How to Monetize a Speaking Opportunity (ep. 46)

If you have someone who wants you to speak to their people, and there are ideal clients for you in that audience, you have a terrific opportunity! But how do you maximize that opportunity, and turn it into clients and revenue? In today’s episode, Pamela discusses the do’s and don’ts of making money from speaking.

In this episode, you will:

• Discover How To Set Up The Speaking Opportunity So It Works For Everyone.
• Learn The 3 Things You Need To Do When You Speak That Lead To Clients.
• Identify The #1 Thing You Want To Do After You Speak To Maximize Your Results.

Timecode Guide:

• (01:49) Discover How To Set Up The Speaking Opportunity So It Works For Everyone.
• (06:37) Learn The 3 Things You Need To Do When You Speak That Lead To Clients.
• (10:55) Identify The #1 Thing You Want To Do After You Speak To Maximize Your Results.

Podcast Transcription

Episode 46: How to Monetize a Speaking Opportunity

Intro

Pamela Bruner: (00:00)
You’re listening to A Profitable Impact. If someone wants you to speak to their people, and there are ideal clients for you in that audience, you have a terrific opportunity. But how do you maximize that and turn it into clients and revenue?

Gene Monterastelli: (00:13)
Welcome to A Profitable Impact, where every single week we help experts like coaches and healers to expand their reach, to increase their impact in the world and to be well paid for their extraordinary skills and talents. My name is Gene Monterastelli and I am the lead coach in Pamela Bruner’s Impact Accelerator coaching program. And please welcome my friend, my colleague, and the CEO of Attract Clients Online, Pamela Bruner. How are you doing today, Pamela?

Pamela Bruner: (00:38)
Well, I’m feeling kind of meta today because we’re speaking about speaking and actually to be clear, we’re speaking about how to monetize a speaking opportunity. So if someone wants you to speak to their people and you know that they’re going to be ideal clients, or you suspect there are ideal clients in that audience, what do you do to maximize that opportunity today? Today, I want to talk about how to set up the opportunity so it works for you and it works for your potential host and also the three things you need to do when you speak that lead to clients. So it’s not just a nice occasion, it actually brings revenue into your business. And then what’s the number one thing you want to do after you speak to maximize your results?

Gene Monterastelli: (01:19)
So, as you’re listening to our conversation today about one of my favorite ways to build my practice, because I absolutely love this one. If this is one that is feeling a little bit vexing to you, and you’re not exactly sure how to implement what we’re talking about today, we’d love for you to have a conversation with one of our coaches to help you to do exactly that. If you go to BookMyBreakthroughCall.com, that’s BookMyBreakthroughCall.com, absolutely free you can get on the calendar with one of our coaches and they will help you to figure out exactly how to implement the strategies that we’re talking about today.

Discover How To Set Up The Speaking Opportunity So It Works For Everyone.

Pamela Bruner: (01:49)
So let’s talk about how to set up the speaking opportunity so it works for everyone. Now this is for both in-person and virtual, but given the time we’re in, we’ll talk more about virtual. I also want to take a moment to distinguish between a speaking opportunity or a signature talk and a workshop. And the way that I’ll distinguish between those two is that for me, a speaking opportunity or signature talk is when someone else provides the audience. A workshop is you providing the audience. Now that is my own definition and sometimes we’ll bend that definition. But mostly what we’re talking about today is the speaking opportunity where someone else is providing the audience.

Pamela Bruner: (02:32)
So there are a few things that are really important. Number one is you must be able to give follow-up info to the audience you’re speaking to, unless you’re being paid a very large keynote fee. And even then I would suggest that you really only want to take the opportunities that allow you to give follow-up info. Whether it is being able to share your website, whether it is being able to share a free gift that requires opt-in or something like that. If you are doing a speaking opportunity and they say, and you can’t share where people can find you or anything, it’s not a good speaking opportunity.

Gene Monterastelli: (03:12)
We actually, Pamela, had a client a number of years ago that was in that exact circumstance. She had an opportunity. She lived just outside of New York City. She had the opportunity to be in a room with 15 high-power female CEOs who were her absolute ideal clients. She was not being paid for the speaking engagement and was explicitly told she was not allowed to give her phone number, her email address, a website handout, any opt-in information that it purely had to be informational. And after we talked about the experience, she decided it wasn’t worth her time to take the train into the city, give the presentation and leave, even though they were ideal people for her to be talking to. Because there was no way to connect and follow-up, it would’ve been a wasted marketing opportunity and it just wasn’t worth her time and investment.

Pamela Bruner: (03:57)
Yeah. Great example. The second thing that you need to do to set up the speaking opportunity so that it works is edification. So your host should edify you to the audience. Now this can happen in one of several ways. It might happen with the host coming on first and introducing you. So if you are speaking to a corporate audience, for example, the head of HR or the VP or the person who asked you to speak may say we’ve asked Sally Jones to come speak to you today because she is et cetera, et cetera. Doesn’t prevent you from telling a story that might warm up the audience, but it does give you extra credibility because the host has edified you.

Gene Monterastelli: (04:36)
I like to call this being the moon. The moon doesn’t actually produce any light. It is just reflecting the sun, but it’s super visible. It’s super bright. And everybody notices it. If we are in a situation where our host is well appreciated by the audience, they are the sun. And by them edifying us, they’re lighting us up the way the moon is lit up. So we’re immediately perceived in a different way because that is happening.

Pamela Bruner: (05:03)
Mm love that. And then the third thing to make sure that this works is to set very clear expectations. So when will the speaking opportunity happen? How long should you speak? Will there be Q and A afterwards or not? What’s the structure and the format of what you’re expected to do? And then, as I said, make it very clear and spell it out in advance so I can give a free gift. Often people who host you for a speaking opportunity will say you can’t sell. And then I’ll always ask, does that mean I can’t give away a free gift? And if the free gift requires opt-in, then I have control of the relationship and can make an offer later at a different time. But very few speaking opportunities will say, “You can’t give a free gift.”

Gene Monterastelli: (05:54)
The other thing I think is a really useful question. I think it’s really good, Pamela, that you’re setting out. We want to know how long it is? Is there a question and answer? What it’s going to look like? One question I like to ask is what happens if we start late? So if we start 10 minutes late, do I still have 45 minutes to present? Or do I need to end on time because of what is coming after it? So then for me as a speak here and a presenter, I can have a game plan in my mind if things are not going exactly as planned, but it’s really good to establish that well in advance versus as you’re walking onto stage and all of a sudden you find out you have less time than you thought, because as they’re introducing you, they’re saying, and the break is still going to happen on time, even though we’re running late, it’s good to have that conversation ahead of time as well.

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Learn The 3 Things You Need To Do When You Speak That Lead To Clients.

Pamela Bruner: (06:37)
Yeah. And the same thing holds true, whether it’s a virtual stage or an in-person stage. Such a great example. So what are the three things you need to do when you speak that leads you to get clients? And the first one is that you talk about the current clients, not in any way that that removes privacy or inappropriate, but this is more about sharing stories and indicating that you get results. And Gene does that sort of naturally, as he’s illustrating these stories to say, “I was talking to one of our clients or one of our clients several years ago did this.” And that establishes the fact that yes, we have clients and yes, we do this work clients. So talk about your current clients in your speaking.

Pamela Bruner: (07:21)
Another thing to do is seed your programs or offers. So you can talk about the coaching program you have, or you could say something like in my XYZ program, one of the things that we focus on is this concept and the way that I usually illustrate this is so I’ve just mentioned a coaching program. I haven’t tried to sell it. I haven’t given a price. I haven’t given the aspects of it, but I’ve indicated that there is a program and an offering that I have for clients. And I have shown that this is the source of some of the information that I’m sharing.

Gene Monterastelli: (07:57)
And when we do that, I think it’s also really useful not only to say, “recently, one of my clients was struggling with,” it’s also really good to say, “and after we made this change, this is the outcome they received.” So we’re not just talking about that we have clients and that we have a program, but we can also in really subtle ways say, this is what they’re struggling with. Maybe it’s like you, and this is the results that they had after we worked with them. So we’re not just saying we work with clients, but we work with them successfully.

Pamela Bruner: (08:24)
Exactly. Then the third thing is to make an offer for a freebie or some other reason for them to follow-up with you. So ideally, in a perfect world, you would make this offer while you were speaking and have them take action then. The way that this is very gracefully done is somebody who in the middle of a talk says, “Hey, just pull out your iPhone and text slides to this number and my system will write you back, ask for an email and I’ll send you the slides for this presentation.” No, I’m not suggesting that you share your slides for a presentation. That’s not always the right free offer, but it is a very common offer. And it’s often done in the middle of a presentation so that it’s very seamless. People just pull out their phone and that way, as you’re connecting with people, you get their text information and you get their email address, which is a wonderful thing to do.

Pamela Bruner: (09:18)
Now that requires some tech to set up. It requires a texting program. It requires an email program, and obviously it requires whatever you’re going to give people free, but that’s a really wonderful way to do it. Another way is to give people a very easy to remember URL. You don’t want to give them a Bitly link. You don’t want to give them a, my website slash this slash that, but the very simple you can buy, in fact, I think I own like BonusGiftFromPamela.com or something like that, which I have used multiple times. You can get a URL like that and give it out and that’s a good way to have people write it down and remember it. And then a third way is to just have the host send something to attendees for follow-up. Not all hosts will do this, but some are willing to and say, “Hey, hope you enjoyed the presentation of Sally as much as I did. And she offered this free resource. Here’s the link to go get it.” So that can be another way to be the moon and be edified and have the host make sure that everyone gets that information.

Gene Monterastelli: (10:21)
And this is something that is so much easier today than it was just five years ago, because almost everybody now has a smartphone where five or six years ago, they may or may not have it. And so people are walking around with little bitty computers. So if we are in person, they literally can do that. And I love the phrase Pamela used there. “You can take your smartphone out right now and,” so you’re not only giving them the information, but you’re giving them permission to say, “Hey, you can actually sign up for this right now.” That’s completely okay. That’s the appropriate thing to do. And they’re much more likely to take action in the moment when you’re asking them to do it than after the fact.

Identify The #1 Thing You Want To Do After You Speak To Maximize Your Results.

Pamela Bruner: (10:55)
So let’s talk about the one thing you want to do after you speak to maximize your results. And this is going to just be funny because how many times do we say this? Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. An important part of this is actually to determine the follow-up beforehand. When you get done with a talk, it can be very hard to say, “Okay, well, I’ve collected this many email addresses and I don’t know what I’m going to do with them.” Or, “Yeah, I sent the one email to people that said, here’s the freebie that you requested because they’d opt in for it. But I don’t know what I’m going to do after that.”

Pamela Bruner: (11:32)
When you are setting up your talk, you want to make sure that the follow-up and the subsequent emails you might send people or videos you might create or additional content you might have, or an offer to a strategy session. You want to make sure that it’s all mapped out ahead of time so that it is congruent with the talk that you give.

Gene Monterastelli: (11:51)
And one of the really key parts of mapping out that particular follow-up is you need to know what you actually want them to do. Do I want them to sign up for branded strategy session? Do I want them to come to another event that I’m doing? Do I want them to buy a digital program that I’m offering that makes sense to what is going on? But it’s really difficult to create a follow-up sequence if we don’t know the place that we want them to land. So if we know, okay, after this, I’m hoping to be in front of a group of people that I can get into some amazing branded strategy sessions so I can offer my big ticket program. Awesome. So that’s the end in mind, what are the nurture emails that I need to send after the fact so that when I am talking about my freebie or whatever it is, I already know in my mind it’s seeding this path that they’re going to go down. And so knowing that ahead of time is really essential.

Pamela Bruner: (12:37)
Yes. For example, if they get your freebie, what are the emails that come after it? And you can put people into a regular nurture sequence that you have, maybe you send out a blog once a week. We send out a podcast once a week. Those are the regular emails that people on the list get, but you may have special emails that come after the freebie. And a final question to ask yourself is, do you need a special offer just for these people? Now, usually I’ll say no to that in the sense that I don’t believe you necessarily have to create a new free offer, a new article, a new anything for them, but you could do a special page with something that already exists.

Pamela Bruner: (13:16)
So say you have a freebie, it’s a regular freebie that you’ve given out before. But what you do is you create a special landing page that says “for friends of so and so,” and that’s your host or “for team members of this company.” And then you have your free offer below it, that special page says, “Hey, this is, is really for you. This is designed for you.” And putting up a landing page like that is not a terribly complex thing. You’re just plugging into your regular email marketing system and your regular freebie system.

Gene Monterastelli: (13:47)
When I do that, when I’m a guest in podcast, I just go and I steal the artwork, steal… I go and I get the artwork from the show that I’m going to be on, and I create the landing page with that artwork that they’re already used to seeing in their podcatcher. So they know that they’re exactly in the right place. And it’s the exact same thing as saying where you were, but if there’s actually artwork that you can use that demonstrates that, it becomes a really simple thing. And then once you have a template set up for that sort of thing, if you’re appearing on multiple shows, you just create a new landing page and you just swap out the artwork and the entire process works over and over again.

Pamela Bruner: (14:23)
Such a great example, because speaking really is a great way to expand your audience, to expand your reach, to get more people on your email list. And finally, it’s a great way to be edified and get good clients.

Conclusion

Gene Monterastelli: (14:38)
So if you’re in a situation where you recognize that you need to be standing on stage more, but you’re not exactly sure the best way to implement the things that we’ve been talking about today, we would love for you to have a conversation with one of our coaches so they can help you to figure out the strategy and the plan so you know exactly what to put in that follow-up after the fact. So it’s easy to reach out, to get yourself on stage because you know it’s going to be fruitful for you. All you need to do is go to BookMyBreakthroughCall.com. That’s BookMyBreakthroughCall.com. Get yourself on the calendar. Have a conversation with one of our coaches so you can maximize those speaking experiences.

Gene Monterastelli: (15:14)
If you know someone in your life who is a coach, a healer, a transformational entrepreneur who could benefit from this sort of conversation so they can expand their reach as well, please be our ambassador. Pass this along. Don’t spam your inbox, but you might know one or two people who could really use this message today, please pass it along. If you have a question, a comment, or a topic that you’d like Pamela and I to talk about on a future episode, we would love to hear from you. All you need to do is go to AttractClientsOnline.com, click on that contact link, drop us a note so we know how we can serve you best moving forward with the show.

Gene Monterastelli: (15:47)
And finally, if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to the podcast. Subscribing is always free. You can find the show on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, Audible, basically everywhere you listen to audio right now. Just search for A Profitable Impact. Click subscribe. Click follow. And make sure you turn on those notifications so each time a new episode comes out, you know right away so you can learn right away. For A Profitable Impact, I am Gene Monterastelli. Until next time, I hope you have an impactful week.

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Building a business as a coach or expert is challenging, especially if you’re trying to find your clients online.

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