How Public Speaking Can Help You Dramatically Increase Your Business
There's an often-quoted statistic that the fear of
public speaking is right up there with the fear of death as the two events
people most fear in their lives. However, as a business owner, I can guarantee
you that public speaking is a phenomenal way to grow your business, so if it's
an activity that scares you, you need to take the bull by the horns and start
working past that fear. As an introvert, public speaking isn't something that
comes naturally to me, although I'm told I'm good at it. It's been quite a
learning process, and I've had as many failures as successes. My best learning
experiences have come through the process of finding the courage to just do it
and learn along the way.
If you're a self-employed service professional, you work in a time-based
economy. You have only so many hours in the day to work directly with your
clients. Speaking to groups gives you the opportunity to reach out and touch
and impact others who might otherwise never cross your path and for you to get
them into your marketing funnel so that they can begin to get to know, like and
respect you. Once they're in your marketing funnel, and if you provide a
solution that solves a problem that they have, they'll ultimately hire you.
Here are ten steps I recommend to get you into action to use public speaking to
fill your professional practice:
1. Pick 3 topics on which you can present a 20 minute - 60 minute speech.
These should be topics on which you love to speak and will readily showcase your
expertise to your audience. The topics also need to be ones that speak to your
target market's pain and provides a solution for a problem that they're having.
If you want to purchase some ready-made presentations, or have some you'd like
to sell, check out
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2. For each presentation, write a 2 - 3 sentence description of that
provides a brief overview of your content. To add some meat to the
description, create a benefits statement for each presentation and what they'll
learn or get out of your talk. Remember, your audience will always be asking
the same question, "WIIFM", or "What's In It For Me?", so make your description
so compelling that they think, "Hey, I've got to hear that!"
3. Have a professional photo made, and create a 3-6 sentence introductory
bio of yourself. Many bios sound the same and are pretty boring, so on
my website, I decided to tell something of a story about myself to make my bio a
bit different,
http://www.onlinebizcoachingcompany.com/aboutdonna.htm. Let your personality
shine in your bio.
4. With your topics, bio, and photo in hand, you can now put together in
MS Word a simple speaker one-sheet that tells a prospective association program
chair everything s/he would need to know about you. If you have a list
of audiences to whom you've spoken previously, you will want to list some of
those under the heading "Satisfied Clients", and spread 2 - 3 testimonials from
other speaking gigs throughout the sheet. In order to get ideas for layouts of
the one sheet, visit the National Speakers Association,
www.nsapseaker.org,
and view the speaker one sheets of other speakers to jumpstart your creativity.
5. Create a speaking link on your website and have the presentations
you've outlined available on your site, as well as your speaker one sheet, and a
separate link with your photo and bio. Many association program chairs
will want to "check you out" online, even though you're offering to speak to
them free of charge, so give them the opportunity to read all about your
speaking topics on your website.
6. Now you need to find audiences filled with your target market.
To start locally, approach the program chairs of professional associations to
which you already belong and see if you can get on their speaking schedule.
Your local library or Chamber of Commerce may have a current list of
professional associations in your area which you can also approach. Other
sources for finding speaking gigs include the American Society of Association
Executives,
http://www.asaenet.org. On the website, click Directories on the left hand
links column, and then Associations, and then select Gateway to Associations.
Once you're in the Gateway, you can look up associations by keyword or by
location. A second place to locate associations is Gale's Encyclopedia of
Associations. This multi-volume encyclopedia is present in the reference
section of all major libraries.
7. You (or your Virtual Assistant) will then need to call these
associations and get the name and contact info of the program chair.
Some program chairs will want to talk to you right away regarding your speaking
topics, so be prepared to have that conversation on the fly. Being able to send
them to your website to read more about the topics is also helpful. Others will
want you to send information, so you'll need to draft an introductory letter
that you can snail mail or email along with your speaker one-sheet.
8. Once you've got a speaking engagement, ask the program chair some
questions about the audience so that you can better tailor the speech to fit
their needs. I learn best through hearing stories, so as I'm asking
questions about the audience, I'm going through my own list of illustrative
stories I've told to see which ones might best match my audience's needs.
Remember that your audience wants a full experience of you as well as the
information that you're providing, so be sure and inject alot of your
personality and wit and humor into your speech.
9. Before your speech, determine how you want to get audience members
into your marketing funnel. Do you want them to sign up for a
complimentary consultation on the spot? If so, bring your calendar or a sign-up
sheet. Do you want to get them on your mailing list? Give away something at
the end of your presentation that is compelling enough for them to part with a
business card or to write down their contact info to enter the drawing. If your
goal is to get them on your email newsletter list, be sure and get their email
address. If you use direct mail, you'll want to get their physical mailing
address.
10. The day of your presentation, just relax and have fun! This
may be the hardest of any of the steps outlined here, but being authentic and
being yourself will get you in the good graces of most of your audience, despite
what you might say (or forget to say!). Think of your presentation as the
beginning of a great relationship that you're establishing, and leave your
audience feeling good about themselves and about you.
Try and book 2-3 speaking engagements per month, and soon you'll become the
"go-to" expert in your industry!
(c) 2009 Donna Gunter
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Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals create prosperous
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