I'm posting on a new site

I've combined my blogs here into a new blog.

To see my recent posts, go to:

http://www.writingformarketers.com

See you there.

Selling From the Stage II

Okay, it's time to brag a bit.

We just put on the Speak Your Way to Wealth seminar a month ago. It was quite an event, 17 powerful speakers talking about everything to do with using speaking as a marketing tool to grow your business.

I was one of those 17 speakers and I sold two items, my new Solutions Press Protege Program and my book publishing program. I only wanted to sell 10 book publishing programs because I'm getting really busy with book projects. However, I'll sell all the Protege Programs you want and it's worth it because you get ongoing support via teleseminar for your writing projects.

Anyway, the brag is: I sold more product than anyone else at Speak Your Way to Wealth!

Go back a few posts and read the Selling From the Stage post in July. It'll give you a lot of pointers on how I did it and how you can do it too.

The best ones are:

• Have a great product you believe in
• Make sure your audience understands the value of your product
• Give them a great deal on your product
• Use powerful stories to create emotional impact
• Engage the audience, use humor, be loose, have fun on stage
• Tell them exactly what you want them to do

To learn how to tell stories, check out my Story Magic Home Study Course at www.leepound.com/storymagic.htm.

To find out more about the Protege Program, go to www.leepound.com/protegeprogram.htm.

And those 10 book publishing programs? They're about gone. And I'm being very picky about who I let get the last spots. My email is on the web site if you think you might qualify.

Consider the Audience

Many beginning speakers are more concerned with how they do on stage than with how much the audience gets out of the speech they give.

To give a successful speech, you must watch your audience, react to their reactions to you, pause to give them time to assimilate the material you just presented, and SLOW DOWN so they can keep up with you.

Don't rush to "get everything in." If you don't get to some of your material, your audience will never know. They will know if you rush your finish and will remember the rush more than the call to action you tried to give.

Next time slow down, use more pauses, play with the audience and make them feel like you care more about them than about getting your speech over with.

Selling From the Stage

A lot of speakers will tell you they would never stoop to selling from the stage. They make their money from fees and, thank you, that makes them professionals.

What many speakers don't realize is that every time they open their mouths on stage, they are selling themselves, their message, their ideas and maybe their products and services.

We get on stage to educate, motivate, entertain and train. However, if we don't prepare the audience properly, they will never get our message. If a trainer just drones out the facts, the audience will fall asleep fast. If a speaker forgets to use humor and stories, the speech will fall flat. If the speaker has no call to action, they audience will never use the information the speaker gives.

One of the best ways to learn how to sell from the stage is to watch the masters in action. My business partner Arvee Robinson and I have a great opportunity to do just this August 22-24 at our Speak Your Way to Wealth seminar in Manhattan Beach, California. You can hear great speakers like Mark Victor Hansen, Adam Urbanski, Dave Lakhani, Brad Montgomery, Daniel Hall, Pamela Harper, Joe Nunziata, Eric Lofholm, and of course Arvee and I teach you how to use speaking to grow your business. You can sign up at http://www.speakyourwaytowealth.com/.

Next time you are up on stage, remember, you have to sell yourself to the audience before they will listen to you and buy your products and services.

And Now The Biggest Tip Of All

To speak effectively, you must not only read about speaking, you must practice it and you must observe great speakers in action.

You also need a basic understanding of speaking craft and the speaking business.

I've worked hard over the last few years to learn my craft and expand my skills and over that time searched for a seminar that would give me both skills and marketing information targeted directly at speakers and found few that met my needs

So I decided to create my own.

It's called Speak Your Way to Wealth and it will be held on August 18 and 19 in Newport Beach, California.

I'm really excited about how this has come together. We've brought together major speakers from all over the country to present. They'll cover everything from how you can create products and make money from back of the room sales to how to use storytelling in speeches, how to create great PowerPoint presentations, how to grow your business through speaking.

Check out the lineup at www.speakyourwaytowealth.com.

Check back here often because we will have updates on the seminar.

Beginning Your Speech

Your speech opening is the most important part of your speech. If you lose the audience with your first words, you will never get them back

You can use several openings for your speech.

First, you can ask a question that pertains to the subject of your speech. If you are talking about marketing, you can ask, "How many of you want to make money on the Internet?" This question involves the audience, makes them give a positive reaction to your topic and creates the anticipation that you will answer the question you just asked. You should ask two questions to ensure that everyone in your audience answers.

Second, you can make a shocking statement, such as, "Fewer than one percent of those who try to market on the internet actually make money." This will pique their interest and the expectation that you will give the solution to that problem.

Third, you can tell a story that relates to your subject.

Fourth, you can do a song, poem, performance of some type. You can do an introductory powerpoint that gives details on your background.

Whatever you do, make certain it is clear, catchy, and gets a reaction from the audience.

Picking Your Theme

In the last post we talked about speech themes. To amplify on that subject, remember that not just any theme will do. Your theme must be interesting to your audience. If you want to inspire them, you must pick a subject they care about.

For a short speech, a theme should be narrowly targeted. You should be able to illustrate or prove your theme with just a few stories or examples.

For a longer speech, you theme can be broader but again you should be able to prove it with perhaps three or four stories and several examples.

For instance, I often speak on goal setting. For the shortest speeches, my theme might be "how to create action steps." This could open with a sentence such as, "How many of you find it easy to set goals but hard to acheve them?" Almost everyone will raise their hands. The body of the speech will include a few stories illustrating how to pick the next specific action step related to your goal and a few examples of what those steps might be. The final part of the speech will be a call to action based on the examples and stories, will refer back to the opening statement and will answer the theme you set for the speech.

A longer speech might include a theme of discovering your vision and creating goals and action steps from that vision.

So practice picking themes for speeches you may be called on to give in the future and pick stories that will illustrate those themes.

See you next time.

And Now For Some Tips

Ever wonder how great speakers compose great speeches? It's not as difficult as it sounds. Years ago, I used to write speeches from scratch, using new material every time. This is like buying a new car every time you want to go to the grocery store. Not very productive.

So how do you create great speeches?

First, every speech must have a theme. This is not the same as the subject. You may want to talk about birds. The theme is what you want to say about birds. Perhaps you want to talk about why birds migrate. This is your theme. You use this theme to create a statement you want to prove in your talk. Pick an opening based on the theme and a close based on the theme. The middle of the speech is used to prove the opening and closing with examples and stories.

If you build from a theme, you will have a coherent, clear speech every time.