RainToday.com Note: This is the second half of a two-part series.

9. Ignoring Less-Senior Clients

Just as it's a mistake to ignore the economic buyer, it's a mistake to ignore the seemingly “less” important executives. Mayer Rothschild, the founder of the Rothschild banking empire in the late 18th/early 19th century, was an assiduous relationship-builder, and even though he hobnobbed with kings and queens, he treated everyone with equal gravity.

Wrote one of his sons, “When he had occasion to apply to an inferior or a man who had little power to assist him in carrying an object he had in view, [Father] spoke with the person as if the whole depended entirely on him, though perhaps he knew he had but the smallest possible influence in the business.”

Recently, a leading investment banker told me about how one of his competitors had a relatively junior staffer literally camp out in the office of the “lowly” assistant treasurer. The competitor won a major transaction because of this relationship—it turned out the assistant treasurer had wide latitude in choosing bankers, a decision that many think of as the province of the CFO or CEO.

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