Welcome to Persuasive Communication, Part One, The Foundation. It's a pleasure to have you with us today. So let's take a look at what we're going to be focusing on today.
As a logistics note, please use the chat feature to send me questions. The presentation should run about 35 to 45 minutes. You can probably add another five minutes onto that.
I tend to go a little bit longer. I'll answer questions for as long as you like. We can follow up.
You can follow up with me at the email address you see there. That's my email address. If you're a member of the community, you can go to the community website and find all of these presentations as well as lots of other goodies.
If you want to talk to me, there's my phone number. I will always take your call and I'll be happy to help you in any way I can. Today's agenda is, number one, to cover message, audience, and delivery method.
I use the acronym MAD and that helps us with the communication process. All of these three things need to match. They need to be in alignment, message, audience, and delivery.
We're gonna talk about that today. Today's focus is going to be on making sure you're coordinating and connecting with the ideal audience first. We're going to get inside the mind of your ideal audience member.
Going to talk about the reason why and the reason what's in it for me is so important. It's absolutely critical. We're also going to be talking about credibility, believability, and likability, and how they play into communication, persuasive communication.
The difference between credibility and believability is important. We're gonna cover that. In our next session, we're going to cover creating a message.
All right, let's talk about MAD, message, audience, and delivery. These three things have to match, and the reason they have to match is because you don't want to hit the right audience with the wrong message. Imagine, for example, if you were communicating with people who needed to get their will done, and you were telling them how important it was for them to have a prenuptial agreement done before they got married.
That message wouldn't be important to them, and it would probably be ignored, and some people might even be offended. Well, that's the wrong message to the wrong audience. Understanding how the wrong message to the right audience can create incongruence, most people get that.
Aligning message, audience, and delivery method is critical because you want to communicate with your audience in the way that is most comfortable and natural for them to receive the message. So as we go through these segments on persuasive communication, you're gonna hear me talk about MAD, the alignment of message, audience, and delivery over and over and over again. In the old days when we learned about communication, so if you learned about communication in college in your undergraduate education, or if you learned about communication in grad school like I did, or if you learned about communication on the job working for a marketing agency, they would say the medium is the message, and they would refer to the fact that television was very visual, and if you made a compelling visual presentation on television, that would work.
These days, we have so much media. We are bombarded by, believe it or not, every individual is bombarded by thousands of pieces of media every week. Television, internet, even email messages these days contain media.
What you read is no longer limited to only newspapers and magazines and books. What you read is available everywhere from outdoor billboards and bus stations all the way through to anything you can imagine online. This is so important that the message, audience, and delivery method all match up that I really wanna make sure in each of our segments we stress this point.
Okay, the first element of the message, audience, and delivery method is to make sure that you capture people's interest. What you wanna do is you want to stimulate curiosity within your audience, and the way to do that is with a headline or a subject line that really grabs people. Now, let's say you're delivering a speech and your communications method is delivering a speech in front of a group or in a webinar.
What you can do to capture people's interest is tell a compelling story right up front. In stand-up comedy, we say all the time that you wanna open up with probably your best joke or at least your second best joke because you need to grab the attention of the audience right away. Well, if you're writing an email, your subject line has to be something that makes people stop and pay attention.
If you're writing an article, the headline, the title of the article has to be something that makes people stop and grabs their attention. Now, your attention-getting device, whether it's a story or a headline or a subject line, not only needs to be compelling, but it needs to be congruent with the topic and the entire content of your communication message. So you can't use a subject line like money, money, money if you're talking about the reason that you want people to make, I don't know, baskets for Easter Sunday, right? Your subject line, your headline, your story that you open with has to be congruent with the rest of your message.
The key point is you have to first grab people's interest by stimulating their curiosity. The second thing you need to do with your message is you need to connect on an emotional level. Now, those of you who are attorneys, this is different than the way you're taught to communicate in law school.
It's different than the way you're taught to communicate particularly right for the court. It's different than you're taught to present a case to other people. Why? Because you're taught to present facts, you're taught to lay out your case, and you're taught to make a linear argument and build on a foundation of rational facts.
If you try to do that with persuasive communication, if you try to do that with communication that's designed to develop relationships, nobody's going to pay any attention to you, you're gonna lose them in the first five minutes. So those of you who are litigators who are with me today, think about making the case to a jury. You need to grab them and connect on an emotional level first, and then you need to lay out your foundation and your rational facts.
In persuasive communication, you connect with emotion first, and then you hit the audience in the mouth with what's in it for them. I want you to connect on an emotional level first, and then I want you to tell them why they need to listen to you. Motivating them to connect with you and to stay with you is critically important.
I see so many pieces of marketing communication from agencies, people who are supposed to know what they're doing, that don't make motivation a priority. You cannot communicate with people without first hooking them with emotion and then telling them why they should be listening to you and hope to make a lasting impression on them. So emotion, then motivation, and then finally the third point, justification.
Then give them the rational facts. I'm sorry, then give them the justification, the reason why they're with you. So let me give you an example, okay? And I'll just fill in the fourth point right now, the support, the logic, the rational facts, that comes last.
I'll give you an example. If I'm sitting with you and I'm speaking with you and we're just meeting for the first time, I would look to connect with you by telling you some sort of story that would put us on an even emotional plane. So I might tell you the story of how I first discovered the place where we are.
So let's say we meet and we meet at a restaurant and we're both waiting for a table, you and I, and I'm sitting there next to you and I say, hi, my name's Dave, what's your name? And then you tell me, right? You don't think I'm a creep, you don't think I'm a weirdo and you tell me. And then I say to you, you know, the first time I came here, I came with a group from work and we had the best time and I always associate having fun with coming here. Is this your first time here? And then you would say, oh no, the first time I came here and you would tell me that story, you would tell me your story.
So we would make an emotional connection. Now that's not a marketing message, that's just communicating with another human being, but we're already on the same emotional plane, okay? So that communication on an emotional level is important. We're both now feeling good, right? If I'm giving a speech, I always open a speech with a story that evokes emotion.
Those of you who know me well, know that I use a lot, I very often will use the taxi cab story, the story of how I got struck by a taxi cab and how it changed my life because that immediately makes an emotional connection with the audience. Then from that point, I move into the what's in it for you, the what's in it for me point of the story. So I will say the reason why I think we should be having this conversation today, and this is what I say to the audience is, and then I tell them why that's so important.
And I hook the emotion to the motivation for them. So let's say you're writing an email and you're writing an email right now to your audience. And let's say you want to get referrals from CPAs.
And let's say you are a business transactional attorney and you want to get referrals from CPAs. So what I would do is I would stimulate curiosity and say more business faster with less work. That would be the subject line of my email or the headline of my article.
It goes into the CPAs inbox and he says, well, sure, I want more business and I want to get business faster and I want to get business with less work. Then I would open up with the story about how I received my best piece of business as a referral from my accountant, Steve Klitzner. And he connected me with someone who was an ideal client.
And the reason Steve was able to do that was because he knows me really well. He does my books and he is familiar with my business inside and out. And I would say connecting with people on an intimate level and referring them makes it easy to attract new business.
That's emotional, easy. Being easy to attract new business is emotional. And then I would follow that up with what's in it for me.
The reason I'm writing you today is because I can demonstrate how you can attract business this way in three minutes or less each day. Then I would give them the justification, the reason why it's important. Saving time and attracting business and attracting deeper relationships through persuasive writing is critical for your success as a CPA.
So I've given them motivation, I've given them justification, and then I would give them the logical, rational facts. We've developed a six-step process to help you learn to communicate persuasively as a CPA to your referral sources and convince them to send you referrals every time they think about you. And this system will keep you top of mind with them once a week.
There you go, I've just given them all the logical, rational facts. So these are the elements of a persuasive marketing message, of a persuasive message. First, attract interest.
Second, connect on an emotional level. Third, hit them with the motivation. What's in it for them? Fourth, give them justification.
What's the reason why they need to go through this message and read it completely and give you a shot? Fourth, support your message with logical, rational facts. Then you earn the right to give them a call to action. Then you have earned the right to tell them what the first step is for them to do.
Now, this call to action needs to be a very simple first step. You can go through and do all of these steps correctly. You can attract their interest.
You can connect with them on an emotional level. You can hit them with the what's in it for me. You can give them the reason why.
You can provide your support, your logical, rational facts, and then you can give them an overly complicated call to action. Go to my website, fill out the 15 category form on there, and then take a screenshot and send it to if you do that, you've lost them. The call to action needs to be super simple.
Very simple first step they need to take. That's the structure of the ideal persuasive message. Those of you who connect with me on a one-on-one basis, I'm happy to help you and craft this for your specific persuasive message when you're ready to write one.
But this template is the template that I've used for 30 some odd years. It's the template I follow today with every single email I write. Those of you who get my weekly email newsletter, you can look at this and you can see this template in it right now.
Those of you who get Nealey's weekly email newsletter, I want you to look at Nealey's weekly email newsletter. Nealey Vora is on our call today. If you're not getting his newsletter, hit me up in the chat box.
I will connect you with Nealey to make sure you get his newsletter. Nealey does a perfect job of including these elements in his weekly email newsletter. This is the structure for the perfect persuasive communication.
I also include, this is optional, but I recommend you include it, a post script. In the bottom of the email, it's a PS. In a speech, when I do a speech, I always do the Columbo, oh, by the way, the post script is the confirmation that they've made a good decision to take the first step.
If the call to action was, reach out to me for my free report on seven things you need to know about how CPAs get referrals, the post script would be, remember, when you get your copy of the free report, seven things CPAs need to know in order to get referrals, you will receive the absolutely foolproof way, easy for me to say, you will receive the absolutely foolproof way to generate more referrals with less effort and make more money. So the post script reconfirms the call to action and it reconfirms the promise that you're making in asking them to take that action. It's just confirmation that by taking that step, making that call to action compelling, it's the confirmation that they've made a good decision by taking that call to action, okay? Does anybody have any questions? Is this template or this guide, is it clear? I got a question here from Steve.
Steve Siegel asks the question, how do you shape a call to action when your audience does not want to be sold? Okay, Steve, good question. So the call to action is at the end of your message. Your call to action doesn't need to be, and in most cases, only in very narrow cases will your call to action be buy something from me.
Only people who are qualified would receive a buy call to action. Most of the time, your call to action is going to be something to convert people from suspects to prospects, okay? So for example, when I get up in front of a room full of attorneys and I'm looking to attract new clients, I don't get up there and say the first three people who sign up to pay me $50,000 to work with me one-on-one will receive a free copy of my book, right? Nobody came to my presentation looking to spend $50,000. So I would never make a sale that call to action.
What I would do if I was in front of an audience of people who didn't know me, like me, or trust me yet is I would say, for those of you who are joining me today and are interested in what you heard here, I have a way for you to continue your education. I'd like to offer you my free report, seven things you need to know about growing your law firm, but were afraid to ask. This free report is yours.
All you need to do is hand me your business card. On the way out of the room, I'll meet you at the back door, hand me your business card, and I will send you my free report. That's a call to action.
And that's a call to action I put at the end of every speech to an audience that doesn't know me, like me, and trust me. If I'm sending out a direct mail letter, at the end of the direct mail letter, the call to action would be for my free report on a topic related to the letter. Simply send me an email at this email address, and I will be happy to email you the free report.
So your call to action is designed to fit the audience. And we don't sell people before we qualify them. And I'm gonna talk to you today about what qualification really means.
So you understand what the call to action is when people are ready to be sold. But your initial communication is something that we would consider to be a shy yes opportunity. So in other words, somebody who doesn't know you, but wants to get to know you, or somebody who wants more information, that's just the gateway to developing a relationship.
We don't hit people in the mouth with a sales pitch right up front. Why? Because we're service providers, we're professionals. We're professional service providers, or we're people who require relationships in order to grow our business.
We don't sell vacuums. We don't knock on doors and say, hey, I'm Dave, I'm a consultant. You got any problems I can solve today? Nobody would go for that.
So we have to employ a multi-step process in order to convert people from prospects into clients. So that's how we focus our call to action. And Steve, I promise you, there'll be more on this as we go through in the presentation today.
We're gonna talk about finding the audience first. A lot of times when people come to me, they say, hey, listen, Dave, I think I got a message problem because I'm reaching out to people and nobody's doing what I want them to do. Most of the time, these folks don't have a message problem, they have an audience problem.
And I wanna make sure that when we're talking about the audience, I wanna make sure that you know that your selection of audience is even more important than how you craft your message. And I'm gonna give you an example. And by way of example, hopefully, I will share a reason why.
If you're looking to attract referrals, let's say you're looking to attract referrals from people who book conventions and they book conventions for an association. And you're looking to attract referrals from those people. So they've booked a convention with you, you plan their last convention, and you wanna get a referral from them for another association leader.
Your audience is very specific. It is association leaders, executive directors, who have been intimately involved in the convention planning process for their association and who've worked with you in the past. That's a very specific audience.
It's not a broad audience. And you know who these people are because you have a list of people who've worked with you in the past and they're the executive directors of the association. They're not the meeting planner for the association, they're the executive director.
It's a very specific audience. If you wanted to just go out and hit up any executive director, your message would have to be very different than the specific executive director who's worked with you in the past. Specific messages have a much better response rate.
So specific is good, everyone is bad. People come to me all the time and they say, Dave, I wanna get referrals from everybody who's a lawyer. I wanna get referrals from everybody who's a lawyer.
And I say to them, okay, well, everybody who's a lawyer isn't interested in your services, what type of services are you looking to offer? Well, I'm offering fiduciary services. All right, well, fiduciary services, you're gonna be interested in bankruptcy attorneys. So bankruptcy attorneys are the specific audience you're focusing on, not all lawyers.
And if you want to focus your fiduciary responsibilities down even more, you may wanna go specifically to bankruptcy trustees. That would make your message even more focused. So specific is good, everyone general is bad.
So focusing on the audience first, specificity is critical. So the more you can narrow down your audience, the example I gave once again was all attorneys, no, we don't want all attorneys for fiduciary services, we want bankruptcy attorneys. Is it every bankruptcy attorney? Well, no, not necessarily, it's probably going to be trustees.
So we've narrowed our audience down from all bankruptcy attorneys to trustees of bank, from all attorneys to bankruptcy attorneys to trustees. You need to do deep research. And when I say deep research, I'm not talking about Googling what do bankruptcy attorneys do, right? What do CPAs think about? What do executive directors for associations do? What do meeting planners and convention planners for associations do? No, I'm not talking about Googling and doing desk research.
I'm talking about doing deep research by talking to people. You will find what your audience does, what they like, who they know, and how you should speak to them. You'll only find this out by talking to people who you believe are your ideal audience.
You're not going to get out of connecting with people, talking to them, finding out what they're interested in, and finding out how you can be of service to them. Now, Nancy is on with us today. She's an intellectual property attorney.
I work with several intellectual property attorneys, and I will tell you that I believe that any business person needs an intellectual property attorney, but nobody thinks they need one because nobody thinks about protecting their intellectual property. So one of the ways I have my IP attorneys go out and understand how they should approach people is by talking to business people about things that are most concerning to them. So if Nancy were to strike up a conversation right now with a business person, she would find out that one of the things they're most concerned about is growing and developing revenue.
So if Nancy decides she wants to create new relationships with business people, she can easily do that by saying to them, how'd you like me to show you an additional revenue stream that's available to you and your business? Now, what business owner is not going to enter into that conversation? Every business owner is interested in a new revenue stream. So Nancy could then get into talking about how once you protect your intellectual property, you are able then to license out intellectual property to others and get paid for it, and that's a passive additional revenue stream most business owners haven't thought about. But Nancy would only have discovered that from talking to business owners and realizing that multiple streams of revenue were critically important to them.
So deep research means talking to people who are in your target audience and finding out what's valuable to them, what they want and what they need, and then structuring your message to meet those needs and to connect with them at that level. What are they thinking right now? This is where you enter, okay? So many of my clients, when they come to me, say, hey, listen, Dave, I got this great process. Every business owner can benefit from it.
I wanna go out and share this with the world. And the process probably is great, and they're probably right. Every business owner can probably benefit from it, but you know what? Nobody cares, right? And if they don't care about it, they're not gonna listen.
You're not gonna be able to make them care. You could tie them down into a chair, and they wouldn't give a crap about your great process. They wouldn't give a crap about your offering.
What you need to do is you need to enter the conversation that they're already having with themselves. You need to enter their mind where they currently are, what they're currently thinking about, and look to help them with that. And then you get to talk about what you wanna talk about.
So your first message has to be about something they care about now, something they're thinking about now. That's another reason why this deep research, having conversations with people in your target audience, is so important. How do they speak? Your language needs to mirror the language they use all the time.
Now, I talk about kitchen table language. So if they have some jargon that they use, you need to be familiar with their jargon. If they have a particular vernacular they use, and the example that I give to people all the time are police officers.
Those of you who have police officers in your family, or those of you who work with police officers, you know they have a specific way of speaking. They have specific phrases they use that are unique to people in law enforcement. I'll give you a couple of examples.
Some of the jargon they use is if you ask a police officer how long he's been a police officer, he or she will say to you, oh, I've been on the job for 15 years. That phrase on the job, here in the United States, universal and specific to police officers. They talk about the job.
They don't talk about the police force. Very few people will use the term police force. They'll say they're on the job.
If you talk to a police officer, particularly a police officer in New York, and you ask them how long they were in uniform and how long they were a detective, they will say, well, I was in the bag for 14 years. And the phrase in the bag is not indicative of the fact that they were drunk, although the police officers I know who are in my family, that could be synonymous. But in the bag refers to wearing the police uniform.
So this is language that is specific to police officers. Another phrase that you'll hear all the time from people in law enforcement is that phrase that I hate so much, it is what it is, right? When something has no explanation, you'll hear a police officer say, it is what it is, right? This is jargon, it's vernacular that's used by people in this specific industry. If you want to connect with and communicate with people who are in a specific industry, you gotta speak their language.
You have to know what the jargon is. Do not gratuitously use the jargon. Don't just throw these terms around.
But what you need to do is you need to pick up on the things that they're saying and the way they're saying them because you need to understand what they mean. And when you write to them, or when you deliver a speech to them, or when you're having a conversation with them, you need to be able to connect with them on their level. So understanding this jargon, this vernacular is critically important.
My friends who are in convention planning, like if somebody mentioned to you that the information was not included on the BEO, right? You would know exactly what they were talking about. A BEO is a banquet event order. That is the gospel when it comes to, it's essentially the contract.
It's the gospel when it comes to planning an event. So using a term like BEO, an event planner would know it. You would know it.
You would be able to communicate with them at their level. You have to know this language. You have to know the vernacular and you have to know how they speak.
Let's talk about getting inside the mind of the audience member. The first thing you need to know is who do they trust and why? So if you're looking to connect with a business owner, there's probably three people the business owners trust the most. Business owners trust their banker, they trust their lawyer and they trust their CPA.
Now, some of you are snickering, you're thinking to yourself, well, they probably only trust one of the three of those people, but most really good business owners I know will only do business with bankers, lawyers and CPAs they trust. And those people are really important to them. Understanding who those people are, knowing who those people are and making sure that you're connected with those people so that you can get inside the mind of your client, that's critically important.
So knowing who they trust and why they trust them is invaluable. What are they reading? I wanna know what trade publications my audience members read. I wanna know what things are most important to them.
What do they read and why do they read it? And then how do we get an article in that publication or how do we get profiled in that publication? And you find these things out by asking people who you're currently working with who are part of your audience. What groups do they belong to? I want you to examine those groups and then maybe when meetings come back or if they have webinars now, I want you to attend those group meetings. I want you to become a part of the audience so that you understand how they speak, what they're reading, where they go.
I want you to immerse yourself in that audience. I can't tell you how valuable it is to spend a couple of days with people who are your ideal target audience members. You will know them inside and out.
Those conversations that you have at conventions, at events or in one-on-one interviews are critically important because they reveal exactly how you're going to be able to communicate with people in these groups in the future. How can you target them? Now, Steve, who's on here today, Steve Siegel, just mentioned, in fact, both Steve, Steve Siegel and Steve Klitzner are both looking to connect with bankruptcy attorneys these days. Steve Siegel because he wants to work with folks who are in the medical profession and unfortunately are going through tough times.
Steve can help them unwind their businesses and bankruptcy attorneys are usually gonna be a call these folks would make when they're thinking of dissolving their practice. Steve Klitzner wants to meet bankruptcy attorneys because he can help bankruptcy attorneys navigate the complex world of the IRS with their clients. So they wanna target those groups, bankruptcy attorneys, in mass.
So we focus on getting a message that will resonate with bankruptcy attorneys related to the things that they're good at and hoping to help them in these areas. So our target is very narrow. It's bankruptcy attorneys, in Steve Siegel's case, bankruptcy attorneys who work with people in healthcare.
In Steve Klitzner's case, it's bankruptcy attorneys who work with either business owners, small business owners or individuals who have tax problems. So targeting is important and we have to understand how we can get in front of those people. Now, these gentlemen are fortunate in that we can get compiled lists of bankruptcy attorneys from bar associations, from groups or organizations that they belong to and we can target those folks in that way.
You need to uncover how you can target your ideal client in mass. And the way to do that is by asking people who are your current clients or evangelists in those groups where they belong, what groups they belong to and what magazines or subscriptions they have. Once you figure that out, it becomes easier for you to target these people in mass because they will be on lists.
We have two goals for our communication and this is to the question that I answered earlier. Goal number one is to sort and screen people for interest. What we're looking to do is convert suspects into prospects.
Suspects are people we suspect might be good clients for us but we have no evidence to support that suspicion. We only believe that because they belong to the same group that our best client belongs to. So we suspect these people might be good clients.
Well, our first goal is to convert suspects to prospects. Now, a prospect is somebody who raises his or her hand and says, I wanna hear more from you. So our first goal for our communication is to get people to say, yes, Dave, I wanna hear more from you.
How do we do that? I gave you the opportunity to say to your audience, here is a free report, the seven things you need to know about growing your business in difficult times. If you're interested, send me an email to my email address, dlorenzo at dlorenzo.com. I will be happy to send you that free report, seven tips to growing your business during difficult times. Now, what that does is everybody who's on the webinar where I make that offer and they send me the email, all those people go from suspects to prospects.
So I'm not trying to sell them anything. I'm looking to give them free information. In return, I want them to raise their hand and say, Dave, I want that free report because that tells me that they're interested in what I have to say.
And I would love to follow up with them. So I send them the free report and I follow up later. That's our first goal in communication.
Our second goal, once we have a group of prospects together is to qualify them. And the goal of our secondary communication is to find out number one, if they have a problem we can solve. Number two, if they have the ability to make a decision on hiring us.
And number three, if they have money, if they can afford to pay us. So to qualify them, we're looking for a problem we can solve, the ability to make a decision and money in order to pay us. For our purposes today, for the purposes of today's meeting, today's webinar, today's presentation, we're only concerned with qualifications.
We're looking to sort and screen people for interest. In our next couple of segments, we're going to talk about qualification. I'm going to give you the formula for qualifying people, for uncovering whether they have a problem that we can solve, for uncovering whether they have the ability to make a decision, for uncovering how much money they have and whether they have money to pay us.
I'm gonna show you how to do that down the road. But for today's purposes, I just want you to sort and screen people for interest, to convert them from suspects into prospects. Now the reason why and what's in it for me.
Those of you who've been communicating with people for years, those of you who are advanced in communication, those of you who have advanced communication skills, you've probably been writing newsletters, you've been writing regular letters to people. You may have even been giving speeches and writing email to folks over the years and you've done a good job and you've had some success. If you want to take your communication to the next level, these two things are critical for you.
And as I look at the attendee list here today, I don't have my client of 14 years, Pat Murphy on with us, but I know he watches the videos. So I'm gonna give him a shout out now. Pat Murphy and I have consistently over the years really honed in on reason why marketing and hitting hard on the what's in it for me.
Pat is an executive with Heartland Payment Systems. They are a payroll processing company. They also do merchant card processing.
So credit card processing and payroll processing. They're part of Global Payment Solutions. They're one of the biggest companies in the world that does what they do.
And Pat's job is to do two things. He communicates to their partners. So he communicates with bankers and CPAs on why they should affiliate with Heartland.
And he also motivates the sales team. He's a big shot, he's an executive. He motivates the entire sales team in his region over I think 1,000 people, 1,100 people, motivates them to go out and do what they do all day, every day.
So Pat's focus in communicating is always giving people a reason why they should do what he's asking them to do and helping them understand what's in it for them. And whenever Pat and I craft a communication together, whether he's delivering a speech, he does a lot of webinars, he's writing an email, or he's sending out direct mail, we always put the reason why and the what's in it for them up front. Why do we do this? People connect with you for their reasons, not yours.
This is so important. Nobody's doing business with you for your reasons. People do business with you for their reasons.
So you in doing your deep research, you in having a conversation with your clients, you will find out what their reasons for needing you and your services are. And you're going to use those reasons. Like I said, nobody cares that you went to Harvard, okay? They only care if you went to Harvard if they went to Harvard.
Nobody cares that you went to Harvard if they're stuck in jail and you're the best possible attorney. They want you because they heard from their friends that you were the best possible attorney. The fact that you went to Harvard is gonna be justification down the road for them in making the decision to hire you, but it's not gonna be the reason they want you.
The reason they want you is because they're in jail, they wanna get out, and their buddy told them that you were the best. People hire you for their reasons, not yours. The audience doesn't care what you want, okay? And this is really important, just as important as the reason why.
The people you're communicating with, they don't care what your motivation is. They're reading this article for their own motivation. And you have to write the article from that perspective.
If you want a lesson on how to write a great book, the way to write a great book is to talk to 1,000 people who you think will be your readers and then give them what they want. Because if you write the book for those 1,000 people, and then you go back to them, at least half of them will buy the book. You need to think about that when you're giving a speech.
You need to think about that when you're writing an article. The audience does not give a crap what you want. They only care about what they want.
So when you're crafting your speech, when you're crafting your article, when you're writing your book, write it from that perspective. The threshold that you have to cross in connecting with someone in a first-time communication is just being invited back, okay? So in other words, if you're sending out a weekly email newsletter and somebody's subscribed to your list, your goal with that weekly email newsletter is to get invited back into their inbox next week, okay? 99% of the people will allow you to come into their inbox next week. That means you did a good job.
So your goal is not to get knocked out, okay? Put another way, if you wanna look at it from a different perspective, if you're standing in front of a room or if you're on a webinar, delivering a webinar to a cold audience, what you wanna do is you wanna disqualify everybody who's not interested. So when you offer your honeypot, that free report, seven things you need to know about building a business in tough times, when you offer that free piece of information, what I want you to do is I want you to think to yourself, if there's 100 people in the room and 75 give me their business card, my audience is 75 people. I knocked out 25 people.
I got rid of 25 people who would never do anything with me, who would never buy from me, who would never wanna hear from me again. So the threshold is being invited back. The threshold is continuing communication with people who are interested.
That's why you cover the reason why and that's why you demonstrate to them what's in it for them. You need to be able to adapt and build your business around what people are interested in. These times that we're in now, my friends, the times that we're facing today are different than just six weeks ago.
Six weeks ago, the economy was swimming along. You could have any job you wanted if you were looking for a job. People weren't worried about dropping dead in the street.
These days today, people are concerned about their survival. They're concerned about the survival of their family members and a tertiary concern is the survival of their business. We need to adjust and you need to adapt and you need to come up with a what's in it for me, meaning what's in it for them, your client, your reader, your audience member, and a reason why for doing business with you, you need to come up with those things for these times.
If you're a real estate lawyer, like my friends at Rosenberg and Estes, and I see Dean is with us today, Dean Arfan, I say, Dean, great to see you. If you're a real estate lawyer at Rosenberg and Estes, six weeks ago, you were concerned about how you could get your real estate project done in a way that was going to allow you to make the most money possible. Now, these days, you may be concerned about just getting your real estate project done, just surviving, making your debt service, being able to pay your bank.
So your real estate lawyer six weeks ago was focused on helping you maximize your profits, helping you really make sure that you were in compliance with all of the local regulations so that you could do just enough public housing to get the best low-cost loan possible, but maximize your market rate units. These days, you're concerned about renegotiating your debt service with your banker, and your real estate lawyer has to adjust, and he has to help you renegotiate your debt service with your banker, because that's what you're concerned about today. So the reason why you're communicating with people today is different than the reason why you were communicating with them six weeks ago.
You've got to adapt and build your business around the reason why people want you today, not the reason why they wanted you six weeks ago, or even worse, and I see a lot of people doing this, the reason why they wanted you six years ago. I mean, if you were a fax machine salesman 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you could probably kill it. You could probably sell dozens and dozens of fax machines every day, and make a great living.
These days, you can't get rid of a fax machine. You can't throw a fax machine out of a car and have somebody pick it up. Nobody wants a fax machine.
So if you're building your business around fax machine sales today, you're screwed. You need to build your business around broadband access today, and access to video conferencing. You need to adapt and build your business around the what's-in-it-for-me for your current client.
This is a wake-up call for a lot of people. Don't miss this point. And that's so important that I put a bullet point in here that says, read the above again, and focus on it.
All right, we're winding up here. Got about three, four minutes left. Credibility, believability, and likability.
Let's talk about this for a minute. Credibility is specific to your audience. So I mentioned if you went to Harvard, people wouldn't be interested.
Well, people would be interested if you went to Harvard and you were a surgeon. Or like my buddy, Nealey, who's with us, if you're a really good litigator and you're up against another good litigator for a piece of business, the fact that you went to Harvard and you have a deep Ivy League network and the ability to think critically, like people who go to Harvard think, that may be something that puts you over the top. But credibility is specific to your audience.
For me, the example that I always give to people is when I stand up in front of an audience full of people and they say, what qualifies you to talk to us? I look out at the audience and I think about the experience that I've had working with people in that audience. So for people on this call today, some of you are lawyers. I have worked with over 600 lawyers in the past 12 years.
I've worked with lawyers from the Amlaw 250 all the way down to sole practitioners. And I have a list of references that's as long as my arm and can prove it. And I often will show some of those references to the audience while I'm speaking.
Or I put those references on my website. If I'm speaking to meeting planners, like my friends from Conference Direct who are on this, who are watching this, I will often talk about the 12 years that I worked in the hospitality industry and how I started my career as a bellman, schlepping bags up to people's rooms. That gives me a lot of credibility with them because that's how a lot of them started their careers.
Credibility is specific to your audience. The three things we're talking about here, credibility, believability, and likability, these are receiver-based concepts. So what you think makes you credible is not as important as what your audience will think makes you credible.
I went to Columbia University. It's an Ivy League school. I would never create an introduction to a speech that tells people that.
I would focus my credibility, if it was a hospitality audience, on how I started my career as a bellman. I would focus my credibility portion of my talk or my white paper or my email to my audience in the legal profession with how I worked with over 600 lawyers in firms from the Amlaw 250 all the way down to sole practitioners. Why? Because it's specific to the audience.
Believability. They wanna know that what you're talking about will work for them. So when we talk about getting testimonials, and I promise you I will do a webinar on testimonials, at least one, probably multiple, on getting testimonials because they're so important.
Testimonials don't necessarily enhance your credibility as well as they enhance your believability. When you hear Steve Klitzner talk about why he's worked with me for 11 years, that tells you that what I'm doing works for somebody who's a lawyer, who solves IRS problems, who's a law firm owner with six employees who he keeps employed and has kept employed for two decades. That's believability.
People believe that if it worked for Steve, it will work for them. And you need to have some sort of believability device built into your communication. Likeability.
In the short term, people don't necessarily need to like you or if it's an emergency, they don't necessarily need to like you, okay? So if you're in jail, you don't need to like your criminal defense lawyer if he's going or she's going to be able to get you out of jail on bail, if they're going to get you out of the situation that you're in. But if you're doing business with a financial advisor, you better like him because you're going to be meeting with that person once a quarter for the rest of your life and if you don't like him, he's not going to last for the long term. So short term, likability isn't as important.
It's still important. I think you need it, but it's not critical. You don't need to like your surgeon, you just need to think he's competent enough to get the operation done and not kill you.
But for the long term, somebody you're going to have a prolonged relationship with, people in our business, people need to like you. So likability in the long term is really important. We're going to talk in the next couple of segments about how you can enhance your likability, how you can help people uncover the likable parts of you.
And believe me, there's some part of you that somebody will like. I know your spouse may not tell you anymore, but there is some part of you that people will like. Promise you, we'll find it.
That was a joke, by the way. And all three of those concepts are receiver-based. So what you think gives you credibility is not as important as what the client thinks.
What you think makes you or your solution believable is not as important as what the client thinks. And likability, what makes you likable, isn't as important as what the client thinks. All three of those are receiver-based concepts.
So in our next session, here's what we're going to talk about. In our next session, we're watching this on a Thursday. Our next session, education session, is on a Tuesday.
Next Tuesday at 1 p.m. Next session, we're going to talk about who to select, why you should select them, how you should write or communicate with your audience, the style, what you should write or communicate, and when, how frequently you should write or communicate. Now, what should you do right now? What do I want you to do right now? This is your homework, folks. So you can either copy it down now or you can catch it on the replay.
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to determine, number one, who you can help. Right now, in these crappy times, who can you help? Who's your audience going to be? How can you help them, all right? How are you going to help them? What do they need? What does your audience member need right now? The person that you're targeting, what do they need? Why do they need it? Remember, the what they need, the why they need it, that's based in their world.
It's not based in your world. I don't care why you think they need it. I care why they think they need it.
Why you and why now? Why should they hire you? Of everybody else they could hire, why are they hiring you? And why do they need you right now? What's their motivation? Why do they need you right now? And then number six, what is the first step you want them to take? What is the first step you want them to take, okay? This, my friends, these six steps, this is a great checklist for any communication that you're going to write, okay? Who can you help? How can you help them? What do they need? Why do they need it? Why do they need you? And why do they need you right now? And then what's the first step you want them to take? Now, what we've done today, and I really, I need to share this with you. It took me a little bit longer. And then number seven, of course, right? Talk to them.
So when you're figuring out these first six things, the seventh point is you have to have a conversation with them in order to figure these six things out. Don't guess at this. Talk to somebody who's in the group that you're targeting.
All right, talk to a client, talk to an evangelist who's in the group that you're targeting. What we've done in this past, I guess it's taken me about 35 minutes, maybe I'm looking at the timer here, maybe 45 minutes to cover this after I figured out how to get the webinar software working. What we've done in 45 minutes is I've given you a primer on how to create persuasive communication.
But really, this is like, the information that I gave you, it takes years. It took years for me to figure this out and to master it. And people were trying to teach me this for years.
They were banging me over the head with it. I thought I knew better, and I learned the hard way. And then I did some trial and error, and then I augmented it, I fixed it up.
And what this will be, if you follow this formula, is this is your shortcut to get inside quickly, all right? This is your shortcut to connect with people quickly. If you follow this process, you'll be amazed at how fast people say they feel like they know you. I connect with people all the time who've read my weekly email newsletters.
And Nealey, who's doing weekly newsletters really well now. Fuller, who's doing weekly newsletters really well now. And Klitzner, who I think he invented the newsletter.
He's been doing print newsletters forever and email for the last few years. Those folks, they'll tell them when people meet them that they say, I feel like I know you. People say that to me all the time.
I've never met you, but I feel like I know you. And the reason is because of these six things, well, the seven too, the seven things. They feel like I know them because I'm inside their head.
And if you master these six things, and you talk to people, and you figure these six things out because you've talked to them, you'll be able to write as if you've been inside the mind of your audience. You'll be able to speak if you wanna deliver presentations as if you're inside the mind of your audience. You'll be able to write letters as if you're inside the mind of your audience.
And there's nothing more powerful than that. Years ago, when I did stand-up, I refer to it all the time because it was so much fun. I was able to get up and do stand-up and take a beating like nobody else because I had been practicing this, this exact process for years and doing it for marketing communications purposes.
Well, stand-up comedy is the same thing. You just get inside people's heads and figure out what makes them laugh. Well, when you're doing persuasive communications, when you're doing marketing communications, you're getting inside people's head and figuring out what they want and helping them get it.
That's all you're doing. Selling or marketing is solving people's problems for money. This communication style is helping them understand that you're here for them and you're available to solve their problems for them.
That's all you're doing here. So take some time, watch this video again. Any of you have any questions, email me at dlorenzo, at dlorenzo.com. That's D-L-O-R-E-N-Z-O at dlorenzo.com. You can call the hotline, otherwise known as my cell phone, 786-436-1986.
I am really glad to have you guys with me. Doing these webinars has been, the last week and preparing for this one today has really made me feel good about myself in some crappy times. So thank you for allowing me to come into your home, come into your computer, come into your office, wherever you are.
I hope you join us tomorrow for happy hour, four o'clock tomorrow, Friday, April 3rd, coronavirus time. I look forward to seeing you guys all there, having a drink with you and laughing and goofing around. Thanks for joining me today.
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you.