For lawyers who sometimes feel nervous about presentations or client meetings there’s good news today. Scientists have finally proven that body language really makes a difference — not only impacting how others view you — but how you feel about yourself.

Watch this TED Talk by Professor Amy Cuddy, starting at 10:25.

Did that pose with the hands behind the head and feet up on the desk look familiar in your law firm?

My favorite take-away from Dr. Cuddy’s research is this: two minutes of “standing like a starfish” will up your confidence immediately. Sounds a little crazy, but it’s certainly easy to try for yourself!

I have worked with well over a thousand lawyers on public speaking and presentations — and hands down the most common mistake lawyers make is they just can’t get to the point!

Many lawyers have a hard time being concise.  Whether lawyers are giving speeches or making presentations, their inability to be direct is hurting their ability to communicate clearly and to keep the attention of the audience.

So what’s the answer?

4 Steps to Get To the Point for Lawyers

These steps will help lawyers — or any professional — make any speech or presentation more direct and engaging for any audience.

1. What 0ne thing is your audience absolutely interested in?
2. What detail can you give that makes that one thing visual, alive, relevant?
3. What is the impact of that one thing on your audience? Why should they care about it?
4. Talk about the impact of the one thing in the first 2 minutes of your speech or presentation. Really.

If you’ll apply these steps during your planning and delivery of speeches, formal presentations and even short updates, you will find that your audience is more interested in what you say — and they will have better understanding of your topic too.

Can Your Clients and Prospects FIND YOU On LinkedIn and Google?

We all do it — check out other lawyers and law firms on Google, LinkedIn and other places on the web.

So don’t fool yourself into thinking that YOUR clients and prospects AREN’T doing the same thing to you.

Here’s a great video that makes this point — and it is fully applicable to lawyers and law firms — not just the B-to-B audience it was created for.

Skip to :50 seconds — that’s where it gets good!

Hat tip to the Legal Watercooler blog. Great find!

Does Legal Thought Leadership Still Work?

On September 27, Jim Durham and I will present a webinar discussing how Thought Leadership for lawyers has changed in recent years.

Here’s a preview:

Given the change in the business environment, the impact of social media and the ease of publishing — is Legal Thought Leadership still a good choice for business development? Is it even possible to stand out with all of the “noise” in the market?

Register for Webinar

We will discuss:

• A realistic assessment of using Thought Leadership as a business development strategy now
• The problems and benefits of Social Media in successful profile raising
• What lawyers and firms need to do differently to succeed
• When Thought Leadership is the wrong strategy
• A hot topic checklist to help you identify a compelling topic in your niche
• Examples of successful Thought Leadership at law firms big and small

Register for Webinar

Check out this marketing infographic on the Long Term Value (LTV) of customers from FastCompany that walks you through various ways to value your current — and future — clients.

The LTV is the projected revenue a firm expects a client to generate over the lifetime of the relationship.  The infographic walks you through three different methods of calculating Long Term Value of clients.  And it’s easy to follow!

It also notes an interesting statistic:

“…by increasing your customer satisfaction by 5% you could increase profits by as much as 25 to 95%. ”

Source: Bain & Company study in Harvard Business Review, 2001

The example here cites Starbucks — which of course is a B-to-C and products company — but still the ideas are valuable for law firms and other  professional service providers.

What do you think? Does your firm look at Long Term Value when deciding which clients to pursue?

Check out Wordle.net for a great tool to add word clouds to PowerPoint, websites or reports.

This word cloud represents the words found here on my blog.

Take a screen shot of the wordle you create, then you can edit and save it as an image.

Please check out my latest blog posts and videos too!

Thanks for your interest,

Marsha

Check out a 5 minute VIDEO summary of our recent webinar “5 Steps to Law Firm Webinars that Get Business & Retain Clients.” This summary covers the top 3 tips for lawyers and legal marketers who are using webinars to get clients and raise the profile of lawyers and practice groups.

Click here for the VIDEO summary:

What better way to grow your practice and support other women lawyers than by attending NAWL’s Annual Meeting later this month!

I go most years and never fail to meet new colleagues, deepen connections and walk away excited to be a woman lawyer and part of such a dynamic group!

Check out this video I made for more reasons to attend July 20-21 at The Waldorf Astoria in New York.

Targeted law firm webinars can develop business and raise lawyers’ profiles…They can also be boring, arcane and occasionally downright embarrassing!

Spend one hour and walk away with what to do and what NOT to do in webinars.

Join Marsha Redmon and Kim Perret July 19 for a free webinar for LMA members, lawyers (and friends) to learn the 5 things lawyers and legal marketers must do for effective business development webinars. Continue reading “Free Webinar: 5 Steps to Law Firm Webinars that Get Business” »