Hiter Harris built a firm on the idea of seizing opportunities and coming through for clients in a crunch. Here, he offers his game plan for successful recruitment.

Harris Williams’s Hiter Harris still proves himself at every pitch meeting.

Long before he got into the deal game, Harris Williams cofounder Hiter Harris earned a reputation for coming through in the clutch. Originally a walk-on who hadn’t even played varsity football in high school, he became a Division III All-American place kicker at Hampden-Sydney in Virginia, landing tryouts with the Houston Oilers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Dallas Cowboys. After none of them bit, Harris, now 47, went to work at a local commercial bank but found himself missing the adrenaline rush that accompanies a make-or-break field goal. So he headed to Harvard Business School, where he met Chris Williams. The pair later accepted positions at Bowles Hollowell Conner, where they shared an office and, after a fateful night of drinking three years later, their own eponymous M&A firm.

“We left Bowles Hollowell with no clients. We rented an office suite and two desks,” Harris reminisces of the firm’s 1991 beginnings. “We got lucky in our first three days of business; we picked up two clients.”

Harris Williams now covers the middle market broadly and deeply, with five dedicated sector-specific groups. The firm closed 59 sell-side transactions last year, a 10 percent increase over 2006. “We have grown a lot, but we still feel scrappy,” he says. “One of the most rewarding things is watching individuals at this firm grow in their careers.”

So what did the clutch kicker learn in this new game? Harris shares three rules for building a team that he has lived by since his firm’s inception.

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