Cynthia A. McCollough

Guest post from Cynthia McCollough, Digital Marketing Strategist, University of Michigan Law School

Cyndy is senior-level marketing consultant with extensive experience at law firms and global technology organizations. Her achievements are primarily focused on implementing and managing strategic marketing environments that improve efficiencies, measure results, and drive new business. You can follow Cyndy on Twitter, where she tweets on the intersection of law and technology.


Learn how to deliver a persuasive pitch that will help get your project off the ground. Twitter #G019

ILTA Con Pitch Perfect Panel

First off, I LOVED the format of this session – 5 panelists acted as a Shark Tank review board for three different pitches. The pitches included improving conference room technology, bringing on project management as a service (PMaaS), and adding a new document composition tool to Word.

The feedback could be applied to any pitch for any product or service, and is a great reminder about how to tell your story to achieve your goals:

  • Start off with a point of view / high level narrative. What is it you are asking? This sets the stage for the pitch. Don’t go right into the weeds.
  • Be clear about the pain points and problems you are trying to fix. Quantify this information whenever possible. What is at stake if this project isn’t done?
  • Keep your audience in mind. If they all lawyers, they might not understand terms like “uplift” and acronyms like GDPR.
  • Use visuals whenever possible. If you have slides full of text bullets, your audience will be distracted reading your content and not listening to you.
  • Paint a picture that conveys what the roll-out will look like, should you get approval on the project.
  • If it makes sense, include a (brief!) demo of the product. This makes it real, and people can imagine themselves using it.
  • Show your passion about your project! People love enthusiasm and it can be infectious.
  • Be concise, don’t waste my time with redundant points.
  • Anticipate the push-back you might get and address it proactively.

From the Editor: I’m not at ILTACon this week (#ILTACON18 and #ILTACON2018), but I have some friends and colleagues who are. I have an open invite to ITLACON attendees to guest blog for us and let us know what we’re missing. Send me a DM on Twitter @heather_morse.