Take Your Public Speaking to the Next Level
Use Speaking Engagements to Get Clients, Referrals --
and Better Bookings
For Lawyers Weekly, 5/15/00 issue

By Michael M. Bowden

Lots of lawyers give occasional lectures to bar associations, community groups or industry conventions.Few, however, achieve the level of prominence on the lecture circuit that makes public speaking into a marketing bonanza.

Since 1987, Vickie Sullivan, founder and president of Sullivan Speaker Services, a consulting firm in Tempe, Ariz., has launched hundreds of professionals to what she calls the "next level" of public speaking. Sullivan helps her clients develop the right message for their audience, and deliver it in a way that leads to more business – and more speaking engagements in the future.

Sullivan recently spoke with Lawyers Weekly USA about the ways in which lawyers can maximize the business-generating potential of public speaking.

What's the key to turning speaking engagements into marketing opportunities?
Two things: Visibility and leveraging. Visibility means a lot of people have to hear you speak. Leveraging means that you have to use your speech to create business relationships that will last after the speech is over.

Too often, attorneys speak in a vacuum. They speak and they think that's all they have to do. But speaking is an opportunity, and you've got to leverage that opportunity.Don't make the mistake of thinking that, just because you're speaking, people will automatically come up to you with their business cards. Or if you refer people to your website, that everyone in the audience will run and go look at it. Not true! You've got to set all of this up in your speech. There are things you have to do before, during and after every speech to leverage that opportunity.

What should you do before a speech?
First of all, make sure that the speaking opportunity is worthwhile for you. A lot of attorneys will take any kind of speaking engagement, especially if they're new at it. But I tell my clients to not do that. You want to:

Determine whether there will be decision-makers in the audience.
If you're not speaking to individuals, but to a corporate or industry audience, you need to know whether the people with the power to hire you are going to be listening.

Obtain guest passes to your speech.
Will the association or group you're speaking to give you guest passes so that you can invite non-competing people – for example, prospective clients you may be courting – to come to this session and hear you speak?

More organizations are pretty flexible about this. Unless it's in the high-tech field where they've got armed guards at the gate, you can usually invite a few people who aren't registered, but might be interested in what you have to say. Don't just depend on the audience to give you business. Pack the house!

'Prime the pump.'
You've got to increase your visibility before speaking, especially in big association meetings where there are concurrent sessions. Otherwise, you're forcing the audience to choose your presentation over five to six others that may be going on simultaneously. Those are not good odds.

For example, I'm speaking to an image-consulting group in July. So in March, I wrote a front-page article for one of the leading industry newspapers. In June, I'll have another article come out in another image consulting publication. The first question you should ask before accepting a speech is, "Where are the media outlets for this industry?" Then write an article or get yourself interviewed for one of them.

Send out invitations.
You might consider sending a personal invitation to everybody who has registered for the convention. It should introduce you, and say something like, "I know you have a lot of choices about which sessions you go to, but I hope you choose mine because here's what we're going to do..."

Post your speaking schedule on your website.
Once again, there is power in this implied invitation. The fact that you are speaking all over the place makes you look more credible to potential clients. It makes you look like more of an expert.

So don't hide your speaking engagements. If you have been invited to speak somewhere, even if someone can't attend the speech, it's significant to let them know that someone thought your ideas were better than anyone else's, and that's why they're having you come and speak instead of somebody else.

You should also post your speaking topics on the website, and even audioclips. So the benefits of your speech go beyond the speech itself.

All right, so you've got your audience – now you've got to deliver. How can you maximize the marketing value of the speech itself?
Your biggest secret weapon is crafting your expertise into a message that is more appealing than that of the competition. And you do that by emphasizing what I call your "Critical Beliefs." These are a group of beliefs or statements that show your unique take on a given subject. They're the little nuggets of wisdom that make an audience think, "Oh! I never thought about it like that before!" and "Wow! That person is right!"

So you're giving them either something they've never heard before, or something they have heard before, but you have such a different take on it that you cause them to see the situation differently. And when you can do that, your stature immediately increases.Because you've demonstrated your differentiation; you haven't just told people that you are different. And that's a completely different dynamic. It's like the power of a good first impression.

Can you give me an example?
Sure. Instead of conceiving your topic as, "How to Improve Law Firm Management Strategy," you might conceive it as: "When managers change their focus away from what's wrong toward what they want, the 'wrong' part magically goes away." Or, instead of just talking about, "Assessing Potential Partners," your take becomes: "Partnerships are formed for emotional reasons,which are usually responsible for their downfall."

In other words, when lawyers just talk about generic subjects in a generic way, they have not differentiated themselves as attorneys. So an audience is going to say, "Well, this is really great, but I can get my attorney or any attorney to do this."

The Critical Beliefs process keeps that problem from happening.

Can lawyers work through the Critical Beliefs process themselves?
Sure. On my website (www.sullivanspeaker.com/tutorial.htm) I have a free online tutorial that anybody can use to learn how to create those nuggets of wisdom.

But I also work personally with attorneys to do that. For instance, right now I'm working with an attorney who speaks on practice management issues. And one of her Critical Beliefs is that the very thing that made attorneys successful in law school – the competitiveness of it – is the very thing that's going to destroy their practices in the 21st century. That's her nugget.

So I asked her, "Is this concept overstated in the marketplace?"

And she said, "Probably. People are talking about how you have to be more collaborative, and things like that."

So I said, "Great. Then we've got to go narrower: What is it that's keeping attorneys from giving up the competitiveness that they learned in law school, and being more collaborative?"

The answer to that question will differentiate her. Because everyone else may be saying, "Hey attorneys, you've got to be more collaborative!" but they're not addressing the problem of what's keeping attorneys from doing that, and how to get over that barrier.

Many attorneys think, "Gee, if I just go out there and speak, and focus on not being so boring and technical that I lose my audience, then they will see that I'm a great lawyer."

But that doesn't happen that way. What happens is, the audience says, "Great speech!" and the attorney gets the applause – but that's it. They don't get the business.

Once you've found your Critical Beliefs for a speech, how can you most effectively present it to the audience?
One effective technique is illustrating your point with stories. Lawyers are great storytellers – a good trial lawyer can captivate a jury through good storytelling. But you should bring a certain amount of marketing sense to your choice of stories.

It's a delicate technique. You want to make sure that your stories make a point, and that you don't just use them for marketing purposes. Because if you do that, then you're dead. You're pitching [making a sales pitch] from the podium, and that's the kiss of death.

You can't tell a story in a vacuum any more than you can speak in a vacuum. You want folks to understand that your ideas can work for them, because they've worked for other people like them. There are three attitudes that an audience comes in with that you've got to deal with if you want business from that audience:

Audiences are focused on getting information and leaving, not on how they can work with you afterwards.

So in the introduction, [use examples from] clients you've had and make sure they match the clients in the audience. That gives the audience the impression: This lawyer can work with us.

Great presentation but it doesn't fit my specific situation.
When audience members say, "Hey, great speech!" but the positive feedback produces no business, that dynamic just screams that you failed to make a connection between your material and its application to your listener's problem.

To avoid this, you must change your focus from teaching your belief to applying it, preferably using audience members as examples. Rather than using hypothetical situations, you can address a member of the crowd, saying "Okay, let's say you've got two pieces of property you want to include in a trust, but you..." and so on. That way, the audience still learns, but they also get a concrete idea of how the technique could help them.

Follow up the audience exercise with stories about your own past clients, citing the commonality of situations. Be sure to make your client, not yourself, the star. Because as the audience is listening, they're trying to figure out if it applies to them, and it's easier to identify with the star. So the attorney has to make sure that any kind of example they use shows, "Yes, this can work for you too."

I can do this myself.
This is the most dangerous of the three attitudes: "Now that I have this information, I can go home and do it myself. I don't need the attorney now, I have everything I need." You've given them just enough information to make them dangerous.

So what you want to do with this is show them, "Hey, this is easier said than done."Again, you can't tell an audience that – they may intellectually agree, but they'll emotionally disagree.

So go back to those stories: Make sure they show the intricacies of your work, not just the general ideas. That will not only give the audience more value, but will also convey the message that time does not permit a full discussion of all the "pitfalls" they need to know about.

So say you're lecturing a roomful of senior citizens on your estate planning technique. I would make a joke out of it, asking: "How many of you folks find this information useful?"

And they'd raise their hands, and I'd say, "How many of you find it so useful, that you're going to take those handouts and do it yourself? You're thinking, 'I don't need any stinkin' lawyer!'"

And people will laugh and maybe a few will raise their hands.

Then you say, "Well, I sure can't stop you, so let me give you a couple of tips before you go do that. I once had a woman come into my office..." And you tell them some horror story about someone whose estate lost a half-million dollars in probate costs because they tried to save money by doing it themselves without understanding the legal complexities of the procedure.

So you're entertaining your audience, and you're gratifying them with a few nuggets of information they can put to use immediately. But you're also subtly demonstrating that you can put those nuggets to work more effectively than they can. Don't misunderstand me: You're not holding anything back. What I'm saying is, if you're good at what you do, then you want to effectively show the audience that you're better at it than they are. And if you're up there lecturing an audience, you should be better at it than they are! But still, you need to impress that upon them: That you're an expert who's worth listening to, paying attention to, giving business to.

Any tips on wrapping up the speech in a marketing-savvy way?
Yes, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind:

Never end your lecture with a question-and-answer session.
Do it three-quarters of the way into the lecture, so that people don't start wandering off.

Say, "I want to open this up to questions before we close the program, but just as a housekeeping item, I want you to know I'm not going to take any fact-specific questions because that's boring for the other people in the audience. I want to stay on topic, but if you want a free one-hour consultation, just come up to me after the lecture, or just write "free session" on the back of your business card, and I'll be glad to arrange a meeting with you. Or if you just have a quick question, put an asterisk on your card, and I'll give you a call and we'll handle it that way. Okay, so now let's take questions on the topic at hand."

You see? So it's a housekeeping item, an incidental – not a pitch.

Close on a high note.
Too many speakers just say, "See ya!" and leave the podium. But professional speakers know – just like trial lawyers know – you need a strong opening and a strong closing. And preferably your closing will tie back to your opening: "In conclusion, let's go back to the little old lady we talked about at the beginning of our presentation." You want to tell a story.

I mean, attorneys are so great at telling stories – they do it with juries all the time. They just have to start doing it with their audiences. And what they want the closing story to be is something that will move their listeners to action – preferably a story in which you served someone creatively.

You want to look at the theme of what you're talking about and have that theme come to a climax in your closing. So to use the estate-planning example again, if the attorney's theme is "Protecting the Future," maybe they could close with a story about how bright the future can be: "The future is open to so many possibilities when we lay a strong foundation. And is that not what we want to give our families? A foundation to use as a springboard to opportunity?" Something like that, the cherry on top of the sundae. Go back to your theme – this isn't just about "estate planning" – it's really about a lasting gift to your family; this is really about leaving a legacy.

Give the audience a 'next step.'
A lot of attorneys who do speaking engagements understand that if they give away a document, they'll get business cards from audience members. You can put out a sign-up sheet for e-mail newsletter, they'll sign up for it, fine. But that's not enough.

The next step is a way for that audience to interact with you, rather than just walking away saying "Great speech."

Let's use the estate planning people again for an example. Say your service costs $5,000. Well, you're going to be hard-pressed to find a lot of senior citizens in that audience who'll run up and say, "You've convinced me! Here's my check for $5,000!"

That's a big risk for them, so you want to slice and dice the risk to make it smaller. Is there a way an audience member can pay $500 and get a piece of the service? And once they buy that, they might be motivated to buy more the next time? Is there a way for them to dip their toe in the water before they dive in? If so, you've increased the number of people who might take a chance with you.

"Vickie helped me reposition my expertise in a way that set me apart from my peers and immediately enabled my target audience to see the value. Result: I generated speaking opportunities in the new marketplace within 60 days. And all without cold calls!"

Pamela S. Harper
President Business Advancement Inc.

It's one thing to decide to change.It's another to know that your changes will get results. Ready to test your assumptions? Get a reality check with Vickie's market assessment .

Ready to get more income and clients from your speaking? Get Vickie's inside scoop at SSS Products -- or go to SSS consulting regarding individual help. Don't know which way is best? Contact Us to set up an appointment to brainstorm!