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Overcoming Obstacles to Your Success Part Two

Guest post by: Mary McKay

Article Overview: How effective are you in overcoming obstacles in securing paid speaking engagements? Let's identify some obstacles that you face, look at the common responses and talk about proven solutions for getting more bookings.

Overcoming Obstacles to Your Success Part Two

An obstacle is something material or nonmaterial that stands in the way of literal or figurative progress. As an expert who speaks, you're paid to teach others what you know so that they can overcome obstacles and impediments to their own progress. How effective are you in overcoming obstacles in securing paid speaking engagements? Let's identify some obstacles that you face, look at the common responses and talk about proven solutions for getting more bookings.

OBSTACLE: Wanting to be a celebrity instead of a problem solver

Common response: Create a website that's all about you. Don't create an optin strategy to stay in touch with people who are looking for solutions to challenges, because it's not about you helping them, it's about them knowing who you are. Refuse to identify a target market where you can actually help individuals and organizations. From the stage, talk about yourself, your achievements, your wealth and your success in business. Arrive late, don't mingle and leave early. Oh, and blame the economy, time, money and others for not understanding your brilliance.

Solutions: Take at least 98% responsibility for your results. After that, become a problem solver. Applause is intoxicating but don't be seduced into thinking it's all about you. The moment you forget that you were booked to serve others, you aren't client attractive.

Example: If your expertise is in customer service, penetrate the market in which you first gained credibility. You can generate profits for a life time by knowing your target market so that you become the leading expert in your field. Celebrity status pales in comparison to that. Solving problems is one way someone who is not published can shift from being a concurrent session speaker to a keynote speaker.

OBSTACLE: Holding on to the past

Common response: Think small. Try to do everything yourself. Become a control freak. Refuse to delegate tasks that others can easily do for you with little to no training. Refuse to outsource projects and activities to product suppliers, duplicators, distributors and affiliate managers. Criticize the efforts of others who try to help you. Stress out. Get sick. Blame the economy, time, money and others for your burn out and lack of production.

Solutions: Take at least 98% responsibility for your results. Hire virtual assistants for booking your travel, handling your social media, generating publicity, administrative tasks, Internet marketing, SEO, bill pay, ezines, accounting and almost any function necessary for speakers. Contact a professional fulfillment house and educate yourself about what needs to be done in chronological order when you create a new product. Delegate and outsource where you can.

Focus on your strengths and do what you love to do like writing, speaking and designing new products and services for your client base. Build your strengths, maximize your best creative thinking and delegate your weaknesses. Ask the pros to help you systematize all campaigns and marketing activities. Work on your mindset.

OBSTACLE: Insufficient funds - yours and theirs

Common response to your insufficient funds: Stay stuck. Give up. Whine. Fail to take advantage of hundreds of websites where free tips and strategies from information marketers and coaches are offered to speakers. Refuse to ask for payment plans, barter opportunities or discounts. Blame the economy, time and others for your lack of money.

Common response to their insufficient funds: Reduce your fee down to nothing which de-values your expertise. Fail to generate new leads. Refuse to demonstrate your value to your target market and the high content of your presentations so that the prospect can see what's in it for them; fail to articulate your USP; refuse to reach out to your customer base and sit back and wait for the phone to ring with invitations; postpone articulating your ultimate claim. Stay unwilling to gather third party endorsements and relevant facts about you and build that into your compelling marketing message. An unfortunate but common response is to give up on your dream to earn a living from speaking and rather than take responsibility for why you're not booked, blame the economy, time and others for insufficient funds so that you can continue to tell your friends and family how the results would be different if you only had more money.

Solutions to your insufficient funds: Take at least 98% responsibility for your results. Reduce the perceived risks that the prospect has of working with you. The higher the risk, the less likely they will hire you to speak. Learn to articulate your USP in one to two sentences because people responsible for speaker selection don't want to hear your autobiography. They only want to know what you can do for them. If you are positioned as a problem solver and you know what solutions will help them, you'll get hired eventually. And when you get hired over and over, you'll have sufficient funds and they'll find the funds to pay you to solve their problems.

Make contact with past clients, your successful speaking colleagues, a combination of trusted friends and successful business leaders for whom you have great respect and admiration. Ask for referrals for speaking engagements and a testimonial from each. Be willing to also ask for any suggestions they might have for securing more speaking engagements. Then ask what you can do for them. Be prepared to offer them something in return-either a percentage of anything booked or a finder's fee or a gift.

If you're losing business because you either don't have a website or your website is all about you which has no traffic and no conversion, create a home page of the most frequently asked questions about your expertise, how you work with customers, how you help clients in your target market solve problems. End with your contact information. This is far superior to a blank page that says, "Website under construction." You at least have something to send meeting professionals to so that they can learn more about how you can help them.

Solutions to their insufficient funds: Take at least 98% responsibility for your results. Then, get to know your target market better than you do now. You should already know their challenges. Create fee flexibility. There's more than one way to get paid to speak. Go to the articles button on my website for your free copy of the "7 Ways to Get Paid to Speak."

Make it your business to find out how to get in front of them either for a fee or for product sales. Be flexible in your speaking fee and arrange to offer additional products and services that you've created following your presentation. Find related companies and suppliers who would be willing to underwrite your appearance and pay your fee and expenses. Be willing to speak at industry showcases where you have a chance to be seen and heard by industry leaders who can hire you in the future. Consider speaking for free to industry associations whose members represent organizations in your target market that do hire speakers.

Generally speaking, the reason that organizations don't want to pay your fee is because they don't see the difference between what you offer and what another speaker offers -in which case, price is all that matters. This is why you have to differentiate your expertise from your competitors and believe in your ability to live up to the claims that you make in your relevant marketing message. When you make it clear that your content is relevant and valuable, you'll be hired. They get solutions to increase their productivity, profits and well-being and you get paid for your expertise.

As you can see from the examples above, all of them are nonmaterial and they stand in the way of your progress unless you become proactive in removing or diminishing them. They relate more often than not to your mindset. I've asked you to take at least 98% responsibility for your results. That way, you can do something to change your circumstances. The remaining 2% covers material and literal obstacles that you cannot control, but that said, there are super extraordinary experts who speak who have figured out how to get over, under and around all impediments.

If you're only interested in overcoming obstacles, you do what's convenient. If you're committed to overcoming them, you do whatever it takes.

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Article Tags: overcoming obstacles, paid speaking engagements, speaking engagements, target market, turn key speaker



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