How do I get more speaking opportunities?

Question

I was approached by a young lady in the educational industry. She wants to build her profile and professional brand to help open up new opportunities for the consulting business and public speaking opportunities.

After looking through your websites it’s clear you have a respectable portfolio for you as a public speaker. Which leads me to think that there are likely two things that are stopping you from getting more speaking engagements: awareness and branding.

Awareness

To put it very simply, if people don’t know that you are available as a speaker then they won’t think to ask you to speak. Although most of us don’t realise it, the biggest problem faced by most people and businesses is awareness. In your case, I would focus on making sure the right people know they can hire you as a speaker for their events. Use your existing speaking portfolio as evidence of your experience.

How do you get the right people know about you? The most effective way to do this is to reach out directly and ask them. Drop them an email, or even better give them a call or better yet meet them in person and build a relationship.

“They can’t see what need you fill”

The best thing to do here would be to make your value proposition as clear as possible. So clear that if someone says your name (or business’ name) then he or she makes an automatic connection with the relevant keywords. So in my case, when you people think of me hopefully the following come to mind: Practical Dreamer, entrepreneur, advice, mentor, dreams, motivation, good looking etc, lol. When I say Apple what words come to mind for you? You get my point.

Getting this right is probably one of the hardest tasks to master but if you can do it, it will REALLY be worth it. This TED is one of my favourite ted talks and it might be a great place for you to start in beginning to think about this for yourself.

“Maybe they don’t have enough confidence in your ability”

This is normal when you are starting off, people just have a tendency to trust brands, even more so the brands they already know. My best advice here is to just keep on getting better. E.g. develop a reputation for giving amazing talks and whenever possible get it recorded to prove it. And of course, get testimonials from people who have heard you speak or even better people who have hired you to speak. This is a type of social proof and really helps to build confidence in you.

Other signs of social proof are people seeing large follower counts on social media (might sound superficial but we live in a superficial world… but don’t buy followers, real recognises real), or large video view counts, or a picture of video of you speaking in front of a large audience.

You can basically sum up everything I’ve said with one of my go to quotes: “Be so good they can’t ignore you”.

“Maybe it’s not the right time”

Sometimes you can do everything right, but then it doesn’t go through because of factors out of your hands. In this case, maybe they just don’t have the opportunity open for you at the moment. No events coming up, or all the events are already filled with speakers etc. If this is the case, then focus on building relationships. Get to know them better and make sure you are top of mind when an opportunity does come up. But please do this is a smart way, unfortunately, “smart” will be different according to each person you approach. There are a number of people who try selling me on why they would be the greatest thing ever and how my events won’t be complete unless they are on the stage … none of these people has ever spoken at a Dream Nation event because they got on my nerves.

If waiting for the right timing isn’t working for you, then maybe the last option might be best for you.

“Maybe they can’t think of how to best work with you”

This is very common as most people have been trained over the years to just stick with the status quo and do what they always have done. As a result, their creativity needs a little bit of life breathed into it, which is where you can step in. Create a plan which is perfect for both parties. By perfect for them, that pretty much means all the thinking and most of the heavy lifting is done by you, you’re basically asking to borrow their platform, space, and audience (which by the way for many brands who value these things, this can still be a big ask). Your job is to then put on your best sales women’s hat and inspire all the key people that this is an idea they want to be a part of. I know this isn’t as easy as I made it sound, but being able to sell ideas is a game-changing skill which will help you in so many areas of life so it worth doing the hard work and learning how. How to do that is probably best for another question.

Create a plan which is perfect for both parties. By perfect for them, that pretty much means all the thinking and most of the heavy lifting is done by you, you’re basically asking to borrow their platform, space, and audience (which by the way for many brands who value these things, this can still is a big ask). Your job is to then put on your best sales women’s hat and inspire all the key people that this is an idea they want to be a part of. I know this isn’t as easy as I made it sound, but being able to sell ideas is a game-changing skill which will help you in so many areas of life so it worth doing the hard work and learning how. How to do that is probably best for another question.

I hope you found some value in my response, and feel free to give me a shout if you have any more questions.