networking.

In the case of networking, Kieran and I both agree that it’s not about how many other people you meet as opposed to how good you are at picking up the best ones, and that mostly doesn’t happen at large, crowded networking events. Instead, the real value comes from smaller, more focused 1:1 settings.

For example, I recently played golf with my friend Dave Gerhardt. We spent about 4 hours together, just the two of us, and most of that time we were not only coming up with a concept for a YouTube show, but we were also dealing with a lot of other difficult situations that we had to deal with.

That more or less concentrated time means you can dig deeper into the topics and actually get to the person. It’s much more valuable than glancing around to meet dozens of other people at once.

So the next time you’re intrigued by how to connect with someone or build your own group, think a lot less about quantity and more about quality. Schedule some alone time, a dinner, a coffee, a round of golf, and you’ll see the difference it makes.

3. Add value to build consensus.

The more additional value you simply send to a relationship, the stronger the relationship becomes. It’s that simple. Alternatively, you want to clearly—and continuously—expose that value with every interaction.

For example, when Kieran first started out, he made sure to jump into every stock where he thought he could just offer value. “I wasn’t just looking to take; if truth be told I wanted to offer where I could just,” he says. “I would join for 30 minutes, pay attention, and figure out how I could just agree.”

It wasn’t the most productive way to build relationships, but over time it led to deeper, more vital bonds.

Why? Because building relationships is not about being an offer; it is about being the one others can count on for trust, reinforcement, or whatever they need.

And when you consistently show up with something valuable to offer, you’re not just another contact in someone’s group—you’re the person who comes to mind first when they want to express their approval or ask for advice.

And this is a fundamental aspect for building lasting professional relationships.

4. Brush as much as possible to improve your qualitative verbal exchange skills.

In particular, when interacting with high-level executives like buyers or founders, it’s not enough to simply give them advice: you need to tell the story behind the numbers.

Sure, executives love their charts and metrics, but they are constantly further influenced by anecdotes and real-world examples. That’s where you get their buy-in, gather consensus, and achieve the autonomy you desire.

Keep it this way: As a promotion and advertising leader, you have all the ideas and stories at your disposal. The trick is to use them together. The information gives you credibility, but it is the stories and anecdotes that make your argument valid.

Let’s say you’re launching a brand new marketing strategy. Don’t just launch the ROI you can imagine. Again, tell a story of a buyer’s fortune or some feedback that highlights why this system is the best change.

Executives are constantly influenced by what they see in customers or business friends, much more than what they see in a spreadsheet.

And keep in mind that this tip isn’t the easiest to apply today. As Kieran points out, “Talking about qualitative wisdom is a skill set that executives will need to hone further over the next few years, as we get less and less direct attribution.”

To check out our entire discussion on improving your professional relationships, watch the full episode of Promote against the current under:

This blog collection is in partnership with Promoting Against the Grain, the video podcast. It delves into the insights shared by promotion and advertising leaders Kipp Bodnar (CMO at HubSpot) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Promoting at HubSpot) as they unpack growth strategies and learn from leading founders and friends.

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