PointBlank Newsletter #2

PointBlank #2

Selling Emotional Junk

n the first issue of The PointBlank Newsletter, I discussed junk sales, i.e. the way many lawyers imagine that business development meetings are largely about impressing potential clients with degrees, accomplishments, etc. What we discovered is that those on the receiving end of these pitches are immune to junk sales, and stop listening almost as soon as the pitch starts.

In this chapter, let's look at emotional junk.

Emotional junk is loaded in to the pitch, but never mentioned directly. But we know its names: fear, insecurity, resentment, greed. Do you know any lawyers who carry that emotional junk around with them? Some say the profession is riddled with them. You be the judge. Must it be so? I don't think so, which is why I write here today.

Emotional junk is the filter in the head and heart that distracts you from making personal, direct contact with your potential client. Emotional junk comes into play when you are stuck in the filters, and have stopped paying attention to the other. When this is going on, your potential client sees you like this: inattentive, aloof, preoccupied, self-centered, self aggrandizing, in a hurry to close. Or, even worse, pathetic.

Do we ever rid ourselves of our emotional junk?

Maybe not, but we can self-intervene.

Before the meeting: take a minute in your car or some private place to breathe slowly and calm yourself. Focus your mind on whom you are meeting, what you know about them, and what you want to learn.

Remember that the meeting is about the potential client's problems, not yours. Your job is to find out as much about those problems as you can.

During the meeting, the emotional junk might creep back in. When it does, return your attention to the other person, and what is actually going on between the two of you at that moment.

When you focus your attention on who your potential client is, and have done your basic research about what he / she / they do, you will come across attentive and capable of putting aside your own needs in order to understand theirs.

That is, you will be closer to what the client is looking for. You communicate your self confidence in your willingness to listen. You are now working from the core, from the inside out. And it is when doing that that you are most effective.

In the next issue we'll look at client retention.