Top 7 Ways to Succeed in the Business of Speaking
by Sandra Schrift
Published on this site: June 1st, 2004
How attractive are you as a speaker? No, your looks, but your
consistent ability to provide a quality presentation, attract clients,
and be irresistibly attractive to meeting planners and speaker bureaus?
Below are some useful tips that I learned while owning a national,
professional speakers bureau for 13 years.
- Presentation - do you have something interesting, inspiring,
and useful to share with audiences? Be mindful of your voice (keep
it deep and low pitched), your personality and attitude (positive),
your tone (soft, loud.
Encouraging as needed), your style, your vocabulary.
- Connection - how quickly do you get to the core of your
audience's problems and challenges? Skip what is between their
ears and go straight to their hearts.
- Passion - do you love what you do? Develop a niche or
specialty that you truly enjoy . and are good at.
- Network - enhance your speaking career by networking
with 50 or more other speakers. They become your referral sources.
Join the National Speakers Association - a 4,000 member organization
that holds conferences and has local chapters to help you with
your marketing skills and networking. Call 480-968-2552 (Arizona)
- Products - write a book, booklet(s), create audio tapes,
video tapes, CD/ROM. Having products will catapult your speaking
career and make you more valuable to your clients. This "passive"
income is like having frosting on the cake.
- Value added - become known as a value added speaker.
Provide handouts, attend the cocktail reception before your program,
stay after your speech, offer follow-up teleclasses, offer your
consulting services, be a facilitator.
- Hire a Coach - The Olympic Games remind us that a world-class
athlete is surrounded by a number of people whose function is
to keep him/her on track. No serious athlete or professional speaker
would expect to progress very far without a COACH.
Sandra Schrift 13 year speaker bureau owner and now career
coach to emerging and veteran public speakers who want to "grow"
a profitable speaking business. I also work with business professionals
and organizations who want to master their presentations.
To find out HOW TO MAKE IT AS A PROFESSIONAL SPEAKER, go to http://www.SpeakersUniversity.com
Join my free bi-weekly Monday Morning Mindfulness ezine http://www.schrift.com/monday.htm.
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