“No marketing” as a strategy

The best marketing is the one that goes unnoticed.

This was confirmed to me by a partner of a Buenos Aires firm during a night of pizza and beers on Corrientes Avenue. We were talking about networking, about those events where cards circulate faster than drinks, and he told me what he responds when someone, just introduced at a cocktail party, suggests doing business together: are you bothering me?

He said it with a smile, and with all the reason in the world. The most relevant businesses in an office are born between people who already know each other, who have shared time and who know how the other thinks and works, at least through a verifiable reference.

Nobody associates with someone they just met between one canapé and another. Between the last drink and the bill, he concluded: non-marketing is the best marketing. The phrase accompanied me the rest of the night, and much more.

In legal services, trust comes first and the mandate later. Non-marketing consists of cultivating that trust with patience: being present, listening, providing a useful idea without taking its toll, remembering what matters to the other person. And that works because it feels genuine and shows that it is also a whole discipline.

From the cocktail to the golf course

In Caracas, on the other hand, a prominent Venezuelan lawyer with wide recognition in international directories gave me the Caribbean version of the same lesson. I asked him where the best deals of his career had come from and he answered without thinking twice: from a golf course.

Four hours walking together goes a long way: to discover how the other thinks, how he takes a bad shot and if he respects the rules when no one is looking.

So, when the business appears, the relationship is already made.

It might sound like nostalgia for another era, until today proved it right. At the end of September, Caracas hosted the Venezuela International Oil & Gas Summit, with some 650 executives, officials and diplomats from companies such as ExxonMobil, BP, Repsol and TotalEnergies, in the context of the oil agreement between Venezuela and the United States. Before the formal sessions there was a golf tournament and, as reported Bloombergthe demand exceeded all estimates: the organizers had to borrow clubs and even buy some so that everyone could play.

When business opportunities appear, executives first look for a place to meet. (And, apparently, a good set of golf clubs.)

In any case, grass is just one of the possible fields. A committee of a chamber of commerce, a commission of the bar association, a column, a conversation on LinkedIn or a union work table fulfill the same function: shared time, without rush and without explicit commercial agenda. This breadth opens the door to young lawyers, women in the profession and small firms, which for a long time found access to the club closed.

The rankings field

In international boards this invisible discipline becomes tangible. Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500 and Leaders League do much of the evaluation through referees, when researchers call them to ask them what their experience was like working with the firm’s team and how much they think they really understood their business.

That partner present when the client needed him? It is the same one whose reference ends up converted into a ranking. And that ranking opens many new and broader conversations.

To not leave it to chance, some simple habits always help: knowing who the key contacts are and when the last real talk with each one was; follow up with a congratulations, a useful article or a timely call; introduce two people who should know each other; and, above all, be constant, because relationships are built with time and presence.

So, if someone ever proposes to do business with you as soon as they know you, perhaps the best response, beyond “are you bothering me?”, is an invitation: a pizza, a beer, in Corrientes or on the 18th hole of a Caribbean lawn.

There is no better business than the one that comes from a relationship already built, with effort and perseverance. And that is marketing.

Yariana Perez Lawyer specializing in marketing for legal studies. Partner for Latin America at LeegaMKT

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