How to Become a Speaker, Part I
by Suzanne Falter-Barns
Typically, you don’t start out by hiring a speaker bureau or manager to book your gigs. In fact, a speaker bureau is not going to be interested in representing you until you’ve done somewhere in the range of 50 paid speeches, or worked your fee up to the $5,000 per speech range. You can’t even join the National Speaker’s Association (nsaspeaker.org) – an industry organization that serves as an unofficial meeting place for many speakers – until you’ve given 20 paid presentations as a freelancer, or done so in the last year in your work, or earned $25,000 as a speaker within the last 12 months.
Instead, you start out as a speaker by simply deciding that you are one. And then, typically, you descend into a muddle of panic and despair as you realize you have no idea where to turn first.
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Increase Your Bottom Line by Hiring Help
by Alicia M Forest, MBA
Multiple Streams Queen & Coach
Do you do everything yourself when it comes to running your business? Or do you find it difficult to delegate to others, at least sometimes? Do you think you don’t have the money to hire help? Well, I’m going to show you how hiring help can help increase your bottom line dramatically.
Not delegating is one of the major hurdles my private clients seem to struggle with. They are doing everything themselves and are so busy with the little administrative things that they have little time to devote to their “genius” work – developing products and services for their niche and working directly with their clients. Once they’ve hired help, either a virtual assistant or an in-office assistant, and move through the growing pains of delegating and trusting that the work will get done (and might even get done faster and better than they could do it themselves), I can always sense a feeling of freedom and excitement as the space opens up for them to work on the things that are really creative and inspiring to them, instead of dealing with invoices or fixing a glitch with their web page. And very soon after, their business really starts to move forward because they have the time and focus to dedicate to increasing their product and services line, which, of course, translates into more profits.
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Touching Base with Prospects
by Alicia Smith
IMPORTANT NOTE: For those individuals who have given you permission to contact them, you may do so using the following guidelines. Please remember that according to the “Do Not Call” laws, you are not allowed to contact individuals, at their home or cell number, if they have not provided you with written permission to do so. The “Do Not Call” laws do not apply to business numbers. For more information click here (Note from Terry: the link is to a great article all in itself!).
If your client is a business person and you are calling them at the office it’s best to make these calls (during the customer’s time zones) at
9 am or
From 11:30 – Noon (before people go to lunch) or
4:30 – 5:00 pm (while they are in their office getting ready to go home).
Make these calls Monday – Friday; DO NOT call over the weekend.
However, if you are calling clients after hours or on weekends, at their home number, then plan accordingly.
Marketing studies have shown that people are much more likely to buy on a Friday. With the weekend at hand they often are not working quite as hard and are in a good mood and more willing to spend money. We suggest that you set aside a three-hour block of time on Friday’s to offer complementary consultations or demonstrations. If you are a retail shop owner, Saturdays and Sundays are also excellent days for offering free demonstrations or consultations.
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Have a Big Picture Day! Do what you Love and Make More Money
by Jan Wallen
So many people have requested my Big Picture Worksheet, I want to expand on it and give you ways that you can use it easily to build your business and stay on track with your dreams.
This article gives you valuable information and also Action Steps so you can get results right away. You’ll need your Big Picture Worksheet and your To-Do List. So take a minute and get them out now. If you missed getting your copy, send a blank email and I’ll send it straight to you.
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Does Your Marketing Need a Flip Flop?
by Jane Atkinson
Quite often I’ll Google speaker websites to check out the competition for my clients. In today’s competitive climate, it shocks me to see that many speakers still start out their home page saying things like ‘John Doe is the best speaker you’ve ever heard. Hire John for your next meeting’.
Yeah right!
As the economy tightens, do you think that John Doe is the type of speaker that clients desire? I have my doubts.
The marketing flip flip is about putting the outcomes to the client first, and thespeaker (as the solution to their problem) second.
Unless you are a celebrity or bestselling author, your website should probably not be about you.
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