Hey, everyone! My good friend and past client, Cindy Ashton, has popped by recently to share with us her 5 strategies to successful speaking! Check out these great tips to learn how to rock that stage! If you like them, you may also like her upcoming webinar, Ultimate Speaking Strategies: Convert Inattentive Audiences into Active Participants that Become Paying Clients.
Cindy’s 5 Speaking Strategies that Attract Droves of Clients
So what’s it going to be?
One of the biggest trends happening in the speaking world in the past 5-10 years has been entrepreneurs speaking as a way to generate new business. Many small business owners are now able to explode their reputation, sales and visibility at a significantly faster rate by going out there and speaking to their target market.
The key though is to know HOW to speak in a way that attracts droves of clients. If you don’t have the tools, you will be wasting your time.
Let me share with you 5 strategies you can implement immediately to get you started:
1. Give your audience a clear end result.
Decide what you want your audience to walk away with by the end of your speech and then build your talking points and structure to lead them to the end result they will receive. Don’t be one of those speakers that ramble on forever with no direction. When you tell them at the top of your talk what they will achieve by the end, they will stay with you and listen to the end. And when they gain the benefits, it will easy for them to say yes to working with you.
2. Provide simple, implementable tools.
You want to build a relationship with your audience right? When you do, they will buy from you. Best way to do that is give them a kick ass strategy they can implement immediately to achieve success. They key is to keep it SIMPLE. If you give them too many tools or a formula that is too complicated, they will feel overwhelmed and confused. Give them something spectacular which will build their trust and confidence in you and your services/products.
3. Build credibility by focusing on the audience needs.
I have seen too many speakers get on stage and tell their story forever and ever. The audience is there to learn something specific. They don’t know you well enough yet to care about your story. But then how do you establish credibility? Think about the end result you are promising. Relate your story to the pain they are trying to solve. Show them how you were where they are, how you overcame it and are now passionate about guiding them to success.
4. Engage the audience through storytelling.
Effective storytelling is the most powerful way to stimulate your audience’s emotions and have them connecting with you on a deeper level (and therefore building more trust and relationship needed to attract sales). They key is to think of the end result / message you are promising them and weave it throughout your story.
5. Lose the scripts. Be yourself.
Yup you heard me. Forbes magazine released an article April 2012 saying:
“For those who’ve been through speaker training, you know the drill. You leave feeling less authentic than ever, with piles of “correct” postures, gestures, and speech effects to practice.”
The problem with this is that this “I am a perfect robot on stage” nonsense creates a barrier between you and the audience. The key is to have a strong structure and flow to your talk, be crystal clear with your message and then speak from your natural, brilliant self.
When Odette hired me as her speaker coach back in winter, I gave her permission to just be her amazing self… exactly AS IS. We built super strong structures into her talk + trust and relationship points, implementing all the above. She grossed 10K at her next talk.
You can take the amazing business skills and apply them to speaking. Focus on creating a talk that builds trust, provides value, has a strong structure and engages your audience in a very real and natural way. Keep it simple and focused. Go shine your brilliance, rock the stage and attract those clients!
QUICK EVENT UPDATE: Register for my webinar August 8 to learn more about how to convert your audience into paying clients.