Dear subscriber,
If you’ve been a loyal subscriber or customer for some time, you’ll know I often feature great trial lawyers in my teachings.
Well, there’s a very good reason for this.
And here’s that very good reason:
You see, a trial lawyer and a salesperson/copywriter are both in the same game – the “persuasion game”
Yep, both of their success largely comes down to how persuasive they are.
So, if you are a salesperson (everyone in business is), doesn’t it make good sense to study great trial lawyers?
I think so.
Well, last week I came across a trial lawyer I’ve never studied before. His name is Robert Shapiro.
Here’s a little intro for you:
On January 24, 1995, Bob Shapiro and twelve other defense lawyers were cherry-picked to form the O.J. Simpson defense team. These thirteen elite defense lawyers were the best of the best. They were known as the Dream Team. Their mission was simple: get O.J. Simpson acquitted of two counts of murder.
They, of course, succeeded.
And it was Bob Shapiro who was the leader of this merry band of legal beagles. And lemme tell you, this guy is as cool as a polar bear’s toenail and as sharp as a Jack White’s winkle-pickers.
Well anyway, as I was studying Bob’s work and career, I came across an excellent one hour interview he gave a few years ago.
There were two things Bob Shapiro said in that interview that tickled my devious marketing mind.
They are as follows:
Wait.
Do you even want to hear them?
Huh?
“Okay,” you say?
Geez, don’t get too excited, now will you. Hey, maybe you should just go watch TV or check your Instagram and Facebook feeds instead. I’m sure you’ll find more valuable information in those places than you will ever find in my little ol’ emails. I mean, what could you possibly learn from a boring old email? (Boy, I can be bitchy sometimes, can’t I?)
Whatever.
If you can focus long enough, here are the two highlights from the Shapiro interview.
(1) The interviewer (David Bet-Patrick) mentioned to Bob that he noticed Bob’s speaking style was different from most other trial lawyers. “You seem to have a different pace and rhythm to other lawyers I’ve heard.”, said David. “I think your speaking style makes you even more persuasive.”
This was Bob’s reply:
“During the course of my practice, I got to know Jack Nicholson pretty well. We got to talking one day about speaking persuasively. Jack has a simple formula: Speak low and speak slow.
I took that to heart.”
(2) David asked Bob what makes a great trial lawyer?
Here’s Bob’s answer:
“Well, I’ll tell you an interesting story to illustrate what makes a great trial lawyer.
Years ago, there was a major lawsuit here (Oakland) by the NFL against the Raiders. This lawsuit was about whether the Raiders could move from Oakland to Los Angles even though there was some controversy with the NFL. I was friends with the owner of the Chargers and he asked me to come and watch the trial.
And so I went to the opening statements.
And there were two different styles.
One was a lawyer from a major law firm who was representing the NFL. This lawyer got up and gave the greatest treatise on monopolies and lack of competition that you could ever hear. And he had behind him about fifteen other lawyers and a ton of file boxes. It was stunningly brilliant.
Then a guy named Joe Alioto, a lawyer from San Francisco got up. He was representing the Raiders. He didn’t have anybody sitting next to him other than a lawyer named Max Blecher. So Joe gets up with no notes and just started talking to the jury about how the NFL was manipulating and taking advantage of these small people.
Well, we then had lunch, and here were the NFL top brass and all their lawyers sitting around patting each other on the back and going on about how brilliant their lawyer was compared to Joe Alitoto, the Raider’s lawyer. ‘That guy knows nothing about antitrust and monopolies’, they yawped.
I told them, sure, your guy was good, but their lawyer knew one thing that your lawyer didn’t: he knew how to talk to those jurors.
He had those jurors’ undivided attention. Your lawyer was great IF….he was teaching a class in antitrust at Harvard law school. But he wasn’t. He was talking to ordinary folks who, by the end of your lawyer’s talk, looked as confused as a bunch of goats on AstroTurf!”
Moral of the story?
This:
If you want to persuade people, you must first connect with people. If there’s no connection, there’s no persuasion.
And one of the biggest “connection killers” you can make is…
…Talking Over Someone’s Head!
Doctors do it to their patients.
Lawyers do it to jurors and their own clients.
Employers do it to their employees.
Parents do it to their kids.
Teachers do it to their students.
And salespeople, business owners, and marketers do it to their prospects!
What to do?
How do you master connection, rapport building, being relevant and relatable, and communicate in a way that both a 9th grader and a Harvard professor would find crystal clear and enjoy?
Sounds like a tall order, doesn’t it?
Well, I guess it is. However, Papa Maverick has something that can make it a helluva lot easier to achieve.
Oh yeah?
Yeah!!
Check it out: The Maverick’s StorySelling Secrets
And yes, storytelling can do all the above mentioned. And when you learn how to connect, I mean really connect with your prospects, selling stops being something you try and do and instead, becomes a natural progression, a byproduct, an automatic reaction.
And, concerning connecting and bonding with your prospects, storytelling can truly do all the heavy lifting for you.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop now.
But…
…I’ll be back to harass you soon.
That, you can count on!
Your friend,
Kelvin
Email Marketing Maverick
