To be a successful speaker, you have to have a genuine desire to use your expertise to help other people. When you do, your authenticity shines through. Authenticity isn’t something that can be measured, but if you have it, it makes it that much easier for people to decide to do business with you.
Having good intentions towards an audience is a wonderful thing, but we should still be honest (at least with ourselves) and admit that making money ranks up there in the process too.
I’m not talking about making millions, although it’s tempting to think that: “If I could just get in front of a big enough audience filled with all the right people, I could make so much money!” I’m talking about enough so you really prove to yourself that public speaking CAN grow your business while helping others solve their problems and grow themselves and/or their businesses too.
When you’re creating your presentations, it’s easy to get so focused on pulling your information together that you might forget to think about the presentation from your audience’s perspective. Their #1 question is always going to be, “What’s in it for me?” Who can blame them? They’re giving up their time in return for “something.” Your success boils down to how well your presentation addresses that “something” from their perspective. Keeping these three necessities in mind while you’re constructing your presentation should help:
Make sure to orient your audience– This is about you making sure that your audience is on the same page as you before you start diving into your content. For example, if your audience is full of beginners, then make sure to help them recognize your presentation as a starting point for them. If you identify their starting point, it’s going to be easier for you to pick the best end point, and to make sure that your presentation clearly covers the distance between the start and finish.
Be upfront and clear about your desire to work with them– Don’t pretend or try to hide the fact that you’re going to offer them the opportunity to work with you. Instead, do a really good job of providing them with something actionable so that when they experience the quick and easy result you provided in your presentation they’ll be inspired to find out what else you can help them with.
Take the time to identify what the next step is for someone in your audience– While it may be easy to come up with an offer, keep in mind that your offer also needs to be relevant to what you covered in your presentation. If it isn’t, if it’s for something off-topic compared to your presentation, people won’t have enough information to give you the “yes” you’re hoping for. They might even feel like you’re doing a bait and switch on them.
So yes, we need to be honest with ourselves! We need to admit that being authentic and making money is okay. In fact it’s a really good thing. Because when we see our business starting to grow as a result of speaking, it opens up opportunities to help more people! That’s one of the very cool results of public speaking!
‘Til we speak again,
~ Beth
Change Is In The Air!
