For a great many people, public speaking ranks as one of their top five fears (along with spiders, high places, elevators, etc.). For those of you who cannot claim that affliction, public speaking is a wonderful way to gain publicity for you and your business.
For clients who don’t have a proactive strategy (i.e. setting goals for a target number of speaking gigs each period), I often have difficulty convincing them to take the plunge. It is not their fears but their schedules that are usually the challenge. They can come up with 10 or even 100 other things that will make them too busy to commit.
All the while that I’m struggling to get them in front of an audience I can’t help but think “do you know what your missing?” Last quarter I had a client finally find out.
He accepted an invite to speak to a local chapter meeting of a very niche national organization. There were about 50 people in attendance (not bad for am association meeting). Afterwards he showed me the stack of cards he collected and as we went through them he counted prospects. The stats were astounding and within a week he had signed three new clients. Not bad for a few hours work. And of course now that he has the fever we’re aggressively pursuing bigger and better speaking gigs as part of his 08 strategy.
If you’re still averse to public speaking, take a few tips from this appropriately named article: How To Conquer Public Speaking Fear.