The best way to close a presentation

April 22, 2015 by
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Yesterday I talked about the best ways to open a presentation. Today, I want to talk about the best way to close a presentation.

Many presentations close with a summary of the key points made during the talk. You tell the audience what you want them to remember, perhaps numbering them in some fashion, and that’s fine.

Another way to close is to tell another story that illustrates those key points.

Stories can dramatize your message and create an emotional response in the listener. People tend to remember the stories you tell long after they have forgotten the facts.

You might combine these two techniques–summarize a few key points, then tell a story that reinforces them.

Another good way to close is to say something that echoes something you said at the beginning. Finish the story you began early on, or provide another startling statistic.

One of the best ways to end a presentation, and something I do in almost every presentation I give, is to tell the audience what to do.

Tell them to fill out the paperwork. Tell them to visit a web page. Tell them to like your page. Tell them to buy.

What do you want them to do after they leave the presentation? What do you want them to do while they’re still in the room?

They’re listening to you because they want to learn something. What do you want them to do with that information?

You’re delivering this talk to gain a new client, subscriber, supporter, or follower. What should they do to take the next step?

The same idea applies to written pieces, mostly. Close with a call to action. Tell them what to do. Tell them why.

When you tell people what to do, more people will do it.

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If you’re reading this in an email, please forward it to three attorneys you know. If you’re reading this on the blog, please like, tweet, or share.

And this:

Your friends will thank you for thinking of them and how they might benefit from this information. I will appreciate you, too.

So thanks for sharing. You’re a good egg. And thanks for listening. You’ve been a great audience.

 

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Public Speaking, Writing

3 sure-fire ways to start a presentation

April 21, 2015 by
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In any presentation or piece of writing, the first words spoken or written need to get your audience’s attention. Those first words are your headline. They tell people, “look at this–this is important”.

If your audience knows you and trusts you to deliver something they will value, you can jump right in and say what you want to say. That’s what I did at the start of this post.

But in other situations, you need to do more.

You can’t go wrong by promising a benefit in your headline. Tell people what they will learn or gain by reading or listening. The title of this post does that by promising to show you 3 sure-fire ways to start a presentation.

But there are other ways to get attention. Here are 3 of the best:

(1) Tell a story

Start your talk or article with a story. People like stories because they are about people and things that happen to them. They keep reading or listening to find out, “what happened next”.

Start with a story about a former client, for example. What happened to him? What did you do to help him? How did it all turn out?

(2) Make a provacative statement

Say something unusual or shocking, something people don’t know or don’t expect you to say. You might share a surprising fact, for example, or a statistic related to the subject of your talk.

If I was speaking about identify theft, for example, I might say, “Most people think identity theft means that someone has stolen your financial information. The truth is, there are five different types of identity theft”.

This gets the audience thinking about what these are, and whether they might be a victim of one of them.

(3) Ask an probing question

Questions work because they bring the reader or listener into the conversation. If you start your talk by asking, “When was the last time you updated your Will?” your audience starts thinking about the answer to that question.

Questions asked at the beginning of a presentation also make the audience continue to listen or read, to find out the answers.

With that in mind, would you like to know the best way to end a presentation? I’ll tell you tomorrow.

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Public Speaking, Writing Tagged With:

3 Keys to promoting your event or offer

April 13, 2015 by
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So you want to get people to register for your seminar, hire you for your service, or buy your new book. What should you do?

Promote it.

Promoting isn’t announcing. Announcing is merely stating the facts. Promoting has an emotional element to it. Here are 3 keys to promoting your event or offer.

(1) Get excited

If you’re not excited about what you are promoting, you can’t expect anyone else to get excited. If they’re not excited, they’re probably not going to look at what you’re offering, let alone sign up.

Start by asking yourself why you are excited about your offer. What’s new about it? What’s different? What will it allow people to do that they can’t do now?

Put your thoughts on paper or record them. Tell people why you are excited and, more importantly, make sure you sound excited.

Don’t go over the top, and don’t make up things. Just share how you feel about it.

Instead of just saying that you are excited, illustrate it. For example, you might say that as soon as you heard about this, you ran to your laptop and started writing. Or at breakfast, you couldn’t stop talking about the upcoming seminar, “just ask my wife!”

(2) Urgency

Tell people why they need to act immediately. Tell them why they should not delay.

What will they gain by taking action now? What will they lose if they don’t?

If there is limited seating or phone lines or quantities, tell them, and be specific. If you’re offering an added benefit for the first ones who respond such as preferred seating, additional bonuses, or lower pricing, tell them.

Make sure they know why they shouldn’t wait, and then tell them what to do: go here, do this, do it now.

(3) Repetition

Don’t tell them once, tell them several times.

They may not have received your email, or read it. They may have been busy with other things and forgot. They may not realize that what you are promoting is as good as you say it is, or believe you when you say you’re not sure it will be repeated.

So tell them again, and tell them in different ways.

In one version of your message, appeal to their desire for gain by emphasizing the benefits. In another message, appeal to their fear of loss by telling how many others have signed up or how many seats are left.

Get excited, use urgency and repetition to promote your event or offer and you’ll get more people signing up.

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, List building, Marketing legal services, Presentations, Writing Tagged With:

Another technique for improving your writing you won’t want to do

March 27, 2015 by
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Yesterday, I told you about a technique for improving your writing. I told you that I dramatically improved my writing by hand copying other people’s writing that I admired and wanted to emulate. Today, I want to share something else I did that elevated my writing to an even higher level.

Behold:

Every morning without fail, I rolled out of bed, grabbed a spiral notebook and pen, and wrote for twenty minutes.

Some would call this journaling, but that implies that I had something to say that I wanted to capture on paper. Instead, what I did was “free write”.

There are two rules to free writing.

First rule: write whatever comes into your mind, no matter how silly or meaningless. Write gibberish if that’s what comes. Write, “I don’t know what to write,” if you don’t know what to write. Write a list of words that have no connection to each other, or write the same word over and over, until your mind coughs up something else.

Which leads to the second rule: don’t stop. Keep your hand moving for twenty minutes and don’t stop for any reason.

So, what happens when you do this? At first, not much. You write a lot of useless junk and your hand gets really tired. Eventually, however, two things happen.

One thing that happens is that you start writing cogent thoughts about important things. Your writing taps into your subconscious mind and reveals your deepest beliefs and feelings, long forgotten memories, and amazingly valuable ideas you can use in your business and personal life.

Free writing becomes a kind of self-examination. It is cathartic and therapeutic. You write your way through problems and find solutions. At times, it is frightening, but ultimately, it is liberating. At first, your writing might reveal feelings of inadequacy, guilt, or pain. After a few weeks or a few months, you start feeling better about yourself and get really clear about your future.

Fun times.

The second thing that happens with free writing (when you do it long enough) is that you become a better writer. Your practice of writing daily (and freely) eventually clears away the warts and blemishes that disguise your writing and protect you from revealing your true self.

You start writing plainly and clearly. Your writing has energy and emotion. Writing is fun, and faster, because you are primarily talking on paper.

If you do this, do it first thing in the morning, before coffee, before you are fully awake. Your adult brain will be tired and put up less resistance, allowing your inner child’s brain to be heard.

Don’t show your writing to anyone. It’s just for you, at least for now. But don’t read what you write, at least for several months. Reading your insane scribbles might frighten and inhibit you.

How long should you do this? As long as it takes. Three months, six months, a year, a lifetime. You don’t have to figure that out right now. Just start, have fun with it, and trust that when you come out on the other side, you will be a better writer. Because you will.

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Newsletters, Personal development, Writing Tagged With:

A simple way to improve your writing you probably won’t do

March 26, 2015 by
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Do you want to improve your writing? Of course you do. Well, there’s a simple way to do that but I’m afraid you won’t do it.

Yes, it’s simple. Easy, even. But it takes a fair amount of time. Most people aren’t willing to put in that time.

But it’s worth it. I promise. When I did it, it changed the wiring in my brain and I became a much better writer.

I used to write like a lawyer–stilted, passive, thorough to a fault, and boring. Everything changed when I started using the method I’m about to share with you.

In a nutshell, this method involves finding writing exemplars you would like to emulate and copying them. I did this with sales letters and newsletters that tickled my fancy, but it will work for any kind of writing.

The idea is that the inputting of words into our brains processes those words differently than when we output them. When you studied for the bar exam, for example, you re-read your notes and outlines and all but memorized the information. But it wasn’t until you did practice tests and outputted that information that you truly internalized and could best use that information.

Something like that.

Anyway, find good writing samples and copy them. Re-type the entire piece. Then, do it again. Keep doing it until you know what the next sentence will say before you read it.

This process allows your mind to slow down enough to see things you ordinarily ignore. You’ll ask yourself why the writer chose one word instead of another, you’ll see how they started and ended sentences and paragraphs, and you’ll notice patterns in the way they staged the information.

You’ll also see how how the writer gets your attention and makes the piece easier to read with headlines, sub-heads, and bullet points.

Now, if you’re really committed, you’ll do what many professional copywriters did when they were learning their craft. You’ll copy the entire piece by hand.

Writing by hand invokes a more direct connection to the brain. You may have read articles recently about studies showing that taking notes by hand improves recall of the information. Copying someone else’s writing works the same way.

Whichever method you use, keep at it. Do it several times a week. Give it three or four months. Maybe more. Eventually, you’ll notice that your writing has started to change. It’s clearer, more concise, and more persuasive.

I can’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure that when I stopped writing like a lawyer and started writing to communicate, I started settling cases faster and for more money.

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Newsletters, Writing

Take Off Your Pants (but don’t show me your briefs)

March 16, 2015 by
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The most important task of a headline is getting the reader’s attention. You may have a brilliant article or blog post, amazing sales copy, and a powerful offer, but none of that matters if nobody reads it.

An example of a good headline is the one on a new Kindle book, Take Off Your Pants: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing.

It’s for novelists who ordinarily don’t outline their books but write them “by the seat of their pants.” They are considered “pantsers” in the parlance, in contrast to “plotters”–writers who outline and plot before they write.

I saw the book when it launched and even though I’m not a novelist I was intrigued by the title. It stopped me in my tracks and made me look at the book description. It made me chuckle.

It did it’s job and did it well.

Of course you need to read the sub-title to understand that the book is for writers and not a 50 Shades knockoff. And that’s okay. The title gets your attention. The sub-title clarifies the title and promises a benefit.

Nicely done.

If you’re looking for ideas for headlines for your posts or articles, or titles for your books, don’t hesitate to borrow from what’s already out there. You can use an existing title or headline “as is” (there is no copyright protection afforded titles), or you can play off titles, especially iconic ones. My book (on network marketing), Recruit and Grow Rich is an obvious but effective play on the classic “Think and Grow Rich.”

Another example.

In the 1970’s, Dr. David Reuben became a mega best selling author with his book, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)”. Woody Allen made it into a movie with that title.

The original title is trademarked, so you can’t use it as is, but I’ve seen more than a few ads for products and services that play off it. You can do the same thing. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Bankruptcy (But Were Afraid to Ask)” works.

You could use this template for many practice areas, and it doesn’t matter whether readers know the original book or movie. There are a lot of things prospective clients want to know but are afraid to ask.

For more on writing effective titles and headlines, get this and this

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Filed Under: Copywriting, Writing Tagged With: ,

How much selling should a lawyer do?

January 14, 2015 by
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How much selling should you do in your letters and emails and blog posts?

More than you think.

The people on your list, your readers and subscribers, your friends and followers, need your help. If they’re not getting that help, if they don’t hire you, they will continue to have those problems and needs.

Your job isn’t to wait until someone taps you on the shoulder and asks you to get to work. It is to reach out to them and persuade them to hire you, or at least take the next step in that direction. If you don’t do that, you’re doing them a disservice.

Educate your prospects about the law and procedure and their options, but don’t merely deliver information. Sell them on why they need to hire you to get the solutions and benefits they want.

Pound your drum with warnings about what could happen if they don’t hire you, or if they wait too long. Share horror stories about people with the same issues who failed to act. Make your prospects feel what it was like for those people, and imagine what it will be like if they follow the same course.

Do everything in your power to convince people to hire you. Pull out the big guns. Don’t leave them to suffer their problems and pain when you can help them get relief.

Don’t be all thunder and brimstone, however. They’ll tune out. Mix things up. Share success stories. Back off the main message and talk about something else. But never stop reminding people about their problems and how you can help them.

And don’t leave it up to them to figure out what to do next. Tell them to hire you, or tell them to call with questions, schedule a consultation, fill out a form, or read more about the issue.

How much selling should you do? More than you think.

If you want to get more clients and increase your income, get this.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Copywriting, Email, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Salesmanship

My formula for persuasive writing

November 12, 2014 by
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When I write sales copy, presentations, books, or blog posts, I often use a formula that makes it more likely the reader or listener will do what I want them to do.

I may want them to buy something, do something, or remember something. The formula works the same way.

The persuasive writing formula I use (no, I didn’t invent it) has five parts:

  1. State the PROBLEM (here’s what’s wrong, what you don’t have, what will happen if you don’t do anything about it.)
  2. AGITATE the problem (dramatize the pain, here’s more about how bad it could get, here’s other ways this will affect you)
  3. Present the SOLUTION (what can be done to stop the problem)
  4. Describe the BENEFITS (relieve your pain, other good things you get with this solution)
  5. CALL TO ACTION (what to do to get the solution and benefits)

Try this formula the next time you write something. You may find it helpful to start with the call to action. What do you want them to do? What’s the key takeaway?

Then, either work backwards through the other parts (ie., the benefits they will get when they do what you want them to do, the solution that delivers those benefits, etc.) or go to the beginning, describe the problem, and work forwards.

Anyway, an article in the Harvard Business Journal presents a similar formula based on classical story structure. In “Structure your presentation like a story,” author Nancy Duarte says:

After studying hundreds of speeches, I’ve found that the most effective presenters use the same techniques as great storytellers: By reminding people of the status quo and then revealing the path to a better way, they set up a conflict that needs to be resolved.

That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently — to move from what is to what could be. And by following Aristotle’s three-part story structure (beginning, middle, end), they create a message that’s easy to digest, remember, and retell.

Persuasive writing is about creating tension (or identifying it) and then relieving it. If you want someone to hire you, show them the status quo and the path to a better way: “You’ve got this problem that’s only going to get worse; if you hire me, I will solve that problem (or help you take the first step towards solving it); here’s how you’ll be better off; here’s what to do to get started.”

Tell them a dramatic story that makes them angry or afraid. Just make sure it has a happy ending.

Do you know the formula for earning more in your practice? Go here.

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Presentations, Public Speaking, Writing Tagged With: ,

Marketing a law firm like a strip club

October 3, 2014 by
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One of the biggest challenges in marketing a law firm is getting prospective clients to see how you are different or better than other lawyers who do what you do.

It takes a lot of thought and wordsmithery to come up with the right benefit statement. I don’t have any shortcuts to offer, but I can give you a place to start.

Imagine that instead of an office you work from a retail store in a big shopping mall. All of the other attorneys in town also have stores at the mall. The lawyer next door? He offer the same services you do. The lawyer across the hall? The same.

In fact, the entire mall is filled with your competitors. The shoppers in the mall are your prospective clients. They came to the mall looking for a lawyer to hire and they walk through the mall trying to decide which one to choose.

Will it be you? Or the guy down the hall?

You don’t want to leave it to chance, do you? You want to get them into your store.

What will you do? What will you put in your store window? What signs will you put up to entice them to stop?

Hold on. We know it’s only a matter of time before one of the other lawyers starts standing at the entrance to his store calling out things to passing shoppers. Yeah, like those guys who stand on the street in front of strip clubs encouraging passers-by to come to see their show.

You’re not going to let them get all the business, are you? Hell no. You’re going to stand outside your store, too. Whatcha going to say?

Before you know it, all of the lawyers in the mall will be standing outside their store hawking their wares. It’s going to get extremely noisy in that mall. You’ll need to be really clever if you want clients to choose you.

Yes, this is a picture of a nightmare. But it’s also a decent analogy for the real world. You don’t stand outside a store shouting at passing clients, (at least I hope you don’t) but you do something similar on the Internet, in ads, and at networking events.

Use this exercise to brainstorm ideas for headlines you can use to get the attention of prospective clients who are scanning lawyers’ ads, web pages, or listings in a directory.

What could you say to get their attention? What could you offer? How can you stand out from the crowd?

Here’s a hint: Your name or your firm’s name is not a good headline. It’s not going to get anyone to come into your store. Nobody but your mama cares about your name.

The good news is that all of those ads and web pages your competitors use with their firm name as the headline make things much easier for you. You can say almost anything else and get more clients than they do.

Write a headline that promises benefits. What do you do for your clients that other lawyers don’t do (or don’t say they do)? What makes you unique or better? Why should they come into your store?

The Attorney Marketing Formula helps you choose a benefit statement for your practice. Go here.

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Filed Under: Copywriting, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , , , ,

The best way to end an email

August 26, 2014 by
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What’s the best way to end an email?

The same thing you do at the end of any closing argument, presentation, meeting, pleading, report, blog post, or other persuasive communication.

Tell the reader what to do.

Tell them to buy. Sign up. Click here. Remember these three things. Go here. Do this.

When you tell people what to do, more people do it.

Can’t they decide for themselves? Sure. And they will. You’re not forcing them to do anything, you’re just pointing the way. Instead of leaving things up in the air and asking the reader to figure out what you want, you’re telling them.

And guess what? People want you to tell them. The judge wants to know what you want. The audience wants to know what you’re selling. The client wants to know what you advise. When you tell people what to do, you’re making things easier for them.

Of course somewhere in your opus you should tell them why. You have to back up your call to action with some substance. Tell them how they benefit, why it’s the right decision, what will happen if they don’t.

The call to action doesn’t literally have to be the last thing you say. You could tell them what to do and follow that with a memorable quote, a short story, or additional bullet points in support of your request. But don’t walk off the stage or sign your letter until you’ve told them what to do next.

You’re not in the entertainment business, you’re in the persuasion business. Do your job. Tell people what to do, and why.

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If you want to get more clients and increase your income, go to this page and buy everything.

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Filed Under: Closing the sale, Communication, Copywriting, Writing Tagged With:
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