MOVERSLIVE - Prospecting future speaking engagements 101

Hello, hello everyone! Welcome to Your Mover's Life. So excited that you're here. We are talking about prospecting today, which sounds like a not very speakery word, and I will admit that for many, many years I was just like, I just wanna speak And I didn't have to prospect because I was speaking on behalf of an organization. I was out speaking to teenagers about these big, wonderful teenagery ideas like kindness and courage and respect, and it was amazing. And I didn't have to worry about finding the gig. Then I started going out on my own, and all of a sudden I had to find the opportunities myself. Now there are two ways, and let me know if you are there right now, if you're like, I would love to speak more, I love speaking, if someone could just help me find the gigs. I hear this all the time. People are like, I, yes, I want to do this, but just help me find the gigs. Well, I like to think of finding the gigs in two ways. One is what we all want, which is people coming to us, right? People seeing us as an expert. People being like, "Yes, you are amazing. Would you please come speak at our organization?" I'm like, "Yeah, I would absolutely. Do you want to come speak at the big stage at this event? Sign me up. I would love it." Awesome. That is possible. That happens. That is because I don't have time to put a lot of energy around building my own speaking business. Working on that. The way I get gigs is often by people coming to me, which is great, but the wait and see, cross your fingers, hope that it all happens is not a great strategy for growth. If you're cool just waiting for people to come to you, awesome, you can just skip this live and, uh, we'll go make sure that what you're doing is awesome. Right? We want to make sure that it's moving your audience. But if you are someone who's like, I want to do more, I don't want to wait for people to notice me, to come to me, then what I want to talk to you about today is the Prospecting 101 strategy. We're going to actually call it Prospecting 100 strategy because that is the magic number that we're going to use on our prospecting approach. Now, I get a ton of questions about prospecting in this approach in particular, so here's what I would What I want to do, I want to talk through a few of those questions with you to help lay the groundwork for what we're doing. And then I'm going to share with you a few really simple things that you can do to help build this prospecting list. Does that sound cool? Does that sound great? Are you with me? Yay! Oh, yay! Hello, Mike. It's great to have you here. You're catching it live on YouTube. How fun. So right now I am on Ecamm. And Ecamm livestreams out to several places at once. So let me know if you are watching on YouTube, like Mike is watching on YouTube right now. You might be over on LinkedIn. Hello, LinkedIn! You might be in my Facebook group, the Move Your Audience Facebook group. It's all happening simultaneously in all three of those places, which I love because I can meet you wherever you're at. Okay. So let's do this. I want to talk— oh, you're not supposed to see those yet. There we go. Okay. So the question that people often start with is what even is a prospect list? They think of selling and want to get into those sales conversations. The prospect list is the list of people who you would like to speak to speak with or speak at or speak for. Okay, it's the— who are your hot leads, or even cold leads or warm leads, right? So if you're a salesperson, some of that language might be more familiar to you. But we want to think of a prospect list as the people we're going to go after. Not to be creepy, but we're going to go after. It's like, where are all the places you would love to speak? Now, my strategy and approach is for you to come up with 100, 100 people on your prospect list. I call it the top 100 list. And the next question everybody asks me is, why 100, Sally? Like, when I sit down and try and think about where I want to speak, I come up with 7. If I'm lucky, I get past 10. But why 100? It is torturous. And now I'm coming up with 100. The reason it's very intentional, it's not just because we want to have a huge list, okay? The top 100 list is more about you really recognizing and noticing the leads that are already around you and, and the, the dreams that are in you that you have not even recognized or articulated or made intentional yet. So we want 100 because it gets past the easy stuff. Now we want the easy stuff on there too, all your what I call low-hanging fruit, all of the people that are, are, uh, that you know, that you are connected with, that already know and love you. Great, throw those on your top 100 list. Once you get past about 25, you're going to start going, where do I want to speak? Where are my people? Who can I be of service to? And you start to show up in your life with those eyes. So 100 is supposed to push you. 100 is supposed to feel a little torturous. But I want you aiming for 100. If you get to 80, that's great. That's great. You can still work with that. It's not like you can't do any selling or what I call pitching until you get to 100. But I want you aiming for 100. Let's get past the easy stuff and really dig deep because you— there's more around you. I forget even, I'm like, I'm talking to people all the time and I'm not thinking of them as prospects. Those are prospects, Sally Koering Zimney. Okay. So I want you to challenge yourself to get past the easy stuff and really start to develop your top 100. Okay. So 100 is meant to push you and you're going to do it anyway. All right. Now that brings us to, okay, where do I find, where do I find 100 prospects, Sally? I want to share with you a few ideas. Okay. Besides just paying attention and noticing your network and who is already in your network, you can probably just go on LinkedIn, friends, right? And start pulling out those names and connections. And you're, you're gonna, you're gonna do the easy stuff first to get your network in there, get your, the friends and family list, right? They're all going to show up on your top 100. But then I want you to do a few things that will help you. And the first is to go look at your competitors. Okay, now I hope you have competitors. Because if you have a competitor, it means that there is a need for what you're talking about. There is a need in the marketplace, and it has already proved itself through a competitor. Okay, so instead of seeing your competitor as like a, hey, you're talking what I'm talking about, I want you to see your competitors, oh, thank you for making room in the marketplace for what we're talking about. Yay! And I want you to go look at where they have been speaking. Where are the associations they've been? Where are the events that they've been? Who are they connected to? Where are they publishing articles? Where are they doing all the things? Okay, take a clue from them. It's not like you're gonna just then go pitch all those places, but it's going to help open your eyes to all the different places where you could be. Okay, that's going to help you fill your top 100 list. I also want you to have a part of your list. I call it the Oprah list or the dream list because— do I want to speak for Oprah? Yes, I do. Hi, Oprah, are you watching this? Hook me up, let's go, right? You have some dream places and I want them on that list too, even if it feels totally unrealistic. If you're like, I have no business even doing this, Imposter syndrome is keeping too many of us from even doing any of this. And this dream list is going to help you start to imagine and visualize the places that you really want in your heart, but you haven't even admitted to yourself, potentially out loud. Okay, so add some things from your dream list on your top 100. All right, and then the last thing that you're going to do that's going to help you fill out this list is that it's an always thing. This is not a, I'm going to sit down for an hour and really brainstorm. Feel free to do that. You're not going to get to 100 likely if you do that. But if you think of this as an always thing, you've, you've always got your top 100 list. Every conversation you have, every networking lunch that you go to, every LinkedIn post that comes up that you're like, oh wow, that was a great connection. I like that organization. Right? Those all go on your top 100 list, friends. It is an always thing. And if it's an always thing, you're gonna get to 100 pretty quickly because we are people people. Many speakers are people people. They're out there networking anyway, and I want you to take advantage of that and start to pay attention to all of the things around you. And fill out that top 100 list. Okay? Your prospecting list then becomes the place where you go to when you're like, I, I want to do this more. And you're like, I don't know who to talk to. Well, instead of waiting for people to come to you, you can start reaching out to them. Hey, I'm not sure if you, if you are aware, but I have a new keynote I'm sharing. I'd love to share with you about it. I thought about your organization. I think it could be really valuable. You're opening up a conversation with people, and they're, they're on your list. Okay, they're not— it's not something you forget about. It's not like, uh, um, something you're squeezing into your timeline when you can, but you are working that top 100 list, and you start to see I can do this. I have a lot of connections. There is potential here. And once you start working that list, you're going to start to see some opportunities opening up for you, which is so exciting. And that is what I want for you. All right. Now, this little strategy here is a part of my Scale Your Speaking Guidebook. It's a freebie. It's a true step-by-step guide to kind of take you from I want to do this thing to now I'm getting paid for this thing. What does that process look like? Okay, so if this is something that you want to grab, just put SSG in the comments. I'll reach out, I'll send you a link so that you can start to really make sense of this and bring it to life in your business. I'm so glad that you were all here. I hope this was helpful for you. Say hello in the comments if you're watching on replay, and I'll see you next time on Armorer's Life. Hope everybody's having an awesome day, and we'll talk soon. Bye, everybody. Whirlwind!