Building Business and Careers Starts with Listening | IPWatchdog Unleashed

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Fran Cruz and Marlene Valderrama. Recorded before a live audience following IPWatchdog’s Women’s IP Forum, our conversation explored how professionals build relationships that lead to business, career opportunities, and better ways of doing their jobs. Drawing on their perspectives at Juristat and Halliburton, respectively, Fran and Marlene returned to a fundamental point: earning someone’s attention begins with understanding what matters to them. That requires asking questions and actually listening.

For law firms and service providers, effective business development requires looking beyond the capabilities they want to sell and examining the problems prospective clients need to solve. In-house professionals juggle patent portfolios, invention disclosures, business strategy, internal stakeholders, and shifting corporate priorities. An outside provider may see an opportunity to introduce a service, while the intended recipient sees another request for time. Effective outreach bridges that gap by demonstrating an understanding of the recipient’s responsibilities and offering something useful. In essence, focus on making that person’s life easier.

Patent portfolio management illustrates an opportunity outside counsel can overlook. Portfolio reviews and decisions about maintenance fees and annuities require considerable attention, coordination, and judgment. They can also be tedious and recurring demands on already stretched teams. When a practitioner responds that they do not handle that type of work, they may be dismissing precisely the burden a prospective client needs help managing. The practical question is whether you can bring useful analysis or a workable approach to that problem. Doing so can create an opening to demonstrate value and build trust.

That relevance becomes more important as technology makes generic outreach easier to produce and harder to escape. Fran discussed how automated sales messages have increased resistance to communications that feel impersonal or interchangeable. Preparation matters: research the organization, ask informed questions, and tailor the conversation to actual needs. Equally important is recognizing when there is no fit. A relationship can remain valuable through referrals, changing responsibilities, and future opportunities. But maintaining it requires an interest in the person beyond an immediate transaction. No one wants to feel like a sales target.

The same principles apply to career development. Specific questions and meaningful follow-through help distinguish someone seeking advice, an introduction, or a new role. We also discussed the difference between mentorship and sponsorship. A mentor can offer guidance; a sponsor actively advocates for someone when opportunities are being considered. Building those relationships requires curiosity, preparation, and a willingness to reach out. It also requires staying connected when there is nothing immediate to ask for.

Networking has practical value for in-house professionals who are not seeking clients. Conversations with peers can reveal different approaches to portfolio management, technology adoption, and everyday organizational challenges. Those exchanges matter when responsibilities extend well beyond substantive patent work and there are few people inside the organization who understand the pressures involved. Relationships developed along the way can also become important when circumstances change, whether through a new role, a restructuring, or a move into private practice.

Throughout the conversation, we returned to the importance of showing up, listening, and participating. For professionals more comfortable with technical or legal analysis than business development, a thoughtful question is a useful place to start. You do not need to force a pitch into every interaction. You do need to give people an opportunity to know you, understand what you offer, and see that you are interested in what matters to them.

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