By Murray Gottheil | August 6, 2025
One day, several years ago, I was out for lunch with a banker whom I will call Neil. Neil was a commercial account manager at a large Canadian Bank. As I always did at such meetings, I asked Neil, “How can I help you?” (For those of you who need a masterclass in networking, this is how you do it: You don’t tell referral sources how great you are, how your firm provides better quality services at lower prices, and all of the usual boring stuff. You ask people, “how can I help you?”)
If you have not had the experience of trying to get work from banks, here is what you have to know:
- Bankers rarely pay for lunch when they are out with lawyers unless the lawyer has just referred a big loan to them;
- Bankers are motivated to refer work to lawyers in the following ways, ranked from most to least important:
- What can the lawyer do for them?
- Does the lawyer get loans advanced quickly with minimum aggravation to the banker?
- Price.
- Is the lawyer any good?
Most bankers would reply to my question about how I could help them by asking me to refer borrowers to them, deposit trust funds with them, and buy tickets to their annual golf tournament. I was ready for all of that. But Neil surprised me. He told me that my firm needed to buy 10 of the Bank’s Gold MasterCards.
So I asked Neil to tell me about the Bank’s Gold Mastercard and why I wanted to buy ten of them. Here is what he explained:
- The Bank’s Gold Mastercard was, according to Neil, “The Gold MasterCard with the fewest privileges of any Gold Mastercard issued by a Canadian Bank” (at least at that time);
- Neil got credit for every Gold Mastercard that he sold;
- The annual fee was $65.00 (it is an old story), so I needed to find $650.00, back in the day when that was more money than it is now; and
- There was no benefit to Neil if the card was renewed, so I should tell everyone at the firm who bought them to diarize the renewal date and cancel them before they renewed.
So I went to the managing partner and explained that I thought that $650.00 was a good marketing expenditure, took the application forms around to the lawyers and got them all to sign up, told the lawyers to remember to cancel them within a year, and bought ten cards.
Neil was happy. I got a few loan files.
There is an epilogue to this story. A few months later a Trustee in Bankruptcy named Sheldon called me and told me that he was out golfing with Neil who said that Sheldon needed to buy gold MasterCards but that rather than explain why, Neil suggested that he call me and I would explain it to him.
Now you understand networking.
Murray is a happily retired lawyer who lives in the country, drives a pick-up truck, writes, teaches and mentors. You can reach him at murray@murraygottheil.com or see what he is up to at lawanddisorderinc.com.
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