Love in an Elevator: Convey Your Zeal, Competence and Confidence in Sixty Seconds or Less

Marketing is a difficult thing for attorneys. As we have implicitly covered in the annals of this blog, over its brief history of time, lawyers are taught only the theories of law in the halls, and mostly classrooms, of their law schools. Practice management is an art that lawyers develop their callused hands at after hard-won experience earned. And, if practice management is a topic that is left outside of the traditional stream of the legal education, the question of marketing a law firm is caste further off. Being released into the light of day, following three or four years of doctoral schooling, the law graduate is left with a significant amount of basic legal theory swimming around in his head, and the clouded perception that perhaps his law office will run itself, like something out of the Jetsons, which impression is yoked to the vague notion that perhaps otherwise unwitting clients will just wander into his office, having no other particular place to go, having heard that he had finally graduated from law school, and that he was open for business. After a short space of time, of course, illusion gives way to reality, and it becomes clear that a business plan is necessity; and, beyond that, that it’s a near certainty that a marketing plan, attached to that business plan, is a requirement for garnering the client referrals and clients you’ll need to earn the money to support your practice, and yourself. Of course, unwrapping a marketing plan, and determining what to include in said marketing plan, can be a groping forward in the dark toward a light, especially for attorneys schooled in discernable theory. And, once you settle upon what your marketing efforts will be, it feels an awful lot like you are dropping seeds into a deep, dark well: if they bloom, you shall never know how or why. How do you determine your return on investment? How do you know what is working and what is not working?

Here at LOMAP, our recent client discussions have been dominated by questions respecting the marketing of a practice; and, so, we have come here to help, in this specific regard. We have recently founded a marketing group, as an experimental endeavor. We are hopeful that it will take root as a permanent marketing and networking group, upheld by the group’s original members, and fed by future marketing group session members. If you have any interest in participating in future marketing groups session, or in joining the continuing marketing and networking group that we are hopeful will result from these first sessions, please feel free to email me at jared@masslomap.org for more information. In the meantime, this will be the first post in a series of posts on marketing, that are getting set to appear here at the LOMAP blog. We will be covering a new marketing-related topic every two weeks for the next three months, for your reading pleasure. Couple that with our previous marketing posts (on business cards; Twitter; client service opportunities; and, classic retainers) and you’re looking at a pretty nifty marketing crash course . . . nay, corpus . . . nay, curriculum (too strong?), by the end of the summer. Come read us; we shall show ye the light.

Naturally, the discussion covered in these marketing blog posts will track the course of conversations within the inaugural LOMAP Marketing Group. (Less thinking for me.) Our topic this past week was “Elevator Speeches”. Thus, our first blog posting will be all about elevator speeches.

Everyone knows what an elevator speech is. Everyone knows that the definition of an elevator speech is that it is a short pitch for the promotion of your business. Everyone understands the derivation of the term, that the delivery is one that might take place in an elevator, where you are traveling up a few short flights, with only precious time on your hands to convince a potential client or referral source to use or to recommend your services, before he gets off at his floor. Everyone knows that they should have an elevator speech. Not everyone knows how an elevator speech should be constructed, or delivered. Although an elevator speech should be unique to the deliverer, unique to the deliverer’s services and unique to the situation in which it is delivered, several general pointers can be derived.

Don’t be surprised if the creation and delivery of an elevator speech may not come easy to you. Although, as an attorney, you may feel as though you should be uniquely trained in drafting and advocacy, and you should be, that might not necessarily translate to the creation of a solid elevator speech, at least, not right away. There are some factors that you may not appreciate until you begin. For one, some attorneys are shy; yes, it’s true. For another, there is a disconnect between the technique of the law and the sale of a law practice. By that I mean that attorneys spend so much time working, and solely focused on their craft, that it is difficult to disconnect from the day’s mentality; but, you can’t present at a cocktail party by walking somebody through your steps for drafting an easement. They’ll be asleep in the cheese dip. There is also the fact that attorneys, generally, love to hear themselves talk. But, the proper delivery of an elevator speech contemplates the b side, and becomes the invitation to a conversation, such that you must recognize when it’s time to shut up, and to engage your subject. Ease of conversation comes naturally to some, but not to everyone.

The mortar for your elevator speech is your uniqueness. And, there are two forms of uniqueness that I am referencing here; those are: specialty in practice and specialty in person. Let’s take specialty of practice first. (What’s that you say? You don’t have a specialty? Get one, or get a few, areas of practice concentration. It’s 2009. In practice, specializing reduces errors and decreases exposure. Attempting to cover a multitude of practice areas in a world as administratively complex as ours leaves sprung many traps for your tripping. Better to select specific practice areas for which you have an affinity. Send off the rest, and take the referral fees. You’ll likely find that you’re wasting less time researching, that you are better at what you do and that you get more clients.) In a difficult economy, you must establish your niche, and present your specialty. You must show why it is that your services are better than another attorney’s. And that’s true whether you are seeking to gain clients directly, or to gain clients through attorney referrals. If your elevator speech tends to a run-on sentence describing your various practice areas, it’s not going to be memorable, or effective. Another attorney is not going to make a referral by saying, “Oh, you want a divorce? Well, you should go see Simon Simple. He does a bunch of stuff, one of which I’m sure is divorce. He’s all over the place.” No, he is going to say, “Oh, you want a divorce? Go see Cathy Competent. She specializes in divorce, has a flat fee option and offers mediation services, if you want to explore that route. And, you can find her across the internet: she blogs about this stuff all the time. She really knows her stuff.” Communicate your practice area, and attach to the conversation the unique services that you offer, that separate you from your competition. Remember, you are fighting to become top of mind within a specific sliver of consciousness. You have to pop.

The second area of uniqueness is your specialty in person. In point of fact, you are not going to get referrals from people who don’t like you. Folks just aren’t that equitable; you’re never judged solely on your skill set. You can’t come across stiff, and standoffish, like the third generation car dealer take on a local television advertisement. You have to be engaging, and, dare I say, even charming. You’ve got to have a hook. You have to be able to draw out a conversation and to have the confidence to meander along where it goes, even if it means retreating from your script some. In the end, it might not be anything that you say about your practice that gets you the client, or the client referral. It may be that your third cousin twice removed got a wart removed by your conversation subject’s wart doctor. You just never know. You should make it a point to be unafraid to reveal more of yourself than just what you do for work. You never know what connections you will share with another person until you bait your hook and cast it. Talking about things separate from work will also allow your conversation to flow more easily, more naturally. It will ease the tension of the underlying push for a business arrangement, and will likely disarm your subject enough to cause him to let his guard down. Presenting your personal uniqueness is a factor of perspective: being an attorney is what you do, it is not who are you. If you really know who it is that you are, you can talk about that person pretty fluidly.

Remember that your elevator speech is not a direct sales pitch. It is not your object to come off as smarmy, to the point that your hearer wishes to shower after speaking with you. Overt bragging just makes you look bad. Plus, nobody wants to hear it. The translation to “blah blah blah” is not what you want. And, although there are some folks out there who have no problem promoting their vast accomplishments, there are far more people who do not wish to brag in the least, and, in fact, do not want to talk about themselves at all. There is an easy fix for both personality varietal: sell your service, not yourself. Don’t talk about what you’ve done; talk about what you can do for your clients. That’s what they want to hear anyway.

Larry Bird was the greatest NBA player ever. (That’s right, I said it. Do yourself a favor, and watch this video from 5:12 on.) Nevertheless, he practiced constantly, obsessively. He always tried his hardest, but it was never hard enough. No matter how solid you think your elevator speech is, you can get it down better. You’ll play like you practice. Write your elevator speech down. Rewrite it. Remove unnecessary words and excess legal jargon. Trim awkward constructions. Take the time to create different versions of your speech for different audiences, and for different situations. You always want to tailor your speech to your audience, as what you are interested in, especially with an elevator speech, is telling them what it is that you can do uniquely for them that no one else can quite do. Remember as well that your written elevator speech should be a living document, one that you change and update over time, from time to time, so that the presentation you are making at any given time is the most relevant presentation that you can possibly make.

Beyond the crafting of your talk, there are certain communication techniques that you must be aware of when relaying your elevator speech. First and foremost, check arrogance at the door. Attorneys can be haughty. Don’t be one of those attorneys. Don’t treat anyone as if they are dumb. Value everyone you speak to. This is the one strain of commonality throughout the course of human history, religion and philosophy: from Christ to Kant. As we’ve covered earlier, when appropriate, ask questions, engage your listener, move your (sing.) speech to your (pl.) conversation. Make consistent eye contact. Smile. Don’t rush your speaking; maintain a cadence. Make sure you are as fluid as possible. And, watch your non-verbals, the ums, the ahs, the uhs. Eliminate those. You want your speech to appear as effortless, as if you are just chatting with a friend. It is all about creating an ease of atmosphere.

And, don’t just walk away when it’s all over. Instead, end on an “action item”. Give a business card. Better yet, get a business card. Make a separate contact, someone your engaged subject knows. Set a lunch appointment with this person you’ve been speaking to. And, when you get back to the office, send an email out, saying how nice it was to speak to you. Have something to hang your hat on. Then you can go meet somebody else.

. . .

Aside from this extremely well-written blog post, there are some other good resources out there that discuss elevator speeches for attorneys, most of which I have read or watched in deriving good information for the writing of this post: Dan Pinnington’s 2006 article in the ABA’s Law Practice Today has a great section on elevator speeches. Staying with the ABA, here’s a thread from the SoloSez archive covering thoughts on elevator speeches. This is an interesting article from Italy on the “espresso pitch”. Tom Kane’s Legal Marketing Blog has posted on elevator speeches on two occasions: one, and two. And, here is a clip from Kevin Houchin about attorney elevator speeches, and a main consideration.

. . .

So, I suppose I owe an elevator speech now. Well, okay.

“Hi, I'm Lyle Lovett. You may know me as Julia Roberts' ex-husband. And, I think I’ve appeared on the Simpsons. Some people say I look like Abraham Lincoln, if Abraham Lincoln had been beaten about the head and face with a shovel. But, that's certainly not charitable. And, I’m richer than all those people. What is charitable is the gift of music that I have contributed to the popular culture. I've been pigeonholed as a country artist, but my range is wide, and my depth is, well, deep, as exhibited by the following samples: bluegrass, gospel, prog pop. I'm the man. What do you do?”