She called me because she was worried about money. She doesn’t have enough clients, and the clients she has don’t always pay their bills.

I can hear the worry in her voice.

I asked her to stop talking and to go do something for me. She agreed. “Open your calendar. Look at the last two weeks. Count the number of lunches or coffees with existing or prospective referral sources.” She did it. “Zero,” she reported a minute later. Of course, she knew the answer without counting, but she looked anyway.

We found the problem. I pitched her my Networking 101 course. “The course will solve your problem,” I explained.

“I already bought the course,” she replied.

“Oh shit,” I thought.

Turns out she went through the lessons, watched the videos, and listened to the audios. She did it all over two days and took it all in.

However, she didn’t act on what she learned. She did nothing with the information.

How to Find—and Handle—Your Networking Achilles Heel

Of course, that doesn’t work. Had she done what she learned to do, she’d have a ringing phone. She’d have more paying clients. She’d be calling to book a trip to Hawaii instead of calling me worried about revenue.

So what can she do now that she knows what to do and how to do it?

She can DO IT! She’s going to have to take action. She’s going to need to get going, get out, and get to work building relationships. There’s no time like the present.

We talked more and we pinpointed the moment of hesitation. She’s good at identifying targets, she’s good at the research, and she has a well-organized plan. The moment that kills her momentum is the moment of the call. She can’t bring herself to pull the trigger, dial the number, and make the call. She chokes.

I gave her some suggestions. I begged her to call at 8 AM knowing that she’d get voicemail. I begged her to leave a message and put the burden on the other party to call her so all she’d have to do is wait. I pleaded with her to leave my simple, boring, formulaic message that gets a return call nearly every time.

Will she do it? Hard to say. I’ll keep encouraging and coaching her, but I’m worried.

If she doesn’t get moving soon, I’m going to shift gears.

• I’m going to push her to go to more bar association events.
• I’m going to encourage her to join a BNI group.
• I’m going to help her sign up for the Chamber of Commerce.

These approaches are dramatically less effective than my usual approach, but they’ll do if it’s all we have the courage to do.

Just before we disconnected, I explained that she’s not unusual. In fact, she’s pretty normal. Many lawyers struggle to make the call. We hesitate. We choke. We don’t go through with building the relationship, and that’s a shame.

As I explain in the course, when we do go forward and build relationships, we win. More importantly, our referral sources win, and our clients win. And—and this is wonderful—we stop worrying about money because we have a phone that rings, a door that swings, and a cash register that sings.