A lot of speakers pride themselves on being able to be on an airplane an hour after they leave the stage and never think of that gig again.
At Speaker Sales Systems, we love to hear that. Not because we love getting back to our families quickly too (we do), but because we know that speakers that bounce as soon as they’re done are leaving a lot of money on the table.
Meaning you and I can capture that revenue. We’ve discovered that selling can continue long after the proposal is signed, speech delivered, and sale made.
(Want to know how to increase your speaking sales after the speech? Then you’re going to want to sign up for our next FREE Masterclass. Register HERE)
First Missed Opportunity: The Folks In The Room
Some speakers ignore their audiences entirely – outside of the standing ovation. If the speaker has any back-end programs like courses, workshops or consulting, the audience may be a better source of revenue than the keynote itself.
The most basic form of gathering an audience’s information is paper forms that an audience can fill out. Unfortunately, this means a virtual assistant or the speaker has to transcribe the data. In the 21st century, there’s no reason for this. Multiple affordable systems exist to capture audience info via text-to-opt in. Bonus: You can customize the fields a person has to fill out to get your free follow-up item so you can vet decision makers for future outreach.
Another opportunity speakers miss as they rush to the airport is a video testimonial from the decision maker – the person who hired you. We leverage these throughout the sales process to unstick conversations and get folks on the phone who have never heard of us.
Second Missed Opportunity: The Speech Itself
Unless you deliver the exact same talk, word for word, at every event (and if you do, keep doing it, because speakers like me love taking business from folks like you) then you spend some time customizing your talk to your audience. Once the talk is done, how many times have you reviewed it to track metrics, though?
For most speakers, the answer is: Never.
If I’m spending the time to interview attendees, rehearse my stories, build in humor and customize the talk to my audience, I want to know how well I’m doing it – and so do the people who hire me.
Understand that so few speakers are able to leverage metrics into the service they deliver, because they either never take the time to review a recording of their talk or know what to listen for. It’s difficult to track implementation of your content, but it’s easy to track things like customizations, numbers of times your audience laughed, audience interaction points, etc. We’ve closed thousands of dollars’ worth of business because we’ve been able to say:
“We build in 50+ customizations to your industry in every keynote we deliver, using their stories, acronyms and specific challenges. Most speakers can’t or won’t devote that kind of effort. Would you rather have a speaker simply deliver a motivating talk or one who can deliver tailored solutions to your audience?”
After that, the talk sells itself.
Third Missed Opportunity: Generating Referrals
As part of our sales process, we leverage LinkedIn as a communication channel. We don’t just do that to drive sales conversation – we also use it to ensure we have quality referrals.
After the event, we take the time to ‘scrub’ our decision makers’ profile for likely peers – other executive directors, CEOs and meeting planners. We bring those names and a template to the decision maker from the event we just left and bypass the ‘I’ll get back to you if I remember someone’ response that often comes when someone asks for a referral.
Fourth Missed Opportunity: A Follow-Up Conversation
Because we advocate, and sell talks, on the basis of providing solutions, it makes sense that we would circle back and find out if our talk provided the solution our audience needed. Of course, we are sure to ask ‘What one thing do you need to happen to consider my talk a success?’ before we take the stage. That way, we have a metric to follow up on as an appointment premise.
This conversation not only allows us to go over whether we reached our objective, it also allows us to hear what we could do better in our next talk. That feedback might sound like the language we used, whether we referenced the audience members by their correct title, and whether we finished on time. After that, we review the metrics we gathered from our review of the keynote: Number of audience engagements, customizations, audience laughter, etc. That blows most decision makers away- no one takes the time to do this. But it doesn’t end there.
If you gathered any data on your audience via your opt-in process, we deliver it during this after-action call. Not only does it differentiate us as more memorable and more involved than the average speaker, it’s also a value-add they didn’t expect. It’s not a trinket they’ll throw away. Instead, it’s something they can use to design future educational programming with.
Before you end that call, find out about their next event, a theme – if it’s been decided, and if your expertise is not a good fit you can refer speakers in your network who might be.
The sale doesn’t end when you leave the stage – unless catching that Uber is more important than growing your business.
Do This Now:
-Record your talks and review for customizations, laugh lines, audience interactions and other metrics you want to track.
-Schedule an after-event call with your decision maker to go over your speech’s objectives, review metrics and generate referrals
-Ensure you bring potential referrals’ names to the conversation to ensure easy introductions
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