Speaker - April 2009

It’s time for a reality check. Look around at where money is really being spent in the meetings industry. Ask some meeting planners what they really need, most of all. A common phrase you will hear is “hard skills” or maybe “hard content.” This doesn’t mean you have to speak about engineering or statistical market analysis, although it might help. What it does mean is that you had better be selling direct value. Direct value is a solid line that connects your topic with money, sex or happiness.

Just to make your job harder, that line to direct value really has to exist in the audience member’s mind; not yours. You may be convinced of your presentation’s value on, say, reducing stress in the workplace. But imagine this conversation happening at a corporate client:

Ms. X: “We need to cut our expenses by 20 percent to break even this year.”

Mr. Y: “Well, there’s the training budget. Hmm…the one-day class on using our computer system is necessary. But what’s this?

Reducing stress? What the heck will that do for our bottom line?”

Ms. X: “I dunno. Let’s cut it.”

gram descriptions that make the direct value obvious to them.

“Increasing Employee Retention,” for example, offers more direct value to some executives, because the cost of recruiting and training employees is a significant part of their budgets. “Reducing Recruiting and Training Costs” or “Increasing Productivity” are even more direct and, while they might be the same speech, clearly promise a direct improvement in a specific line item for a corporate meeting planner.

The ultimate extension of this would be a very spe-
cific, concrete result that attendees would expect to get
from information in your program: “How to Reduce
Training Costs by 15 Percent” or “How ABC Company
Gets 10 Percent Better Work From 10 Percent Fewer
Employees.” In promoting public programs, tests have
shown that these specific numeric benefits will consis-
tently out-pull the earlier generic
examples above. The same will hold
true for you when you are selling
speeches, whether they are break-
outs, keynotes, or day-long training
programs.

So let’s say you think long and hard about your topic, and you come up with a way to sell it as having much more direct value. Will the money come rolling in? Hardly. You must also provide unique value.

SUCCESSFUL SPEAKERS CULTIVATE CLEAR AND COMPELLING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEMSELVES AND OTHER SPEAKERS. WHICH TYPE OF SPEAKER WILL YOU BE?

Now, before you rip off a letter remarking how stupid this conversation is, I want to agree with you. But I want you to think very deeply about how realistic it is.

You could use any topic with an indirect value proposition, and have the same conversation. This happens every day in corporations, associations, and even in personal decision making about which public programs to attend.

It doesn’t happen because your attendees are stupid—it happens because they don’t know the value of your subject as well as you do. In many cases, they don’t even care.

What Is Unique Value?

Imagine this conversation:

Ms. X: “We can spend money on a speaker if it will help us make more money.”

Mr. Y: “Great, let’s get a sales trainer. Are there any in the NsA directory?”

Ms. X: “Yes, there are 1,200.”

Mr. Y: “Cool. Find one nearby with a low fee.”

Make the Direct Value Clear Let’s take a look at a topic that is common in NSA: motivating employees. I understand the value of this program, and I hope you do, too. But repeatedly, executives and the meeting planners who work for them will choose a topic that offers a more direct and measurable path to a stronger bottom line. If this is your general topic, I’d suggest spending an hour pretending that your clients aren’t too bright and write pro-

This conversation is sillier than the first one. But again, it happens all the time. And yes, a good salesperson can overcome the thinking of potential clients who view speakers as a commodity, but sales trainers are in plentiful supply, too. This is also true of strategic planning, leadership, change management, branding, customer service and almost any other topic area that has a heading in the NSA directory. Today, more than ever, people are leaving their corporate jobs, or being downsized out of them, and hanging out the “speaker” shingle.