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O P I N I O N
There’s plenty of things, from the simple to the complex, that project managers can do to engage the important people in their database. PMs and their business relationships
W ith so many duties and requirements, project managers can struggle with spending time cultivating and maintaining relationships with their stakeholders. Gateway Engineers, a full-service civil engineering firm headquartered in Pittsburgh, supports PMs with varied activities they can use to manage business relationships. The activities range from simple, inexpensive, and quick to complex, costly, and time-consuming.
Ryan Hayes
Below is a sampling of some of the activities. Each one is segmented into three categories: activities that take approximately two minutes, twenty minutes, and two-plus hours. 1)Connect. Stay connected to ensure the PM is consistently in a position to receive-and-act- upon timely information that is important to the contact(s). ❚ ❚ Two minutes: Set up alerts on the contact’s organization (company, services, products, or people), their associations, and interests by setting up Google Alerts. ❚ ❚ Twenty minutes: Read an online article in the local business journal or industry publication about the contact’s business and comment publicly (often through traditional or social media) by writing a small, thoughtful caption.
❚ ❚ Two hours: Purchase the contact(s) something fitting like a gift card to their favorite restaurant or an office plant to commemorate good news you heard about them, their organization, or association. 2)Share. Sharing the PM’s network with the contact(s) is an activity that can have a positive impact on multiple contacts simultaneously. Both contacts will likely remember the gesture the PM made by taking the time to share, thus increasing the chance they may return the favor. ❚ ❚ Two minutes: Send an email connecting two contacts within the PM’s network who may be able to help each other. ❚ ❚ Twenty minutes: Make it more personable by the
See RYAN HAYES, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER October 28, 2019, ISSUE 1318
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