Marketing Lesson From My Bosses, Part 4

In 1980, my edi­tor, and there­fore my boss, was a vet­eran of the news desk of the Detroit News who had recently moved to Florida, named Al Low­man. Al was a vet­eran news­man of the old school, which is to say he was deeply cyn­i­cal, hos­tile to all forms of author­ity, could not be bought, smoked like a chim­ney, and had impec­ca­ble judg­ment about what was news. I deeply appre­ci­ated work­ing for him and he seemed to think I was pretty good, too.

I used to rag him about his age then, which was early 60s (I was not quite yet 30). “Hey Al,” I would say, “What’s it like to be that old?”

Read­ing glasses (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He stared at me over his read­ing glasses. “If you’re very lucky, young man,” he said, “you’ll find out.” And so I have.

Al paid me many com­pli­ments in the years I worked for him, but the one I trea­sured most came just after I had bro­ken a pretty big story hav­ing to do with the mis­deeds of a local pri­vate ambu­lance service.

“You know what I like about you, kid?” he said. “You don’t go to lunch with other reporters.”

He meant to say that although reporters really liked hang­ing out together, they weren’t going to get any news that way. I made it a habit to lunch with cops, and nurses, and attor­neys, and pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors and all sorts of peo­ple who seemed to belong to a vast under­ground net­work. They were the peo­ple you would see at a bad car acci­dent at 3 a.m. or a house fire, or the hos­pi­tal, or at a big drug bust after dawn. After a while, I knew them and they knew me. It paid off in great news sto­ries again and again.

Today, I don’t go to mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences. I go to legal con­fer­ences, where my clients and poten­tial clients are. I don’t hang out with other mar­ket­ing experts, much as I might respect them. I hang out with lawyers, from whom I can learn some­thing about their needs, wants, fears, objec­tions, ambi­tions and more.

I would sug­gest that if you’re, say, an attor­ney serv­ing busi­ness clients, you are bet­ter off attend­ing the local con­struc­tion indus­try con­fer­ence than a bar asso­ci­a­tion meet­ing. (I’m not say­ing those are worth­less. You might well learn new legal tech­niques or meet another lawyer who can refer busi­ness to you. But rel­a­tively speak­ing there will be more prospects for you within the mar­ket you serve.) By attend­ing that con­struc­tion con­fer­ence, you’re going to learn an awful lot about what makes the peo­ple in that indus­try tick; who are the movers and shak­ers; what are the indus­try hot but­tons, and so on.

It’s fun to have lunch with peo­ple who do what you do. It’s just not very profitable.