INBOUND 2016: Tamsen Webster "Why the Speaking Circuit is Content's Last Frontier"

Have you ever had that experience where you sit down in a room like this or maybe a giant big ballroom, and you're excited for whatever somebody's about to say? You're thinking, this is going to teach me something new. I'm going to learn something. I know exactly what that feedback is going to sound like in that moment. And all of a sudden, the speaker goes off script. Oh, wait, that was Tuesday. Not doing that. You are getting exactly what you signed up for today and what I wanted. And the reason why I want to talk about that is that when we violate that expectation of what an audience is expecting in the moment when they come in, expecting there to be a very specific thing that they're going to hear or that they're going to learn, or when all of a sudden that, yes, I want to listen to this turns into a. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. The dreams of the audience die. They wanted this opportunity. But you know who else's dreams die the minute you get that? No. The speaker's dreams die because as a speaker, as a speaker in a marketing or a sales opportunity, we know that there are. So why Getting up on stage in front of a room of people who have chosen to come see you is a chance that would be very, very difficult to replicate any other way. Would you agree? Think about how many people can write the same blog post. If you run a search on how to create an editorial calendar, you'll get 433 million results. But the opportunity to sit or stand in front of a room of people who have chosen to be in front of you for 20 minutes, for 45 minutes, sometimes even an hour and a half, that's something that you can't exchange. And you know that. You know that as marketers, regularly, what we find and everything important I'm going to say, is on the handout, by the way. So if you don't have one, they're on the seats up front. That was for a reason. So. So you come up front. But it's also that you can listen with your whole head and not have to worry about making sure you're capturing everything that I'm saying. But at the top of that handout, you'll see a really interesting statistic, which is this, that for B2B and B2C marketers, we put in person events, number one, number two in effectiveness. But when we ask the same group of people how often you use them, those in person events, that opportunity to speak to people, drop to number seven and don't even crack the top 10 for B2B marketers. And I think it's for that reason that we are terrified of people saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no as soon as we open our mouth. In fact, I've seen signs at conferences that have a sign that say, text this number if you hear any pitching or selling from the stage. I want to know what happens when you text that number. I really do. Like Tom Cruise drops from a wire on the top of the ceiling. Like, stop talking. Okay, so this is what today is going to be about. Today is not going to be about presentation skills from the standpoint of how can you be more polished and professional on stage. Why? There's a ton of really great people out there talking about it. And yes, it's important. But you want to know what's even more important in my experience, understanding how and why that no happens in the first place and how we can turn that no into a yes. Because what I'm going to argue, what I suggest is that every time we present, and this can be written, this can be spoken, this can be over a webinar, over a conference, any of those things. We are looking for a yes from the audience. We're looking for a yes to do you want to learn more? Will you take a call from a sales rep? Do you want to buy this? We want that yes. But every time that no happens, we run into some trouble. So in order to start this process of how to go from no to yes, one of the most important things we need to figure out is what. Where in fact does that no come from? Well, it comes from a number of different places. But when it comes in the context of speaking for marketing or sales persons purposes, one of the things that we're trying to figure out is what flips the switch between someone saying, yes, I want to hear what you have to say and no, you just started selling to me. Here's the secret to that. It's if you push for a yes. If you push for a yes, you will always, always get a no. Now, if any of you have children, seen a child, okay, so you're familiar with how their beautiful little brains work. If you, particularly around the age of three or four or five, that if you tell them things are one way, they say, oh, heck no, it's this way. You're tired. No, I'm not. You're like, oh, yes you are. Guess what? We never outgrow that. We never do. There's this fascinating study done in 2002 which was studying exactly this concept and what they did was they asked a group of people to make a choice between two equally attractive sports teams. I will let you decide what you think equally attractive means. That way I include everyone in the audience. Now, what they were asked to do is the people participating in this experiment were asked to say, I prefer Team A or I prefer Team B. And they were asked to make note of that preference somewhere. But hiding elsewhere in the room was someone pretending to be part of the people making the choice, but they were actually part of the experiment. And what they would start to do is once someone made a choice, let's say once someone made Team A, that person working for the researchers would go to. What's your name? Tracy. Tracy. Which go to Tracy. And like Tracy, you totally have to bet on team A. Like, you're stupid if you don't. Now, what do you think happens to Tracy? If Tracy had already chosen Team A, you know what happened? 76% of the time they changed their team simply because someone was like, oh, you have to do this. They're like, no, I don't. But this is what happens when we start selling from the stage. It's something called psychological reactance. It's this automatic pushback when someone tries to force you into decision a little too soon. So one of the very, very first things we have to understand when we're starting to put a talk or a speaking program together is what exactly is the yes that we're looking for? And so this is one thing that I want to speak about quickly. It isn't actually on the handle, but let me talk about it quickly because I want to make sure that we're clear on it, is that the situation that an audience or prospective customer finds themselves in determines their mindset. What do I mean by that? Think about it this way. Would you agree that no matter how many loops and turns that the general buying decision or marketer's journey or consumer's journey has, there's basically two big phases to it. Phase one, gather information, collect stuff. Now, people may go back and forth between these two phases, but phase one is let me get more information. Would you agree this is why content marketing exists, because we are putting out stuff for people to find in that moment. Then there is a second phase which eventually happens after the first, which is winnowing information back down. Right, now that I have all this information, let me select from amongst it what's going to be most useful to me, which is the thing that's going to help me answer the question that I have. Solve the problem that I need to solve or achieve the goal that I'm trying to achieve. So two phases. Gather winnow. Here's what's important about that. When someone is in this first gather phase, their mindset is one of a learner. They're trying to gain more information. Which means these questions that they're asking of you, of themselves, are mostly questions about why is this happening? What do I do now? How do I solve this? They're not asking for which is the specific product that will help me here. But bless you in the other half, instead of being in a buyer mind. Excuse me, instead of being in a learner mindset, now they're in a buyer or they're in a doer mindset. They are looking now for very specific questions. And here's the thing. You as the speaker, you as the marketer. Because by the way, everything I'm telling you today applies to written content as well. You never get to decide when they flip. They do. And so if nothing else today, understand that. That. No, that selling from the stage, that will get you in trouble every time happens when you are trying to treat someone like a buyer when they are still in learning mode. That is the biggest. No, no. Now, this is not about the sales part of this conversation today. I want to talk about the buyer pace, because this is how you can use speaking in a speaking program to add into and make that gather process much more useful for you as an organization or as an individual. Why? For exactly the reasons I said before that anyone can write a blog post, but the opportunity for someone to see you speaking about your company, about seeking the depth of belief that you have about it, hear and have this opportunity to interact with you, to follow up, to ask very specific questions. That's something that can't be exchanged. So let's think about it this way. Let's say, let's use an example. Let's say that we have a product that we need to sell. To make sure that I wasn't playing favorites with anybody in the room, let's say that we need to sell a dirigible. Anybody selling those? I just want to make sure. Okay. All right. Now, whenever you have a product that you're trying to get someone to buy, eventually here's the thing to understand that when they're in that learning mindset, there's some very specific questions that they have in their mind. Why would I ever need a dirigible? Okay, now that I understand why I would need a dirigible, what do I do now that I think I need Some way to be up above the world. And then finally, how do I go about doing that? Here's a way to look at it. Depending on where somebody is in the overall buying process, where in the overall buying journey, they have different types of questions. So here's the first thing to understand as you're developing either a specific talk or if you're starting to think about creating a speaking program for your company is understand where in this process they are, how ready are they to act, how close or far away are they from this decision to buy or to do? Because that will tell you what kind of talk or talks to develop. Here's why. There's basically two kinds of content. And this is also true for written content. There's what I call why content? Why am I not getting the thing that I want? Why is this goal worth having? Why is this problem such a problem? And then there's how content? How do I do this? How would working with you look? How much does it cost? How does the process work? Now you might be saying, well, Simon Sinek says there's a what in the middle. And I agree there is a moment where you need to explain to somebody what the actual thing that you're talking about is. But basically everything else other than that one or two sentences that you have that says we are a marketing automation system. Answering the other questions and here's how that maps when we're talking about content. Early in the buying process, we need a lot more why and very, very little how. Later in the buying process, we need a lot more how and very little why we need both. And you can consider the line that in between is the what. But this emphasis will tell you very upfront what is it that I really need to talk about. So three types of talks how I think about this derive from here. First type of talk, a why talk. Why outbound marketing is not the answer in this new day and age. Do you remember the keynotes from inbound from 3, 5, 7, 9 now, nine years ago, they were making the case for why inbound marketing was a new thing to do, why it was going to be where we needed to go next. Then over time we got to say, okay, I agree with you. I agree with you that inbound is something that I need to pay attention to. Now I have another question. Well, what do I do now? And then where did the conversation start going? Talk about what are the components of inbound community building? Automation. High level understandings of why this issue, why inbound is important, but also high level how do I go about achieving that and then the final type of talk, as you might guess how. And that's what each of these breakout sessions are essentially. Would you agree? This is how do I do this little piece now that I've already understand? Okay, I want to do community building. I know I need to get traffic to my website. One of the sessions today. How do you get 250,000 more visits to your website right away? That's a how and so you can see that depending on not only what you're trying to achieve with the audience that you're trying to reach, what kind of talk to create as an organization, you can say, we need a suite of talks that operate in different places. And if you have this bucket list dream of yours, which I know some of you do, to give a talk like this, or TEDx Talk, or TED Talk Big Ted, as we like to say someday, here's what I'll tell you. This is how this breaks out. Keynotes, not interviews like Alex Baldwin. But the keynote keynotes are almost always why talks. Sometimes they're what now? Main stage sessions, spotlight sessions. And sometimes some of the breakouts are going to be what now Workshops. Breakout sessions, always how. So if you're somebody in the marketing department who's been charged with getting your CEO out onto bigger stage one of stages, one of the first things you can look at is what kind of talks are we generating for him or her right now? Because if you're putting that person forward with only how talks, they're never going to get to the bigger stages. See how that works? Okay, so we've got these three types of talks. We've got why talks. We got what now talks. We've got how talks. And this is important to understand because this will just even this will help us avoid one of the first and central problems that we have, which is that we get a no when we either answer the wrong question, someone comes in looking for why? And you say, well, here's how you do it. They're like, mm, didn't like that. Or you answer the questions out of order. I'm interested in this idea about inbound. Let me tell you how to do a marketing automation system. Like, whoa, that is not what I was looking for. Here's the way to think about it. Imagine that you go to your doctor's office for a routine medical checkup. Okay? Routine medical checkup. And as soon as you walk in and the doctor goes, so when are we scheduling a C section? You're like, I'm not pregnant. I'm not a woman. You get what I'm going with this. But we do this all the time. We see it all the time where somebody walks in and they're saying, hi, I'm here because I want to stay healthy. Like, let's schedule the surgery now. At the same time you go, okay, well, I don't do that. But think about it this way. Sometimes we say, well, we know we need to establish the problem first, right? This is something a lot of people say. We need to focus on the problem. Any good pitch deck, start with the problem, but then we still skip over to the solution. And that's the equivalent of same doctor's office. That doctor walks behind you and goes, oh, you've got a spot on your back. Let's schedule surgery. You have some questions, right? What is that spot? Where did it come from? And they're like, oh, it's lint. Well, I'm glad I didn't schedule surgery. Right? This is why we can't skip over. So this is where the next piece comes in is once we've understand at a high level, what is the big question that we need to answer with a particular talk or over the course of time with a suite of programs for our potential audiences. Now we need to figure out, okay, but what is it exactly we're talking about? And this comes back to the idea now here's what I mean. So if we've got a derigible back to our dirigible and we know that even if we answer the right questions about this, that even if we tell them why and what now and how, it's the best thing, and he's going to give a different perspective on life and what, whatever, we know there's still an issue there. And here's what we need to understand, that even if you answer the right questions, the answer, particularly when someone's still in buying mode. Excuse me, still in learning mode, the answer to those questions can never be you or your product. Why aren't I differentiating myself in the marketing place? Well, you don't have marketing automation. No, no. Needs to be something bigger than that. Now, why is that the case? Well, the answer is sitting on any number of your butts right now. So let me tell you a story. Back, oh, 20 years ago, there's a place in North Carolina called Cone Mills. Anybody ever heard of it? They made all the denim in all the jeans. I'm going to date myself here. Do you remember when Levi's cost 25, $30 a pair? Do you know how much they Cost now, add a zero depending on. Yeah, someone's like, there's 60 now. Yes, but there's also ones that cost like 120, $200. Here's the thing. What are you really buying? You're buying the idea of what that's going to be. Now, here's what this. Here's what I mean. That denim isn't even made at Cone Mills anymore. It's made in China. China. So you're not even. Even at $60. You're not buying the same jeans that you bought before. You're buying the idea of the jeans that you bought before. If you're paying $200 for those jeans, you're buying the idea of something else. Right. So this is what we have to understand. No matter what we're talking about, people don't buy products. They buy the ideas of the products. And if we understand that, then we can understand a very important thing, which is when we're asking someone to cross over from wherever they are right now to the thing that we want them to do, if we don't understand what that idea is, we're going to fall into what I like to call the no hole. Because they look at this big gap between where I am and where you want me to be, and they go, oh, no, no, no, no, no. It's too big. But if you can make this thing that you want to sell them, you can put themselves in it. Ah, now I can conquer the land that I see. I can feel good about still buying Levi's, even though they're not made in Cone Mills anymore. Then you allow them to close and make that. Yes. That you're asking them to make a lot smaller. And as I said before, that comes to the idea. But what is this idea that we talk about now? As somebody who works for TED and TEDx events, I've thought a lot about this, because this is about how do we get ideas to spread. And I have a very specific definition for what an idea is. And it's in the handout that you have. Here's what an idea is. It's on the top of the third page. An idea is the one thing that people have to understand but probably don't to solve a problem that they probably don't know they have. Here's why this is important. The idea is the only thing you can sell from the stage. The idea is the only thing you can sell from the stage, because the idea is the only thing that is the thing that really takes you and how you look at the world and sets it apart. So is it at some level, some nature of branding? Yes, but I think it's much more specific than that. It is the concept that helps people understand. You're saying, okay, this is really high level. How do I figure this out? Don't worry, that's where we're going next. How do we find an idea? Well, for this, we go back to the audience that we're talking to again. So just like we were asking, what question are they asking? Now we start to say, once I know that they're asking why or what now or how, there's some things that I know that needs to happen. One is they walk in to this room with a goal. Not your goal for them. This is their goal. They walk in, you walked in wanting to know how to do something with speaking. So if I did something not about that, I would not have helped you achieve your goal. Now, sometimes it's not always clear why somebody walks in the room, but your marketers, your salespeople, you can take a pretty good guess or even better, do some research. But this goal, and I want you to think of how would you state this in one simple sentence? This goal is the one thing that they would readily agree that they want. Before they ever hear you speak, they were like, yes, I want to know how to differentiate. Yes, I want to know how to make my video program work better. Yes, I want to understand how to maximize my presence online. It has to be something that. If you just said, hey, would you agree that you want this? They go, yes, that's the first yes. This is how we make the yes smaller. We make it little yeses. So that's the first yes. Now, if I want to maximize my presence online, there's probably some issues here. And one is there's people who are not so nice online, right? There are haters. So full credit to my friend Jay Baer. I'm going to be using his talk and his book High Hug your Haters as an illustration of all these points that I'm about to make. So we know that there's barriers out there to whatever our goal is. But your job as a speaker, your job as a marketer, your job as a content creator is to figure out what the second big yes is. And what is that? It is the real problem that explains why someone's not achieving their goal. So in the case of Jay Baer and his Hug youg Haters, what he said was, haters aren't your problem. Ignoring them is. Now you see the answer to this. The problem Is, hey, you haven't hired Jay Baer and his customer service program, right? This is not part of it. It's, you want to maximize your online presence, but you have these people who say bad things about you and leave bad reviews. Guess what he says, that's not your real problem. Your real problem is not the existence of those people, it's ignoring them. And I guarantee you, absolutely, this has never been the case where you haven't been able to find some underlying reason why people have the problem that you have. Otherwise, guess what, your business wouldn't exist. Or if it does and that doesn't exist, guess what, Your business won't exist very much longer. Do you know why? The number one reason why startups fail? No market for the product. It means someone didn't stop and figure out, does this actually solve a problem that people actually have? And how do you know that? By making sure that it answers a goal that they have. Hey, hey, look, I just solved another problem for you, okay? From there. Now that we understand the goal and the problem, now we have to understand, well, okay, what is the one thing that people have to understand in order to solve this problem? Remember, that was the definition. So in the case of J Bear and Hug youg Haters, it's this. Here's the thing we didn't understand. Those haters, the people who will talk about you online, are your most passionate people. They took the time to do it. They're really frustrated. Ah, well, that's a new piece of information. In fact, it's a new piece of information I can't unhear. And that, my friends, is the mark of a great idea. That's a piece of information that permanently changes how somebody views the space in which your product, your service operates. So once you understand that the haters are the most passionate people and that they can be turned, now you understand what the fourth yes has to be. What do I do? What do I need the audience to do at a high level in order to make this change happen? Answer. It's in this book title, Hug your haters. In other words, don't ignore them. So you understand too that we're not just reverse engineering the need. You know, the problem was ignoring them is the problem. The answer isn't don't ignore them. The answer is one step beyond that. They're the passionate people. Figure out, how do you ignite that passion in your defense? Hug the haters. And then of course, people are going to have this question, well, how do I do that? And then there's actions that accomplish it from there. Goal, problem, idea, change, action. Those five things. Those five things are the underpinning of any great message, any great talk, any great idea, and even better, you put them together and they turn into a whole bunch of stuff that helps you as a speaker. Number one, you have an almost ready made session description written. In a world where we're trying to maximize our online presence, we face these people who give us bad reviews online, the haters. But it turns out there's some other reason that's going on behind that. In this session, learn why haters aren't your problem. Ignoring them is, and what you can do about it to achieve your business goals. Super simple. And guess what? It also serves as the underlying outline of your entire talk. Because the other thing to understand is that people need to hear these things in this order in order for any idea to make sense to them. They need to understand. Yes, this is the thing that I'm looking for. Yes, this is a barrier. Oh yes, this is a problem that I have. Oh yes, this is an idea that I've never thought of before in context of this. Yes, that's a change that makes sense given that this is the new reality I find myself in. Yes, those actions make sense clear. And so what happens is then this, that instead of making people make this huge leap from here's where I am to here's where I want you to be, what we do is we make the stepping stones smaller. So instead of a big yes, there's three little yeses, which makes it a lot easier for them to walk over, hop into the dirigible and off they go. Now the other thing this does for you, because I spend a lot of time trying to make this easy. I spent many, many years in resource strapped marketing departments. So think of this as talk Mad Libs, right? Once you figure these things out, you figure out a whole bunch of stuff, you figure out how to structure the talk itself. So this is the, this is kind of the last big thing that I want to talk about today. That in every talk, as I said before, you need to answer those questions in this way. And what that will tell you is how to structure the talk. Because in the first big section of the talk, you're moving people from agreement with the goal. That easy? Yes, that they have to agreement that they've got a problem. The next intellectual chunk of the talk. Okay, they've agreed with the problem. How do I get them to agree with this new reality, this new idea that we've got? And finally, last section of the talk, how do I move them from agreement with the idea to the change in the action? Are you ready for this? Depending on whether it's a why what Now or how talk, you're going to spend less or more time in each of those three. See how this works? A why talk. Which block are you going to spend most of your time in? First one, a what now Talk. Pretty much going to look like this. It's pretty much going to be pretty even because you're taking about half your time to get people there and about half your time to move them the rest of the way. And then the last one, what Now Talk. Excuse me, how talk, where you're going to spend most of your time? Right there? Absolutely. If you want. And this isn't in here, but if you want three TED Talks to watch to, to map to this. I know it's not what you're selling, but this is. It's a good, short way that you don't have to commit to 45 minutes to see my point. A great why talk is. One of my favorite why talks is Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath talk. He spends 10 minutes landing the problem. And the last two on do do and oh, by the way, do this, the what Now Talk. Great example of that. Number one TED Talk of all time, Ken Robinson's How Schools Kill Creativity. Takes about half the time to go, it's the schools, and then the other half of the time to go, now what do we do? And then my favorite how Talk. If you saw me speak here last year, you probably already know the answer to this. Joe Smith's how to Use One Paper Towel. Four and a half minutes. It will change your life. Okay, see how this works? The reason why I wanted to spend so much time here is because this is what most people miss. This is what most people miss when they're trying to figure out how do I get that? Yes, they go straight to how am I going to be polished and comfortable on stage? And they miss that. People need to understand, why should I listen in the first place? And now that I understand why I should listen in the first place, does it make sense what I'm supposed to do now? And once I understand that now, do I start to think about, do I like and trust it? So unless you figured out these other pieces before you get yourself a speech coach, you're never going to be particularly as successful as you could be when it comes to needing to speak for marketing purposes. Because speaking for marketing purposes has all that need for polish, but it has all this other stuff, too, because you've got your business goals riding on your ability to get that idea out there. Thank you very much.