10 Ways to Use Speaking to Get Clients and Make Sales for Authors, Consultants, and Small Business Owners
Speaking is one of the best ways to get clients and make sales of books, videos, or other materials, as well as get paid for your speaking. The advantage of speaking in various formats — from short talks to seminars and webinars — is it increases your visibility, credibility, and authority. Importantly, it will help you find clients and make sales of whatever you are selling — from books and video programs to products and services. And after you put on speaking programs for a while, organizations will pay you to speak, too.
Often people who hear you speak may want to hire you and buy any products or services you are selling. They may refer you to other organizations looking for speakers.
Initially, you may need to do your talks, workshops, or seminars for free or for a small honorarium of about $50 to $100, but that’s fine because these programs are a source of clients, sales, and referrals leading to future business. Over time, you may get paid more for your speaking, and at some point, this can turn into a major income stream. But first you generally need to build up your credentials as a speaker, with a series of no pay or low pay talks and testimonials from attendees.
You can use your initial presentations to create a video or series of video clips from different programs to get additional speaking gigs. As you speaking more, start to build up what you charge. Ideally, to position yourself as an expert, charge $5000–10,000, which is the going rate for an expert.
Regardless of whether you get paid or not for speaking, expect people to pay you for consulting, coaching, or other services. Perhaps you might offer an introduction to what you do as an incentive, such as 20 to 30 minutes on the phone or in a one-on-one meeting to explore how you can help them. Or you might offer a free 30 to 60 minute strategy session to plot out what they might do to build their business. But after that, expect to get paid.
Once you develop one or a few subjects to talk about, focus on speaking about that to different audiences, rather than trying to change your program to continually come up with something new.
Following are different ways you can use speaking to get clients and make sales.
1) Create a small format seminar for a small group of 4 to 12 people. You can meet in a conference room or around a table for coffee, lunch, or dinner. Then, use this gathering like a mastermind group, where you talk about how your expertise can help them and you get input from others on how they can deal with their current concerns. You can set up this small group meeting through local organizations, your mailing list, or create a Meetup group to offer such an event.
2) Contact organizations in your community that are looking for speakers and let them know you are available to speak about certain topics based on your area of expertise. You can contact these organizations by email or phone call, and follow up with a flyer or document listing the topics you talk about. Indicate if you do seminars or workshops on these subjects, too. You can also target organizations in nearby communities. Some of the organizations to contact are local service clubs, such as the Rotary, Lions, or Kiwanis clubs in your community.
3) If your topic might be of interest to corporations, such as programs on marketing, increasing productivity and profitability, team building, improving relationships, or motivation generally, you can pitch your paid talk or workshop to whoever handles these guest speaking arrangements at the corporation. You can get a list of companies through the local chamber of commerce or through lists of companies in your area, such as the Book of Lists, published by the San Francisco Business Times. You can also find these companies and contact information on LinkedIn. Another source is the members of Vistage, which has chapters around the country. In your pitch to this corporate market, charge $5000–10,000 as an expert. If you price your program too low, the officials who set up these programs might not take you seriously.
3) Organize a public seminar or workshop, charge admission, and promote this by yourself or with others. Generally, charge $10 to $25 for general admission to a 60–90 minute seminar. For follow-up in depth programs lasting several hours or longer, you can charge more. Some good venues for holding seminars include a room in a library, at a college with an adult extension program, or a conference room in a bank, hotel, or country club. If your program would be of special interest to the employees or officers at a large corporation, choose a room near that company’s offices and promote the program to the people there. Another approach for these public programs is to use them as a fundraiser, where you share the proceeds with the organization or association that will promote it to its members and mailing list, as well as do other marketing and publicity.
4) Be a keynote speaker, where you speak for about 30 to 45 minutes at a luncheon, dinner, or conference for an organization or association. In this case, make your program entertaining as well as informative, such as by including stories to illustrate the different points you are making.
5) Offer to be a leader of a breakout session on your topic at a conference, which usually has about 15 to 50 people. Or offer to be on a panel or organize a panel on your topic, where you are the moderator, and usually you can speak as one of the panelist, too.
6) Pitch yourself to be a guest on a podcast. These are ideal because they typically stream, so people can listen whenever they want, such as when driving, going on a hike, or working out at the gym. By contrast, radio shows are commonly aired at one time, though some become archived and are much like podcasts, such as shows on BlogTalkRadio.com. It’s better to be a guest than have your own show, since the host already has a built in audience. You can certainly start your own podcast or radio show, but you have to build your audience, which can take much time and efforts. Getting on TV shows can be fine, but you tend to be on for just a few minutes and once it’s over, it’s over. However, adding a TV show to your bio contributes to your credibility and authority.
7) Team up with others who are speaking on related areas, where you can pitch yourself as either individual speakers or part of a panel. This way you can market your programs together through joint mailings or flyers, or you can exchange email lists or promote each other in your emails.
8) Organize a retreat on your topic. You can do this yourself or combine forces with others. In this case, you find a nice place to hold the event, such as in the countryside near you. You can rent a house for a couple of days through Airbnb, HomeAway, or other short-term home rental service and hire someone to cater or order food from a local restaurant. Then, you schedule a series of talks and workshops throughout the day. Or for a more local or short-term program, such as for a day or half-day, you can find office or meeting space rented by the hour or day through companies like Industrious, OfficeEvolution, Regis, and WeWork.
9) Contact your local universities and colleges which have continuing education programs to offer a college course or extended study program on your topic. If you have a book on the topic, you can even require it as reading for the course, and as long as it’s on topic, it’s both fitting and ethical to do so. Many of your students may also want to learn more or hire you as a consultant.
10) Still other possibilities include the following:
- Record your talks and create audio recordings for sale, or combine them on a flash drive or DVD with your book and sell them together.
- Set up a teleseminar or webinar, such as on Zoom or GotoMeeting. Introductory teleseminars and webinars are ideal for introducing you and your products or services by giving attendees some valuable information about your topic. Then, you offer a more in-depth program, such as a workshop, retreat, online course, or several hours of consulting at a special rate. For instance, you might offer a dramatically lower reduced rate for the next day or two for those participating in this introductory program to entice them to sign up for your offer now.
- Participate in a 50–50 event sponsored by a promoter, where you appear on stage if you have some kind of product, such as a book, video, or other package of information. You get to talk briefly about your topic and the products you have and split the proceeds with the promoter.
- Create short how-to videos of about 1 to 2 and at most 3 minutes, where you share some valuable tips on how to do something in your topic area. One good way to create these videos is to hire a professional videographer to come to one of your speaking engagements and record your talk. Then, you can cut that full video into very short how-to clips and post them on YouTube. Additionally, you can sell an edited video of your complete talk — or use the complete video as part of an online course made up of a series of videos. Still another way to do these videos is to set up a VSL camera or your phone on a tripod, sit in front of the camera, and talk. Or combine a short 15–20 second introduction of you talking with a PowerPoint turned into a video using text-to-voice technology to create a narrative for the video as it plays.
So there you have it — 10 different ways to use your speaking to get clients, sell any books or products, and eventually get money for your speaking. I’ve used many of these techniques or have heard them recommended by professional speakers.
Now get started by turning whatever you are doing into topics you can talk about to get clients and sales.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GINI GRAHAM SCOTT, Ph.D., J.D., is a nationally known writer, consultant, speaker, and seminar leader, specializing in business and work relationships, professional and personal development, social trends, and popular culture. She has published 50 books with major publishers. She has worked with dozens of clients on memoirs, self-help, popular business books, and film scripts. Writing samples are at www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com.
She is the founder of Changemakers Publishing, featuring books on work, business, psychology, social trends, and self-help. The company has published over 150 print, e-books, and audiobooks. She has licensed several dozen books for foreign sales, including the UK, Russia, Korea, Spain, and Japan.
She has received national media exposure for her books, including appearances on Good Morning America, Oprah, and CNN. She has been the producer and host of a talk show series, Changemakers, featuring interviews on social trends.
Scott is active in a number of community and business groups, including the Lafayette, Pleasant Hill, and Walnut Creek Chambers of Commerce. She is a graduate of the prestigious Leadership Contra Costa program. She does workshops and seminars on the topics of her books.
She is also the writer and executive producer of 10 films in distribution, release, or production. Her most recent films that have been released include Driver, The New Age of Aging, and Infidelity.
She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her J.D. from the University of San Francisco Law School. She has received five MAs at Cal State University, East Bay, most recently in Communication.