There are three things you need to be a good lobbyist.
You need (1) issue expertise, (2) process expertise, (3) and some focused skills.
No-one is born with the requisite knowledge or skills. You can, over time, learn all of them. And if you want to improve your expertise and skills, you’ll refine it and improve on it, and develop a high degree of expertise.
Over time, developing and combining this knowledge will build up a valuable latticework of models and information that you can deploy.
Issue Expertise
Issue expertise is an intricate knowledge of the issue you are working on. I came to Brussels over 22 years ago, with a good knowledge of fisheries policy, environmental policy, the non-enforcement of European environmental law, and some good political campaign experience.
Over time, through work and interest, I have picked issue expertise in air pollution, chemical regulation, waste policy, product regulation, lobbying and secondary legislation.
I have many, many blind spots. Those are blind spots that I just don’t hold myself out on.
Process Expertise
Process expertise is knowing how policy and legislation is developed, adopted, legislated on, and implemented. If you want to be effective, you need to know how the Commission, EP and the Council work.
You need to be comfortable with the practical elements of how the Commission develop and adopt legislation. What they put out the door often goes through more or less intact.
If your work includes Agencies, you need to know how they practically work.
As 97% of EU law is secondary legislation, you need to know your way around the system.
Skills
Key skills are the ability to communicate clearly, both in writing and speaking, deal with people, and project management, and the ability to learn and digest large amount of information.
If you turn up late in the day, you are likely going to lose. Good project management, and reverse engineering events, so you have the necessary support, studies and publicity ready on time is vitally important. Turning up too late is suprisingly common.
Many lobbyists churn out incomprehensible memos that reader can’t understand. The ability to write plain English is valuable, but scarce.
The ability to speak as if you are not defending your doctoral thesis helps as well. Again, plain English needs to be mimicked.
A vital skill, learned over time, is to not kid yourself or your client. If you jump down the rabbit warren of confirmation bias, you are going to lose. Plan for the worse and hope for the best is a good rule of thumb.
You are also going to have to get used to loosing. No-body, however good they are, has a 100% winning record. A lot of people find loosing hard to deal with. Get used to it.
It really helps to like working with people, in particular with officials and politicians. If you dislike politicians and officials it is likely to come across when you write to speak with them. It makes you less persuasive.
If you can’t walk into a room and not offend people with misogynist, jingoists, and ill-informed conjecture, this is not the job for you. Roger Helmer, then MEP, may have played well to the home crowd, but his support for your cause was the death knell for your cause.
You need to instinctively keep to the highest ethical standards. If you think lying is okay, walk away.
How to develop
Robert Greene explains how you can develop mastery in your chosen field in his classic study ‘Mastery’,
It helps to work as an apprentice for a master craftsman/craftswoman. I was fortunate to work for some of the very best politicians, officials, and campaigners for twenty years. I learned many valuable skills and lessons from them.
It is important to keep on reading and learning the lessons of others. This is a life long essential habit. Here are some books I have found helpful (link and link).
At the moment, I am reading ‘Marketing Communications‘ by PR Smith and Ze Zook. Books help fill in gaps. Valuable information is nearly given away. All that it takes, is your time to read, dsigest and apply the valuable insights and lessons.
Also, if something no longer works, discard it, and adapt. What works and is useful is always changing.
There are a lot more practical suggestions in the book ‘Working with the EU Institutions’ ed. Alan Hardacre.