|
The National Speakers Association is
not only the voice of organized professional speaking, it is
also the educational force that drives forward the careers of
new professional speakers. But how do you get "there?"
How do you get started or re-started?
Don't even think about launching a speaking
career without having at a minimum…
1. A well-defined topic. It means nothing to want to talk to people
"and really motivate 'em." You genuinely have to have
something to say--a clear message of value to others which they
will pay you to talk about. And more than a message, it must
be obvious that you solve a problem the client has. Compare:
"I talk about sales" vs. "I help tap
into new markets for companies stuck on old plateaus."
Optimally, you could use 2-3 well-defined topics on one subject
(three facets of one stone) because shows you have depth.
2. A target population. If you plan to get out there and Speak to People
("all the world is my audience. Anyone can benefit from
what I have to say!"), you probably won't get any audience
anywhere. What does your targeted group have in common?
An industry? A skill? A life condition? A certain challenge?
What makes them unique as a group that puts them in common with
you? You can't just go somewhere; you have to go somewhere!
3. A twenty-minute Rotary talk. At the drop of a hat, you need to be able to
stand up and deliver a dynamic 20 minute talk on your topic,
stay focused, with a meaningful and interesting message. If you
can't make a point in 20 minutes, you don't have a point. To
develop your speaking skills, you need a live audience. The country
is full of civic organizations like Rotary, Kiwanis, Chambers
of Commerce that meet one to four times a month and will give
a speaker-with-a-message 20 minutes. For this you get something
more valuable than a small honorarium and a paper weight: experience
with a live audience on your topic. Be real with these audiences,
and be on top of your game.
4. A 25 word "elevator speech."
That's a brief and interesting
way to tell people what you do and why it is valuable. For example,
"have you ever been treated rudely by a sales clerk who
made you feel like a huge inconvenience to the store? I teach
them how not to do that." Ok, that's 29 words, but you
get the point.
5. A speaker's one-sheet. In the space of one sheet of paper (front only,
or front and back), you introduce yourself, your topic area,
what you can do, who has hired you before, give evidence that
you are good, and how to contact you. Think of this as a big
business card with a mission since the purpose is to get a decision
from people as to whether you fit into their plans.
6. If you don't have a full color
speaker's brochure, at least you need an interesting, professional
quality tri-fold brochure. And
don't fill it with 600 words in small type. It should briefly
explain who you are, what you do, how to get in contact with
you and make it interesting enough to get them from the cover
to the contact information.
7. A list of five to twenty people
from different companies who can vouch for you. "Yes," they say, "I know [speaker]
and have seen him speak. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat."
In addition to giving these names out with their permission,
you should also call them periodically to ask for referrals.
But if you have twenty of these names, don't give the same names
out to everyone. Rotate them so your cheerleaders don't get overwhelmed.
8. A contact list with at least 200
people. Each of the 200 people
should be in a position to hire you, or recommend you to someone
who can hire you. It is best if the 200 already believe in you
and love you even when you are wrong. Start by calling these
200 yourself. But inevitably, you will have to call someone who
doesn't know you yet.
9. A telephone booking script. Can you give someone five reasons to have you
speak? Five sample benefits from hiring you? Do you have five
different ways to ask for a decision? You shouldn't run out of
scripts before they run out of indecision! Write out these scripts
and keep them handy by your phone.
10. A determined fee. There is nothing wrong with going with the
flow, negotiating a deal, working within their budget, etc. But
if you don't have a specific fee in mind--your estimated value
for what you do and not a figure you pulled out of the clouds--you
will always be at the whims of "gee, we don't have much
of a budget for speakers (although we have $30,000 to spend on
convention luncheons, hors d'oeuvres, coffee breaks and the open
bar on the first night of the convention.") Your determined
fee (your sense of your value) is the starting point from which
you are free to subtract if you need to, or add to if they want
more services from you.
11. Get on your feet! Being inspired by watching Tiger Woods compete
would not make me a good golfer--inspired or not. Professional
athletes--all of them gifted to begin with--have spent their
lives practicing 6-8-10 hours a day. Those who want to
compete professionally have to walk in ready to perform at the
same level of other gifted athletes who already have those
years of experience. Certainly the same is true for professional
speaking ... as well as musicians, comedians and writers. This
isn't like giving-birth-makes-you-a-mother. Professional experience
on your feet in front of an audience makes real
difference in your platform skills. Working with an effective
coach accelerates your experience. (More on that in a moment.)
12. Money in the bank and a clean
credit card. Like other fields
(music comes to mind), professional speaking has no true overnight
successes. But there are many overnight successes who took five
to seven years to be discovered. You are going to have some negative
cash flow--sooner, rather than later--so don't hobble yourself
by starting out in debt and quickly making it worse. Credit
card interest is the angel of death.
13. You need a real e-mail address. You have to be able to get information quickly
to and from others. Not having an e-mail address identifies you
with old school, old technology. The computer revolution isn't
going to go away even if you choose not to participate. (More
on that when we discuss web sites.)
14. You need a membership in the
National Speakers Association.
If you are going to do something for a living, why not belong
to the association of people who do that for a living? NSA's
heavy focus on professional education shaves years off your learning
curve regardless of your level of experience and gives you access
to important discussion of issues you won't see addressed anywhere
else.
Very quickly after all the things
you have to have first, there are other things you must have
soon thereafter. Many speakers - smart, experienced people who
know what they are talking about - will tell you this second
list is so important that it should be part of the first list.
15. A Marketing Plan. How are you going to go about this? What are
you best at? If you could pick your topic, audience, location,
event and fee/value, what would it be? What is the venue and
circumstance under which you shine best? Then, do what you can
to make that happen. Who will you call? How can you generate
the most referrals? Are there other income streams open to you
(consulting, product sales)? What is your time table?
16. A written budget keeps you from
planning out of your checkbook.
Are you making a profit? "Gee, I dunno; let me see if
there is money in the account." How much cash do you
have now? Where will the new money come from and when will you
have it to re-invest into your business? If you took your marketing
plan and your budget to your banker, is it solid enough that
your bank would make you a business loan based on it? If not
why should you invest your own money in your business?
17. A professionally designed brochure. This is not a good place to skimp. You need
color, layout, graphic design, tight copy writing and balance.
You need it to look better than you could ever do yourself. You
can accept speaking fees that are less than the quality of your
brochure, but you never get offered any fees higher than the
quality of your brochure.
18. A 4-8 minute demonstration video. You don't have to spend $8,000 to $10,000 on
it, although you could. But don't spend less than $500, and don't
even flinch until you cross the $2,000 mark. Your demo video
has to have television network broadcast quality, and you have
to look worth it. If your great video is of you on an off day,
it will clearly show people why they should not hire you. Ask
to see other speaker's videos, and ask your video producer to
show you other examples of what they have done. To get more variety,
go to the video producer and sit there with a stack of samples
and their equipment.
19. You need a professional web site
on a registered domain. If your
web site address is http://geocities.com/Tropicana/3578/b/southbeach/home/brittany/index.html
it looks like you aren't really in business. And with that many
keystrokes, even some of the most determined visitors will get
lost. Frankly (I will be criticized on this one), if your e-mail
address is terry@aol.com, you don't have an edge over
a high school freshman known as terri@aol.com Even if
you can't afford to flesh it out yet, spend the $70 (for two
years) to register www.terry.com which will come with
your own e-mail address, terry@terry.com Register your
domain before someone else named Terry gets theirs first - if
he/she has not already beat you to it. (Another Steve Stewart
beat me by two weeks to registering my name. Now until I'm very
old and retired, I will have to explain the hyphen in my name
whenever I give out my www.steve-stewart.com address.)
20. You need a contact management
software program. Contact managers
literally manage your contact with people. Many of our losses
come not from poor speaking but from poor marketing; good contacts
slip through the cracks so that we fail to follow up, or follow
up too late or too ineffectively. With contact management software
(ACT!, Goldmine, etc.), if you are suppose to call, write, e-mail
or see your prospects, it will happen or your computer will keep
prompting you until you do your job--or tell the computer to
stop telling you to do your job.
21. You need more than a twenty-minute
Rotary talk. All on one central
topic area, now you need a quality 45-60 minute centerpiece keynote,
plus several 3 hour seminars. It would be great for you to be
able to lead a 2-3 day retreat. Maybe a 1-4 hour workshop you
can offer to follow up on your keynote (in the keynote, you show
them why; in the workshop you show them how). If you are an expert,
have your expertise ready to deliver in multiple ways.
22. You need a coach. Michael Jordan - probably the best to ever play
the game of basketball, had a coach. Stefi Graf--no slouch on
the tennis court--has a coach. Actors making $20 million per
movie make those movies under a director. Bill Clinton's biggest
critics acknowledge that he has extraordinary political skills;
but even he has a coach (Vernon Jordan). So what makes you think
having a speaking coach is unnecessary? There are several ways
to get one. Hire one listed in the NSA directory. Ask the best
speakers in the business who coached them (they will tell you).
Or get a "collective coach"--a group of accomplished
speakers who give each other genuine, candid critiques of their
performance and guidance on how to improve. Invite seasoned pros
to watch you speak. But do not count on riding along without
seasoned input.
23. You need at least two dedicated
phone lines for your business.
One is for your incoming and outgoing business calls so you don't
have the kids answering your phone, or your teenager tying up
the line, or sounds of dinner preparation in the background.
The second is for your fax machine. Yes, you do need a dedicated
fax line so that just like General Motors and Johnson & Johnson,
faxes get straight in without having to call you back, deal with
phone trees or wait for you to get off the call you are talking
to right now. This is a business; do your best to look like one.
If your Internet service provider offers fast DSL connection
accounts (AOL does not/cannot), you can run the connection over
one of your existing phone lines without ever tying up the line;
you use it while you talk or fax without any conflict.
24. Have a current picture of yourself.
Heck, have a half dozen or more,
but they have to look like you do today rather than when your
hair was darker, lighter, longer or when you just had more of
it. Women who change hairstyles and hair color have to struggle
with this more than men, but everyone has to stay current or
your photo on the event flyer won't look like the speaker on
the platform. "Who's that guy? Did he send his father to
take his place?"
25. Finally, you need the ability
to generate at least $100,000 a year in speaking fees, consulting
fees, training fees and net product sales. That
is because from the $100,000 you will spend $35,000 on marketing,
promotion and bureau fees; $10,000 on office support (even with
a home office); $10,000 in staff support (in-house or out-sourced,
you need administration, accounting, etc.). These figures presume
that your clients cover any travel expenses you need. Clearly,
you aren't going to generate $100,000 a year while doing work
valued at $10 to $20 per hour, so delegate the small stuff and
focus yourself on the big issues. Don't forget to figure in $5,000
on miscellaneous expenses or you won't have it when those creep
up … and they will. This will leave you with $40,000 from
which you pay your own health insurance, car payments, house
payments, groceries, living expenses and the $12,000+/- absorbed
by federal, state and self-employment taxes on your net income.
From $100,000, you are left with maybe $450/month; go paint the
town red and send everyone vacation postcards from Paris (or
is that Perris, TX?). But don't forgot about making a profit
with your business and planning for your retirement. If you don't
plan for retirement income, you can never retire.
How do we know this is how it works?
Experience, experience, experience.
© Steve Stewart, 2007 |
