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Recently, public speaking has become a large office of my life. In the final year alone, I have spoken at an average of four to five industry conferences, universities, and startup accelerator events per month.

People oft inquire me why I practise it, and more than frequently, how I do information technology.

The "why" is elementary. Public speaking is a highly effective (though often underutilized) platform for any good content marketing and sales strategy. Chances are your directors and C-level executives are industry experts, and industry experts are highly sought after for public speaking engagements. And public speaking (if yous practice it properly) gains you and your brand additional printing and industry brownie, which makes it easier to sell your products and services.

The "how," on the other hand, requires a more in-depth explanation.

You Accept To Requite Earlier Y'all Can Get

Public speaking is an incredibly valuable sales tool. It's so valuable, in fact, that I just accuse for near 50% of my speaking sessions because they help me generate and then much revenue. That said, at that place seems to be a lot of misconception out there nearly how to effectively sell at speaking engagements.

Many of the tech companies and inventors I advise have read the words "public speaking" and "sales" together at some signal and assumed that their speaking sessions need to exist structured as sales pitches to sell their products. Only the about powerful feedback I've e'er received after giving a speech was from someone who said "Give thanks y'all for not trying to sell us annihilation. Every other speaker here has simply been peddling their products without giving whatever real value."

The master goals of public speaking are to:

  • Enlighten and engage an audience.
  • Brand your audience recollect.
  • Plant interest and credibility in your brand.
  • Build and nurture relationships that can later on turn into sales.

It may audio counterintuitive, just public speakers should avoid directly selling or pitching any production or service during their speaking sessions.

The sales generated from public speaking engagements are more indirect. They are the issue of heightened brand awareness and increased make post-obit. Merely you will just run into a lift for your make if y'all are giving your audience something that makes them trust you and desire to learn more about you and your product.

You should think of your speaking sessions as a way to initiate a new human relationship. You and then have to nurture that human relationship by giving, giving, and giving some more earlier you lot e'er consider asking for annihilation in return.

That's right, in order to be an constructive public speaker you have to requite something away. Your audience has to come abroad from your speech communication with something of value.

Some examples of what you can offer your audition include:

  • Advice on a topic your audience cares about
  • Statistics that enlighten your audience
  • A story that touches them on an emotional level and makes them look at the world differently

This ways you take to give your audience quality content -- don't bore or badger them. Only then will they intendance near what else y'all take to offering.

Gary Vaynerchuk wrote a great article with more than insight into this strategic approach to sales that's worth a read.

Perfect Your Content And Delivery

An audition's perceived value of you is determined 100% past your spoken communication and how it is delivered.

It should become without saying that you lot need to spend time and focus on perfecting your oral communication and its commitment. All too ofttimes I accept seen speakers who tried to finalize their speeches or presentations 15 minutes before an upshot and suffered because of it.

A poorly delivered speech is a huge waste of time for you, your company, and near importantly, your audience. Why invest in a strategy and spend resources on public speaking if yous aren't going to do it effectively?

To develop a one hour presentation, it usually takes me near 3 days:

  • One 24-hour interval to typhoon the content and presentation
  • Another day to practice the delivery and brand revisions to the content for amend menstruation
  • And ane more twenty-four hours to practice the final presentation

Practice is primal for a good presentation. Just like athletes and musicians practice the same moves and songs over and over over again, you should be practicing your presentation until you take information technology memorized.

To exist an engaging and effective public speaker, your audition needs to feel like you are having a personal conversation with them, non that you're reading from a script and talking at them. This means that you lot need to understand who your audience really is. There's a big deviation between how entrepreneurs, business organisation professionals, and higher students communicate so it's of import to speak to your audience in a personalized way they will connect with.

Other methods I employ to connect with my audition include:

  • Telling a story
  • Making jokes
  • Using metaphors

For more tips on how to develop your presentation and content delivery strategy, check out this list past Joe Pulizzi.

When It'southward Time To Sell, Maintain Your Brand Experience

With public speaking, you commonly need to have multiple conversations with people before you lot tin initiate the sales procedure. Personally, I take spent more than six months and 30+ speaking sessions to establish credibility with a given audience before initiating sales conversations with them.

This process can have some time, so exist patient and pay close attention to your audition to determine the right time to move into a sales date.

With this approach, it's also important to remember that you lot've developed a strong make paradigm and perceived value with your client through your speaking sessions and you must maintain your brand experience throughout the sales process.

I believe in that location are v principles to go on in mind to sell products or services after speaking sessions:

  1. Drive multiple interactions. Develop your presentations with standalone content such as statistics and graphs and then your attendees can leverage the content again in the hereafter.
  2. Differentiate yourself. What do you lot offering the customer that nobody else does?
  3. Make your value easy to understand. Don't tell your customer what your product does, tell them what they can do with it.
  4. Maintain your experience. The customer is used to hearing the way you communicate in your speaking sessions so brand sure to give them a consistent feel during the sales process.
  5. Repurpose your content. Reuse phrases and images from your voice communication and presentation in articles, blog posts, promotional materials, email templates, and over the phone.

Public Speaking Is a Marathon

With so many people out at that place wanting to demonstrate their thought leadership to enhance their brands, public speaking tin can be quite competitive.

Personally I have about 100 local competitors and several thousand global competitors in my specific niche (content marketing). And then what'due south my strategy for maintaining a potent public speaking presence?

As I've already mentioned, I practice an average of four to five speaking sessions per month and only accuse for about 50% of these sessions. Two or three of these monthly appearances are commonly local to me and one or two of them are global. About 65% of the time I am invited to speak but the other 35% of the fourth dimension I make an endeavor to speak at strategic events that will help me go along to develop my personal make.

The master benefits of this strategy are:

  • Y'all gain more experience.
  • You larn how to work with unlike audiences.
  • You lot can perfect your content.
  • Y'all drive more than traffic to your website and social media channels.
  • You gain more than followers for your make.

Public speaking is like a marathon -- yous have to maintain a steady pace in order to win the race. This is why it's and so important to maintain a regular schedule of speaking sessions at strategic events that will generate constant visibility for your make while you lot go on to evolve as a public speaker.

This commodity by Neil Patel will give you some more insight into the marathon strategy for public speaking as well as how to choose the right speaking events for your brand.

All of the concepts we have covered will help y'all finer leverage public speaking to take your content marketing and sales to the next level. But you'll have to put in some time, effort, and delivery to succeed in this channel.

Are y'all using public speaking to sell a product or service? Is it working for y'all? Why or why not? Let united states know in the comments below.

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Originally published Jun 10, 2015 viii:00:00 AM, updated February 01 2017