Keith Ferrazzi - Never Eat Alone

Apparently, people rarely called Mary to thank her for organizing events, and she was very grateful. She even bragged the next morning to Pat about how much she liked me.

Mary was a blast: fun and full of energy and wonderful stories. In my early days at Deloitte, when I'd call Pat, I'd spend an extra few minutes kibitzing. "Mary, you're a hoot to talk to." Looking back, my relationship with Mary was clearly one of the most important reasons I was given such easy access to Pat. And my relationship with Pat was one of the most important relationships of my business life.

However, with Mary and me there was a time when all that began to change. I had just become chief marketing officer.

At that time, I got my very own full-time administrative assistant, who I'll call Jennifer. I thought Jennifer was everything I'd want in an assistant: smart, organized, efficient. We got along great. The only problem was she didn't get along with Mary—at all.

Mary managed all the administrative assistants in our executive suite. Almost immediately, Jennifer and Mary were butting heads. Jennifer was digging in her heels and not letting up. I just thought they'd work it out eventually.

"It's all a power play. She's wasting my time," Jennifer complained.

I wanted to be supportive. Jennifer's complaints and concerns seemed reasonable to me, but I was hearing only one side of the story. I encouraged Jennifer to work harder at the relationship. And one day, after I had been pulled into the middle of another bout between them, I asked Mary if she could just work harder to get along with Jennifer.

Mary didn't take my suggestion well. Before long, getting on Pat's calendar became more and more difficult. Bypassing corporate bureaucracy, which was a breeze in the past, now became impossible. My expense accounts were getting micro-scrutinized, taking up my time, and the pressure on Jennifer was greater than ever, which made her react even worse.

I'd had enough. I went up to Pat's office and said bluntly, "Look, Mary, this has to stop."

If I thought Mary had been upset before—yikes!—it was nothing compared to her ire now.

Office life became a nightmare for a period of time.

Finally, Pat drew me aside. "Keith," he said, "you've gone about this all wrong. Now this whole ordeal is making my life difficult. Think about it: I get to hear all this from Mary's side as well about your administrative assistant, and I don't really want to have to deal with this. Second of all, you're being stupid. Mary likes you and always has. Do yourself a favor. Do me a favor. Whatever it takes, smooth things over with Mary. When it comes to these issues, she runs this place."

Personally, I had always cared for and respected Mary, but now I learned something else—an assistant like Mary has enormous power. Secretaries and assistants are more than just helpful associates to their bosses. If they are any good, they become trusted friends, advocates, and integral parts of their professional, and even personal, lives.

One day Jennifer, who was as loyal to me as Mary was to Pat, came to me and offered to resign. "Listen, I'm miserable and your career is going to be jeopardized if all this doesn't get straightened out," she told me. It was an amazingly gracious gesture, as well as a way to restore sanity in her life. I promised to help find Jennifer another job (which she did quickly), and we remain good friends to this day.

When I went to hire my next assistant, I did two things. First, I asked if Mary would prescreen all candidates and rank her top choices. I went with her first choice. I also told my new administrative assistant to do whatever Mary instructed. It didn't take long for me to make up with Mary, either. Pat was right: Mary did like me and I just had to better understand her role. Pat started getting my messages again and all of our lives were so much easier.

As important as gatekeepers are within an organization, they're that much more important when you're working from the outside.

At about the same time, Kent Blossil, an advertising sales rep-

resentative for Newsweek magazine, was one of twenty ad salespeople banging on my door looking to make a sale. But I had a media buyer at the agency whom we paid to take those meetings for me, and as a rule, I never met with ad sales reps.

Kent was different. He knew the kind of influence a gatekeeper wields.

Kent would call Jennifer once a week. He was deferential and overwhelmingly kind. Every so often, he would surprise her with a box of chocolates or flowers or something. Still, despite my assistant's suggestions, I saw no reason to take the meeting.

Jennifer persisted, however, and Kent must've been scheduled into my calendar on ten different occasions without my knowledge. Each time, I'd cancel. But she'd just keep plugging her good friend into my schedule because she felt he was different and had a more innovative approach than the others.

"Have him go meet with my buyer," I finally said one day.

"No, you're going to meet with him. You can take five minutes out of your day. He's very nice and creative and worth five minutes." So I relented.

Kent certainly was nice, but he also came to the meeting prepared with a deep understanding of my business and an interesting value proposition. At our meeting, almost the first thing out of his mouth was "If it's okay with you, I would like to introduce you to the top three senior editors of Newsweek. Would you be interested in that?" As someone who relied on getting the media to cover Deloitte's intellectual property, this was an important offer.

"Of course," I told him.

"By the way, we're having a conference in Palm Springs where some other CMOs are getting together with our editors and reporters. It's going to be a really good conference about media strategies in the New Economy. Can I put you on the guest list?" He was offering a real business value, as many of the other CMOs would also be Deloitte customers. It would be a personal networking opportunity among my peers.

"Yeah, I'd like to go to that."

"Also, I know your media guy has been evaluating a proposal we put in a few months ago. I'm not going to waste your time with the details. I just want you to know that it would be great if we could do business together sometime." That was it. That was Ken's five-minute sales pitch. It was 98 percent value-add for me, 2 percent sales pitch by him.

I called our media guy after Ken left my office. "Go to Newsweek," I told him. "Quote them a fair price relative to the other magazines we were considering, and give them our business in this segment. Make it work." And you know that when Ken went to another magazine, so did my business.

My point? Always respect the gatekeeper's power. Treat them with the dignity they deserve. If you do, doors will open for you to even the most powerful decision makers. What does it mean to treat them with dignity? Acknowledge their help. Thank them by phone, flowers, a note.

And yes, there are times, of course, where the situation calls for more than niceties and pleasant gifts. At times, you'll need to use street smarts to get a meeting.

Last summer, I met a former Disney executive on a flight to New York. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I was a fairly new transplant to Los Angeles and I was always looking to meet good, smart people. She suggested that I might like to get to know an up-and-coming executive by the name of Michael Johnson, the president of Walt Disney International.

There wasn't anything obvious that Johnson could do for my company or me at that point, but I felt he was someone I should meet. I was running a computer games company, and who could say whether Disney might someday be interested in the video games space. The only problem was getting through Johnson's gatekeeper; at a huge company like Disney, that's often a big problem.