Trial Attorneys are Salespeople

Recently, one of my customers told me about his best friend who is a successful trial attorney. He only tries a few seven figure cases a year. He is an expert in a very niche area of litigation.

My customer asked him, “Do you use emotion or facts to persuade a jury?” The attorney answered, “It depends on the jury.”

This statement reminded me of the fact that he is selling his case to the jury. If you are selling a product, service or idea; you are also in the same position as this trial attorney.

The question remains, “Are you using emotion or facts to sell your prospect?”

My answer will always be that it depends on the customer, not on your perspective. Regardless of how emotional and confident you are about your product, if your prospect’s personality requires facts to make a decision it will be in your best interest to provide those facts. The same goes for emotion.

Frankly, the best presentation will have a combination of both of these ingredients as long as you remember to incorporate solutions pertaining to the prospects specific needs and personality.

There is a school of thought in selling that says that people buy on emotion and justify the purchase logically. This is true of almost every ad we see on TV. They are playing to our emotions and many times it works. However, some of you are dealing with companies who have budgets and approval processes involving multiple decision makers.

Your greatest success will come from presenting to the entire group of decision makers at once. Many times this is difficult to accomplish so you must arm the person in front of you with the tools to further the decision process. In this scenario, this person must have facts that support spending the money with you. Justifying the purchase because he thinks your product is cool and sexy will most likely end poorly for you.

Emotions and facts, you need both to be successful.

Have a great week!

Pierce