You’ll Never Know if You Don’t Ask at Your Next Conference

Apr 24

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 21th edition of Short & Sweet, a weekly newsletter where I provide brief tips for attorneys to build their brand and book of business, on and off of LinkedIn. Read until the end to see my LinkedIn tip of the week.

If you’re attending a conference and you talk about everything other than business - you're missing a huge opportunity.

You've traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to attend this conference. You've invested thousands of dollars to register, travel, stay, eat, and look good - and you’ve lost a week’s worth of billable hours.

You have too much at stake not to make the ask while you’re there. I understand. Lawyers hate being salesy, but if you never ask, especially when you’re in-person, you’ll never know. The biggest risks reap the biggest rewards.

In this case, the reward is the crucial return on your investment in the conference.

Making the ask means getting to the bottom of people’s pain points and their business needs, and capitalizing on information you learn.

Here’s how you can structure a conference meeting in order to accomplish this:

1. Start the meeting off conversationally by asking questions that go beyond "how is your meeting going," "where are you staying," "when did you get here," and "when do you leave?"

You could ask instead:

"Do you have any travel plans after this conference?”
"What do you look forward to doing the most while you're here?"
"Have you gone outside your comfort zone with a restaurant or other activity here?”
“What is your favorite place to travel?”
“What keeps you busy outside of work?”
"What's an experience you've had recently that shifted your perspective about something?"
“What’s something people would be surprised to learn about you?”

2. These conversation starters should flow into a deeper conversation, which is fine for the first several minutes of the meeting.

3. Then get curious and ask the more challenging questions. For an IP attorney attending an international conference like INTA, these questions could be the following:

“What trends are you seeing in your practice?”
"What are your business needs in my jurisdiction?"
"How much business do you tend to have here?"
"Who have you been using for your legal work here so far?"
"Are you happy with their services?"
“What are your top expectations of local counsel?”

4. These questions should allow you the opportunity to talk about your services and how they stand out from your competitors. It also allows you to target your message to their needs.

5. You can also then ask: "Is there a reason why you haven't tried our firm yet (or are sending us less work)?" This will open the door to feedback you can use to address their concerns.
6. Then make sure to leave the meeting with something like

“Next time you have such-and-such a matter in my jurisdiction, I’d love for you to send it my way.”
“When are you available for a follow-up Zoom call after the conference?”
“Do you have anything pending in my jurisdiction now? Can I help you with it?”

If you’re not comfortable making the ask, practice before you go by yourself or in other potential client meetings. Be intentional about doing it in every conversation you have at the conference. By the end of the week, it will feel natural.

I work on teaching these strategies, and focusing them on my clients’ target audiences and strengths in coaching sessions. If you want to be super prepared for your next conference, schedule a free initial consultation with me:

Schedule a Call

Warmest Regards and see you next week,

Jamie

LinkedIn Tip of The Week:

It appears that LinkedIn is transitioning away from hashtags. You can no longer search for the follower count for a hashtag or follow a hashtag. When you type a hashtag into a post, it no longer automatically populates known hashtags. Given this development, it is still useful to use them to categorize your posts if people do a search for your hashtag, but likely will not give your post much more visibility in the algorithm.

P.S. You can work with me in the following ways: