There is one thing I have been saying for years, and I firmly believe it will always be true:
“There is no better form of marketing than a great speech!”
With all of the noise in social media and marketing, having prospects see you live, or hear from others how great you are, has always been the best way to book more business.
I have several clients on the circuit who do some marketing, but their primary form of getting business is what I would call “be good marketing.” They kick butt and take names in nearly every performance.
Being good is one strategy, but during your presentation, you have an opportunity to plant seeds in the minds of your audience so that they will think of you for other business.
Here are two examples of how you can plant seeds to get more business in your presentation.
Seed Planting Scenario #1: Share Who You Serve and What Problems You Solve
Let’s imagine you are doing a free presentation. Try starting the presentation by telling a story that starts with “A large ABC type company hired me to help them solve their XYZ problem.”
The seed you are planting in this situation is that you get PAID to speak! The goal when doing free presentations is to turn those into paid spin-off engagements.
PLEASE NOTE: If you are not getting two or three spin-offs from each engagement, you need to revisit your presentation. Keep working on it until you are sure that it is working to get you those additional gigs.
Seed Planting Scenario #2: Share What You Offer
If you offer other services beyond speaking (such as coaching, books, training,etc.), you have another prime seed planting opportunity: Mention your products during your speech. If you are a coach, you might share a story about a coaching client, tee’ing it up the same way; “Last year, one of my coaching clients named Jeffry was struggling with ……”, and on you go into the story.
You must remember, however, that the key to this working is that it must always lead back to your point. If it does not, you are just taking your audience down a rabbit hole that they will not appreciate.
Between planting seeds and the “Power of the Ask“, each piece of business you land should be leading to more business. Every time you step onto a stage, you should be gaining clients in at least one of your other streams of business, whether it be consulting, coaching, webinars, online courses, live events or others.
Now, let me be clear: I am not suggesting your 60-minutes on stage should be a commercial. It should be just subtle seed planting that will allow people to understand the full scope of your services and the many different ways you can help them.
See you soon Wealthy Speakers!
PS: If you haven’t placed your vote for the 2017 Best Speaker Website, do it now! Voting ends on 5/31/17!
