Free Tools

…for Making the Leap Without Falling into the Abyss
Contributed by Jane Atkinson

How do you turn your success as an author into a speaking career? Here are 8 simple tips to make the transition painless and profitable.

1. Find Out Who Will Pay

First, you need to consider whether someone will pay for the information or expertise you have to offer. People offering kudos on your book is great for confidence and book sales, but when they offer to pay you to speak to their organizations, you know you’re onto something.

Whether your topic is motivational, inspirational, or based on a business expertise, you need to do your homework to make sure your topic is one that the marketplace values—and, more important, will pay to hear. But while content is immensely important, style is usually what differentiates you from the crowd and will increase your fee quickly. Consider your style. Are your technique and presentation strong enough to make you a pro?

Once you’ve done your research and know you are ready to enter the speaking industry, follow the tips in the rest of this article to get started.

2. Make Freebies Count

Get out and speak to anyone who will listen—for free—but only for a set period of time. The best way to turn a free speech into paid engagements is to ask the audience for help from the platform. I call it the “help me speech.” It’s two simple sentences that you can include right before the closing of your speech: “As you can see I am passionate about this topic. If you know of any company or association that could benefit from this material, please hand me your business card before you leave.” That’s it. Then use those business cards to follow up and build a database for future marketing.

I remember my first job as an agent in the speaking industry. My speaker handed me a stack of cards she had acquired through her help me speech. I spent three months working through that pile, and it filled her schedule for the next three years.

3. Develop a Killer Speech

A killer speech is the best form of marketing. No flashy brochure, no innovative postcard, no cutesy giveaway can top it. Audiences will remember a great speech that motivated or moved them. Focus more time and energy on having a great speech in the first three years of your professional career. You will increase your odds of success dramatically.

4. Broadcast Your Credibility

Put together a bio that will establish you as an expert in your field. (Being an author is definitely a plus.) It needs to establish why clients should hire you over all the other speakers they might consider. You’ll want to position yourself as an expert first and a speaker second. Brian Palmer of National Speakers Bureau in Chicago says, “Clients don’t want to hire speakers; they want to hire smart people who happen to speak.”

5. Develop Professional Marketing Materials

In order to get booked, you’ll need to develop materials to promote your services. A website is your first priority. Print materials may not be necessary, depending on your market. Many speakers start with basic websites that allow visitors to see exactly what they do, whom they do it for, and how they do it. Always test your marketing materials with prospective clients before launching them. Ask this question: “Would this piece make you want to hire me?”

6. Establish an Appropriate Fee

Establish a speaking fee and post it on the wall of your office. You don’t want to be pulling a number out of the air every time you have a conversation with a prospective client. In order to set a fee, do some market research. Ask other speakers for advice—and ask clients, too. Remember, the client is paying for the twenty years of experience that goes into your speech, not the sixty minutes that you actually speak.

Fees are truly a state of mind. I once worked for a very successful motivational speaker. When I started working with him, he was earning $2,500 per speech. We set some goals and decided we wanted to aim for $10,000 per speech. While he agreed at the time, I found out five years later that he thought I was dreaming. But he set his mind on the goal and there was no stopping him. Today, that speaker earns more than $1,000,000 per year in speaking fees.

7. Strategize

Just like books, speaking requires a sales and marketing strategy. Define your target market, start making the calls, and send your website link or marketing materials to people who could hire you. The key to your success is going to be consistency and clarity. Touching the same group of people four times a year could pay off handsomely down the road.

8. Match Client Needs, Don’t Sell

When talking to prospective clients, your goal is to see if your service matches their needs. It helps to have some sales skills, but knowing that you won’t always be right for every client can alleviate some jitters you might have about cold calling. Be clear on the value you offer before picking up the phone.

A good technique to keep you focused is to post a list of the values you bring to organizations. For example:

I provide a strategy for increasing sales.
My strategy covers three areas that are integral to selling success: authenticity, integrity, and value.
My average client’s ROI (return on investment) is a 25 percent increase in customer loyalty.
Starting any new business is a tricky venture, and small business skills, such as strategic planning and cash flow management, are required. But knowing that you have a killer speech and a valuable message to offer the world, and marketing that message correctly, will help you move down the path of becoming a handsomely paid professional speaker.

Jane Atkinson has been helping speakers catapult their businesses for more than 15 years. She has worked as a business manager for several high-profile speakers/authors, such as Vince Poscente, Joe Calloway, and boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard. Jane was also the vice president of International Speakers Bureau in Dallas. Her new book, The Wealthy Speaker: The Proven Formula for Building Your Successful Speaking Business, is available at www.SpeakerLauncher.com.

25 Ways to Sell Your Book
by Jeff Magee

It has been said that an expert today, is someone who has read more than five books on the same subject. Imagine what one would say about the individual who has done the body of research that goes into writing the book and has the moniker “author.” As the definitive authority or author, you can utilize that book to build a new career, lifestyle and experience.

The book is the vehicle by which I have learned one can get doors to open, that would otherwise be closed. With the book, I am able to attain a level of acknowledgement and respect that would potentially evade me. With the book, I can get placement onto bookstore shelves, in distribution houses, on direct mail lists and have visible on the back of the room (BOR) product table sales at speaking venues or consulting engagements with clients.

All of these options translate into one common ingredient: more income! With a body of work that makes a solid contribution to the market place, you give others a viable reason to invest in your printed word, if in exchange the information provides them with a better life. Whether you explore the fiction or nonfiction market, if you can fulfill a need and illustrate to others that they have a need to which you have some answers, than you and your work will always be in demand!

Here are 25 ways motivational speakers can sell more books.

ONE - From the platform, while in front of an audience, I can always find an opportunity which does not violate my presence before them to address their needs by way of sharing a nugget of information or a story from one of my works, and subtly reference - explore a certain product/resources at your leisure at the back of the room.

TWO - If my staff is attempting to penetrate a new market, we have found that by sending an autographed copy of one of my books to the decision-maker, it always gets through to their hands; no screener/support staff/assistant/secretary is going to be responsible for throwing away a personalized book! Include in that complimentary book an order form to induce additional bounce back purchases.

THREE - Maintain constant instant access. To have in your briefcase (at all times!), serves a powerful purpose, as casual social dialogue may also provide opportunities to credential building and networking, when you can immediately produce your latest book for someone - anyone can say they are writing a book or have a book, but being able to produce it may quite often be a new story. With this book include an order form to induce additional bounce back purchases or a note card to suggest that this reader buy a copy as a gift for someone special in their life

FOUR - Arrange for pre, post or advanced sale copies for a client and now you have the opportunity to generate additional income as a speaker to an event or to compliment any speaker fees you may be receiving to engage a group. When you can arrange for a copy of a book to be bought for each delegate in your audience prior to arriving, you have sold your book in quantity and made good money. You can use your book as a good follow-up vehicle to reinforce a presentation, talk or meeting by suggesting to delegates, or your client, to buy a copy and have them sent to people afterwards.

FIVE - As one of the leading authorities on managerial-leadership coaching effectiveness (the leading seminars, books, video training series and audios being sold by the leading two seminar houses in North America, are my products!), I have been able to provide my clients with significant additional development opportunities from my printed words and generate significant additional income annually without having to be in front of the audience. Personally contacting all consulting, speaking or training clients about a new book that will aid them, based upon past interactions with them, gives me the opportunity to advise them to purchase book(s) and this too may increase sales.

SIX - Have bookmarks available at your signings, and place them in the books. Use the bookmark as a feel-good reinforcement for your client by having a picture of the book they just purchased along with other companion products (books, audios, video, merchandise, etc.) on the ‘bookmark’ as well. On the reverse of the bookmark have multiple contact data available for post purchase opportunities.

SEVEN - Develop bookmarks with your book on it and multiple order options on the reverse (through your Web site, fax, phone call, physical mail, via a book distributor or clearing house like amazon.com or BarnesNoble.com on line book stores). Place the bookmarks in all places where your target audience might beon store counters as impulse grabbers, in newsletters, inside every letter you mail out for any purpose to someone as a sort of statement stuffer and in other peoples books and magazines.

EIGHT - Bundle your book with another collateral product item that an individual would want. In essence, piggyback it with another product or service.

NINE - Develop a simple or intricate newsletter as an author to send to your fans, advocates, past and present customers that promotes your book with some vignettes in it and directed ways to buy the book at special price points if done so through that newsletter offering.

TEN - Contact other authors of books that their audience would be the same as yours and offer to them your book at substantial discount as a motivator for them to buy your book and offer to their clients as another product they can offer and make money off of!

ELEVEN - Offer special reduced priced books to the national bookstores in your community, as most have local author sections and love to spot light quality books. You may also be able to arrange a special book signing with them as wellfor example most all Barnes & Nobles booksellers have at each store a Community Relations contact that would work with you!

You can also do the same with often over looked local vendors, consider offering special reduced priced books to the local independent owned and operated specialty or novelty bookstores in your community, as most also have a local author sections and love to spot light quality books from local talent. You may also be able to arrange a special book signing with them and gain local radio coverage.

TWELVE - From the list that you maintain of your own raving book fans, prior customers or data base clients, you can send special pre publish offer for a reduced priced book personalized to them or a special someone that they want to pre order a copy for!

THIRTEEN - Identify local specialty stores in your community, at shopping malls, in strip centers that feature various products from your community or region and contact that local proprietor about providing them copies of your book at special prices or even on consignment.

FOURTEEN - Design an email feature promotional offer on your new book and wrap it around some text that the reader would see as informational, inspirational, motivational or entertaining and send out to your email list of contacts. Offer a special discount to those people that order back to you via email. Then, grow this same selling strategy by designing an email feature promotional offer on your new book and wrap it around some text that the reader would see as informational, inspirational, motivational or entertaining and send out to your email data base with a request that those people send it onward to their email lists. Offer a special discount to those people that order back to you via email.

FIFTEEN - Send complementary signed copies to your advocates and include order information with it. This can also be used as an approach to local televisions and radio human interest and community interest shows (this may be the early a.m. or Noon shows). As a guest on the airwaves you can provide them with intriguing interviews and suggest places in the community to buy your book. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hanson of the famed Chicken Soup For Your Soulseries, first self-published made their national impact in this vary manner!

SIXTEEN - Identify every affinity contact/organization that may have a direct mail newsletter, magazine, local press or eZine that would be a target buyer/reader of your book and offer to write an article for them in exchange for your book being featured and order information listed. Also, with every affinity group design a new book press release and send it along with three copies (personalize one copy to the potential book reviewer/editor) of your book for review and possible exposure within their affinity press.

SEVENTEEN - Identify those catalogs that have readership that would be interested in your book and offer to them special quantity per unit price points to be carried in their catalogs. There is a catalog available at your local bookstore that lists all published catalogs and then you can determine which ones are appropriate to market your book to. You can move a large quantity of books annually through these affiliations.

EIGHTEEN - Add a book by line to your emails that follows your signature line that promotes your book, has the ISBN number and price point, with a directed statement as to where to buy it and how! Also, make sure that you add a book by line that follows your signature line in all letters/correspondence that promotes your book, has the ISBN number and price point, with a directed statement as to where to buy it and how!

NINETEEN - Shrink wrap your book with either another one of your slow moving books or that of a colleagues and offer a two for one special or two at a special price that entices buyers to grab both!

TWENTY - Add a short statement on your telephone answering system, whether that be at home or at work that says, Be sure to check out my latest book (title) on (subject), that you can get at (identify a point of purchase) today!

TWENTY-ONE - Consider having your book cover layout converted into a logo for printing onto a shirt, hat or other apparel item that you would wear and which would draw inquiry into your book. Now you have a selling opportunity.

TWENTY-TWO - Create a one page promotional flyer that advertises your book and send it to individuals that might be interested in buying copies from you and having you personalize that copy as a gift item on a special occasion to people.

TWENTY-THREE - Have special 3-by-5 direct mail cards produced (I use 1-800 POSTCARDS for this service for two-sided, four -olor, 5,000 units for $250) that promotes your new book, where to find them and how to order copies. Use these as a low cost, high quality direct mail vehicle to your contact names, names in your Diary/Rolodex/Computer database. You can also use these direct mail cards as inserts to newsletters, as statement stuffers, to leave at bookstores on their counters or to have as hand-outs for the general public.

TWENTY-FOUR - Provide copies to your local library system at either a significantly reduced fee as a local author or even free. With the books on their shelf and in circulation, you may see an increase in awareness and thus purchases of your book by library readers that would actually want a personal copy on their bookshelf.

TWENTY-FIVE - Design your own note card that can be used to send as a Thank You a Follow Up or used for any General Purpose that has your name and contact data on it. Then on the outside back of the note card have your book(s) cover promoted with some promotional text about what it is, where to buy it and what the cost is. Now every time you send a note to someone you will be soft selling your latest book(s) and stimulating additional book sales.

So ask yourself how you can use your product to establish yourself as a Subject Matter Expert (SME), generate significant income trails and serve others needs!

Jeff Magee, PDM, CSP, CMC can be reached at Jeff@JeffreyMagee.com or toll free at (877) 90-MAGEE.