Small business owners have a variety of marketing tools at their disposal to attract new clients including internet marketing, email and social media. Those all work well, but I’ve found that speaking is also one of the best ways to get new clients because giving presentations allows you to demonstrate your expertise. And it gives your prospect a chance to get to know more about you as a person, which will help them to decide if they want to do business with you.
Be aware that I’m not talking about giving sales pitches. These presentations should be educational – providing tips and strategies to solve a person’s problem – whether it’s personal or business-related. You can make an offer for your product or service at the end, as long as you’ve served your audience by giving them useful information first.
Here are 5 ways you can use speaking to get clients:
Live presentation
When you don’t have a large email list, a live presentation is a great way for you to promote your product or service. If you belong to a networking organization, like NAPW (National Assoc. of Professional Women) or BNI, there are usually regular opportunities for members and guests to deliver a 20-45 minute presentation to the membership. If you don’t belong to a networking group, there are still plenty of other organizations that need speakers, such as Chambers of Commerce, Rotary or Kiwanus.
Teleseminar
A teleseminar is essentially a telephone presentation, during which people call in and listen to you speak. If you’re shy, and don’t like speaking in public, this is a great format for you! Freeconferencing.com is one of several excellent resources for this purpose because you can record the calls and email a link so that people who weren’t able to be on the live call can still listen to the presentation. You can also repurpose a teleseminar as a free gift or sell it on your website.
Webinar
A webinar is similar to a teleseminar, except that it typically includes a slideshow. You can use services like GotoWebinar (which can be expensive and has limits on number of attendees) or Google Hangouts. I recently used Google Hangouts for a webinar for the first time, and was pleased with how it turned out. I used slides via screenshare, so I didn’t even have to be on camera! I could just have easily started the webinar on camera and then gone to the slides. You can also invite another speaker to join you on a webinar (and teleseminar) for that matter.
Tele-Summit or Video Summit
A tele-summit or video summit is a presentation in which you invite multiple speakers to participate and you conduct live interviews that take place over a series of days or weeks. Naturally, you are one of the speakers too! You can also pre-record the interviews via freeconferencing.com, Skype or Google hangouts. I’ve had the pleasure of being a guest speaker on 3 different tele-summits this year, including The Mastery of Money.
Workshop
Hosting your own one or two day workshop in a hotel or other meeting space can be a lucrative opportunity for a small business owner. A workshop is more complicated to put together, since it requires a lot of advance planning and more out-of-pocket expenses. But you can recoup those expenses by charging admission, and selling programs or products to your attendees. You can also host a workshop with other speakers so you can split the costs involved, and potentially reach more prospects for your business.
