Posts Tagged ‘Professional Speakers’

Gaining Your Clients’ Confidence

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

As a professional speaker or executive coach, there are things to keep in mind as you develop your promotional material.

Don’t use it to give tons of information or lists of all your credentials. You first have to catch your prospect’s attention with a catchy title.

Your speech or course title and positioning statement need to appeal to the emotional part of your prospect’s brain. That’s the beginning, that’s the attraction process.

Ideally your title should activate the limbic part of your prospect’s brain and evoke a positive emotional response.

Your promo material is a kind of invitation that needs to have great copy and great graphics and a very compelling promise.

All you want at this point is for your buyer to be inclined to buy, to lean toward. Now it’s yours to lose and hopefully you have enough strong content not to lose it.

Use words that make the person reading feel more attractive, stronger, more powerful rather than using words that rob energy or that are patronizing in any way.

And if you try to get too serious, you’ll simply put your reader to sleep.

Don’t you yourself get a immediate physical reaction to certain words and images? Pay more attention to this response in the next week and see what book or movie titles make you want to know more.

There are some words that energize while others rob your energy.

Great words give you goosebumps!

How does your material stand up to scrutiny? Does it evoke a physical and emotional response in you? If not, you’d better rethink it.

Once you’re sure that your material appeals to your buyer’s emotional centre, much of your work is done. This simple action means thousands of dollars in returns to you over the years and puts you way ahead of many of your competitors. Most people simply don’t bother.

Now that you’ve touched the emotional centre of your buyer’s brain, remember that this is the most vulnerable part of the brain and where the fight and flight centre resides. The initial attraction part of the brain (much like love at first sight) is totally irrational and your client will be prepared to run in case this turns out to be a scam.

Another name for this is buyer’s remorse.

That’s where you need to provide solid evidence (testimonials, detailed descriptions, desired outcomes, credentials) to back up your invitation. That’s when you need to make that follow up phone call and perhaps a reference from someone the buyer trusts. That’s where you may need to provide solid value to the buyer before you’re hired.

You yourself go through this same process. It’s really worthwhile to take the time to closely analyze your material before getting it out there.

In a tricky economy, the weak have already dropped out of the picture. That leaves it wide open to you!

If you’d like to find out more about professional speakers #1, then read about Cathleen’s consulting services.

Surviving As A Public Speaker, Now That Public Speaking Is Dead

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

In a report I just published, I discussed my view of the last 2 years of the public speaking business. The report is called “Public Speaking (*as you know it) Is Dead!”

If you would like a free copy of the report, you’ll find a link to it in the resource box at the end of this article

This report contains my opinions, but the facts support and top speakers agree with what I have concluded.

I recently received a comment from well-known speaker and author, Jim Cathart, CPAE and Past President of the National Speakers Association, who said this: “Scott Dennison has nailed it. The problem in our business is that it’s not there anymore. The needs are still there and our skills are still valuable, but the ways in which people buy our services has permanently moved. It’s time to go where the buying is happening.”

So what is this all about and if the old way of doing things in the speaking business is dead - what can you, as a public speaker do to survive? Here are my top three tips for public speaking success in 2010 and beyond.

1) Since we’ve moved from a time when speakers delivered their message in meetings and conventions and commanded high fees to do so, to one where meetings that require a speaker are reduced, we all have to respect and adapt to the new rules.

Even though meetings and conventions are less plentiful the audiences you served are still hungry for information on your topic and want to gain access to your knowledge, so be sure to provide it to them. The new rules state that you must move beyond thinking like a speaker and instead think like a publisher of content and information.

2) Understand what your audience members loved about your information, seek out those who are passionate about your topic and build relationships with them.

With the power of the Internet, your audience does not consist only of those who could or would travel to the meeting where you were speaking, but to individuals all over the world. If you can fill a need in someone’s life with your information (content), it does not matter where they live provided they are connected to the world wide web.

Provide content for your users in multi-media formats for them to consume. When you offer your information in video, audio and text based formats you meet the needs of everyone and do it in a way that allows them access in the learning style which they most prefer.

It is not uncommon to see a presentation that was recorded in video, later made available as an audio CD, as a book, offered in a series of articles or blog posts and many other forms of distribution. While that may seem like a lot of work it’s actually quite easy and very profitable to do so.

Forget about thinking that tens of thousands of fans are needed for speakers to make an outstanding living. These days if you have just 1000 people who you’ve built a strong relationships with, and who want to learn from you, that they invest only $100 per month, you’ll immediately decide that THERE IS life after the old model of public speaking has died.

Speaker’s marketing whiz, Scott A. Dennison is discussing the future of the public speaking business and offering you his FREE report Public Speaking (*as you know it) IS DEAD along with his top ten free Public Speaking Tips when you visit his site.