HOW TO USE STORYTELLING FOR BUSINESS AND WHY IT MATTERS

The post today comes from my colleague Wendy Scharfman
Coaching For Effective Communication
www.wendyscharfman.com

Today’s issue is about the use of storytelling in business.  It’s one of the oldest and most magical forms of communication.  Primitive peoples chronicled their lives on the walls of caves with stories and gave us our history. Children develop their creative imagination through stories and as adults we share a valuable cultural and societal bond whenever a good story is told. These days, you’ll hear stories in all forms of business communication and for good reason.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Every great speaker is a great storyteller. Why? Because the audience can retain information BETTER when people can emotionally and viscerally connect to what’s being said. If you think back to childhood, stories were – for many of us – an introduction to life ‘s lessons, to human behavior, morals, ethics and right versus wrong. And we remember still the value of those stories and what they taught us, not to mention the vivid imagery they conjure up.

The use of storytelling in business is growing and for good reason. As the necessity of communicating the value and benefit of what you do to the world increases, the skill with which you articulate that requires some imagination and uniqueness in order to capture the audience’s attention… and keep it. By activating the imagination of the audience through stories, you, as the speaker, engage the audience to participate in an experience that is both captivating and informative. It’s a perfect way to connect to the content of your message. The emotional thread of a story is a direct line to the brain for memory retention and the processing of information. In a sense, you are providing an effortless way to learn using a technique that has been instilled in us since childhood.

Here are some great ways to weave a story into your speech or interview:

• Be brief. A story should have a strong beginning, a colorful, clear middle and a great ending. And if the story is within a speech, make it 6-8 sentences. You dissipate the impact of a story if it rambles on too long or is too repetitive. Choose your words wisely and make them count!

• Paint a picture of a great central character and take us to a different time and place. Set it up well and describe it with a few, choice descriptors. Add a bit of dialogue in the character’s vernacular. It will make the character come to life.

• Know WHY you are telling this story. What is the point of your story and how, very specifically, does it tie into your talking points. Make sure you have the connector! And weave it in seamlessly.

• Use some dynamic and inflection in your voice when you tell a story. Incorporate some pacing – don’t rush. Be a little theatrical (little being the operative word) and let us relish the tale.

And remember your story is NOT your bio. Put that in a document. Your story, any story you choose to use in your business communication should be told with humanity and wisdom, a bit of flair and with a take-away for your audience.

If you would like to sign up for Wendy’s blog please visit: http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=001Vjt3cCjZco_UHnxe90vk-g%3D%3D

E-mail: wendy@wendyscharfman.com

Post by Sharon Berman via RainToday.com

When people require the professional services of an accountant, attorney or other type of professional services provider, they are really looking for a knowledgeable, approachable individual they can talk to, not just a firm. Even if your website articulately communicates your expertise and experience, you remain just another faceless company to a prospect who has never met you, your colleagues, or one of your satisfied clients.

To counteract that dilemma, proactive service providers are now placing videos on their websites to show the people behind the firm. Some of these videos feature the firm’s professionals reaching out to website visitors and connecting with them on a personal level. Other firms have posted video testimonials, with actual clients telling powerful success stories.

Videos are a strong marketing tactic for any type of professional services firm. With today’s technology, you can easily produce them in-house or you can inexpensively outsource their production to a video specialist. Either way, here’s what you need to know to get started.

Put Someone in Charge

Your firm’s size and structure will determine who should be involved in implementing the video production. Regardless of how many people will provide input, it’s important to appoint one individual who directs the entire effort. A marketing staff member or strong administrator can coordinate schedules for meetings and facilitate discussions to make sure everyone’s insights are taken into account but don’t stop the show. If your coordinator also happens to be good at handling a camera and uploading video to the website, that’s even better.

Testing the Value of Video How an Insurance Firm Doubled Conversion Rates Using Video Blyth Valley needed to do something to set itself apart from its competition. The insurance brokerage was the first in the UK to move sales online, but soon its competitors were right there with it. It turned to online video to capture website visitors’ attention and sell policies. >> Read the Case Study

Select a Page

Before you begin production, decide on which page or pages you would like to place the video. The type of message the video communicates has to align with the text that appears on the same page. Examples:

• A home page video might feature a message from the firm’s CEO or principals. It could describe the firm, explain what makes it different, explain how it works with clients, or describe the founder’s vision.
• Appropriate video content on the services page might be a success story or case study, not the firm’s history.
• A video testimonial might go on the testimonial page (if you have one), or it could be placed on the homepage if it’s so compelling that it outshines a potential message from someone within the firm.

Decide on a Topic

Once you decide on the type of video and its potential placement, zero in further on the content. It may sound obvious that your video should tell your website visitors something they find interesting, but identifying such material is not as easy as it sounds. Your prospects may not really want to hear what you think should interest them. For instance, you might be tempted to address a certain challenge that keeps coming up in meetings with your clients. But if the solution to that challenge is a service people pay you to provide, then prospects won’t want to watch a video telling them how to do it themselves. What they may want to hear instead is how you have used your expertise on this topic to achieve a win for a client or to make a client’s business more successful.

Choose Your Talent

The next order of business is to select a “star” for your movie. Whether you produce a message from someone within your firm or a client testimonial, your talent should be someone who is comfortable in front of a camera. An introvert or someone who is camera shy won’t be able to communicate effectively and won’t “touch” your viewers. On the other hand, you don’t want someone who comes across too “salesy” or so forcefully as to drive viewers away.

If you plan to produce a testimonial, narrow your client list down to a few good candidates. The most important factor in selecting someone is not the extent of their involvement with the firm or the magnitude of the success you achieved for them. Rather, identify those who are likely to be comfortable on camera, will sound articulate, and can connect with people.

Production Dos and Don’ts

Create an outline of what your star is going to say and allow him to practice, but don’t over prepare. The communication should appear natural, casual and relaxed, not scripted and stiff. At the same time, don’t allow rambling. With today’s short attention spans, it’s critical to keep your video to fewer than 30 seconds and to get to the point of your message immediately. Remember, the average website visitor spends only three seconds on a page, so you need to grab and hold their attention. A prospect who is drawn into your video is more likely to continue exploring the rest of your site.

Even the most outgoing person might be a little nervous when first confronted with a camera, so it’s important to take the time to make him comfortable. Expect that it will take several attempts to get the video right. Have the speaker practice looking directly at the camera. A person who is nervous will be tempted to keep looking away, which gives the appearance of “shifty eyes” or fear. Further, to keep your viewers’ attention focused on the message, avoid clutter or movement in the background.

Keep the content of your video professional. Unless its purpose is to take a stand on a particular issue, don’t make any political statements. Don’t talk about personal matters. Visitors to your site are not interested in hearing about your last business trip or how you gave good advice to someone at the gym. Finally, don’t bash the competition and, in general, don’t say anything negative unless you can put a positive spin on it.

Unless you’re a movie star, you probably won’t love the way you look in your video. Just about everyone dislikes seeing themselves on screen, but other viewers will think you look great. If you’re the talent in the video, don’t watch it for your looks—watch it for content. You’re not auditioning for a movie, but communicating with prospects.

Do It Yourself or Hire Out?

If you’re inclined to produce your video in-house, a Flip Video camcorder is an inexpensive and user-friendly tool that makes it easy to create a quality production. Recording is as simple as pushing a button, and you can plug the camera directly into your computer’s USB port to upload the video. No special lighting is required, as Flip camcorders are designed to work best in low light.

Although no training is needed to create a simple Flip video, a tech-savvy individual may be interested in producing a more complex presentation. Flip camcorders come with software that shows you how to cut and edit. Another feature you may consider adding is background music, which can improve the flow of a video. To learn about these and other refinements, a webinar may be all you need. Whatever you do, avoid getting too artsy. Too many cuts or excessive camera movement will make your viewers dizzy and will distract from your message.

If your firm lacks the resources to coordinate video production internally, outsourcing is a worthwhile investment. The Los Angeles area, in particular, has a wealth of inexpensive professionals who specialize in producing workplace online videos.

Reach Out and Touch Someone

Like any other marketing tactic, videos should be integrated into your overall marketing strategy and plan. And because they are part of your website, videos need to be updated frequently to communicate your firm’s energy and land you near the topic of the search engine rankings. While a new video every week is probably too much, you should produce one every month or every other month.

Susan note:  LA folks check out the Web Video & Marketing Workshops YOU ON CAMERA

Wendy Scharfman a social media friend and communication coach interviewed me for her blog News from Coaching For Effective Communication .  I thought you might be interested in reading the interview and the post from her blog.

GROW YOUR BUSINESS OR PROMOTE YOUR BOOK THROUGH SPEAKING

Wendy Scharfman
Coaching For Effective Communication
www.wendyscharfman.com
Take it away Wendy,

This week I want to focus on the ever-increasing necessity for professionals and authors to grow their business through speaking in public.

I had a radio interview with Bill Frank last week for KKZZ talk radio in Ventura, CA http://dld.bz/rq2K and one of the things we discussed was the importance of honing your speaking skills for whatever message or product you are providing. If you are not the BEST representative of what you do, the world will not embrace and engage with what you have to offer. It’s seemingly obvious, but often not the case. Taking the time to work with a coach, trainer or even a partner on refining your message for any speech or material you put out there will come back to you tenfold. And then, get some help getting out on the trail.

Susan Levin, owner and founder of Speaker Services (http://www.speakerservices.com/) put this notion to work. I came across Susan several times as I was building my business and I believe “Attention must be paid” to the seeming coincidence of someone repeatedly appearing in your life. She offers great services, training and a wealth of information for people who want to market themselves as speakers.

INTERVIEW:

Wendy’s Question:

Susan, can you briefly tell me what led you to start your business and how has it changed since its inception?

Susan’s Answer:
In 1992 I was inspired to work with business folks and give them the opportunity to market themselves as speakers. We began with a print directory in Los Angeles, which was mailed to event producers, meeting planners and was distributed on newsstands around town. In 1994 the Internet came to life and I was one of the first 1500 people to have a url and a website. We continued with the print till 1998 and then went full boar on the web as many more people were using it as a resource.

The web took Speaker Services from being a local business to worldwide – we have clients all over the country and in Europe as well. With the influx of social media, it has become very easy to connect with more people and grow my business. Connection is the key. It spans from a 30 second introduction, 10 minute talk to a keynote presentation, to blogging, lead generation, social media, creating videos, job interviews and workshops. The whole enchilada. I love connectivity!

Wendy’s Question:

What do you think are the most important factors in becoming a better speaker?

Susan’s Answers:
• Don’t be a speaker, be an expert who speaks.
• Be passionate about your subject matter. When you are on fire, others catch on fire.
• Know your target audience.
• Get a presentation, media and branding coach.
• Make sure you have The 3 C’s or the Holy Triad in your presentation Connection, Content and Comfort
• Be a great storyteller and get the audience involved.
• Create videos so that event planners can see you in action.

Wendy’s Question:

How does social media come into play in terms of the services you provide and promoting your own business?

Susan’s Answer:
Social Media is awesome. I promote my services and speakers via social media and teach them too how to join groups so that they can begin to create joint ventures, visibility and credibility. I prefer social media to networking meetings in person. Once you find your tribe it is totally acceptable to arrange a meeting to learn more about how you can support one another. Wendy, you and I met via social media and started a conversation and here I am writing a post for your blog!

Wendy’s Question:

Talk a bit about the various classes and teleseminars Speaker Services offers.

Susan’s Answer:
• I teach a workshop in Los Angeles called Market Yourself as a Speaker, which is about the business of speaking. I also work with folks privately. http://www.speakerservices.com/services/marketyourself.html

• Barbara Niven and I teach Web Video & Marketing Workshop, YOU ON CAMERA http://www.speakerservices.com/web-video-workshop.html

• Once a year we offer a Video Demo Showcase & Authors Video http://www.speakerservices.com/videoprod.html

• I have been offering teleclasses way before they were even popular.

• We have a membership club The Speakers’ Community where I interview experts twice a month on speaking, marketing, books, social media and more. http://www.speakerscommunity.com . It is an online library and it is 60 days complimentary.

Wendy’s Question:

If you were starting out as a professional speaker, what would be the most important sequence of actions that you would take to succeed?

Susan’s Answers:
• Get a coach
• Get focused
• Speak for Free
• Attend events, listen to teleclasses, join speaker groups or start your own on Facebook, LinkedIn
• Learn the business of speaking and get all your marketing materials together including video
• Build a following; stay out in front of your peeps via regular e-mails and social media

Wendy’s Question:

What transformation do you see in your class participants after they have completed the training for their speaking videos?

Susan’s Answer:
They jump to the next level of professionalism, begin to get paid for speaking and they are more visible.

Los Angeles friends join Speaker Services on 9/26/10 complimentary YOU the Star, Speak, Write, Market event. http://t.co/GPunWDY

If you would like to sign up for Wendy’s blog please visit: http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=001Vjt3cCjZco_UHnxe90vk-g%3D%3D

Invite from Susan Levin

COMPLIMENTARY

YOU…THE STAR!!! SPEAK-WRITE-MARKET MINI SUMMIT & VIDEO DEMO SHOWCASE In Los Angeles

Sunday, Sept.26, 9:30am-5pm   $FREE  Register Now

In this day and age, to truly make a lasting impact, you need to be a media conglomerate: a compelling speaker…a credible author…a believable video performer…a master marketer.

In “YOU…THE STAR!!!” you will learn — from acknowledged experts in their respective fields — the ins and outs, the secrets and strategies for being a multi-faceted media personality.

Regardless of profession, everyone is an expert in their field and this event is a perfect opportunity to turn your expertise into a successful business; to master the game of speaking, to navigate the latest technology, and learn exciting new strategies for producing active and passive income.

THE PROMISE OF “YOU…THE STAR!!!”

- EARN why the magic of speaking is invisible

- POLISH your performance, presentation and communication skills, no matter what field you are in

- TRICKS to sharing your passion & excitement that translate into action and sales

- WITNESS a live video demo shoot

- DISCOVER why a speaker video demo is the ultimate calling card

- GET the #1 secret so you can “play” on camera – it’s the magic secret sauce that brings you $$S!

- LEVERAGE videos into your marketing campaign and convert visitors into customers

- EXPLORE self-publishing vs mainstream publishing

- CREATE time to write your book

- TURN your content into cash

- FIND out how event producers decide who gets booked

- UNCOVER what’s uniquely marketable about you and your mission

- MASTER Social Media, Blogs, Article Writing, Teleseminars, UTube

PRESENTERS:
Jack Barnard is a master presentation & branding coach, a media trainer & writer: a true maverick in the business. He works with speakers, authors & entrepreneurs, both one-on-one and in groups. His original method emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual, focusing on the permission to bring forth one’s distinctive style.

Susan Levin is owner & founder of Speaker Services. Susan is an International Marketing Consultant for speakers & authors. Her company offers marketing & training services & video production service.

Jean-Noel Bassior is a book coach & journalist who specializes in celebrity interviews. She is the author of Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television published by McFarland.

Barbara Niven is an Actress, Speaker and Performance Coach.  Barbara is in demand as a Performance Coach for actors, hosts, speakers & executives. In her studio she videotapes sessions for instant replay & feedback.

Location:  Marina del Rey, 9:30am-5pm

When you register you will receive the address and location.

REGISTER NOW

By Eric Gruber, Your Article Marketing Expert www.articlemarketingexperts.com

How to Sell Your Ebooks and Reports in Amazon’s Kindle Store by Denise Wakeman

How to Get Published on Amazon Kindle from Denise Wakeman on Vimeo.

Have you added your ebooks to the Kindle Store? Share your links here in the comments so we can check out what you’re doing!

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6254/The-Next-Big-Thing-for-Marketers-Social-Magazines.aspx#ixzz0uLch6JMf

Susan’s note:

I included this post from RainToday.com as it applies to speakers, consultants and business folks.  I have been testing out this system as well when meeting with potential clients who are interested in speaking and marketing training.  It is all about connecting and relationships and by having a meeting with your team and the client makes a huge difference in them buying your services.  They feel very nurtured and trusting of your team effort and feel that you have their best interest at hand.  Interested to know about how I bundle Speaker Services services  Give me a call and let’s see what how we can assist you.  310-822-4922 PT.

Take it away Anne

A Perspective from Architecture & Engineering

By Anne Scarlett

Throughout the lead development process, business development professionals work very hard. You make contacts, nurture relationships, submit RFPs, all before you finally get a chance to interview with prospects.

By the time you get to that interview, you realize that all of the firms are fully qualified—especially in terms of project portfolios and proven performance track records. So what’s in question? Quite simply it’s the personalities and the “wow” factor. When considering how to showcase synergies and group dynamics, what’s better than giving your prospects an opportunity to truly “experience” working with you and your team?

Creating an interview “experience” is possible, even within the limited timeframe of a formal client interview. Think about it. As a service provider, your firm often facilitates sessions around project strategy, programming, and design charrettes. Why not dedicate a portion—or even all—of the interview to facilitate a dialogue? In other words, why not make your presentation truly interactive, rather than just saying it will be interactive?

Turn Prospects into Clients Deliver the Perfect Pitch: 9 Rules for Winning Clients 5 Ways to Win Business and Influence Decision Makers How to Make a Prospect Love You

Here’s how it’s done. (I’ve used this format myself, so I know it works.)

1. Prepare and submit an agenda in advance. Share your intentions to incorporate facilitation as part—or even all—of the presentation.
2. If the client requests specific points to be covered by each team, include those points within your agenda. Just make sure you allocate plenty of time for facilitation as well.
3. Prepare your firm’s top three messages that you want to emphasize to the client. Think: “If the client remembers nothing else from this interview, I hope they will remember this…”
4. Work out some potential talking points that you may want to cover during the facilitation, depending upon the direction it takes. Practice drafting out (in a simple format) your team’s process and/or diagrams to illustrate a point. You can always bring mini-sketches of these diagrams to refer to if you need to draw them in real time.
5. During your rehearsal, have someone serve in the prospects’ role while your team guides them through the interview. Preselect the facilitators and the scribes. Make it smooth and organized, yet be flexible and open to spontaneous shifts during the actual interview.
6. Make sure you have flip charts with a sticky back and multicolored markers. Bring at least one easel.

Sample Agenda

• Brief introduction of firm, team, and client. (Casual and quick).
• Brief summarization of your understanding of their project goals. (List these in real time. Ask if there are any additions or changes.)
• Identification of top three to five client challenges/issues for project. (This part is facilitated by you. It will require your ability to help guide the client through their priorities and get them talking immediately. In addition to stating the top three to five challenges, you may have to group items into buckets and/or create a parking lot. Document these on flip charts).
• Reflection by your team of how you would propose to tackle the identified challenges. Use relevant, real stories to support your proposed approach. Whenever it makes sense, tie their challenges back into the key messages that you mentioned during the introduction. Perhaps it will also include a representation of your process by drawing it out in a simple form.
• Presentation of initial design schemes, if required.
• Wrap up: Inquire if there are additional questions. And finally, repeat the top three messages that your firm wants to leave them with (the ones you started with at the beginning).

Reasons to Use This Format

• Your team shows off its ability to glean information from a client group and organize that information into something solid and real.
• Teammates demonstrate how they work with one another. Team dynamics can be quite telling.
• Your team exemplifies tremendous listening skills, making the prospect feel both heard and respected.
• Your prospect speaks out, so the overall experience will be fun and interesting. Don’t worry that those speaking aren’t decision makers. Those who have a less important voice will most certainly defer to those who have final say on projects.
• The overall experience is kinesthetic and engaging. It will be memorable and unique, and it will greatly differentiate your firm.

Reasons to Not Use This Format

• Your team is risk-averse and doesn’t like the idea of simply using talking points rather than a prepared presentation.
• Your team is unable to think on its feet, especially if the client throws a surprise curve ball.
• Your prospect is not willing to be led through an active dialogue—they simply want to “be pitched.” This needs to be determined as early in the process as possible, which is why you need to share your agenda/intentions in advance.
• Your prospect includes decision makers who will not be involved in the actual project. These people don’t care about the experience of working with your team.

If you have team members ready to show off their talents as professional design consultants—quite literally—then this is a great interview format to consider.

Anne Scarlett, President of Scarlett Consulting, provides marketing advisory services to the architecture/engineering/construction industry. She is a frequent public speaker and contributing author to multiple industry publications, including PSMJ’s AE Rainmaker. What’s the Scarlett Consulting difference? Clients receive hands-on attention. Find out more by calling 773-251-8132 or visiting www.annescarlett.com.

Post from blog@hubspot.com

Yesterday in Boston, author and speaker Seth Godin took the stage at John Hancock Hall. The event was part of a tour to promote his new book, Linchpin, and several members of the HubSpot team attended the morning half of the event.  The morning focused on Godin speaking and making his case for change.

What was the key takeaway from these few hours? All of Godin’s ideas and books can be condensed into one simple word: Permission. After listening to Godin discuss a variety of subjects, ranging from the current economic revolution to the failures of higher education, one thing is clear. The man is completely obsessed with permission.

The Two Sides of Permission

Godin uses permission in two vastly different ways to address his points.  It is clear through books like Permission Marketing and Tribes as well as his talk today that he believes effectively marketing to people in today’s culture requires their expressed permission.  An individual or company needs the permission of a group or tribe of people to be able to join and then eventually conduct commerce with the group.

Godin’s other focus of permission is positioned sharply on the other side. While individuals and companies need permission to market products and services outside the company, to make great products, or “art,” as he calls it, employees need to do great work without waiting for permission.  He maintains that most people are great at doing what they are told, but not good at solving problems that everyone else is afraid to solve. He believes that successful companies in the future will be filled with employees who don’t wait for permission and instead tackle the tough problems head-on.

Impossible and Perfect

Impossible and perfect are the two biggest principles stopping people from progressing, says Godin. Industries at certain times are perfect. For example, record companies in the 1970s. During this time, demand for their product was huge. They had free advertising through radio and a strong hold on distribution. Today, the record industry is in shambles because its time of perfection has passed.

Problems seem perfect because they can’t be solved. Revolutions create opportunities for things that seem impossible. For example, when Henry Ford first sought to mass produce the automobile, it was viewed as an impossible task. The balance between impossible and perfect is what stops individuals and organizations from seeing opportunities in front of them. Godin believes we are in the middle of the biggest economic revolution in history.

He explains that now you don’t need a big office building and a large company to create and distribute a product and build a successful business. Instead, he argues that today we need connections and problem solving skills to build great companies. There is no map in this economic revolution. Value today is created by solving a problem no one has solved before.  It is easy to copy others, but the challenge is building your own map.

8 Marketing Lessons From Seth Godin

1. Spamming People Doesn’t Work Like it Used To – People who spam others have determined that it doesn’t pay for itself like it used to. If you look at companies that are growing (e.g. Zappos), they don’t do a lot of advertising.  They do just a little bit of advertising to keep their investors happy, but have realized that personalized messages will always do better than spam.

2. People Like Doing What Other People Are Doing – We like to be like each other. People strive to fit in and find their own groups, so marketers who facilitate this will win.

3. Ideas That Spread Win, and Free Ideas Spread Best – Godin explained that he made more money by giving away his book, Idea Virus, than he made on his previous New York Times best-seller. Free ideas create demand, and demand can always be monetized.

4. Remarks Make Something Remarkable – When people comment on something, then it is remarkable. The old model, which focuses on companies making average products for average people, is not remarkable. Companies that aren’t remarkable can’t grow quickly.  By making products worth talking about, then companies can become remarkable.

5. What We Make and How We Make It Has Changed – In today’s economy, people are buying experiences and conversations. Godin provided the example of LittleMissMatched, a company that sells unmatched socks that provide a point of interest and conversation for young girls.

6. You Have the Opportunity to Lead a Tribe – Tribes exist today, and they’re looking for leaders. You don’t have to have charisma to be a leader. Leading gives leaders charisma. The internet is the ultimate extension of communication to help organize tribes. Don’t waste time trying to convert non-fans; instead, work to strengthen existing tribes.

7. Lots of Alternatives Exist – Choices are now rampant, so people or companies that are perceived as the best or the leaders are more successful. People have been trained to be good at a lot of things, but not to be the best at one niche skill. Difficult opportunities are the ones worth doing.

8. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Indispensible – Lots of opportunities exist to be a linchpin, but most people and companies are scared of being great and indispensible because it’s hard and scary. By overcoming this fear, marketers can become critical to business success.

Read more

Post by Vickie Sullivan contributing editor of Rain Today

In these days of free webinars, free speaking, even free projects to “build the relationship,” buyers have plenty of opportunities to discover your value. They take that content and either 1) file you under “not a good fit” and move on, 2) keep in touch to pick up more free stuff, or 3) pick up the phone and call you with their latest challenge.

How do they decide who is a “go-to” person and who has nice ideas but aren’t worth paying for? One word: relevance. Let’s explore these three comparisons buyers use to separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves. Buyers use these filters to decide who is relevant now and who can wait for next year’s budget.

Your Priority

Most of you are pretty good about being clear on what you do. Once buyers know your offer, two questions determine if they need to act now. The first question they ask themselves: will your expertise help them with something they know they need right now? Will you help them get something they already covet? You must be a conduit for something they already want badly.

How to Beat the Competition Changing Your Position to Beat the Competition Tap into Buyers’ Emotions and You’ll Win More Clients Selling Ideas: How Ideas Can Transform Non-Buyers into Clients

Here’s an example: one of my Turbo Charge clients is a best-selling author who wanted to expand his brand into a new area. He wrote another book that publishers wanted so badly that they started a bidding war. Why did the winning publisher fight for that book? Because they wanted to expand into business books and they saw my client’s project as the conduit to make that happen. Yes, they liked the author’s brand, but they also saw what the book could do for the CEO’s top priority. So before writing that article, ask yourself this: what do the decision makers already covet and how can your expertise help them get that?

The second question buyers ask themselves: is solving the problem worth this price point? Here’s where your fee strategy really plays a role. Your investment forces buyers to explore what the solution is worth to them. And they compare your fee with what else they can do with the money. Even in this recovery, there’s a lot of competition for the same pot of dollars.

I’ll use myself as an example. I just heard from a prospective client that she’s weighing two options: working with me or hiring staff. Isn’t that interesting? My competition isn’t other brand consultants—it’s administrative help. In the got-to-have space, your competition is not only other experts; it’s also other priorities. Everyone has more things to do than money to spend. This is why the got-to-have experts position their focus as a conduit for something bigger than themselves.

Your Scarcity

The second thing buyers do to determine whether they must have your services is compare your expertise with theirs. There are two assessments buyers make that can put you into nice-to-have status. First comparison: our insights vs. what they already know. I call this the invisible Vulcan mind meld. Decision makers invest in what they don’t already have. So the question buyers ask themselves is do you know something they don’t?

Must-have experts show the market that they have something not readily available. Many talented, nice-to-have folks focus on the clever title or analogy. Buyers see right through that. They are looking at the insight, the point you are making. The analogy, the story, and the cleverness make your point come alive. If your writing is better than your insights, you are a nice read but not worth reaching out to. If you give a speech and hear, “Hey, nice reminder of what I already knew,” you failed the invisible Vulcan mind meld and are in the nice-to-have category.

After passing that test, buyers make a second comparison: your high-end services vs. information they don’t have but can easily get from you. The second bias—all things being “good enough,” the low-cost or free route will prevail. Notice what I didn’t say: equal. Even if you are better than the free resources you provide, even when prospects have a budget, buyers want to make sure they are getting the best option for their money. So another question they ask is can they get your insights from other free sources such as your book or white papers on your website? Is that “good enough” help for them?

This economy has created a lot of free and low-cost education. And it’s good stuff. A must-have expert provides high-quality content but always leaves the impression that “there’s more where that came from.” My favorite example of this strategy is Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics. His way of thinking appeals to so many situations that folks can’t get enough of him. And yet everyone knows that if they want their situation examined, they have to pay him his fees.

Your Approach

The third thing buyers look for is agreement. Before hiring you, even before talking to you, buyers want to get a sense of your approach and the way you think. The question they ask themselves: do they agree with your world view? They want to know this because they plan to implement your recommendations.

Think about it: we facilitate change, and change is confronting at the very least. Clients are willing to go on that journey with us as long as we don’t throw them under the bus. And that’s what buyers are really afraid of. They want to make sure your solutions won’t create too much brain damage. Your approach is their early-warning system.

And just saying your solutions are easy won’t cut it. Buyers are now in what I call “discovery” mode. They credit you with any discoveries they make about themselves while reading your material or hearing you speak. They believe their opinions about you more than they believe what you say.

No More Spaghetti on the Wall

The days of just getting your insights or story out there and hoping for the best are over. In this noisy marketplace, either you are relevant or you are ignored. When we tap into the three things that buyers look for—priority, comparisons, and agreement in approach—not only will we get attention, but we will get the incoming emails and calls, too. And isn’t that the whole point of getting our message out there?

Post from E.G. Sebastian

If you want to be taken seriously, you need to strive to project a professional image with all your marketing materials…

In the 21st Century, you won’t be taken seriously if you do not have a website; but if your website is of poor quality (and God knows I could list you a few bad examples) then you are worse of than not having a site at all…  Well, maybe I’m wrong with this one; I believe no matter how bad your site is, if you have a great offering, you’ll get at least a few local engagements…

I see several mistakes that ineffective speakers do on their websites:

1. They pay an inexpensive designer to build the site and it looks “home made”… and the sad part is, the website owner cannot add content to the site at will – s/he has to pay the web designer to modify the site each time.
! – now…., if you are not on low budget, this is the way to go – except do not chose the inexpensive web designer, as you usually get what you pay for (unless this web designer is oversees and a complete professional – you can find one at http://www.eLance.com .

I built most of my sites with web-based site builders, or with Dreamweaver… and recently with Microsoft Expression Web.  My sites built with the online site builders were the easiest to builld, have a professional look, and one of them comes up on the top of the search engines for several key keywords http://www.egSebastian.com , build with http://www.QuickBizSites.com — see another site that I built with http://www.HomeStead.com site builder at http://www.YouthPresentations.com

2. They make the site more about themselves, describing qualifications, certifications, etc.; instead of focusing on the client’s benefits. If you can help your audience members improve their time management, start out with a strong headline on “Get Proven and Effective Strategies for Time Management!” Then support that headline with some great bullet points… Each bullet point should address an area that you know the pottential client would really want.

3. Putting large blocks of text with multiple paragraphs on the home page (or any page). Use instead bold, large headlines,  subheadlines, and bullet points to describe your offerings.

4. Not having an opt-in box with an irresistable offer to collect visitors’ contact info.  Many people get to your site by total accident… or maybe you sent them there throgh hard work: twittering, FaceBook, or other online or offline strategies. HOWEVER, if they go to your site once, even if they mean to visit again, they’ll most likely never come back.  That’s why it is CRUCIAL to collect their contact info, then you are able to send them valuable tips on  your niche topic, as well as shamelessly – or subtly – promote your speaking, coaching, or other services/products.
Use www.aWebber.com or www.ConstantContact.com to create low-cost professional looking eZines or newsletters.  Both of these services will provide you with the code to create the opt-in box on your site.  I use OneShoppingCart, which is a bit more pricey, but it provides a complete set of solutions for me, such as shopping cart, split testing for my promotions, autoresponder, upsell pages, and a ton more great features…

5. Not having your contact information easily accessible. Make sure you have a tab on your navigation that’s clearly marked “Contact Us,” as well as you should have your contact info on the bottom of each page – I think that’s the law, but I could be wrong . Either way, it’s for your benefit; you do want to be reached by potential clients.  Just be careful not to put your email address anywhere on your sites, but rather use this format: eg[at]egSebastian[dot]com (so the nasty email collection spamming robots can’t collect it from your site.  Or use  a “Contact Us” form that prospects fill out online and your web system will email it to your personal email inbox.  Just again, make sure you require your visitor to fill in a security code at the bottom of the form to verify that they are a human being, not a robot; or else you’ll get dozens of viagra and penis enlargement promotions day in and day out submitted by spamming robots…

6. Not having a video of your speaking on your site – one that’s easily accessible.  It should be either on the home page, right at the top where everyone can see it right away… or have a clear link close to the top of your main page, stating Click Here to View a Demo Video of Me (replace “me” with your name”).  If you do not have yet a video, make sure to have at least a good picture of you and if possible several pictures with you in action (speaking to different audiences)

7. Too large pictures or slow loading videos. Any of these will result in people leaving your site.  There are tons of speakers out there – don’t do anything to make your visitor click away from your site.

E G Sebastian
E.G. is available to speak internationally. He speaks six languages and presents in four: English, Spanish, Hungarian, and Romanian. http://paidspeaker101.com/

Great tips from Scott Stratten

I’ve done the “speak for free to five people in a room that holds 100″ thing (proof), I’ve been paid keynote fee’s and everything in between, I figured it was time to share what I’ve learned.

1. Don’t be a “speaker”. Be an expert who speaks. Speakers are a “nice to have” but experts are a necessity

2. The power is not the point – slides are there as navigation points, not to be the content

3. If everything you say is on your slides, you’ve rendered yourself useless. Speak, don’t read.

4. There is a high demand for people that can both provide content and deliver it effectively from stage. Some can do one of the two, most don’t do either and a select few do both. Aim to be great.

5. End your presentation early.

6. What new ideas/skills will your audience have when they leave your session? If the only answer is “they’ll know more about me!” You need to start over.

7. Be prepared to present without slides if something goes wrong. And then do it on purpose.

8. Its not about you.

9. No matter how many times you remind people, someone’s cell-phone will go off during your talk. Get over it.

10. Make sure your own cell phone is off before speaking

11. Speakers are their best during Q&A because they’re not handcuffed to a slide. Think about that.

12. Stop walking in front of the projector. Seriously, how do some people not know this?

13. Use a hand-held clicker for slides instead of using the laptop. And when they don’t see the hand clicker, you look like Obi Won Kenobi when the slide progresses on its own. I use Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer

14. Don’t apologize to the audience about something they wouldn’t know was wrong. Saying “I was supposed to have a video here” doesn’t help. Keep going.

15. Have passion for what you’re saying. If you don’t, your audience won’t either.

16. If you use feedback sheets, there will always be somebody who didn’t like you. If its in the majority, you need to consider what’s said. If its in the minority, ignore it.

17. Be early and stay late. Getting to know the audience beforehand and talking after to answer questions is a forgotten thing that gives the highest value.

18. Speaking for free is a great lead generator and a quick way to go broke. Get value one way or another because you give it. Get conference passes for others, barter for product or services or at least a wheel of cheese.

19. Videotape every session you do. Share it on your blog and watch it yourself. Learn from it.

20. Change your presentation every time. Update stats, bring new examples. Own the content, not repeat it.

21. Ask for testimonials, don’t just assume the organizer will send one.
22. If you start every point with “In my book…” you’re doing a commercial, not a seminar. The best way to sell is to teach. I’m not saying ignore that you have a book, just simmer down a bit, we heard you the first five times.

23. It’s not about you.

24. If the conference has a #HashTag on Twitter, start finding people who are going to be there by searching with it. Talk to them, build relationships and then track them down at the event to say hi. It’ll be like you already know them, because you do.

25. Send out helpful tips that have to do with your content by using the same hashtag as above.

26. Watch Twitter for mentions of your talk and let people know you appreciate them spreading your word.

27. You’re not their parent, don’t tell them to put phones away, just ask as a courtesy to put the ringer on silent. I don’t understand speakers that tell audiences they can’t text/tweet during a talk. Make your content so good people feel they HAVE TO tell others right away, but great enough that they don’t want to miss a word.

28. If you’ve done a certain presentation numerous times and you feel it’s routine, either change it up or trash it. It may be the 20th time you’ve told a story, but it’s the first time that audience has heard it.

29. It’s not about you.

30. If you use feedback sheets, create two check-boxes at the bottom. One that says “I would like to be subscribed to your newsletter that provides [insert awesome benefit]” and the other says “I know of a group/association that would benefit from your talk, drop me a line”. Extend the contact past the session.

Visit Scott’s blog: http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/services/speaking/

by Donna Gunter

Teleclasses, also referred to as teleseminars, teleconferences, and webinars (with the added component of seeing a presentation) provide a platform for online service business owners to connect virtually with prospects around the world via a teleconference bridge line and share information with them. Many service professionals use paid or free teleseminars to grow their lists, establish their expertise, and deliver training and coaching programs.  It’s an ideal platform for information delivery, as both the presenter nor attendee can listen from the comfort of their home, office or car, without any of the headaches of having to be present for a live, in-person event.

Once you have created a compelling description and list of learning points for your teleseminar, how do you promote your teleclass and find participants?  Here are 15 ways for you to promote your upcoming teleclass:

1.  On your web site. Regardless of your reason for offering a teleclass, you need to create a search-engine optimized page on your own web site that contains an opt-in box where interested participants can opt into your list and get the call-in info for your teleclass.  This is the landing page to which all of your promotional efforts should link.  You may want to use a hover ad promoting your teleclass that pops up when visitors land on your site, or use a graphic popup, like AdImpact.com

2.  Your ezine and blog. Be sure to post an invitation to your teleclass within your email newsletter as well as on your blog.  When I’m offering a teleclass, I make the post about the teleclass my featured post on my blog so that it shows up above all other posts while I’m taking registrations for the teleclass.

3.  Events on social networking sites. Both Linkedin and Facebook permit you to create an event (your teleseminar) and invite your contacts and friends to the event.  On Facebook, you’ll want to remind those friends who have RSVp’d “yes, I’ll attend” to go to your teleseminar opt-in page to register. You may also belong to some niche-specific, target-market-specific, or business-to-business social networking sites which will allow you to create an event and invite your followers to your event.

4.  Press releases. You can submit this online via a fee-based service like PRWeb.com.  Don’t bother with the free online press release services, as your release doesn’t go anyplace other than on the site to which it has been submitted, with the exception of PRLog.com, which has been shown to give releases high search engine ranking.  Send your release out to your local media list, as well.

5.  Affiliate Marketing. Create a special email, blog posting, or Twitter campaign that your affiliates can send out to their lists to promote your event. Remind them to use their affiliate link for your program so that they get proper credit for any registrations. Even if you’re holding a free teleclass, your affiliate program should let you to create a special affiliate link to your teleclass registration page for your affiliates and track those registrations and credit the affiliate for any purchases made from your upsell promotion on the teleclass.

6.  Article Marketing. If you’re planning a free preview teleclass where you will offer an upsell to a paid program, begin writing articles and submitting articles on your teleseminar at least 30 days prior to your event.  I use GetMoreClientsArticles.com to help me distribute my articles.  In your resource box, you can offer your free teleclass as your client attraction device, and send readers to your opt-in page as your call to action.

7.  Email signature. If you correspond frequently via email or participate in online discussion forums or lists, create an email signature either in your email program or as part of your discussion forum profile that specifically promotes this teleclass and sends recipients to your opt-in page.

8.  Viral report. Write a special PDF report or white paper about the topic of your teleseminar and give it away free of charge to your list and social networking friends with an opt-in box.  Offer your list members and followers the opportunity to give it away, as well.  If you use a viral report brander like ViralPDF, your list members can personalize it with their name, web site, and affiliate link.  Be sure that the report links back to your teleseminar opt-in page.

9.  Discussion lists and forums. Some lists and forums permit members to overtly promote their products and services on the forums, while others have separate forums and lists specifically for those purposes.  Be sure you know the rules of the list before sending a promotional post.  And, if no overt promotion is permitted, post other comments to the list/forum and use your email signature to help you promote your teleclass as described in #7 above.

10.  Strategic alliance partners. Ask colleagues with whom you have a relationship and who publish ezines and blogs to pass along your teleclass information to their readers.  Or, you can use DirectoryofEzines.com to help you identify ezines that reach your target market and request that they let their readers know about your upcoming teleclass. If you offer a free event and promise to deliver valuable content, you may have an easier time getting ezine and blog editors to help you promote.  Or, offer them the opportunity to become an affiliate and outline your commission structure to help motivate them to help you promote your program.

11. Speaking. If you regularly speak to groups and organizations, mention your teleclass to them at your next speaking gig.  Or, ask colleagues if they will sponsor you as a special guest to their list to offer your teleseminar.  Research radio talk shows on BlogTalkRadio.com or podcasts on iTunes.com and contact the host to interview you about the topic of your teleclass.

12.  Purchased advertising. You can do this by buying classified ads in ezines that cater to your target market, as discovered in #10 above.  Or, you can create a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign on Google ,Yahoo, or MSN.   Most of these programs let you set a daily/weekly/monthly budget that you can begin and end as you choose. If you time your teleclass during the time when people are actively searching for information on your topic (like “home owner tax tips” in April before the IRS tax deadline), the greater the likelihood that your PPC ad will yield results for you.

13.  Audio and video marketing. Create videos about the topic of your teleclass using your webcam, video camera or screencast software and post to the major video sites via TubeMogul or TrafficGeyser.  You can also create a Powerpoint presentation about your teleclass and upload it to Slideshare.com.  Lastly, you can create a viral video or movie about your teleclass topic and ask your colleagues and strategic alliance partners to pass that to their lists, as well.

14.  Teleclass promotion sites. There are a number of places where you can post your teleclass either free or for a fee.  Paid listing sites include:
24/7 Coaching(must be a paid member)
PlanetTeleclass.com
FullCalendar.com(post in the San Francisco area because they seem to have the media most open to posting teleclass info)
Solo-E.com(you have to pay to be an expert here to post your teleclass)

Free listing sites include:
Seminar Announcer
Craigs List Can only post in one city without being penalized and removed from the listings.
Conference Call University You do have to place a link to their site on your event page.
Find Free Seminars
All Conferences

Also search Yahoo Groups and Google Groups for any teleclass announcement lists.

15.  Track your results. You need to know what promotional efforts are bringing you the best results.  Create a specific URL (like through BudURL.com, for example) where you can track the click-throughs on any promotion.  Or, use a tracking service like Hypertracker.com to track your results.

Add teleclasses to your marketing mix.  Watch your business gain credibility and see how quickly your list grows!

Donna Gunter, author of Get More Clients Online: How to Get 95% of Your Clients from Internet Marketing, and founder of OnlineBizU.com, is an Online Business Coach and Internet Marketing Strategist who helps independent service professionals create prosperous online businesses that make more profit in less time by teaching them how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise, and get found online.

You can learn more about Donna’s products and services at OnlineBizU.com

Susan’s note: Need a reliable bridge line for your teleseminars?  Console Call is the service I use.  It is a paid service and worth every penny  http://tinyurl.com/ydnqfyf . Cut yourself free from the stress of poor quality and service 

provided by those other conference calling companies

By Kathleen Gage

Please leave comments as Kathleen will be coming by on 3/17 to answer your questions.

Make millions, drive fancy cars, buy big houses, enjoy trips around the world.  All without effort, work or time invested. And anyone can do it.

All of this and more has been promised to speakers and authors who are eager to build their business using the Internet. The problem? It’s hyped-up baloney.

Although you can make a great living, drive luxury cars, live in a beautiful home and travel extensively, it’s not without work, effort and commitment.

How do I know? I’ve had an Internet-based business for years. I make a great living for one very important reason. I run my Internet-based business like I would any other type of business — like a business.

Sadly, far too many people get sucked into plopping down money with the promise of fame and fortune only to be disappointed when things don’t happen as promised. The fact is that anyone who says you can have it all without effort is blowing smoke.

So how do you know what’s hype and what is the real deal when it comes to learning what it takes to build a business using the Internet? Research, patience, no rose-colored glasses and commitment.

In the 15-plus years I have been a professional speaker and 10 years plus I have been an author, how we —my counterparts and I — market has drastically changed. The fact we have to market has not, but how we do has. In many ways it is a lot easier than ever before.

Yet, there are many speakers and authors who are so intimidated by marketing they continually avoid it.

The reality is most authors will never sell more than a handful of books because they haven’t given much thought to how potential readers will find their books.  Many think their book is going to be “discovered” simply by writing it.

It’s the same with professional speakers. Many live with the misguided belief that all they have to do is have a great speech and everything else will take care of itself.

However, in order for you to sell your books, speeches, consulting services, coaching and anything clients will pay for, you must market.

This is where lots of people freeze, shut down and run the other way — fast! They love writing and speaking, but fear the unknown of getting the word out. They are often the same people who say how lucky bestselling authors and superstar speakers are.

Luck has very little to do with one’s success. A solid marketing plan with focused implementation of the plan is more likely the driving force behind one’s success.

It’s essential to create balance that allows you not only to develop your craft, but to market, too. If you’re not one who wants to do your own marketing, an option is to hire to assist you someone who specializes in Internet marketing for speakers and authors.

This is where I get lots of pushback from those on a limited budget. “I don’t have the money to hire someone!” is their constant battle cry.

The fact is either you get on board with your own marketing, you accept that you need to budget for reliable and knowledgeable help or accept that your success will never be at the level you truly desire.
With all that’s available by way of the Internet it’s actually a lot easier to market and sell books, presentations and consulting services than in the past.

However, in some ways it is more difficult due to the number of authors and speakers vying for the same market as you. Your job is to stand out in such a way that people know about you and are eager to buy whatever it is you sell.

There are dozens upon dozens of ways you can promote your products and services from the comfort of your home.
Here is a partial list of what you can do.

•   Virtual book tour
•   Promote to your opt-in subscribers
•    Web-radio interviews
•    Dedicated blog
•    Guest-blog postings
•    Article writing with a link back to your blog or the Amazon page
•    Facebook FanPage
•    Teleseminars
•    Joint-venture promotions campaign
•    Video trailers
•    YouTube Channel

There are countless more, but you get the idea. Each day do something to get the word out. However, it is best to avoid trying to do everything all at once.

Begin with one idea to implement and add something new every few days. If I had never marketed before I would begin with a dedicated blog. Why? Because the blog is the hub of all your other marketing. You can use your blog postings in a number of effective ways that all link together.

Regardless of what you choose to do first, just start. Avoid one of our main enemies as authors and speakers — procrastination. “I’ll start tomorrow” is one of the most dangerous phrases you can say. Tomorrow will never come.

To successfully market and sell, begin today. Even fifteen minutes a day can make a huge difference. The difference between the dream of a successful business and actually experiencing success is the difference between thinking about marketing and actually doing so.

Kathleen Gage is an Amazon.com bestselling author. She works with spiritually aware speakers, authors, coaches and consultants who are ready to turn their knowledge into money-making products and services. Learn exactly what you need to do to market your books, your services and yourself with Kathleen’s VIP Club. Click here to learn more.

Have a Presence

The first step in becoming a paid speaker is to position yourself so that you can provide value. Your product is what you say, so if you communicate intelligent things online you are on the right track. Twitter, blogs, online video and podcasts are great platforms to express your message to the world. This gives potential clients an excellent place to get a free sneak preview of what you can provide. Video works great because the audience actually feels like they get to know you.

Your website should say exactly what you stand for and what you can provide for an audience, it should scream “John Jantsch is awesome!” but not “I am so awesome! I’m god’s greatest gift to earth!” Nobody likes someone who over hypes him/herself. The proof is in the pudding, so let your work speak for itself; that’s why content in the form of text, video or audio works so well.

It is incredible how many referrals you can attract by simply having a presence. Online, all people need to do is make a quick introduction on Twitter and potential clients will start checking out your content. Referrals are so powerful because they are often done by trusted friends–when a friend directs someone to quality content of yours, it doubles the impact.

Build your Bio

Your bio should solidify your credibility. If it’s not up to par yet, check out these 59 Ways to Grow Your Credibility. Bio’s need to be short and to the point. Often times they are read for your introduction so don’t just rattle off all your fancy degrees and awards, make it sound like you are a real person. Adding humor is a major bonus, as most intros are incredibly bland and boring. Your bio is just as important as a resume and if you aren’t comfortable writing your own bio, have a friend write it for you.

Adding in your biggest press mentions is critical in growing that credibility. As soon as your potential client or audience hears “Whoa he’s been in BusinessWeek?”, they start to pay attention.

Have a Speaking Tab on your website

Here is where your bio, headshot, testimonials, speaking resume, highlight reel and description of your value driven talk go. This should be very obviously placed on your site and linked with your about page. Now, when people find your site and want to learn more about you, they’ll automatically know you are a speaker and learn more than they ever wanted to know about you.

Don’t forget to include your email address or booking agent’s contact information so they can get in contact with you.

Often times referrals in the speaking industry come from people who say “I just heard John Janstch speak, he was awesome”. They might not actually know John well enough to put you in contact with him, so you’ll have to be found on Google. Reaching your homepage or your speaking tab is what will get the referral in the door. You might not ever hear where the referral was generated, so make sure you make it as easy as possible for them to find you.

Have a hook

If you ever wanted to get paid to speak again, you’ll need to have a point to your talk. Reel them in early with some thought provoking ideas, maybe a joke or exercise to get everyone involved. Your first minute of your talk is where the audience passes judgment so get them on your team early and let them know what they are going to get out of your performance because they are probably already wondering “why am I here.”

Your talk should do two things: 1. Teach the audience something 2. Tell your story in a way your audience can relate.

How do conversations spark in the world of speaking referrals? “Matt Wilson used this awesome example about G-String businesses 2 minutes into his talk.” If people don’t remember what you talked about it, they won’t spread the word for you. Have something that hooks them in and keeps them thinking about it days after the talk. The 1-2 week period is when most word of mouth referrals will happen.

Start Small

Don’t expect to get paid right off the bat if you’ve never spoken anywhere before, so start off small. Local high schools, colleges and organizations are always looking for some inspiration. Call them and get your foot in the door. Search meetup.com and call the president of these groups, they are always looking for a way to fill meetings. If you have something to teach others, schedule a seminar with a local library or chamber of commerce. Not only is it a great way to build your resume, but it’s also a fantastic way to network. Have plenty of business cards on hand.

It is in your community where you are going to start to form relationships that lead to referrals. Small business referrals start by having your go-to accountant, lawyer, real estate broker, etc. and drive them business. If they saw you speak at the Chamber of Commerce, why wouldn’t they want to bring you in to the local Toastmasters group?

Ask to get paid

Josh Shipp of HeyJosh.com says, “How did I make the leap from non-paid to paid? Watch: I asked to be paid. At first $500. Then $1,000. Then $2,500. Now $5,000.
If you’re good at what you do, you’ll find the more you charge the more demand you’re in and the better clients you’ll get. You get what you charge for.”

Referrals come by truly helping other people. If you deliver on content, inspire them and give them value to take home, then people will not only be happy to pay you, but happy to refer you to others.

Build Testimonials

Your speaking resume, should include links to any press from the event. This provides instant credibility to say you rocked out on the big stage. Testimonials are literally referrals in written or video form. They are recommendations that you can use anywhere. When you put them online they have the power for millions to view which grows trust with every one of your potential clients.

Collect videos from your talks as people are walking out or come up to you after and favorite every nice thing people say about me on Twitter and link it up!

Creating a highlight reel builds both social proof and your expertise, by showing a mix of positive reactions in a live setting and clips of you on stage. The people who speak positively are literally making their referral to the whole world.

Have an Agent or Bureau

If you are looking for more speaker referrals, it helps if you are paying someone a referral fee to connect you with more engagements. Bureaus and agents typically work on a percentage basis of everything they book for you, leaving very little risk or upfront investment on your part. These are the people with connections to shop you around, so why not give them a referral fee?

Start Hustling

Want to do it on your own? It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get people to refer you. Start asking people who compliment you who they know; these people often know tons of people in their industry that would also benefit from hearing your talk. Ask them who they know and be upfront about it. You just helped them by delivering massive value with a great performance and you are looking to help more people in your niche. If they refer you to someone else and you are a rock star, it’ll be huge benefit to them too!

Referrals all come down to over delivering with your service and wow-ing your audience enough to start some chatter. Word of mouth really works!

Matt Wilson is co-founder of Under30CEO.com urging people to drop the 9-5 and get passionate about something. Follow him on Twitter  @MattWilsontv as the Gen-Y spokesperson looking to help every young entrepreneur on the planet.

Post by Lisa Sassevich

Lisa at the Speakers Summit

When you’re trying to get booked to speak on stages or teleseminars, it’s crucial to give your talk a hooky title. By that I mean, an instantly appealing and easy to remember name. A hooky talk title can mean the difference between getting booked or not and between a big audience or a disappointing turnout.

I learned this the hard way. When I was first starting, I taught a course for women about how to understand men. At the time, though, I didn’t understand the elements of a catchy title, so the introductory event was called: “The Amazing Development of Men.” Not surprisingly, we drew very small audiences.

The title didn’t grab them because the secret to a truly hooky title was missing. That secret is to clearly state the transformation that the audience will experience as a result of attending.

When I realized that, we changed the title to: “Understand Men 101.” And guess what happened? Attendance skyrocketed. We started drawing women by the hundreds because the benefit was so clear and compelling!

So the key to crafting your own hooky talk title is to include in the title the outcome that your audience will experience from attending. Here is a simple two-step process for doing that:

1. Ask yourself: What is the transformation that I provide?
To get clear on the transformation that attendees will experience, start with your own clients. What is the outcome that your clients get as a result of working with you?

Focus on the client who is your greatest success story. What outcome did she receive? List all of the exact results of working with you. Did she save time, money or energy? Gain clarity or understanding? Improve her health?

Now, ask yourself: What other transformations happened in her life because of those results? For example, if you’re a nutritionist, a diabetic client may have lost 100 pounds and no longer needs to take insulin. Her direct results include: greatly improved health and well-being, a longer lifespan potential and weight loss, but her relationships with her family and at work were also transformed because she no longer suffers from off-putting mood swings and low energy.

2. Create your title using the list of transformations you just generated. After you’ve done step one, you’ll end up with a whole list of very real transformations in your client’s life that you can draw from to create your outcome-focused talk titles.

Which of those transformations are most compelling? Or most universal? For instance, the nutritionist might try: “Reverse Diabetes Using Diet Alone” or “Diabetics! Kiss Mood Swings and Energy Dips Goodbye Forever!” That speaks to anyone suffering from that disease.

As you go about crafting your own hooky titles, remember to keep these guidelines in mind:

• Put the outcome that people can expect into the title itself. For example, “Reverse Diabetes…,” “Understand Men….”

• Appeal to their pain. My title addressed the pain and frustration that many women feel because they don’t understand why men do the things they do.

• Don’t sacrifice hooky for cute. Sometimes people try to have cute titles that are clever but nobody knows what they mean. You want your title to be immediately appealing and recognizable. For example, I often speak on “Boost Sales Using Irresistible Offers” because as much as I love my brand, The Invisible Close, the outcome is not obvious as a title unless I use my tag line “For those who love what they do but hate selling!”

So get out there and take that first exciting step, create that talk title! And then right after that, plan to join me June 10–12 in San Diego for the LIVE “Invisible Close Speak-to-Sell Bootcamp,” where you’ll create offers you love, a talk that sells and gain the confidence that comes with being prepared!

What is your hooky talk title? Let us know on our blog.

has x-ray vision for seeing the sales opportunities that exist in every company, and the creativity to convert them into gold! If you’re looking for simple, quick and easy ways to boost sales without spending a dime, get your FREE Sales Nuggets now at www.theinvisibleclose.com.

Lisa is offering a complimentary teleclass on March 17.  Click here to sign up

Great post by Helena Bouchez in MarketingProf Today

As I always say speaking is one of the best ways to connect directly with decision makers in your industry. Following the noted guidelines will help you better connect with the decision makers who can put you in front of an audience.

Speaker  Services can assist you in preparing your marketing materials and videos so that you will be more professional.  View a short video that I created on Speaker Marketing Plans at the bottom of this page.

Getting speaking gigs can be a mysterious and frustrating process, particularly if you don’t have much experience. You know the drill: Send pithy email offering yourself up (or copiously fill out online proposal form). Hit Send. Wait.

To find out what happens during “wait,” I interviewed a few content directors and program advisers, as well as some Web-seminar and teleseminar producers responsible for booking speakers.

Here is what they said, along with some sage advice on how to increase your chances of getting that breakout gig.

Be Patient

Long lead times for live conferences and events are the rule rather than the exception. Planning typically begins at least six months ahead of time but, depending on the size of the event or industry, can begin up to a year in advance.

Heather Lloyd-Martin, owner of SuccessWorks Search Marketing and program adviser for PubCon, SEMpdx, and major Direct Marketing Association conferences, explains: “There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes…. [When we're considering a speaker, there might be additional planning and logistics, and several layers of approval needed before we can confirm the slot.

" Lloyd-Martin says they approach A-list speakers first and then contact others who they think might be a fit. But, Unknowns, take heart. Lloyd-Martin says if she thinks you will do a good job and provide a fresh voice and perspective, she will bring you on.

Web seminars and teleseminars have shorter lead times (one to four weeks for teleseminars, three to four months for Web seminars) but can be even tougher to get in on because presenting virtually is much harder than speaking in person, says Marty Fahncke, a professional speaker and president of Conference Call University.

"If you are someone who feeds off the energy of people when onstage, the Web [seminar] or teleseminar format may not be for you. Keeping a virtual presentation moving and afloat requires the ability to sustain high, high energy for the entire session.”

Be Online

To be considered for either format, a robust online footprint is essential. “The first thing I’m going to do is type your name into Google,” says Fahncke. “I really want to see a book, but at the very least I should see examples of you being quoted by the media and links to whitepapers and articles you’ve written. Next, I’ll type in a few key phrases that would make sense given your topic. If you’re truly an expert in your field, your name should appear on the first page.”

MarketingProfs’ Web-seminar producer, Shelley Ryan, adds, “It’s best if I have come across your name already on social-media and networking [sites,] such as Twitter and LinkedIn. I want to know what you’re tweeting, are you interesting, are you engaged in conversation within the industry?”

Ryan says when considering someone for a slot, she will Google a candidate’s name to see what she can find out, and go to the candidate’s website and read the bio.

As for websites, all agree that a good one may not get you the gig but a bad one can lose it for you. Ryan recounts an incident with a Web expert she was considering for a presentation.

“He had a pretty good reputation and some interesting things to say about lead generation, and I thought, Gee, maybe… To find out more, I went to his website, but I didn’t stay long. It looked like his nephew had built it for him.”

Traci Browne, president of tradeshow marketing firm Red Cedar Publicity and Marketing, books speakers for organizations, including the Business Marketing Association Philadelphia. She says she looks for online evidence of expertise but will contact the organizers of conferences in which speakers have presented to before to find out what the audience response was.

Says Browne, “In this day and age of Flip cameras, it is almost not acceptable to not have a video sample of your presentation—or several samples. We’re not looking for high production values; we just want to see if you’re a good speaker or not. A video will show us how dynamic you are.”

Lloyd-Martin says she tries to get a sense of a person’s personality and what that person will be like in front of an audience. She also emphasizes that title and position do not guarantee someone is going to be a good speaker (a statement that everyone I interviewed agrees with).

“We’ve had really high-level executives read straight from their notes, which the audience does not enjoy. They might have a fantastic message, but if people tune out, it gets lost,” Lloyd-Martin says.

To avoid that scenario, she taps her network to find someone who has heard the person speak before or has been on a panel with that person. If she doesn’t have contacts, she said, she might dig into what the person has done online.

“Everyone’s an expert and being promoted as [an] expert. But if I go online and find that the person has never written on their topic, and I can’t find any information about them beyond LinkedIn, I have to wonder if they are really who they tout themselves to be,” she says.

Make Contact

How people want to be contacted varies. For example, Ryan prefers to be contacted directly by the speaker, rather than by a public-relations (PR) person or handler.

“Talking directly to the presenter allows me to start a relationship as well as to get a sense of what that person is going to be like for a broadcast.”
She doesn’t have much patience for candidates who play hard to get. Case in point:

“If a Guy Kawasaki [founder and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures and co-founder of Alltop] or Seth Godin [best-selling author and renowned speaker] can pick up the phone and call me directly…” Lloyd-Martin doesn’t mind working with representatives but cautions, “Build a relationship with me but don’t hammer, or I’ll be thinking, If I bring on this speaker, I’ll be bringing on this obnoxious PR person, too. Can I handle that? All agree it’s a good idea to ask what the preferred form of contact is in the initial email and to abide by it.

Browne urges candidates not to underestimate the power and purpose of the online proposal application form, which she uses as a screening tool. “If speakers can’t be bothered to fill out the form, chances are they won’t put much thought into their presentation, either.”

All agree that if there is an online submission form, it’s safe to assume that is the way the organization prefers to receive your application. Other things on which the interviewees agree: (1) Email is the best way to make initial contact, and (2) dispense with the clever subject line (which might be construed as spam) and get right to the point.

If you don’t hear back within a few days, it’s acceptable to send a follow-up email. If there is still no response, then call the person to make sure the email has been received and didn’t get caught in a spam folder. Remember to leave your email address on the voice mail so the person can check.

Pet peeve: people who enable email return receipts. Don’t.

Engage

Browne says proposals from association members and those who have a booth at the show definitely carry more weight. Her advice: “If you do get a booth, rather than staffing it with a salesperson handing out tchotchkes, consider offering free 20-minute mini-consultations to discuss solutions to pain points of participants who might be prospective clients.”

Similarly, Ryan says, MarketingProfs recruits first from its network of member contributors and often will invite candidates to write an article for the site to gauge interest in the topic based on click-throughs and reader feedback.

* * *

Helena Bouchez is principal and owner of Helena B Communications

The following is an excerpt from Jane Atkinson′s new book, The Wealthy Speaker. For more information, visit http://www.speakerlauncher.com.

How much should I charge for speaking is a question I get asked quite often? Thanks Jane for offering these tips.

• Assigning a dollar value to yourself is not an easy task. Many factors come into play – some relevant and some not. Below are some pointers for setting fees and knowing when and how to raise them.

• Start somewhere. Do your homework, ask clients and other speakers and set a fee. It may be low to begin, but there′s only one way to go – Up!

• You can raise it as you build your confidence and momentum.

• If you have any level of celebrity status – you write a column, do a national radio show, wrote a book that′s gotten some attention, etc. – then you can start higher than average.

• Put your fees down on paper in the form of a fee schedule. Don′t pull a different number out of the air every time a client calls. If you do seminars as well as keynotes, have them all listed on the page. You may use this internally in the beginning, but eventually you′ll want to make a fee schedule available for your clients. Everything that the client will need to set a budget should go on this page – include such items as speaking fees, travel expenses, AV requirements, etc.

• Don′t post your fee schedule on your website. You want to have an opportunity to establish value with your clients long before fee is discussed.

• Never charge more than your fee just because you think a client has more money. If you want to capture more of their budget, do it with additional value – programs or product – but keep your fee integrity.

• Travel expenses are typically separate. Some speakers offer a travel inclusive fee or a flat fee for travel. The benefit of a flat fee is that the client is never surprised.

• A great way to gauge if you are ready to raise your fees is when these situations arise: your clients tell you that you are too inexpensive or your calendar is getting full.

• Test your fee idea with the people who book you the most (i.e., bureaus, clients).

• Harry Beckwith in “Selling the Invisible” talks about meeting a little fee resistance. If you are not meeting any resistance at all, your fee may be too low.

• Make sure that you are always giving more value than your fee. Your client should feel more than satisfied.

• Know what′s going on in the market. Don′t be afraid to ask people what they charge. It might surprise you.

• When you continually share the platform with speakers who earn a much higher fee than you, then you need to consider making a change.

• Don′t allow fear to dictate your decisions. When you raise your fee, be prepared to lose 25% of your business from the bottom end, but know that you should gain 25% better clients at the top. Make room for those better clients in your business.

Jane Atkinson, All rights reserved.

Jane Atkinson has been helping speakers boost their businesses into the Wealthy Speaker level for more than 15 years. Along the way she developed a tried and true strategy for getting her speakers well beyond average and into the $1,000,000+ per year range in speaking revenues. Jane has also worked as Vice President of a speaker′s bureau, managing best selling authors and celebrities. Within the bureau, she also worked for a period as a booking agent and through her non-profit work has been in the position of meeting planner. So Jane has seen the industry from most every angle, speaker, bureau, meeting planner and now as a coach. For more information visit Jane′s websites at http://www.speakerlauncher.com and http://www.thewealthyspeaker.com.

This post came via
Terry L. Green, MVA
Fastype VA Services, Inc.
 Helping Speakers, Coaches and Internet Marketers make more money 800-554-0897
 info@myfastype.com http://www.thewealthyspeaker.com

Speaker Services  www.speakerservices.com

Marketing and Training Services for Speakers  & Authors

3/1/10 – E-Zine

Content:
- Note from Susan Levin
- Tips, Advice/Requests for Info
- Article 42 Ways to Use Video
_____________

Greetings,

Today I want to call your attention to the value and benefits of video marketing for your business.  You have heard the expression a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth a million.  People respond to videos and appreciate that they can actually hear and see, instead of what they can only read.  Online video branding specialist Lou Bartone says, online video can be your “secret weapon” in the battle to buck the recession?”

Chris Crum content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz reported that online video has become a much more widely discussed topic for businesses and marketers, not to mention entertainment. There have been many strides made on a variety of different levels.

Have you had a chance to see our new home page redesign yet?  Click here and you can see a video welcome message from me. This video is one out of nine that I created with a professional video company.  For the past three weeks I have been spreading the videos around on the interne and I have been getting more calls then usual and I attribute it to the videos.

There’s no reason why your business can’t capitalize on video marketing especially since it is viral and viral marketing is one of the best and quickest ways to get your message out to the public.

The article for this month is 42 Ways to se Video.  I am sure you will get some ideas of how you can do video marketing with all the tips that Jimm Fox suggests.

Do you have a video marketing strategy?

Speaker Services has been offering Video Production Services for the past 13 years.  We can do one or three camera videos for you. If you are speaking and want to get noticed and get paid the big bucks you must have a three camera video demo in front of a live audience.  Check out The Video Demo Showcase offered only once a year in LA on September 26.  This is not a workshop but a real live showcase. We can customize and coach you as well on any kind of video that you need.  Please call me to discuss your video needs and concerns. Video marketing rocks!

To your video marketing success,

Susan Levin
Speaker Services
310-822-4922 PT
susan@speakerservices.com
_________________

Featured Speaker for March 2010

Kim Mitchell, Video and Author, S. California
Creativity coach reveals how to activate and utilize both sides of your brain.
Creativity, Stress Management, Team Building

See all Speakers/Authors
_________________

Tips/Advice and Requests

Get Weekly Speaking Leads in your e-mail box
Mark Mikelat, Mark@BuildingAspirations.com sends out weekly updates for organizations who are looking for speakers and it is FREE
Sign up at www.SpeakerLounge.com

_______________

Request for Guests for Radio Show

The subject on my radio show in March is CONTROVERSARY.

In March I  am looking for controversial subjects for my radio show ‘The Dr. Bunny Show – Here’s The Thing’
on KKZZ AM 1400 (also heard on on KKZZAM1400.com)

The show is heard 3-4 PM, daily (M-F) right after Dr. Laura.

Speakers in Los Angeles may come to the studio or call in with their controversial story/

E mail Bunny Vreeland at Bunny@BunnyVreeland.com. Go to BunnyVreeland.com to hear all of archived shows.

_______________

Tip #1

Trends of Corporate America
- Vickie Sullivan Marketing Strategist, www.sullivanspeaker.com

Interesting findings from CareerBuilder’s 2010 Job Forecast survey.  Social media experts will have plenty of work this year, as organizations plan to restore their brands through these campaigns.  Other big opportunities loom for hiring experts, as organizations invest in efforts ranging from recruiting a diverse workforce to finding top performers.

Bad news for meetings, especially in the association market:  Corporate America will continue to cut travel expenses this year.  Why do we care?  Because convention attendees won’t go unless their employers pay for their travel.  Which means attendance challenges will continue to dog these groups, which means less money for speakers.  Their antidote:  virtual meeting attendees for association conventions.

Meeting trends speakers care about:
Theme for experts who speak:  be a bargain.  That’s what buyers are looking for now according to Meeting Professional International’s FutureWatch 2010.  Top three concerns:  budget cuts, doing more with less, and not having enough staff.  Basically saying the same thing in three different ways:  no money or time for frills.  Get ready for intense negotiations on speaker fees.  Your antidote:  have no less than five things you are giving away — for free — for every paid speech.

Yes, there is good news:  overall, respondents expect a 2.8 percent increase in meetings this year — especially the corporate market, where planners project a 3.6 percent increase.  Click here for a free summary of FutureWatch 2010.
_______________

Tip #2
Smaller sponsorships on the rise — Vickie Sullivan

Another trend in associations: going after smaller sponsorship deals. The “less is more” approach of reaching out to fewer but bigger sponsors has hit a snag due to smaller budgets. So now the mantra according to IEG is “no stone unturned.” The gist: look at all reasonable offers. The problem: exclusivity is a big issue with sponsors and smaller budgets don’t negate that need. Associations will have to tread lightly on that one.

Why do you care? It opens the door for you to bring in your own sponsor. Sponsored speaking tours are easier now that you don’t have that big sponsor brick wall anymore. Go forth and conquer…

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42 Ways to Use Video Marketing, Jimm Fox

1. Video Customer Testimonials (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Nothing is more compelling than seeing and hearing your customer (ideally in their own environment) extol the virtues of your products and services or explaining how you helped them achieve their business goals. These videos usually run from fifteen second snippets to a minute and are typically combined with or used to support other marketing material.

2. Video Success Stories (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Similar to a customer testimonial these videos run between one and two minutes and follow an interview format where the person on screen answers questions posed by an interviewer just off-camera. These videos are usually delivered as stand-alone marketing support materials and are often grouped with other customer success stories.

3. Video Case Study (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
A video case study combines customer testimonials with more a more in-depth explanation of how your company’s products and services helped your customer be successful. These case studies usually incorporate two voices – a narrator and the voice of your customer and can run anywhere from two to five minutes. The video structure follows the same “Problem, Solution, Benefit” format found in a printed case study.

4. Man-in-the-street Interviews (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
These videos are typically done to promote events and to build buzz around coming events but can also be employed to capture ’spontaneous’ responses to targeted questions that help promote your product or service or to help differentiate the benefits of your brand compared to the real or imagined problems associated with your competitors. Soft drink companies, phone companies, fast food companies often use this format in advertising. Sometimes they are genuine. Sometimes they are completely staged. ‘Authenticity’ is becoming a style…

5. Customer Presentations. (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Low)
If one of your customers is presenting at a conference, trade show or event or even in your offices and is talking about your products or services either directly with you or indirectly as part of a larger discussion this may be a perfect opportunity to capture the presentation of video (with permission, of course) to re-purpose on your website and intranet.

Product and Service Promotion

6. Product Presentations (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Product (or service) presentation videos are typically employed early in the buying cycle. Product or service presentations focus on benefits and talk from more from your customer’s perspective. They should speak clearly to how your product solves a specific business, personal or economic problem that your prospect is experiencing. They are used to help your customers and prospects differentiate between the benefits of your products and services to those of your competitors.

7. Product Demonstrations (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Product demos show how your product works and highlight the features that differentiate it from that of your competitors. Software screen captures, a 3D cut-away, or a high impact demo by a presenter are all excellent ways of showing how your product or service works. These videos are typically used to influence a prospect who is relatively far along in the sales cycle. In technology marketing these videos would be targeted at the technical approvers who need to understand how something works. In consumer marketing these would be targeted at buyers of larger ticket items who are further along the sales cycle.

8. Product Reviews (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
The best product reviews are trusted third party reviews. Video reviews can be found anywhere from YouTube to various business portals. To the extent they help you, they should be referenced. You can also partner with trusted third parties to create product reviews for your own products.

9. Visual Stories (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Quickly rising in popularity, visual stories employ illustrations, animations and motion graphics with a voice-over to explain complex products or services in a simple and compelling manner.

Corporate Video

10. Corporate Overview (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: moderate)
These videos are the video equivalent of the ‘company brochure’ for small companies – intended to give new visitors to a website a better idea of the company. Corporate overview videos typically company history, key products, executives/owners and other top level business info. As the cost of video production continues to decrease and the popularity of video increases you will start to see these videos being replaced by multiple, more targeted video.

11. Executive Presentations (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Whether you are preparing for a quarterly update, responding to a major event in your industry or making a regularly scheduled presentation there is great value in presenting the “face” and “voice” of your leadership team to all of your constituents.

12. Staff Presentations (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Social media and other Web 2.0 trends have caused companies to reconsider how they communicate with external audiences. Your senior leadership team should not be the first and only consideration to represent your company. It is becoming more imperative to consider showcasing the people that drive the day-to-day operations of your company. Customer service representatives, technical experts and legacy workers are all valuable considerations for this new category of corporate video. Surveys show that there is more trust associated with these employees than with senior management. When you are selling to influencers in organizations (versus economic buyers or decision makers) it is especially important you represent your company with people that your customers and prospects can relate to.

13. Corporate facilities or equipment tour (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Low)
Ten years ago corporate facility videos and equipment tours were popular. Down-sizing, off-shoring, outsourcing, a couple of recessions and a hollowing out of North America’s manufacturing base has change the priorities placed on these videos. Uniqueness is key to success here. That said, it’s really not about you any more.

Training  and support video

14. Training (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: High)
Corporate video first gained prominence with training (service, support, sales, personal development etc.) and continues to be one of the best uses of video. Online Video is a cost effective substitute for in-class training. You can also easily integrate video into online training management tools.

15. Overnight expert videos (Sales Support)  (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
If you serve a large geographic area or sell through channels then it is well worth the effort to put together short ‘overnight expert’ sales support videos that highlight the key selling points, features, benefits, objection handling and follow-up issues to consider by your direct or channel sales force.

16. Just-in-time learning (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
Contextual training videos are becoming very popular on the web. ‘How-to’ videos, video manuals, on-site video reference, quick assembly demos, and other types of video are being used to supplement or replace traditional training. Mobile video will increase the popularity of this type of video.

17. Post sale support and maintenance videos (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
No one reads manuals. You can save thousands of dollars of post sale support by creating informative assembly, installation and maintenance videos for your products and services.

Internal Communications

18. Internal Communications (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
In larger companies few people have the time or interest to understand what other groups or functions within the company do or even why they exist. Internal videos that highlight business plans, new business activities and achievements can improve knowledge transfer and lead to more effective communications. They are also a great way to show off your local hero’s.

19. Event/Conference and Trade Show Communications. (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Most companies spend a disproportionate amount of their marketing budget on attending and participating in a variety of industry events and yet only a very small percentage of employees ever benefit from these activities. Share the knowledge gained at these events by capturing the presentation, demos, interviews, commentaries etc. on video.

20. Employee orientation (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Once your new recruits are on board employee orientation videos are a great way to get new staff up to speed. Company history, structure, procedures, policies and codes of behavior can all be communicated effectively with video.

21. Health, Legal & Safety (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
The cost of dealing with health and safety related issues within organizations continues to grow. Video is one of the most effective means of minimizing these costs.

Advertising , marketing  and promotion

22. Commercials (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: High)
While advertisers are becoming more selective in how they chose to spend their promotional dollars with broadcast television, other venues for commercials such as online video pre-roll, online sponsorships, in-game advertising, event sponsorships and in-theatre advertising are starting to take the place of broadcast / cable commercials. A proliferation of video screens cropping up on every building, device and structure will create an even more diverse set of advertising opportunities. The challenge will be to create specialized content targeted to an ever shrinking niche audience.

23. Viral Video (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: High)
A video is viral if it is so compelling that people want to share it. (Calling a video ‘Viral’ doesn’t make it so). Viral videos have to be extremely engaging, entertaining, shocking or meaningful to be successful. Unfortunately some of the most successful viral videos have little connection (and therefore value) to any brand. (Everyone references ‘Will it Blend’ but very few viral videos are remotely this successful in actually driving sales.)

24. Email Video (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Testing has shown that open rates can double if you include video in your email marketing activities. To be effective the video should be purpose-built to elicit a specific conversion activity such as requesting a demo, more info etc.

25. Infomercials (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Infomercials have been around forever. While they continue to be the primary focus of web-based parody videos they have remained remarkably resilient over time. The shopping channel is, in effect, a 24 hour infomercial. If done well, Infomercials can be very effective at selling certain consumer products.

26.  Content Marketing (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Huge)
This is a broad category that will become very important over the next months and years. Much of the content (video or otherwise) being creating today by companies is focused on selling. Focusing on solving your customers problems first and then associating your brand with those solutions will be increasingly more important and effective. (i.e. Home Depot could create a branded ‘how-to’ series that sits on their website and shows their customers how-to fix anything. They would, or course, reference tools and supplies available in their store but more importantly, they would generate tremendous value for their customers and prospects – value that would accrue to them over time.)

27. Landing pages and micro sites (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Video is beginning to replace or supplement text and graphics as a content element on many corporate websites. Landing pages can offer a more compelling call to action with video. Some micro sites on larger web properties are self contained, purpose-built conversion machines that have the singular purpose of generating a conversion activity (sign-up for more info, attend event, order something etc.). Video is becoming an important part of the conversion process.

PR Support and Community Relations

28. Video Press Releases (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
The standard four paragraph press release is now being supplemented with video and rich media to tell a more engaging story. Video is now being purpose-built to directly support the important company announcements. The new challenge for press releases is to change the focus from the company to the customer.

29.  PR Support Materials (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)

Make it easy for networks, bloggers, news gathers and others to promote your business and also to talk about your industry. Smart companies are developing video support catalogues of company and industry related materials (b-roll, industry footage, sound bites etc) and offering them to news and business portals. The demand for video is everywhere. If a news agency (online or broadcast) is looking for stock footage to use in a story it might as well be yours. (assuming the story is positive, of course)

30. Community Relations Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
If your company is out working in the community, being good corporate citizens, helping the environment or contributing to important causes you should be capturing those efforts on video. Show the world what you are doing, don’t just talk about it.

Event Video

31. Event Presentation video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
Events represent a unique confluence of expertise and opportunity – often under-leveraged. Trade Shows, meeting and conferences are usually attended by your top sales people, your corporate executives, industry experts and other influential business people. If you are speaking at an event or someone is referencing your company you should be capturing this valuable content on video.

32. Round table Sessions (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
Take the opportunity at an event to corral four to six of your best customers and other industry experts, put them in room and video tape them talking about industry trends, business issues and the future of your industry. This content will be the most valuable content you could ever capture.

33. Q&A Expert sessions. (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
There are many opportunities to take specific event participants to the side and take them through informal Q&A sessions on various topics that matter to your customers. This content is valuable lead generation content.

Other Uses of Video

34. Recruitment Videos (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Finding the best employees is the single most important function of any company and yet comparatively small amounts of time and money are allocated to this critical task. Recruitment videos that feature company employees, highlight corporate culture and promote the direction of the company can be very influential.

35. VLOG (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential:Moderate)
There are many levels  and types of Vloggers today but for the sake of brevity I will identify two: 1. Pro Vloggers who have engaging styles, rich content and a growing list of followers who promote their vlog on their site and through various syndicated channels and 2. Regular Vloggers who have chosen, for whatever reason, to speak into a camera instead of typing on a keyboard. The problem today is that, unlike onscreen text, you can’t scan a vlog – you sort have to watch the whole thing to see whether it is worth your time. The other problem is that most people just aren’t that compelling on camera so there is little, to no value of a talking head – and often it’s a distraction. Of course everyone references Gary Vaynerchuck (from Wine Library TV <http://tv.winelibrary.com/> ) as the rule (rather than the exception) for video blogging in the same way that everyone references the success of Will It Blend <http://www.blendtec.com/willitblend/> as being what to expect when you launch your first viral video project. For individuals looking to gain notoriety from their passions vlogging can be a good option if you have a good on-camera presence and great content.

36. In Store Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
Wal-Mart has its own profitable in-store TV network that makes shoppers aware of new promotions. LCD screens are ubiquitous. In store LCD’s will be networked and customizable offering you the ability to promote your own goods and services or make money by promoting other complimentary services.

37. Company Lobby / Waiting Room Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
HD video screens are popping up everywhere – why not in your lobby or reception where you can get a jump start on first impressions and also take advantage of a captive audience.

38. Mobile Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Huge)
Yep, ‘there’s and Ap for that’. Mobile video will soon be the largest video category outside of broadcast. In the short-run, mobile video will consist of hastily re-purposed video made to fit on a mobile device. It will quickly evolve into a much more specific format – five to fifteen second hyper targeted messages that are part of geo-located and micro-niched promotions.

39. Market research, focus groups and polling (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Market research firms are now capturing the anecdotal feedback along with the raw statistics of their research. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video of your customer describing her likes and dislikes of your new product is priceless. Go to YouTube to see how people are describing your products and services.

40. Website FAQ Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
In certain formats video can be a suitable replacement for text where an authoritative voice, support materials or other visual references are required. A list of FAQ’s answered by a company expert is an example.

41. Video White paper (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Low)
Video white papers have evolved over the last years from basically a person reading a white paper on camera (what’s the point) to a professional delivery that is accompanied by charts, graphs and other visual references to make the presentation more valuable.

42. Video Magazine (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Low)
Some video production companies specialize in helping companies deliver serialized video content to their customers. Like the name implies video content is created on a regular basis (usually monthly) that customers and prospects can view through a subscription service.

Jimm Fox is President of One Market Media – a video marketing and video production firm in Ottawa, Canada. Jimm has worked in marketing, media and Internet related businesses for the last 25 years.

_______________

@speakerservices Tweets of Interest

- RT soundbitesiren  Video can make or break a sale. If YRs is unprof.  U’ll LOSE sales so take care to insure U represent URself well

- Tip: Ask 4 referrals fr existing clients who have hired u 2 speak. Blog Post 14 Ways to Get Paid Speaking Engagements http://bit.ly/cG7QEA

- Meet the Speaker Services team-the wind beneath my wings! http://bit.ly/9g8VPF

- RT karenfrank43  My #ff  vote is 4 @speakerservices . I emailed her today about a concern and she actually picked up the phone & called me! Now THAT”s amazing!

- Check out 3 biggest mistakes that speakers make? View video marketing tip http://tinyurl.com/yj4kc8l Are you guilty?

- Speaker Margaret Futerer keynote talk Breaking Free: From Polygamy to Me. See more info, one sheet & video http://tinyurl.com/yc2efqf

Note:  Web Video & Marketing Workshop,  You On Camera facilitated by Barbara Niven and Susan Levin Saturday 9/19/10 or 10/30/10 http://bit.ly/9vGvKX

Stop wasting time trading links with other websites, posting the same how-to article to a gazillion article directory sites, and doing sneaky little things at your own website to try to trick the search engines.

Spend your time instead creating video, one of the most powerful ways to pull traffic to your website or blog. It will boost your position in the search engine rankings and, in some cases, take tons of business away from your competitors. Do it right, and they’ll be so shell-shocked they’ll pack up and go home.

1. Video Customer Testimonials (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Nothing is more compelling than seeing and hearing your customer (ideally in their own environment) extol the virtues of your products and services or explaining how you helped them achieve their business goals. These videos usually run from fifteen second snippets to a minute and are typically combined with or used to support other marketing material.

2. Video Success Stories (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Similar to a customer testimonial these videos run between one and two minutes and follow an interview format where the person on screen answers questions posed by an interviewer just off-camera. These videos are usually delivered as stand-alone marketing support materials and are often grouped with other customer success stories.

3. Video Case Study (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
A video case study combines customer testimonials with more a more in-depth explanation of how your company’s products and services helped your customer be successful. These case studies usually incorporate two voices – a narrator and the voice of your customer and can run anywhere from two to five minutes. The video structure follows the same “Problem, Solution, Benefit” format found in a printed case study.

4. Man-in-the-street Interviews (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
These videos are typically done to promote events and to build buzz around coming events but can also be employed to capture ’spontaneous’ responses to targeted questions that help promote your product or service or to help differentiate the benefits of your brand compared to the real or imagined problems associated with your competitors. Soft drink companies, phone companies, fast food companies often use this format in advertising. Sometimes they are genuine. Sometimes they are completely staged. ‘Authenticity’ is becoming a style…

5. Customer Presentations. (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Low)
If one of your customers is presenting at a conference, trade show or event or even in your offices and is talking about your products or services either directly with you or indirectly as part of a larger discussion this may be a perfect opportunity to capture the presentation of video (with permission, of course) to re-purpose on your website and intranet.

Product and Service Promotion

6. Product Presentations (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Product (or service) presentation videos are typically employed early in the buying cycle. Product or service presentations focus on benefits and talk from more from your customer’s perspective. They should speak clearly to how your product solves a specific business, personal or economic problem that your prospect is experiencing. They are used to help your customers and prospects differentiate between the benefits of your products and services to those of your competitors.

7. Product Demonstrations (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Product demos show how your product works and highlight the features that differentiate it from that of your competitors. Software screen captures, a 3D cut-away, or a high impact demo by a presenter are all excellent ways of showing how your product or service works. These videos are typically used to influence a prospect who is relatively far along in the sales cycle. In technology marketing these videos would be targeted at the technical approvers who need to understand how something works. In consumer marketing these would be targeted at buyers of larger ticket items who are further along the sales cycle.

8. Product Reviews (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
The best product reviews are trusted third party reviews. Video reviews can be found anywhere from YouTube to various business portals. To the extent they help you, they should be referenced. You can also partner with trusted third parties to create product reviews for your own products.

9. Visual Stories (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Quickly rising in popularity, visual stories employ illustrations, animations and motion graphics with a voice-over to explain complex products or services in a simple and compelling manner.

Corporate Video

10. Corporate Overview (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: moderate)
These videos are the video equivalent of the ‘company brochure’ for small companies – intended to give new visitors to a website a better idea of the company. Corporate overview videos typically company history, key products, executives/owners and other top level business info. As the cost of video production continues to decrease and the popularity of video increases you will start to see these videos being replaced by multiple, more targeted video.

11. Executive Presentations (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Whether you are preparing for a quarterly update, responding to a major event in your industry or making a regularly scheduled presentation there is great value in presenting the “face” and “voice” of your leadership team to all of your constituents.

12. Staff Presentations (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Social media and other Web 2.0 trends have caused companies to reconsider how they communicate with external audiences. Your senior leadership team should not be the first and only consideration to represent your company. It is becoming more imperative to consider showcasing the people that drive the day-to-day operations of your company. Customer service representatives, technical experts and legacy workers are all valuable considerations for this new category of corporate video. Surveys show that there is more trust associated with these employees than with senior management. When you are selling to influencers in organizations (versus economic buyers or decision makers) it is especially important you represent your company with people that your customers and prospects can relate to.

13. Corporate facilities or equipment tour (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Low)
Ten years ago corporate facility videos and equipment tours were popular. Down-sizing, off-shoring, outsourcing, a couple of recessions and a hollowing out of North America’s manufacturing base has change the priorities placed on these videos. Uniqueness is key to success here. That said, it’s really not about you any more.

Training  and support video

14. Training (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: High)
Corporate video first gained prominence with training (service, support, sales, personal development etc.) and continues to be one of the best uses of video. Online Video is a cost effective substitute for in-class training. You can also easily integrate video into online training management tools.

15. Overnight expert videos (Sales Support)  (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
If you serve a large geographic area or sell through channels then it is well worth the effort to put together short ‘overnight expert’ sales support videos that highlight the key selling points, features, benefits, objection handling and follow-up issues to consider by your direct or channel sales force.

16. Just-in-time learning (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
Contextual training videos are becoming very popular on the web. ‘How-to’ videos, video manuals, on-site video reference, quick assembly demos, and other types of video are being used to supplement or replace traditional training. Mobile video will increase the popularity of this type of video.

17. Post sale support and maintenance videos (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
No one reads manuals. You can save thousands of dollars of post sale support by creating informative assembly, installation and maintenance videos for your products and services.

Internal Communications

18. Internal Communications (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
In larger companies few people have the time or interest to understand what other groups or functions within the company do or even why they exist. Internal videos that highlight business plans, new business activities and achievements can improve knowledge transfer and lead to more effective communications. They are also a great way to show off your local hero’s.

19. Event/Conference and Trade Show Communications. (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Most companies spend a disproportionate amount of their marketing budget on attending and participating in a variety of industry events and yet only a very small percentage of employees ever benefit from these activities. Share the knowledge gained at these events by capturing the presentation, demos, interviews, commentaries etc. on video.

20. Employee orientation (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Once your new recruits are on board employee orientation videos are a great way to get new staff up to speed. Company history, structure, procedures, policies and codes of behavior can all be communicated effectively with video.

21. Health, Legal & Safety (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
The cost of dealing with health and safety related issues within organizations continues to grow. Video is one of the most effective means of minimizing these costs.

Advertising , marketing  and promotion

22. Commercials (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: High)
While advertisers are becoming more selective in how they chose to spend their promotional dollars with broadcast television, other venues for commercials such as online video pre-roll, online sponsorships, in-game advertising, event sponsorships and in-theatre advertising are starting to take the place of broadcast / cable commercials. A proliferation of video screens cropping up on every building, device and structure will create an even more diverse set of advertising opportunities. The challenge will be to create specialized content targeted to an ever shrinking niche audience.

23. Viral Video (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: High)
A video is viral if it is so compelling that people want to share it. (Calling a video ‘Viral’ doesn’t make it so). Viral videos have to be extremely engaging, entertaining, shocking or meaningful to be successful. Unfortunately some of the most successful viral videos have little connection (and therefore value) to any brand. (Everyone references ‘Will it Blend’ but very few viral videos are remotely this successful in actually driving sales.)

24. Email Video (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Testing has shown that open rates can double if you include video in your email marketing activities. To be effective the video should be purpose-built to elicit a specific conversion activity such as requesting a demo, more info etc.

25. Infomercials (Popularity: High  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Infomercials have been around forever. While they continue to be the primary focus of web-based parody videos they have remained remarkably resilient over time. The shopping channel is, in effect, a 24 hour infomercial. If done well, Infomercials can be very effective at selling certain consumer products.

26.  Content Marketing (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Huge)
This is a broad category that will become very important over the next months and years. Much of the content (video or otherwise) being creating today by companies is focused on selling. Focusing on solving your customers problems first and then associating your brand with those solutions will be increasingly more important and effective. (i.e. Home Depot could create a branded ‘how-to’ series that sits on their website and shows their customers how-to fix anything. They would, or course, reference tools and supplies available in their store but more importantly, they would generate tremendous value for their customers and prospects – value that would accrue to them over time.)

27. Landing pages and micro sites (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: High)
Video is beginning to replace or supplement text and graphics as a content element on many corporate websites. Landing pages can offer a more compelling call to action with video. Some micro sites on larger web properties are self contained, purpose-built conversion machines that have the singular purpose of generating a conversion activity (sign-up for more info, attend event, order something etc.). Video is becoming an important part of the conversion process.

PR Support and Community Relations

28. Video Press Releases (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
The standard four paragraph press release is now being supplemented with video and rich media to tell a more engaging story. Video is now being purpose-built to directly support the important company announcements. The new challenge for press releases is to change the focus from the company to the customer.

29.  PR Support Materials (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)

Make it easy for networks, bloggers, news gathers and others to promote your business and also to talk about your industry. Smart companies are developing video support catalogues of company and industry related materials (b-roll, industry footage, sound bites etc) and offering them to news and business portals. The demand for video is everywhere. If a news agency (online or broadcast) is looking for stock footage to use in a story it might as well be yours. (assuming the story is positive, of course)

30. Community Relations Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
If your company is out working in the community, being good corporate citizens, helping the environment or contributing to important causes you should be capturing those efforts on video. Show the world what you are doing, don’t just talk about it.

Event Video

31. Event Presentation video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
Events represent a unique confluence of expertise and opportunity – often under-leveraged. Trade Shows, meeting and conferences are usually attended by your top sales people, your corporate executives, industry experts and other influential business people. If you are speaking at an event or someone is referencing your company you should be capturing this valuable content on video.

32. Round table Sessions (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
Take the opportunity at an event to corral four to six of your best customers and other industry experts, put them in room and video tape them talking about industry trends, business issues and the future of your industry. This content will be the most valuable content you could ever capture.

33. Q&A Expert sessions. (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
There are many opportunities to take specific event participants to the side and take them through informal Q&A sessions on various topics that matter to your customers. This content is valuable lead generation content.

Other Uses of Video

34. Recruitment Videos (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Finding the best employees is the single most important function of any company and yet comparatively small amounts of time and money are allocated to this critical task. Recruitment videos that feature company employees, highlight corporate culture and promote the direction of the company can be very influential.

35. VLOG (Popularity: Moderate  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
There are many levels  and types of Vloggers today but for the sake of brevity I will identify two: 1. Pro Vloggers who have engaging styles, rich content and a growing list of followers who promote their vlog on their site and through various syndicated channels and 2. Regular Vloggers who have chosen, for whatever reason, to speak into a camera instead of typing on a keyboard. The problem today is that, unlike onscreen text, you can’t scan a vlog – you sort have to watch the whole thing to see whether it is worth your time. The other problem is that most people just aren’t that compelling on camera so there is little, to no value of a talking head – and often it’s a distraction. Of course everyone references Gary Vaynerchuck (from Wine Library TV <http://tv.winelibrary.com/> ) as the rule (rather than the exception) for video blogging in the same way that everyone references the success of Will It Blend <http://www.blendtec.com/willitblend/> as being what to expect when you launch your first viral video project. For individuals looking to gain notoriety from their passions vlogging can be a good option if you have a good on-camera presence and great content.

36. In Store Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: High)
Wal-Mart has its own profitable in-store TV network that makes shoppers aware of new promotions. LCD screens are ubiquitous. In store LCD’s will be networked and customizable offering you the ability to promote your own goods and services or make money by promoting other complimentary services.

37. Company Lobby / Waiting Room Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
HD video screens are popping up everywhere – why not in your lobby or reception where you can get a jump start on first impressions and also take advantage of a captive audience.

38. Mobile Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Huge)
Yep, ‘there’s and Ap for that’. Mobile video will soon be the largest video category outside of broadcast. In the short-run, mobile video will consist of hastily re-purposed video made to fit on a mobile device. It will quickly evolve into a much more specific format – five to fifteen second hyper targeted messages that are part of geo-located and micro-niched promotions.

39. Market research, focus groups and polling (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Market research firms are now capturing the anecdotal feedback along with the raw statistics of their research. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video of your customer describing her likes and dislikes of your new product is priceless. Go to YouTube to see how people are describing your products and services.

40. Website FAQ Video (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Moderate)
In certain formats video can be a suitable replacement for text where an authoritative voice, support materials or other visual references are required. A list of FAQ’s answered by a company expert is an example.

41. Video White paper (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Low)
Video white papers have evolved over the last years from basically a person reading a white paper on camera (what’s the point) to a professional delivery that is accompanied by charts, graphs and other visual references to make the presentation more valuable.

42. Video Magazine (Popularity: Low  | Growth Potential: Low)
Some video production companies specialize in helping companies deliver serialized video content to their customers. Like the name implies video content is created on a regular basis (usually monthly) that customers and prospects can view through a subscription service.

http://www.onemarketmedia.com/blog/2009/12/42-ways-to-use-video-to-grow-your-business/

It is with a sadness in my heart that I write this post and yet what can you do when you are faced with such a situation? Be honest I say, and save your butt and move on.

Speakers’ Summit 10 is canceled.

My Lament:

I have been working on the annual Speakers Summit since mid December ’09. I polled my followers on what they wanted to learn about and discovered the concerns were about how to position, prospect and prosper.

With the theme in place I interviewed and choose all the speakers, set up the website and began my marketing campaign. I planned several complimentary preview teleclasses and requested that my affiliates and speakers reach out to their people as well. Oh yes, I kept the investment very reasonable and also asked my speakers not to sell from the platform.

I did exactly what I have been doing for the past five years plus I added a video invite to the Summit. Wasn’t I doing it right?

Here I am two weeks before the event and I have two sign ups. What the heck is going on? Am I being drowned out by the big guys? Am I too old to be doing this? Did I lose my expertise? Funny the tagline to the theme is the road ahead!

The road ahead seems to be wait till the last minute and then sign up. Let’s see if she will lowers the fee. No, I am not going to do that. Then I look at my options and I know I am going to lose my deposit at the hotel if I cancel.

What to do? Get with the plan, I say to myself. The plan is to offer some of the talks as teleclasses (stay tuned) and keep on sharing my passion and expertise as a speaker marketing consultant for folks who understand the value of speaker marketing and have a budget to invest in for their speaking career.

Wow, there is nothing like attending live conferences. I will miss the Summit this year. http://www.speakerservices.com/speakerssummit10

Maybe we will have a comeback next year. Who knows? Do you?

Do you know what the meeting planners want from speakers?

Listen to this short video and find out.

Susan Levin has over 18 years experience in the world of speaker marketing.  She is a marketing coach for speakers and authors and the founder of Speaker Services since ’92. Her company offers marketing and training services for professionals who are interested in growing their business or service through speaking.

http://www.speakerservices.com

Contact me for a complimentary 15 minute session – susan@speakerservices.com or call 310-822-4922 PT

Wendy Weiss, The Queen of Cold Calling

The first rule in “Naming Your Prospect” is to ask for a title not an activity. Do not ask for “the person who makes the decision to purchase….” Making the “decision to purchase…” is an activity and may get you a name, however, it will most likely be the name of someone who is involved but not in a decision-making capacity.

A better approach is to figure out what department the decision is likely made in and then find out who is the head of that department. If, for example, you know that the decision to purchase whatever you are selling is made in the Marketing Department ask for the head of the Marketing Department. This could be the senior vice president, or vice president or director. If you are calling small companies the person you want to reach is most likely the Owner

Once you have identified the appropriate title or titles(there may be variations from company to company):
1. Check the prospect company’s web site. This is the easiest way to find your prospect’s name.Thanks to the Internet, many companies today list executive and/or senior management on their web sites.

2. Ask the receptionist. Dial the company’s main number and ask the front line person who answers the line for the name of the person who has the appropriate title. Be prepared to throw out variations of that title as different companies may use different titles for the same type of position. When you are calling large companies receptionist s do not screen calls. That question, “What is this in reference to?” is actually a request for information. Keep suggesting titles until one sounds familiar to that receptionist.

3. Call the Chief Executive Officer. The theory here is that Executive Assistants know everything.Call the CEO’s office and ask the Executive Assistant for some help, “I’m wondering if you can help me.” Tell the Executive Assistant exactly what you need and she will more than likely point you in the right direction.

4. Randomly change the general switchboard number extensions. If the switchboard number is 5000, call 5001, 5002… until you reach a human being. It won’t be the right human being, but that’s ok. Once you reach a human being ask that person to help you, “I’m wondering if you can help me.” Ask, “Do you have a company directory?” When asked, most people are very happy to help.

5. The made-up name. Sometimes companies will not give out information unless you have a name. In this case, make up a name and then ask for that person. The switchboard operator will tell you there is no one there by that name. You then say, “Oh, (Made up Name) used to be the (Title). Who has taken over for her?”Many times this will work to get you the right name.

6. Ask a sales person. Call the sales department and speak with a sales person.Say, “I’m wondering if you can help me.” Sales people will understand and if they can they will help you. Tell the sales person exactly who you are trying to reach. If they do not know the correct name ask, “Do you have a directory handy?Could you look that up for me?”

7. Ask Customer Service. Customer Service is there to help. Call them and ask for help, “I’m wondering if you can help me.” Many times Customer Service can give you the information that you require. Again, if the Customer Service representative does not know the correct name ask, “Do you have a directory handy? Could you look that up for me?”

With these seven ways of naming your prospect, finding the decision-maker should never again be an issue.

Wendy Weiss, “The Queen of Cold Calling,” is a sales trainer, author and sales coach. She is recognized as one of the leading authorities on lead generation, cold calling and new business development and she helps clients speed up their sales cycle, reach more prospects directly and generate more sales revenue. Contact her at wendy@wendyweiss.com. Get Wendy’s free Special Report, Getting in the Door: How to Write an Effective Cold Calling Script, at http://www.wendyweiss.com.
© 2010 Wendy Weiss

Great post by Lisa Sassevich

Okay, you’re on stage, you’ve just done a great job of walking your audience through your offers, clearly communicating their value and the transformation your clients will experience. You did everything right, including presenting a Today Only bonus that has your audience chomping at the bit to buy from you.

You may or may not realize that what you do next ~ or, rather what you don’t do next ~ could cost you thousands of dollars in sales. Don’t let that happen to you. Follow these deceptively simple secrets and claim the sales you just earned.

3 Simple Secrets for Claiming Your Back-of-the-Room Sales

1. Get to the sales table quickly. I told you they were simple. Yet, how many times have you been waylaid by a few people dying to ask you their questions? You don’t want to be rude, but customers are waiting for you in the back of the room with their credit cards in hand.

The best way to handle that situation is to just get back there quickly: move your body. Don’t let anyone get to you before you’ve left the podium and don’t break your stride until you’ve reached the sales table. When someone tries to stop you, say with a big smile, “Follow me and I’ll answer your questions. I promise!” And then keep going. Repeat what you just said to anyone who tries to stop you. You won’t lose anyone who’s serious about buying from you and you may even gain clients you wouldn’t have had. You’ll be like the pied piper, gathering a line of followers, drumming up even more excitement in your offerings, as you go. Grab their hands, if you must, and bring them along with you!

2. Have extra order forms and pens available at the sales table. Yes, you passed out the forms already, but sometimes people lose theirs or they make notes on them and want to keep them.

The last thing you want is what happened with my husband, Michael, one time. He was at a big training, standing at the sales table, ready to drop about $20,000, and he couldn’t get a form, and then he couldn’t get a pen. That level of frustration and disorganization makes people turn and walk away. And that’s exactly what he did. He decided to go to lunch and THINK ABOUT IT! And, as happens more times than not, he talked himself out of making that significant of an investment. So, make sure you have plenty of extra forms and pens on hand.

3. Send them away with more than a receipt. If you’re selling a big product that you don’t want to lug to the event, or a service that has no package at all, have something that you can give to the client who just spent hundreds or thousands on your package. That can be a nice gift bag that includes their starter CD, a quiz, a Getting Started guide or a signed copy of your book. Make it something that not only acknowledges their purchase, but also gets them energetically invested in your program right away, before any buyer’s remorse can set in.

When it comes to using the Invisible Close to bring prospects to a decision on-the-spot when you speak, remember, the dollars are in the details. Taking care of these simple but powerful details can ensure that you get all of the sales that you so richly deserve.

Sales-from-the-podium expert Lisa Sasevich has x-ray vision for seeing the sales opportunities that exist in every company, and the creativity to convert them into gold! If you’re looking for simple, quick and easy ways to boost sales without spending a dime, get your FREE Sales Nuggets now at www.theinvisibleclose.com.

The post today comes from Donna Gunter

Social networking using Twitter seems to be the most popular way to connect today, from celebrity Ashton Kutcher’s challenge to Oprah to reach one million friends first (Ashton won) to a U.S. State Department official contacting the co-founder of Twitter to delay upgrading the Twitter system so as not to interrupt election dialogue in Iran. More and more news agencies are using Twitter to keep their audience up-to-date, and local businesses are also jumping on the Twitter bandwagon as an immediate way to connect with their customers, as well.

How can you make the best use of Twitter in your business? It all starts with having followers in your target market. No doubt you’ve been inundated with email offers of things like “10,000 Twitter followers in 60 seconds for only $19.95!” Trust me — 1000 followers that are members of your target market are much more useful to the growth of your business via social networking than 10,000 followers that come from anywhere.

How do you find members of your target market on Twitter? Here are my top 7 strategies:

1. Add people you know in your industry. Twitter permits people to use fictitious names or business names as their Twitter identity, rather than their given name. So, it may be difficult at times to find the person you’re seeking, especially if she goes by “ShoeDiva” on Twitter and you know her as Miranda Smith. Try Twitter Search, or Advanced Search, to help you in your quest.

2. Find others with the same interests or serving the same target market. The online yellow pages of Twitter users, Twellow, permits users to list themselves by industry and interests. If your business isn’t currently listed on Twellow, take a few minutes to do that right away.

3. Follow those in the same geographic region. If marketing to your local area is an important part of your business, find local members of your target market by using Twellowhood or TwitterLocal and find the top movers and shakers in your region, as well as some members of your target market. If you want to meet fellow Tweeps face-to-face, search local Tweetups at TwtVite,com, or create your own gathering.

4. Get relevant recommendations. The free service, MrTweet.com, will provide you with info on recommended people to follow based on your current Twitter profile. You do have to follow MrTweet in order to participate. Once you’re logged in, you can see your recommendations, along with how these recommendations are connected to your list of followers. You can evaluate your recommendations, and MrTweet will make changes in your recommended list accordingly.

5. Follow those who follow you. It’s considered good Twitter etiquette to follow those people who’ve chosen to follow you. And, to prevent being labeled a Twitter snob, ideally you should be following more people than are following you. I have automated my ability to follow my followers by using a free version of TweetLater.com.

6. Look for keywords. Another way to find relevant followers is to keep track of people mentioning certain keywords in their Tweets. I do that through the free version of TweetLater.com. I use this same service to keep track of any mentions of me or my company on Twitter in the very same way I use Google Alerts.

7. Find groups. Twibe permits you to find groups by industry and interest and join them and/or see the members of each group. And, if you so inclined, you can create your own Twitter group, as well.

Remember, finding your target market is just the beginning. Once you’ve found them, you need to begin to build relationships with them. This means paying attention to what they say so that you can respond when appropriate either with a direct message (DM) or an @ reply that is public or retweeting (RT) their message to your followers when you feel someone has great info that would be useful to those who follow you. Take 10-15 minutes per day to keep yourself informed about what’s happening with your Tweeps and watch your business grow!

Internet Marketing Automation Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals create prosperous online businesses that make more profit in less time by teaching them how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise, and get found online. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> http://www.TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com

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There’s more marketing hype published on the Internet in one day than P.T. Barnum generated in his lifetime. Like a worm swallowing its tail, the Internet marketing beast feeds mostly on itself. The vast majority of what appears on the Internet about marketing is designed to help you market products and services sold and delivered exclusively on the Internet.

Website Makeovers: 3 Things Buyers Want on Your Website3 Tips for Making Every Website a Lead Generating Machine4 Pointers for Building Relationships with Your Prospects Online

So what does that mean for the independent professional whose web presence is primarily aimed at selling his services? You know, services delivered the old-fashioned way, by humans interacting face to face or at least voice to voice. At best, the average professional is likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Internet marketing advice available. At worst, he is seriously misled by it.

The problem is that marketing your professional services is simply not the same as marketing a retail product or an anonymous business service. You can’t sell management consulting like you sell web hosting, nor can you sell executive coaching the same way as an ebook. If you try to market yourself by following advice designed for marketing Internet products and services, you’re likely to make some serious mistakes.

Here are five Internet marketing myths that may be hazardous to the health of your business.

Myth #1—It All Starts with A Great Website

Actually, the place where it starts is with a well-defined service. If you don’t have a crystal clear picture of whom you are marketing to and exactly what you’re selling, the best website in the world won’t get you clients. Before you even think about building a website, you should know who your target market is, how to describe your professional specialty, and what specific benefits your work provides for your clients.

You’re site’s content is much more important than its design. Yes, you should have a professional-looking site, but a brilliant design and dazzling graphics won’t pay off anywhere near as well as a clear explanation of why a client should work with you. Useful material such as articles, assessments, and other samples of your expertise will go much further to persuade prospective clients than flash intros and interactive menus.

Myth #2—More Traffic Translates to Increased Profits

The only result guaranteed by more traffic to your website is increased bandwidth use on your web hosting account. Before spending money on banner ads, web directories, or pay-per-click listings to drive visitors to your site, make sure the people you’re attracting want to do business with you once they get there.

Ask your colleagues and clients to critique your site. Do they understand what you offer? Can they see concrete benefits to your target audience? Revise your site based on their feedback. Then invite some prospective clients to visit the website and talk to them afterward. Do your prospects seem more inclined to do business with you after seeing your site? If so, you’re on the right track. If not, you still have work to do.

Myth #3—Do Whatever It Takes to Build Your List

There’s no question that a substantial opt-in mailing list is a valuable marketing asset, but the quality of names on your list is much more important than the quantity. Acquiring names through giveaways of other people’s material, trading lists with joint venture partners, or purchasing lists from a vendor rarely provide qualified buyers truly interested in your services.

Ask your site visitors and people you meet to join your mailing list and offer them something of value in return. A well-written ezine, helpful report, or informative audio are all effective premiums. But, your premium should directly relate to the services you provide and should serve to increase your professional credibility. Names acquired from promotional gimmicks or unknown sources seldom turn into paying clients.

Myth #4—Killer Copy is the Secret to Sales

Hype-laden web copy may be effective in selling products or home-study courses, but it hardly inspires trust. You’re not going to persuade anyone to hire you as a consultant, coach, trainer, designer, or financial advisor by offering “not one, not two, but three valuable bonuses” as if you were selling steak knives on late-night TV.

Your Internet marketing persona should reflect the same professionalism as the work you do with your clients. If writing marketing materials isn’t your forte, by all means hire a professional copywriter. But be sure you hire one with experience writing for professionals like you. The copy on your website should inspire feelings of confidence about your abilities and communicate your reliability and solid qualifications.

Myth #5—Just Follow the Winning Formula and You Will Get Rich

There’s only one surefire recipe for Internet wealth that I know of, and that’s the business of selling surefire recipes. There seems to be an infinite number of buyers for every new get-rich-online scheme invented, but paradoxically, precious few people successfully making money on the Web.

The Internet may be a different medium for marketing professional services than traditional approaches like making calls, writing letters, or meeting people in person, but the same time-honored principles still apply. There is no winning formula for overnight success. The secret to landing clients remains what it always has been—build relationships and get people to know, like, and trust you.

If your website, ezine, social networking, and other Internet-based activities contribute to building long-term, trusting relationships with prospective clients and referral sources, you’ll get business on the web. But if you blast your message out to anyone who will listen, aiming for a quick profit, the Internet won’t bring you any more business than standing on a street corner with a megaphone.

Post by Donna Gunter http://www.getmoreclientsonlineblog.com

Once you  have created an information product, you may think you’ve completed all of the hard work.  Unfortunately the most challenging piece of product creation is yet to come — the creation of the sales letter landing page where you talk about and sell your product.

Creating an effective sales letter is really all about following a formula.  If you look at enough sales letters, you realize that most of them follow the same template.  While there aren’t necessarily any hard-and-fast rules, here are 13 steps to help you create the perfect sales letter for your product or service:

1.  Headlines.  First create an intro headline, which appears in smaller font just before your primary headline and gets your reader warmed up for the headline to follow.  Then comes your primary headline, which is a large font in a different font color that must grab your reader’s attention.  The best way to get your reader’s attention in your headline is to tug at an emotion, like fear, insider secrets that no one else knows, or how to do something.

Then, you have mini-headlines that are scattered throughout your text.  Usually they contain a benefit and are meant to draw the reader’s eye to a certain section of text.  They are in a larger font although smaller than the primary headline and in a different color than the text of your letter.

2.  Greeting.  Start your letter with “Dear <target market name>, a date, and your geographic location.

3.  Introduction.  This is section where you reiterate the details of a particular problem suffered by your target market, empathize with those who have a similar problem, outline why it’s important to seek a solution, and begin to drop hints that you’ve got the solution to this problem.

4.  Your story and credentials.  Elaborate on your background and credentials that make you qualified to sell this product or service, as well as the story that led to the creation of this product.

5.  Product introduction.  Here’s where you talk more about your product and begin to list and explain the main benefits (not features), or what’s in it for your reader if your reader buys the product.

6.  Bullet points.  While this isn’t technically a part of the template, you’ll want to make full use of bullet points throughout your sales letter as a way of cleanly listing the many benefits and features of your product.  Bullet points make it very easy for a reader to scan your page and pick up the pertinent information she needs to make a decision to buy your product.

7.  Testimonials.  Testimonials serve as social proof that your product works. If others have purchased and used your product and gained the benefits that you promise, the reader feels more certain that they can purchase it, too, and receive similar benefits.  Make your testimonials believable by including a photo, web site URL, phone number, audio, or video of the person giving the testimonial.  The more that your visitor can identify with the person giving the testimonial, the more likely she is to purchase from you.

8.  Product details/benefits.  Here’s where you get to break everything down for your reader, with all of the details of all of the specific components of your product.

9.  Your offer and bonuses. Your offer can make or break the sale of your product. Make the offer so irresistible that your reader can’t help but think, “I’ve gotta get that!”  When you add bonuses to the mix, you increase the value of the offer immediately. Make sure that your bonuses are directly related to your main product so that your reader sees the enhanced value.

10. Guarantee.  Make your reader feel safe by offering an iron-clad guarantee that takes all the risk out of the purchase.

11.  Price justification. Compare your pricing to other products/services that you sell, or to items your reader might use regularly.  Your goal here is to make the price a non-issue for the reader by reminding her how much continuing to deal with this problem is costing her.

12.  Final call to action.  Again make your offer here, with clear, specific instructions on how your reader can purchase the product.  Remind her of your guarantee and any bonuses she receives for purchase.  Remind your reader why she should take action now, and include a sense of scarcity here, as in time limits, product limits, or limiting the bonuses to the few xx number of orders.

13.  Closing and postscripts (P.S.).  Sign off on your letter and include at least one post-script.  The post-script serves as a a powerful place where you give readers a reason to go back and consider the offer.  Believe it or not, the P.S. the third most-read section of your sales letter, so don’t forget to include at least one.  The P.S. is also the last place many of your readers will end up after reading your offer – just before they leave. Your P.S. needs to be the last persuasive offer to get them to stay and buy.

When you follow these 13 steps, you have now created a powerful sales letter. By following this 13-step formula, any online business owner can create an effective sales letter that sells her product or service.