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by Burt Dubin

How to collect even higher speaking fees by creating alliances with sponsors…

Can you believe that a perfectly simple, marvelous, easy-to- implement marketing idea can be largely ignored by the community of professional speakers?

Can you imagine having an organization with deep pockets of cash promoting your programs at their expense, building your name and fame in markets you want to penetrate?

Can you picture this cash-rich sponsor sending along a logistics person-on the speaking tour they’ve set up for you-(Be still, my beating heart!) to handle all the physical details like room set-up for you.

And, of course, you may as well fantasize your sponsor then doing all the advance publicity to be sure you address a packed house. Well, hold on to your hat because all the above is true. It’s real. It’s happening now for 2 speakers. They are-in alphabetical order-Michael Chatman and Barb Schwarz, CSP. This article is due to their generously revealing how they do it.

What is a sponsor:
A Sponsor is a group, a company, any cash-generating, profit- making entity that can benefit from exposure to your target market. Sponsor needs you because they want to market to the same folks you target. When you work together you create a triple win. The third winner is your target market. If your target market is schools and their students, logical sponsors include retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers. They get their name and logo on your handouts. They get great PR. They are the good guys. Remember the firms that place soft drink, snack and candy machines in the schools, suppliers of uniforms for school athletic teams. Purveyors of the foods served in the school cafeteria.

I share these insights anecdotally. I do not pretend to have access to any wisdom beyond my own experience. What I say here is true for me. You alone can decide whether it is true for you. And this may not be all there is. It’s simply what I get here and now:

Photographers who do class pictures, school ring vendors. Every entity that makes money from providing equipment, supplies, consumables to the school. If you address sales professionals, cellular phone companies, computer companies, vendors of everything salespeople buy are potential sponsors.

If you speak to real estate agents, title companies, escrow companies, mortgage companies, etc., are appropriate sponsors.

In any industry or trade group that buys from a group of vendors, any member of that group-including vendors presently frozen out by trade custom or long-time habits-is a prospective sponsor of your programs.

Your sponsor, or sponsors, use funds from their advertising or promotion budgets, funds already committed to be spent somewhere, to advertise and promote attendance at your programs.

How do sponsors benefit from promoting you:
Exposure of their products and their company before the program starts through the publicity created by any of the interested parties.

Sponsor can do a Pre-program presentation. You can sometimes, depending on the venue, give Sponsor table top display space in the back of the room. Sometimes you can arrange for sponsor to have a booth. Sponsor name and logo may go on all printed materials, including any tickets, book covers, albums, bumper stickers, your letterhead.

In media interviews you always mention sponsor’s name. Sponsor’s representatives can sit down in front and you can introduce them during program. Sponsor’s customer goodwill and loyalty is enhanced. Sponsor may get more direct business because they sponsored you.

Is there to be signage at this program? Arrange that each sponsor have the exclusive sign for their type product. If sponsor markets a soft drink and refreshments are to be served, you arrange that sponsor is to have exclusive pourage rights with no other soft drink to be made available.

There may be $ generated from your product sales-and you need to agree in front whether you get all this or whether sponsor shares. You can create a data base of attendees or of key influencers for later follow-up.

Burt Dubin may be reached at www.speakingsuccess.com or +800-321-1225, or, from overseas, 928-753-7546.  Or you can E-mail Burt at burt@BurtDubin.com. For a free subscription to Burt’s Speaking Biz Strategies Letter, send an e-mail to Burt with a one-word message, Subscribe.

TOP TEN WAYS TO MAKE MONEY PUBLIC SPEAKING
by Tom Antion

1. SELL YOUR KNOWLEDGE

This is my overriding principle that came from years of hard knocks trying to get people to hire me to speak. I get more speaking engagements than I ever had before when I quit trying to sell them and began selling my knowledge in as many different formats as possible. The idea is that infinitely more people can buy what you know through books, tapes, CDs, Ebooks and videos than could ever hire you to speak. Your name recognition because of your knowledge distribution makes speaking engagements much easier to come by because the people that could hire you have already heard you and your message on your knowledge based products. In the mean time, the money from the product sales keeps your business thriving.

2. GET SPONSORSHIP

You can get other companies to sponsor your speaking fee so they can be associated with your message when you speak. Stop and think of what kinds of groups would want to be associated with your message. Let’s say you speak to the banking industry. Maybe mortgage, or mutual fund companies would sponsor you. Maybe bank equipment companies would. Think of anyone who would want to have exposure to your target audience then simply make a proposal to their public relations department.

3. GET DIRECTLY PAID

This is pretty straight forward. As a motivational speaker, you speak to a corporation, association, civic group, or anyone who would hire you and they pay you directly. Most of the time you should try to get a deposit up front of about 50 percent and the balance either before the event, or the day of the event. You will use various methods to get hired. I have had the greatest success in my career getting hired to speak by promoting myself properly on the Internet.

4. SPEAKERS BUREAUS

A speakers bureau is a for profit organization that locates speakers for paying clients. The speakers bureau normally takes a percentage of your gross fee. The percentage is usually in the 15 to 30 percent range with the average fee being 25 percent. It is very difficult to start with speakers bureaus unless you are a bonafide celebrity and your fees are substantial. You must remember they get paid on straight commission and the higher your fee, the more they make. Also, unless you have a proven track record, a speakers bureau will be afraid to put you in front of one of their clients because if you bomb they could lose many more bookings from the same client. You must also supply the bureau with promotional materials that don’t have your contact information so anyone that sees the material will contact the bureau directly and not you.

5. PUBLIC SEMINARS

This is another fairly simple idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s simple to do. Basically you promote your seminar to the public and they buy tickets to attend. You could also promote it to corporate management and get them to buy tickets for their employees to attend. I avoided public seminars for years because of the risk and expense involved in printing and mailing brochures. Now I do lots of public seminars because I can promote them at no cost through my website and email magazine.

6. TELEPHONE SEMINARS

This can be a form of public seminar, or it can be done for private groups. You arrange for a telephone bridge line (very inexpensive), or a conference call (can be VERY expensive). You have participants call in and you deliver the seminar over the telephone. This saves a tremendous amount of money on travel expenses for you and the participants along with all kinds of savings for the participants (travel, time, etc.) For visuals you can have the participants sitting in front of their computer while on the phone. You tell them what web page to visit to see your visuals. 

7. WEBCASTS

This is similar to telephone seminars except you are using the Internet instead of a telephone to hold the seminar.

8. TRAINING COMPANIES

In this case a company hires you to deliver their programs to public seminar participants, or to participants all from the same private company. Career Track, SkillPath Seminars and Fred Pryor Seminars are examples of companies who hire seminar leaders. In some cases you can develop programs for the seminar company and get a higher fee for delivering that program and a fee each time it is delivered by another seminar leader. You also get a percentage of all the back of room products you sell. These companies can keep you on the road quite a bit so you better be ready to travel and don’t think each event will be in the Bahamas . . .Your events are more likely to be in places like Toledo, Cleveland and Columbus. These are relatively low paying jobs when compared to the kind of money you can get promoting your own speeches and seminars.

9. MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKERS SPEAK FREE TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS

Many professionals (including professional speakers) speak or give free public seminars to help get clients. Attorneys, doctors, dentists, accountants, real estate agents, lawyers, home builders and many other people from a wide variety of professions give seminars to promote their business and to gain clients directly from the seminars. To do this effectively you must not spend the entire seminar promoting yourself. You must give the participants good information with the idea of establishing yourself or your company as the expert. There is certainly nothing wrong with showing people how complicated things are and even though they can do it themselves, it might not be a wise thing to do. For instance, you could be a plumber giving a seminar on how to remodel your bathroom. You tell the participants every little detail of how to do it and also tell them the perils if they do it wrong. No one will complain that you were just giving a sales pitch, but many will think to themselves, “Maybe this is too much to tackle by myself. Maybe I should hire this person to either help me or do it for me.”

10. SPEAK AS PART OF YOUR JOB

Many companies have their own speakers bureau. Normally the only reason it exists is as a public relations tool to provide a good image of their company to the community. One of the ways you can speak for pay in your company is to volunteer to be in the speakers bureau. As long as you are on company time when you are speaking, you are indirectly getting paid to speak. If they always ask you to speak after hours on your own time, well that’s a different story. You still might want to do it to continue to become a better motivational speaker. Another way to get paid to speak in your job is to join the training staff of your company, or start one if one doesn’t exist. You can simply target a problem the company is having and work up a program to train others in the company on how to solve the problem. Suggest a few sessions to your boss to see how it goes. If you get results, chances are they will want you to do the same program for others in the company.

Speaking - From FREE to FEE 
by Lenny Laskowski  

Many people often ask me what it takes to get people to
“pay” you to speak. Before an organization is willing to pay
a speaker they need to feel there is value in what the
speaker has to say. Keep in mind speaking for free
does NOT mean that you do not offer something of value.

The goal of speaking before a group should not always be motivated by money. I can remember situations during my career where I would have been willing to pay for the opportunity to speak to a group. One thing that always occurs when you are speaking before a group, whether being paid or not, is that you are making impressions to everyone in that group. The more people that hear you speak, the more people there are who can refer you to others who CAN pay you.

Organizations such as Rotary, Elks, Lions, Moose, Chamber Of Commerce need speakers all the time. Several non profit organizations and associations have meetings every month and often have trouble looking for speakers. Contact all your local associations and introduce yourself. Many of the members of these associations have businesses of their own and often have the ability and authority to “hire” speakers to speak within their own organizations.

The speaking business, and I emphasize the word “business” is a heavily referral based business. Most people prefer to have a friend or colleague refer a speaker to them that they have actually heard speak. The more people that hear you speak and are familiar with your abilities and message the more people there are who can refer you to paying clients. Whether you get paid to speak or speak for free you should focus on delivering your message to each audience.

Most audiences have people who do have the ability to hire you or know someone else who can. I can honestly trace paid speaking business to many of the free speaking engagements I have performed. Over the years I have learned various methods and techniques that help me to maximize these free speaking engagements.

Often these same organizations that do not have budgets for the speaker can offer other “in kind” services that are worth more than your actual speaking fee. For example, I have spoken for an organization who did not have a budget to pay speakers but did have the resources (people & equipment) to professionally videotape my presentation. In the end they provided me with an original recording along with several copies of the video of my presentation. Had I hired someone to professionally videotape my presentation, it would have cost me much more than my regular speaking fee.

Many speaking bureaus will not hire you until they have seen and heard you speak. They may hire you if someone they know refers you but typically will still ask for a demo tape (audio or video). Whenever I am speaking at an association meeting in a new city, I try to contact the local speakers bureaus and let them know I will be speaking in the area. After getting permission from the client who hired me, I offer the speakers bureau the opportunity to come and hear me speak.

When you do speak to any organization, bring plenty of business cards. Have your name, address and telephone number on all your handout materials. I also include my web address and e-mail address as well. It still amazes me the people who have attended keynotes I have delivered 3 or 4 years ago contact me because they saved my handout. I have had people who have attended one of my sessions give copies of my handouts to other people they know because they felt the materials I provided were worth sharing. These people, just based on the handout, called me and hired me to speak to their group.

Speaking to associations is a key part of my marketing efforts. Let me explain. The bulk of my speaking services (about 60%) is providing “in house” workshops and seminars to the corporate market. Another 25% is “keynote” speaking to associations and organizations. Providing “one-on-one” coaching to executives and individuals accounts for 10% and the remaining 5% is providing local continuing education seminars. These four types of speaking provide a constant source of referral based leads for my business. The percentages do vary from year to year. Some years I may spend 40% of my time delivering keynotes, 20% coaching individuals and the balance of 40% is providing “in-house” corporate programs. A lot will depend on associations. Most associations will not hire the same speakers as they hired last year. If they do hire you again it may not be until 3 years later because they like to have different speakers each year. On the other hand there are associations that I have spoken to each year for the last 4 years, but I will usually provide a different program.

Not all speakers can provide “in house” seminars and also provide keynote speeches. The speaking skills involved for delivering a keynote and not the same as those skills required to provide a “hands-on” workshop. The keynote speaker is usually hired to entertain a group at some special function. That is not to say, that the keynote speaker does not offer substance and education value, but the speaking delivery and approach of a keynoter requires some different skill sets. This is important to understand from a marketing perspective since the people you may be marketing to are different.

Corporations typically hire trainers and workshop leaders. They generally do not hire keynote speakers for “in house” programs. They are looking for people who can provide some type of training for their staff.

Associations generally hire keynote speakers, lunch time speakers and after dinner speakers for one of their regular meetings or special annual meetings. Some associations will also offer some special training seminars to their membership in conjunction with their event. The speaker who can provide both a keynote and training session will often be hired because they can meet the needs of the client for both speaking situations. For example, in October of this year I will be providing three half day seminars for a client as part of their annual conference. On the last day of their conference, I will also be providing the lunch time keynote. Because I was already being paid my full fee for these three seminars and needed to be there during lunch, I offered to provide the lunch time keynote at no additional fee. This is a “win-win” situation for both of us

Keep in mind, many of these association members also work for corporations who need “in house” programs. Speaking at association meetings continues to generate leads and actual work for me as an “in-house” trainer. I have even provided many FREE lunch-time 45 minute programs that have lead to multiple “in house” seminars. The condition of providing the program FREE was to require that key decision makers attend these lunch time programs and hear me speak, especially those people who have the authority to hire me. I also make sure I am introduced to these people during the lunch time event and follow up with them afterwards. This was the way I “broke into” the corporate market and established some credibility as a corporate trainer. These corporate executives then referred my name to other corporate executives, which in some case were either their next door neighbor of a member of the same church they attended. As I mentioned earlier in this article, this is a referral based business. I can trace many of my best paying clients back to some “pro bono” speaking I provided either that year or a few years earlier.

Many of these associations will often provide you with the names & addresses of their entire membership list. I also ask the person who hires me to provide me the names and contacts of other people they know who they think may be interested in hiring me. I also ask that they make the initial contact with these people. When I do call them, it is not a “cold call” but a follow up call to the one initially made by the people who hired me. I add the names of these people to my mailing list, especially the members who attended my session and heard me speak. If you do offer to speak for free, ask that the person who hired you provide some kind of press coverage and place an article in the local newspaper announcing your speaking engagement. Always try to have them include a photograph of you as part of the article. An article with a photograph always draws more attention. It also helps you establish a “celebrity” status, at least in the local newspaper. Other executives, both corporate and associations will read this article and may contact you just based on the article. This article will more effective in attracting other business, than a classified ad you would have paid a lot of money for.

You can even call the local newspapers and mention that you will be speaking in the area and offer to write a short article about your topic that they could publish in the local newspaper. The article should not be too promotional but offer some sound advice to the typical client you would like to attract. Have them include your name, address and telephone at the end of the article so people will be able to contact you. This also lets the newspaper know that you would be available as a good contact for future articles and believe me they will contact you.

Another effective method is to become an active member of key associations who have the types of business contacts that may be good for your business. Becoming an officer in the association affords you the opportunity to become first known as a member of this association and get to know the members personally. Through this professional association, the other members become more familiar with your speaking services and what you have to offer. They are then in a better position to either refer you to someone they know or even hire you for their own company.

The moral of the story is to speak every where, even if for free. It works. The more people who know about you the more people there are who can tell others. Continually build your network of business contacts and soon you will be asked to speak for your full fee. The key is to learn how to “leverage” these FREE speaking engagements into generating PAID speaking engagements.

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Lenny Laskowski is an international professional speaker and the author of the book, 10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking and several other publications.