Self Promote and Succeed Chapter 16: Speak and Sell

Chapter 16 speak and sell it was a multi speaker event and one of my PR friends clients was the only speaker with a line to her table afterward. Why? She had a book for sale and offered to autograph copies. Thanks to the conference and her book, she received invitations for two more speaking engagements. That kind of synergy can happen to you. Too many authors write a book to become a speaker, and whether you are a speaker or that's your goal, if you it makes sense to be an author. Speaking and books go so well together. They are like peanut butter and jelly or fries and ketchup. Yum. Getting speaking engagements is one of the best ways to sell your books, make money and expand your reach. Your hosts will often buy a copy of your book for every person in the audience, or you can sell books at the back of the room. Books can be icing on a speaking contract because they amount to higher fees. For someone just starting out as a speaker, you may not be able to command a contract rate, but you should be able to ask for participant emails or sell books. Maybe even both. I did many talks where my payment was a kind of barter, either books sold to the event organizer or at the back of the room. It's well worth it to do this if you have a larger impact or income goal and the audience is a great fit. How do you make that happen if you're not yet a speaker? Once you have a book, if you've done a great job of creating a hook and a compelling read, it's quite likely speaking opportunities will find you. My second book had a chapter called you Are who Google says yous Are, and that chapter alone generated multiple speaking engagements without me pursuing them at all. Still, it's never a good idea to leave anything to chance. First, come up with some super cool and compelling topics. If you want to be a keynote speaker, you need to develop a signature talk. Steve Molter, a professional speaker and event mc, wrote nothing gets sold until a story gets told to complement his already successful business, the book is all about how to tell a great story as a presenter, a skill that every business leader needs to know. Sometimes the audience is small, but often the stakes are high because you need to have an impact and influence your host's organization. Steve's book has a great tie in to his profession and and his speaking engagements offer clear and compelling topics for organization managers. If you're new to speaking, I'd suggest getting a copy of his book because it might help you think of stories you can tie into your message. Make a list of three to five talks that you can give and create interesting titles that will generate curiosity and focus on the benefits of your chosen topic. Here are some of the talk topics we've helped book launchers clients create Sean Hayes, author of the Great Choice Lessons on My Journey from Big Time Banking to the Big House and Back Business Ethics how to keep your decisions from straying off track and derailing your business and life. Entrepreneurship Smart risk taking or dangerous decisions how to tell the vital difference in business motivation and inspiration From Perfect to Lessons from a multimillionaire turned conviction on staying the course through life's ethical gray areas Dr. Virgie Bright Ellington, author of what yout Doctor Wants yous to Know to Crush Medical A Health Systems Insider's 3 Steps to Protect Yourself from America's Number 1 Cause of Bankruptcy An Insider's look at Medical Bills 3 Steps to Manage medical bills and stay out of debt what your doctor wants you to know how to dig out of and avoid medical debt Secure your financial future how people in their 20s and 30s can arm themselves against a lifetime of medical debt Mark and Kristin Kricke, authors of youf, Me and Airbnb the Savvy Couple's Guide to Turning Midterm Rentals into Big Time Profits A five Star Stay how to use Airbnb to make home ownership affordable for you and your family Master the art of midterm rentals, build cash flow and get more quality time with your family. Mom CEO Create your stay at home business with short and midterm rentals Once you have some compelling ideas for talks, assemble the necessary materials. You need a great profile picture and a bio that is short but packs a punch. It needs to clearly highlight why you are the person to speak on this topic and what makes you that person. If you did a good job of creating an author bio, you can probably pull from that, but be sure to highlight your tangible successes and experience. This is also the time to name drop the big companies with whom you've worked or done presentations and speeches. This is not the time to be shy, okay? You're trying to get other people to put you in front of their audience. Also important are references or testimonials from past speaking engagements. You can even create a Speaker one sheet which summarizes your speaking business and is a simple sell sheet for your talks. We have examples on the bonus resource page at self, promote and succeed.com finally, you should create a speaker reel. While this is the most important task, it's also the most challenging when you're starting out. This can feature excerpts from one talk or several if you've been speaking for a while. The reel shows clips of you speaking to an audience and audience reaction and engagement. It also highlights brands or events at which you've spoken and usually has a soundtrack. When you book paid gigs, you you need a reel unless you've been a referred or the event booker has seen you speak. You can start without this, but know that paid gigs may be initially harder to get. Start planning your pitches. Start small and focus on individuals or organizations that are going to have some interest or gain value from what you have to share. Are you a member of your local chamber of commerce, a women's business association, or business owners group? What about any other kind of association or meetup group that's relevant? A lot of my early speaking gigs and actually many others later on took place with meetup groups because they had a huge following and sometimes it was the perfect audience. These groups were excellent for book sales too, even though there might only be 50 people in attendance. I would often sell a book to every single person. Just like with your media pitch prep, do your research. If you don't have a personal connection to a group, then make sure your pitch is researched, focused and all about how you'll benefit their audience. When you start submitting to larger events, you'll complete speaker submission forms as you find events near you or with ideal reader or with your ideal reader in the audience. You can look on the website for these forms. Your goal with your first few talks is to get an audience for you and for your material. Do what Stand up comedians? Talk in front of people in a place where you can afford to fail and test your material. In other words, start small. Find an open mic night or another place where you can do an unpaid talk for a small group of people to see what works and what doesn't. If it goes well, you can collect reference letters from those organizers. When you reach out to people about speaking engagements, even in small venues, make sure the pitch is about them and what you can do for them and deliver to their audience. That's super important. You can get started by finding groups through meetup.com, linkedIn, Facebook, and Good old Google. Just search away. Let's say you're looking for entrepreneurs. Look for local entrepreneurial meetup groups, local business groups, etc. What you're really looking for is a group that meets regularly and typically has a speaker. Even at my local mom's group, a potty training expert came to speak to us for $20 a piece that's not a lot of money when you only have 20 people in the room, but she also offered potty training consultations and sold a handful of $500 consults along with copies of her book. She probably made $4,000 for a few hours of her time. Not bad for a pretty casual gig. As you do these smaller events, if you're good and your content resonates with your audiences, you're going to find bigger ones come up. You're also gaining practice, confidence and a track record that's going to help you when you start submitting speaking applications to larger events. Getting a speaking engagement is a start, but what should you do once you actually land one? How to Prep for a Speaking Engagement A lot of authors think that they can write a book and get paid for speaking without any preparation. The truth is that this rarely happens. It's in fact your progress will feel slow until suddenly you're like Shel Phelps, author of the Big Bliss Blueprint, standing on an international stage. That's not where she started, but she just kept going. Can you tell I'm enthusiastically cheering her on? I'm so excited for her. If you've never given a talk before, you really need to be ready for it, and there's a lot more involved than putting some PowerPoint slides together and delivering your expertise. If you want some amazing tips, I highly recommend you check out Dan Fraser's book Kick Ass Presentations. Workshops are very different from keynotes or breakout room talks. You'll almost always find me speaking in a breakout room or a workshop format because I am teaching. If you're going to be sharing something that will change the audience's perspective on something, you'll be on the main stage giving a keynote. You'll want to iron out that sort of thing first, and then realize that most speakers start in breakout rooms have the core of your presentation rehearsed and ready. If you haven't done the work on a signature talk, it can be really useful to at least have a core talk structure outlined and ready to go. Sometimes these opportunities appear on short notice. On one occasion I was exhibiting at fincon for book launchers and a speaker didn't show for their talk. On turning your book into money making content, I was able to step up because I'm always prepared to give a talk and share content, and that one little speech generated more activity at my booth than anything else. I did the entire event and in the next year after the event, we had two clients join with us from that impromptu talk. If you need help preparing a talk. There are a lot of great speaking coaches or programs to help you. For instance, Michael Port and Andrew M. Davis wrote a great book called the Referable Speaker. As I read it, I was delighted to see a feature on the book Launcher's author of Mean People Suck. Michael compared how actors prepare for the show Hamilton on Broadway with an improv show. Tickets to Hamilton cost hundreds of dollars, while an improv show ticket may be priced at $40. While all the performers are skilled in their craft, what you are getting when you go to an improv show is mostly a spontaneous performance. Meanwhile, Hamilton is precise, practiced, and highly professional as a speaker. Do you want to be a performer in an improv show or do you want to be an actor in Hamilton? Are you rehearsed and ready? You should be. You can't afford to wing it if you want to effectively communicate your message and succeed. And as it turns out, you already have an amazing tool to help you prep your talks for speaking engagements. Creating a talk from your book. Your signature talk can come right out of your book. In fact, your signature talk and your book should support and reinforce one another so that you're presenting a cohesive brand. But you don't have to stop there. You can mine your book for all sorts of topics. What I find often happens after you develop a signature talk is that now you have a core story to plug into different lessons or training elements for all your talks. This allows you to have material that works every time, along with flexibility to customize the talk for each audience so it resonates. Another important thing to consider when you start to structure your talks. And really, any story you tell on stage is a three act story structure. This type of story structure is a foundational framework in Western storytelling. And guess what? You actually are already familiar with this structure through movies, TV shows, novels, and more. You just may not know it yet. Learning the moving pieces of this structure is very helpful because when you become a speaker, you also become a storyteller. How does a three act structure work? Here's a crash course. Act one is the setup. This is the inciting incident. It's the thing that sets you off on your adventure. For Alice in Wonderland, it's Alice's curiosity about the rabbit that sends her off on her adventure. Another classic is Alec Baldwin's speech in Glengarry Glen Ross. You know the one, the gist is Sell or be fired. Always be closing. Basically, it's the call to action that leads up to the next act. Act two is the confrontation or conflict. This is where things get intense. It's often the midpoint and it's when a lot of things pile on top of each other and really create a challenge that seems insurmountable. As in, you're never going to overcome it. And then comes Act 3, the resolution. This occurs after the climax, the peak of the action. Ideally, in my world at least, this is where everything gets wrapped up with a bow. If you want to get really into this stuff, you can also read about the Hero's Journey, a story framework that takes this three act structure and explores it in more depth, adding character archetypes and steps along the way. Scott McMillan released a book titled Be the Hero of youf Life. If you're looking to dive more into the hero's journey in your life, this is an excellent read. Have you ever wondered why we like to watch movies and TV shows and read books? It's because they take us on a journey. They they spark our imagination with a situation where something goes wrong or some kind of tension builds up and then resolves at the end. That's exactly what your signature talk should do for your audience. If you can tap into the way human brains are programmed and primed to want to hear stories and go on that journey, your talk is going to be all the more memorable. How to apply the three act structure to your talk it's time to apply this amazingly helpful structure to constructing your Talk as Act 1 is where you set up the situation. In this case, what is the audience's goal? What do they want for themselves? Their lives, their career, their business, their health, their relationships? And how is this linked to your area of expertise? What is the obstacle that the audience sees as being in the way of them achieving their goal? And more important, what is the underlying real problem that they may not recognize, but you, as the expert on this topic, understand and can identify for them? This is where you create the tension for your audience that you're going to resolve by the end of the talk. Act one is also where you bake in your credibility as to why you are uniquely qualified to help them. Act two is the framework you use to get the audience where you need them to go. Because you've written a book, you always have a lot of content. If you have a step by step process in your book, take a few components and use it here. Integrate some audience interaction such as questions or activities. Make sure you also pepper in real life client examples to bring your message home in a concrete way. Finally, Act 3 is the resolution. This is where you give your audience the next steps what are the things they can do on their own and what are the things they can do with you? You've got it. This is where you plant your call to action for them to purchase your book. The call to action could also be for them to hire you or your company. The real trick though, is to make sure that at the end of Act 3, you've left your audience with the inspiration and motivation to work toward the better vision for their future that you see is possible for them. Now that you have the tools you need to get started creating and booking your talks, how can you make sure to make the most of any speaking engagements you land? How to Leverage Speaking Engagements for years I did a lot of speaking engagements that didn't pay me speaking fees hello real estate industry. These days many events charge speakers to step on stage, so it's even worse than not getting paid. The reason they can charge and people will pay is because a smart speaker can leverage that talk into tremendous value for their business. So knowing how to do this is vital to your success. Whether someone else books you for a speaking engagement or you do it yourself, you need to plan ahead so you can make the most of every gig. Here's what I recommend. Promote your participation in newsletters, social media and on your website. You're doing this for two reasons. First, it boosts your credibility and lets people know you are a speaker, which can unearth future opportunities. And second, event organizers appreciate your helping them get the word out. This can often lead to their referring you to other events or giving you opportunities around their platform like video interviews, blog posts, shoutouts and reposts. Research, Plan and leverage media coverage of the event. Smart event planners, especially of larger 100 plus person events, typically arrange some sort of coverage around their event. The things to look for when you're pitching the event to media are opportunities for a human interest or news story related to the event. Because the media isn't interested in promotions, make yourself available for interviews and introduce yourself or ask to be introduced to to on site bloggers and others so you get exposure through follow up posts or articles after the event is over. If you aren't prepped with an angle or don't know whom you're looking for, you'll miss out. So do your research in advance. If the event is a decent sized one, it can be worth it to hire a professional photographer and or videographer to shoot a demo reel and photos including headshots. This is great for your portfolio and can also be used for social media, your website and media outlets that Ask for professional images Collect email addresses with a feedback form I've got to give a huge shout out to speaking coach Carol Cox. She caught me speaking at PodFest in 2018 and gave me this brilliant Ask the audience to turn in a feedback form at the end of the talk and include a simple offer to join your newsletter list. You'll find that 30 to 60% of the room signs up platform growth, baby. You also might learn a few things that the audience really liked or wished you'd covered. If the organizers of the event didn't buy books for the audience and you're unpaid, ask if you can set up a table at the back to sell books. Many events now have a designated author's area where authors can sell books. This is good, but being able to sell right after your talk is best because people will be primed and ready to learn more from you. Assuming the talk goes well, let the audience and the organizer know you're looking for more speaking engagements and ask for referrals for the audience. This is a little trickier, but as people come up to you afterward and say how great it was, let them know you'd love to do more and if they know any events you'd be a good fit for, you'd appreciate a connection. Do the same thing with the organizers. If you can, ask for testimonials from the organizer. Letters of reference are ideal, but a great testimonial can really help too. Just because a speaking engagement doesn't put cash in your pocket directly doesn't mean it's not worth doing. In many cases, event organizers will buy books in exchange for your speaking. In other cases, they will be more than willing to help you get something out of it. Think about what you need and ask for it. This is optional, but if the event was a great one for you or the event organizer made your experience special, I highly recommend that you send a thank you card with a small gift to the event organizer. This will help you stay top of mind for future events, as well as increase the likelihood of getting that endorsement letter or testimonial. In general, the larger the audience and the more experience you gain, the more value you can expect in exchange for your talk. Before you know it, you'll be getting paid to speak to most audiences, and eventually you'll have gained enough exposure and clout to generate a lot of income and book sales from every opportunity, including unpaid ones. Of all the possible marketing tactics, speaking Done well is one of the few that is almost guaranteed to sell books, make an impact, and get your name known, boost your credibility and catapult your platform. Granted, public speaking may not be something you want to do, but I really recommend you try it. For those of you who prefer to stay out of the spotlight as much as possible, let's move on to the wild and wonderful world of audiobooks and how to market an audiobook if you decide to record one chapter Summary Speaking and books go together like peanut butter and jelly, so if you're not speaking now, it's something to seriously consider. 2. Creating a list of high value topics that generate interest and curiosity is a great first step to show an event organizer what you will bring to their audience. Remember, it's about what value you can provide the audience. 3. Consider creating a speaker one sheet and demo reel if you plan to do a lot of speaking, these are investments in your speaking career that will pay off quickly. 4. Leverage speaking engagements to support your bigger author and business goals by asking for referrals to other engagements, collecting emails for your newsletter, selling books at the back of the room, hiring a videographer or photographer, posting engagements on your social media, and asking for testimonials from event organizers. 5. It's okay to start small. In fact, it's the best way to begin if you don't have much public speaking experience.