Your clients believe that a highly skilled professional person such as yourself, who holds an esteemed position as a representative of our legal system, is highly educated and possesses aptitude.

Your clients assume a person such as yourself, can move majorities with a whisper, and the snap of a finger. What this means, is they expect you to have ‘Influence’, and what this should mean to you personally and professionally, is that you should want to be an ‘Influential Communicator’.

Have you ever wondered why some people are so persuasive, and how it is that they can influence otherwise reasonable people, to agree to and accept services that are below par or of lesser quality, when there are other great service providers out there? Without a doubt, some people are very good at influencing others when it comes to getting them to agree to what they tell them or suggest they do.

As Guy Kawasake, former chief at Apple pointed out, “If such a person does not have a deep relationship with people, he or she will not have much influence with them”.

Influencing others does not come from outsmarting a person. It is a matter of discerning what your client truly wants, and then offering it to them in a mutually beneficial package. Being ‘Influential’, has very little to do with having any formally acknowledged education or experience as such. To be a truly ‘Influential’ person, you must have a shrewd and spontaneous ability to read beneath the surface of an interaction. In other words you must have the ‘sensory acuity’ to know ‘what is, or is not being said’ through all the other key indicators you are most likely not reading from your client, your mediator, your judge, your opponent and others. If you learn these powerful skills……… then the benefits to you will be:

• you’ll earn more money
• because you’ll know how to be persuasive and influential, which will
• make people take notice of you, and
• this means you’ll become highly respected, regarded and sought after
• because you’ll have the skills other’s in your profession lack

Commit to improving your skill set, so you can move to the next level. Challenge your old ways of thinking about negotiating, selling your services, and what the art of influencing others could mean to you and your long term success as a Lawyer and as a Legal Firm.