One of the techniques I use to grow my business is through training and speaking. First, I love to teach so when I approach it with that goal in mind it takes away a lot of that scary feeling around public speaking. I have practiced by providing many trainings whenever I can and when it fits my business goals.
This week I have done two trainings and off to another one later today where I am speaking at a Writer’s Festival on the Business of Marketing You and Your Book. I encourage business people to find ways to share their knowledge, experience and talents with groups. There are many benefits to doing so, but here are the top three:
1.) You can share your expertise with many people at one time
2.) You gain credibility
3.) You can easily generate leads
Speaking to groups of business people generates many leads for my business and I want to offer you some suggestions of groups that you may consider contacting
- Chambers – obviously if you are a member you will get priority
- Business networking groups
- Associations relevant to your niche
- Business and economic development departments of your city
How to get started
Create one or two presentations that you will then consider your signature presentations. Generally I have a couple ready to go that are timed out for 60 minutes and then one that is longer.If you are speaking at local business groups the average speaking opportunity is limited to one hour. Create a speaker document that you can use as a handout that give a short summary of your signature presentations and bullet points with what the attendees will learn.
If you are speaking for free in exchange for the possible leads, be sure to ask the organizer these questions up front;
1. In exchange for waiving a speaking free, you request the contact information of the attendees so you can followup with them later.
2. Tell the organizer that at the end of your presentation you want to briefly make people aware of your services should they want to learn more about you. This should be a soft sell or presentation and not something that will turn off the audience. Remember this is not your platform to sell, it is your platform to share your expertise.
Use Your training to gain testimonials
I always provide a feedback form for the attendees to fill out following any presentation I give. This allows me to tweek my presentation to offer the most relevant content and with the positive feedback I ask for permission to use the testimonial. This is gold to you because testimonials are such powerful proof of your expertise.
Sometimes I also ask attendees for a video testimonial, this has been powerful for me and is fairly simple to do. I encourage you to be sure if you do this that you use a microphone so the sound is good quality as you can hear in this short 30 second testimonial below.
So have you use speaking to grow your business? Would love to have you share your experience in the comments below!
