How To Crush Your 2024 Sales With Public Speaking

Public speaking will do wonders for your business. There is no other prospecting channel that will take a cold prospect who doesn't know who you are and turn them into a hot one. As fast as public speaking, people can literally walk in the room not knowing who you are. And by the time they walk out, 30, 45, 60 minutes later, they need to talk to you, they need to set up a meeting with you. They are sitting there going, we need to talk to her, we need to talk to him. Nothing else can do that. Why don't more people leverage public speaking? Very simple. Number one, you're afraid. People fear speaking. It's been said people fear speaking more than death itself, and it's true. But here's some other reasons why I think people are afraid to take the stage. Number one, when you know that you've got to speak in front of a room full of people, especially people who may not know who you are, heck, this actually might be more of a concern if it's people, you know, imposter syndrome is going to set in right away. That fear of will they discover, I actually don't know as much as I think I do. Is is one thing that keeps so many people from public speaking. The other, fear or hesitation is I don't know what I'm going to talk about. If I were on stage, what the heck would I want to talk about? Public speaking is one of the quickest paths to cash. Public speaking has done wonders for my business. It has allowed me to open doors whether I was a health insurance advisor or an insurance coach. Today it's helped me open doors to opportunities that I did not think were possible. Q1 2017, I had one of my first real shots. Big chances to take the stage and open some very, very high quality doors. And I can remember this conference like it was yesterday. It was a benefits conference. It requires you to fill out an rfp. And truth be told, I didn't really do that much research on the conference. I just saw that it was a benefits conference in Denver. I wanted to speak, so I put my name in the ring and lo and behold, I got picked. So on a cold winter January morning, I drove down to Denver, south side of Denver. I get to the event and I am ushered into a breakout room which, where where I'll be speaking. And I can remember putting my stuff together, setting up my PowerPoint, and as people started to come in the room to take a seat, I started introducing myself. And what caught me off guard right away was after the 9th or 10th person entered the room, they shut the door. I can remember standing up in the room, feeling a bit awkward. Like, really? I drove all the way down here to speak to 10 people. And so I walked over to the corner of the room where no one could see me, and I gave myself a little pep talk saying, dude, this is what you want to do. I don't care how many people are in the room, show up. So I went on to give a presentation about how you could build a better health plan for less money. And I'll never forget what happened after the talk. I'm cleaning up, packing up my stuff, and one of the attendees comes up and says, hey, man, I gotta be honest with you. I've never heard anybody talk about health insurance that way. That was pretty good. He said, in fact, this is the discussion I'm having with my team right now. Would you be willing to jump on a call with my team? I said, sure. Give me your business card and I'll. I'll shoot you an email and we'll get something on the calendar. So he handed me the business card. The name on the card really wouldn't mean anything. If you're listening, his name was Duncan McHalef and he was the director of Total Rewards. However, the name of his company is very recognizable because that name is PepsiCo. And what I realized in that moment on a cold January morning, 2017, was public speaking can open doors you could never imagine possible. And that's what I want to share with you today. You see, public speaking is not somebody, something, somebody was born to do. I truly believe that is not the case. It's how you put talks together and what you focus on during those talks that make you a good public speaker. Public speaking will do wonders for your business. It can open doors you never believed you could open before. However, when it comes to delivering a good keynote presentation, a good public speaking talk, I'm here to tell you, practice is important. What you talk about is important. But most important is you focus on encouragement, entertainment, and education. Why? Because if you just focus on those three things, you are going to leave the audience feeling good about themselves. You are going to give them the opportunity to engage with you and have fun with you. And you're going to give them the opportunity to walk out of that room with tactical things they can do to change their career. Because if you just focus on encouraging them, entertaining them, and educating them, here's what happens. Those fears that you have about getting on stage, the fear of screwing up, the fear of forgetting what you're going to say they go away because you're now going at it with the attitude that I am just here to serve. If you just get up on stage to serve your audience, you will never deliver a bad keynote in your life. So that's the advice I wanted to give you today, is if you're sitting out there and planning what 2024 is going to look like for you, planning how you're going to hit sales goals you've never reached before and how you're going to prospect next year to get there, I'm here to tell you, try to make public speaking a part of that game plan. But most important, with that, put the practice in in invest in the time and maybe money to get better. Have a good idea what you want to talk about to grab the attention from the right prospects. But I'm here to tell you the secret sauce is if you just focus on encouraging them, entertaining them and educating them as much as you can, you're always going to be able to leverage public speaking in your favor and you're going to grow a book of business you're damn proud of.