How To Turn Public Speaking Into A Prospecting Weapon

All right, guys, you ready to talk today? All right, guys, today we're gonna talk about public speaking. And to set this up, I am also gonna make some statements about what I see in the industry when it comes to public speaking. And feel free to get mad at me. Feel free to say I think you're wrong. But what I want to share with you guys today is essentially this. I believe.

Public speaking is the most effective prospecting weapon everyone in this call has, if used appropriately.

So I'm going to set the stage for those who've been on the webinars consistently. You have heard me talk about this. If you're new, welcome.

But first and foremost, for those that have been on the calls, I hope you're taking what you're learning and applying it, because in the industry, it's easy to get a lot of theory right, a lot of theory on things to do, and then you go back to your office, you go back to your fires, and you don't apply anything. You learn. Yep. Number one, you got to take what you're learning and apply. And today is no different with this public speaking. Because remember, at the end of the day, guys, this is the key to prospecting. You have to know who you're targeting, who is your ideal prospect? You can't be all things to all people. Number two, what is their brand message? What is it you're going to say that's going to get them to raise their hand? And that does not happen overnight. Number three, how are you going to share that message far and wide? And this is where I've talked about the exponential versus the linear game. Linear is picking up the phone, smiling, and dialing. It takes 100 calls to contact 100 people.

Exponential is how do I get one message in front of 100 people at once?

And today is one of those strategies. We've talked about social media, webinars, emails. You can do a podcast today, but today it's about public speaking.

I think public speaking is the most effective weapon you have. Here's why. 99% of your competitors don't want to do it, because they're too afraid to do it. Remember, most people fear public speaking more than death and taxes.

And here's what I believe is the reason the fear exists. You don't know what to say.

If you don't have clarity on the message. You don't want to feel stupid. And if you stand on stage and feel stupid, you're going to be burned forever. That's why most people fear public speaking, is they don't know what the message is going to be. And so today I want to help you fix that. Now enter the comments Andy's going to make now about the industry. What I see often, guys, and it frustrates me is public speaking.

Is just, just like being an athlete. You got to put the reps in. You can't just go up on stage and wing it. And far too often in our industry, if you've been to any industry events, conferences, 90% of the presenters are winging it. They have spent all their time on a PowerPoint slide and then they spend the entire presentation reading the PowerPoint slides with you.

How many have been to a presentation.

With a presenter? And they go, hey, you know, I'm really excited to be here today. Thank the conference for giving me a chance to talk to you guys today. What I'm going to talk to you about is how to use long term disability to grow your revenue inside your agency. All right, you guys ready to get started? Here we go. How many have been to that presentation?

Five minutes in. What are you doing? You're looking at your cell phone, you're like, holy crap, I got to sit here for 45 more.

That's got to change that game. Guys. This is how you stand out, not just in the industry, but how you stand out your prospects eyes. And I want to share this. Not to brag, I want to share this because this is actually the idea. This is the comment I received that gave me the idea to hold this webinar. I had a, an HR professional that I used to know when I was selling a little bit in Nebraska Send me a LinkedIn message last week. And we just went back and forth and I said, hey, are you guys looking for any speakers for any events this year? And he came back and he said, no. He goes, I don't know yet. But he goes, if we do, I'll make sure I put your name. I'll put your name in. He said, the talk you gave four years ago.

I still remember today.

And again, I guess I don't say that to brag. I say that because if you put memorable talks together as a public speaker, people don't forget them. And if it's a prospect sitting in that room.

Guess who they're going to go to when it's time to buy their insurance.

So that's the goal today, is I want to share three things. I want to share three tips with you that is going to make you a better public speaker.

Start with tip number one.

I want you to always remember this Formula. When you put a talk together, I want everybody who's got a pen and a pencil or a pen and paper right now, write this down from top to bottom like this. I want you to write the word impact. I am P, A, C, T.

And here's what the acronym stands for. I is intro, story.

And there's some of my academy members on this call today. So you guys, academy members who are in my academy, we're going to go a lot deeper on this. In the Academy, the M is memorable message.

The P is problem. Problems, plural.

A is answers.

C is call to action.

And T is transformation.

So intro, story, memorable message, problems, answers, call to action, transformation.

When you're being asked to give a talk, whether it's at a conference event in front of prospects or you're hosting your own event, every time you go to put your presentation together, I want you to write that acronym out. And here's the key.

When you give a talk, the number one thing you have to do in the talk is get their attention out of the gate.

And one of the most powerful ways to get their attention out of the gate is to tell a story.

And I personally believe if that story hit includes an opportunity to let your audience get to know you.

That is how you're going to get their attention for the entire talk.

So even though you are there to give a talk about health insurance or about benefits in some way, shape or form, I want you to think about what story you could tell out of the gate that might even include something personal about you that could set the stage for why you are there to talk today. So I'll give you guys a great example. When I used to give talk, when I was giving health insurance specific talks, as an advisor, I would always share stories about my pro baseball career. Most of you know him by now.

So I went into my story and I talked about why I failed in Pro bowl. And I said it came down to three things.

Fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of comparison, fear of failure.

And I said, that is exactly what everybody in this room is going through with their health insurance. The reason you are not making the changes you need to to build a better health plan to help your employees and save money is you fear comparison. You fear what your plan looks like to your peers. You fear judgment. What are my employees going to think about this? And God forbid, fails.

Boom. Did everybody catch that? I told the baseball story, but the real message was fear, judgment, comparison and failure, which is showing up on my screen right now. When you speak at events, think About a story and impact that sets the stage for why you're there. Question, engage the audience out of the gate.

Find a way to grab them right away.

A story, your story can be a powerful way to do that.

And then you go into the P, the A, the C and the T. The P is the problems. Before.

He came in frustrated and angry about his benefits, he walked out clear, confident, he's got a plan.

So guys, when you are asked to put talks together, put the PowerPoint away and just write struggling with what we're here to fix.

And then once I walk through the challenges you're facing, the problems, I'm going to show you the fix, the answers.

Once I go through the solution, the answers, I'm going to call you to action. I'm going to energize you to actually take action, which is going to be step two or tip two here. But then the T is transformation.

This is the number one thing you guys have to do in a talk if you want to be viewed as a public speaking weapon. Now, transformation is when those people walked in the room to hear you speak. If they walk out a different person, you got them. That's when a guy says, I still remember your talk four years ago. He walked out of that room a different guy than he walked in.

He came in frustrated and angry about his benefits. He walked out clear, confident, he's got a plan.

So guys, when you are asked to put talks together, put the PowerPoint away and just write that acronym out and go, okay, what's going to be my story? What's the message from the story? What problems am I going to address? What are this? What's the solution I want to share? How do I call them the action? How do I make them feel transformed?

Which leads to tip 2, which is the C inside impact. Call to action. Andy, what do you mean when it comes to call to action?

Guys, why I believe.

Public speaking is one of the best prospecting weapons you have is if you've seen me draw this out before. When it comes to marketing and sales.

You have to create marketing before sales.

Marketing includes getting on social media, holding webinars, sending out good email campaigns, public speaking, networking, all that stuff.

One of the quickest ways to get somebody to walk in a room that does not know you when they walk in.

To come into your sales pipeline after they walk out is public speaking.

As you are the sage on stage, you have their undivided attention whether you're speaking for 30, 45, 60 minutes. And if you follow impact and they walk out feeling transformed. They could go from not knowing you 45 minutes ago to saying, he's the guy, she's the woman we need to hire.

But if that's not the case.

You want to call them to action. You want to walk away from that talk, getting something from them.

So when I give talks today, how many people are in my email community right now to get my newsletter? Anybody willing to raise their hand? Anybody in my text community.

My goal when I go to public speak is, yeah, it's going to be great. I know I'm going to get a couple people walk up, they want to meet with me afterwards. Cool. But at a minimum.

I want to walk away with some, some, some assets from them, whether that's an email address or a cell phone number. So they can come into my email community or they come into my text community.

So when I talk one of the last slides I have on the screen, sometimes it's the only slide I have up there is how they can join my community, whether it's through their newsletter or through my text.

And so if I walk out of that talk with a larger email list or a larger text community, that is a victory for me. Why? Because I'm going to be sharing content with the text community and the email community on a weekly basis.

And if I share that content enough people are going to start raising their hand.

So the other second reason why I absolutely love public speaking. It is an amazing way to get people into your community. I hope everybody on this webinar today are sending out good emails, good newsletters that bring a ton of value, not copy and paste from xywave.

And if you can use public speaking to grow the list of people who are getting that email, getting that newsletter, what's going to happen is they're going to get to know you, they're going to get to like you, and they're going to raise their hand. So when they enter the sales pipeline, you already got the leg up on the competition.

So tip number one was use the impact formula. Tip number two is figure out what you're going to do from the talk to build your community of prospects. Think of it as your list of prospects. If it's gathering email addresses, create something they want to get so they can give you their email address. Here's a great way, guys question comes up a lot. Well, what do I do to get emails? Do I just ask for them? How do I go about doing this? One of the number one ways guys to get emails is imagine you create a document PDF.

That is A summary of the talk you're giving. So you've already created a PDF document that highlights the main notes they need to take.

So when you kick your talk off, you say, hey, guys, got great news.

You don't have to take notes today. I actually have already created the notes for you.

What I'm going to do at the end of the talk is I actually have. I'll show you the slide where you can go get the notes.

So all you have to do is sit down and focus on me. You don't even have to take notes if you want to. Great. But I've already taken the notes for you. And then at the end of the talk, you put up on a screen how they can go get those notes. Maybe you have a landing page where they have to put their email address to get it.

That is an awesome way to collect emails. Guys, create a summary of the notes of your talk. And at the end of the talk, they've got to go get the notes, but they've got to give you their email address to get those notes.

And then the third tip, so we've got the impact formula, we've got how you collect emails, the call to action.

The third tip you have to put the work into to become a better speaker is you have to hit a home run with your clothes.

So think of the close of a talk as the last three minutes, three to four minutes of a talk.

Your job in the close. First of all, what you see often in the industry, see often from a lot of speakers, not just in the industry, is they have a really weak close. They literally get to the end of the talk and they say, well, hope you guys liked it. What'd you, you know, hey, guys, have a great day. Hope everybody liked it.

And it just kind of ended like.

Your job is to have a talk. Think of it this way, guys, your talk, that last thing you say when you wrap up that talk, should be the mic drop moment.

And your job in the close of a talk.

Is to restate the problems, restate the solution you gave them, restate what their life is going to be like if they act on the solution. And if you can tie in the intro story you shared back into the close, you not only have a home run, you've got a grand slam.

So when you put a talk together.

Let me go back. Most people in our industry, when they put a talk together, when you learn that you've been asked to speak at an event. Sure. An industry event, whatever it is, the first place people want to go is I'm going to go put my PowerPoint together.

No, no, no, no.

You need to sit down, write out the impact formula, and go, what is the flow of this talk going to be?

How am I going to create an intro story that lets my audience get to know me, but it also has a lesson about my life or about the story that ties into why I'm here to speak today?

Second thing is, what's my close gonna look like? So when you prepare for a talk, the first two parts of a talk you put together are the intro and the close. The close has to be just as powerful as the start because that's where the transformation comes in.

If your close includes the problems, a review of the problems, a review of the solutions and what their life's gonna be look like, look like. If they act on the solution, you transform them.

So as you prepare for a talk, intro, close, then put the rest of the talk together.

And at the end, you spend about 10 minutes on putting some slides together.

I'll get to that. I know some questions are coming in the chat box. I'll answer those in a second. So here's the three tips, guys. I wanted to go over this because it's so important and is if you now have clarity on what you're going to say using the impact formula.

You have got a mechanism to walk out of the talk with email addresses, some way to continue building value for the people who are there. And the most effective way is just create a summary of the notes.

And then you have a powerful close.

That transforms the audience to go take action.

You have not only motivated them, you have not only transformed them, they've walked in feeling this way, they've walked out feeling a completely different way. You are the person they will always tie that to.

It's just like if you gave a talk, an industry talk, where you're bashing things. Think about some of the talks you've heard from our peers where they're bashing certain things about carriers and the health care system and so forth. It may be true, but bashing and things like that is a negative tone. I don't care how effective that talk is, that audience member is tying you to that negative tone.

Give them hope, not heartache.

So that's what I wanted to talk about today, guys. It's use the impact formula to put your talks together.

Have a good call to action, a way to collect something from the audience, like email addresses, and then focus, focus, focus on the close of the talk. So they walk out feeling positive, feeling transformed, because Those are the people who are going to hire you and want to do business with you.

So with that being said, I've got some questions that have popped up in the box. Can you give us an example of your close? Yeah, I'll give you guys a real quick example. When I used. When I close my talks, they include the baseball stories. I'd say, you know, with the two minutes we have left, I'll close by saying this.

Did I have what it took to make it to the major leagues? I don't know. But here's what I do know. I didn't give myself a chance to do it. Why? Because I feared judgment. I feared comparison, and I feared failure. And those are the three things you fear the most right now that are keeping you from building a better health plan for your employees. A plan they love and a plan your bottom line loves. But if you just insert these three solutions, what you are going to have is a better health plan, employees that love you, and a bottom line that is better than it's ever been.

And then I would go into that last statement. You have two. And I'd always say, you have two choices. You can keep doing what you've always done.

Or you can try something new. The choice is yours. And then I would go into my drop, drop mic moment, that last statement. The point is, what did I just do? I tied in my story again. I talked about the current problems, reviewed the three fixes, and then had that transformation. If you do this, this is what will happen.

That is a close that drives people to action.

All right, questions.

Andy, what would be your advice in seeking speaking opportunities? Have you found more opportunities through just reaching out to organizations that you want to get in front of, or have you found better opportunities by getting on social and other places first and then people coming to you asking you to speak?

Great question. Great question. Great question. Early on, I had to go get them. Okay, so think about your Target audience, guys. SHRM is HR. So if you. If you work with HR, SHRM is a great place to start. CFO CEOs, they have their own groups, right? They have CFO roundtables. Fei, there's a bunch of organizations out there for the C suite. Don't be afraid. By the way, if you just want to get better at becoming a better speaker, go join a local toastmasters where you can just practice. Guys. You guys want to know who my number one audience is for my speeches right now?

My dog.

Because I practice at home, and she's sitting on the couch looking at me like you're an idiot. But I got to practice. That's the key. Guys. If there's one message I can drive home today.

Put the work in on. If you truly want to use public speaking as a weapon, put the work in.

Give it the credits. It's due. Just like playing sports. Put the work in when no one is watching so that when you get on stage it's like, wow, he or she is good.

Andrew, to your second point. When you do it enough.

And you're out on places like LinkedIn and social media and people are seeing you, you are going to get people starting to reach out to you, say, hey, I see on LinkedIn, would love to have you come speak at our event. And by the way, guys, when you go kill it at one of those speaking events.

You have no idea who's in the room. You might get somebody else to come up and say, hey, you know, I run this event over here, love this talk. Could you come give this at our event?

That's why public speaking is such a powerful weapon, guys. And I'm going to say this, the bar is low in our industry. If you put the work in, guys, you will stand out from your competition. Not only will you be a sought after speaker.

But this is going to be a way your prospects will be like, I don't know what he's saying or she's saying, but I love it. We need that person in our office.

Another question. Does all the impact formula apply to webinars? What do you need to do differently for webinars compared? David, you just hit it on the head, my friend. Webinars.

That'S another form of public speaking, isn't it? If you apply the impact formula to webinars, it'll be just as powerful. Why? Because a webinar should go like this. You're on this webinar today because you want this. This is why you attended. I'm thinking this is why you attended. Well, let's talk about the challenges. I'm going to give you the answers, the fixes, or I may have a subject matter guest on to talk about the fix fixes. But then I'm going to call you to action. Now, if it's your own webinar, you could truly sell on the webinar if you want. And I want you walking away from this webinar transformed.

The problem with most webinars in our industry is here's how they literally end. Well, I hope you guys loved the webinar today. If anybody wants to learn more, feel free to reach out.

Nobody's reaching out.

You gotta call them to action.

So, David, great question. Yes, you can use the Impact formula as effectively on a webinar as a public speaking opportunity.

One more. We're getting questions coming in. Nope. Any. Anything else, guys? One more. Any more question?

All right. Feel free to reach out to me privately if you want to talk about this deeper. If you're in my academy, like I said, you're going to get a lot of this. And if you just want to reach out, because marketing, sales, building this brand message, guys, is something you know you need to do. Let's connect because this is what this is all about. In 2022. I had a client of mine. I'm going to share this and then I'll shut up. Client of mine told me yesterday he was at an event this last week at a conference, industry event and he had a. There was a speaker there up talking for 60 minutes about a marketing strategy called direct mail.

Guys, this is what our industry is still talking about, direct mail.

I promise. Know who your ideal prospect is? What is the brand identity and brand message and how are you going to share it? With social media, public speaking, webinars, podcast emails. You, you lock that in, it is game over.

That's how we went in 2022.

With that being said, it is now 1132 Mountain. I promise to keep these 30 minutes. So if anybody needs additional help wants to talk deeper about this, hit me up. I am always happy to chat.

Thanks, Andy.

Appreciate it. Thanks, Andy. Always kick ass, guys. Have a good one.