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Public Speaking: Its Many Benefits Can Grow Your Business
| Guest post by: Ken Lizotte |
Article Overview: Smart professionals well understand the value of relationship building in developing and keeping new business. What better vehicle to further such cause than an event at which you are a featured speaker? Speaking multiplies the benefits of networking by initiating face-to-face personal connections. By addressing a topic which illustrates something you know about, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how fruitful public speaking can be. New prospects and clients will come out of the woodwork... or at least the folding chairs!
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Free Download - Public Speaking: Its Many Benefits Can Grow Your Business By Ken Lizotte |
Public Speaking: Its Many Benefits Can Grow Your Business
Smart professionals well understand the value of relationship building in developing and keeping new business. What better vehicle to further such cause than an event at which you are a featured speaker? Speaking multiplies the benefits of networking by initiating face-to-face personal connections. By addressing a topic which illustrates something you know about, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how fruitful public speaking can be. New prospects and clients will come out of the woodwork, or at least the folding chairs!
Public speaking provides value in other ways too, including:
1. Helping you organize and deepen your thoughts and expertise
2. Forcing you to think quickly on your feet, which can economize and refine the way you articulate your value proposition
3. Helping you perceive your own concepts in a new light, especially when asked about a point you made in a fresh way, a perspective you hadn't thought of before. You may even learn something new about your client base when an attendee describes a personal experience or a provocative business dilemma
But I’m Afraid to Speak!
Some people get stuck before they even begin, however, mainly due to the age-old maxim that public speaking is feared (as survey-takers consistently report) even more than death. If that describes you, consider these tips for getting past this fear of speaking to a crowd:
• Practice speaking in a safe setting via public speaking courses at colleges and community adult education centers or through Toastmasters International, an informal speaking practice club found in most regions. In such venues, individuals get together to coach one another on their speaking skills. Also check out the National Speakers Association, which likely sponsors a chapter near you. This professional association can help you fully integrate public speaking into your business development repertoire.
• Recognize speaking opportunities when you see them. Sometimes seemingly mundane situations can be beneficial not only for practicing public speaking but for promoting your brand as well, for example voluntary elevator pitches at networking events. Speak when you can, even if only for 30 seconds!
• Work through the bumps. As you go out and speak, expect to experience ups and downs. There will be times when you wish you had never gotten up on a stage or behind a lectern but if you keep at it, you’ll eventually grow better and better. Plus a newfound confidence will develop for you as well.
What Do Meeting Planners Want?
If you decide to make speaking a component of your marketing, you’ll need to investigate what conference and meeting planners are looking for. Most professional events typically have themes, so reviewing an event’s speaker guidelines and past agendas carefully enables you to know where you might fit in, and how.
For example, many legal or engineering associations prefer to stress topics that are professional-technical in nature, such as seminars on new regulations, changes in laws, new technological developments or accounting procedures. If you can speak to such issues, you may find yourself in great demand as a speaker for such groups.
On the other hand, other event planners seek broader topics, requiring you to adapt to a wider audience. You always want to be sure your knowledge is tailored to whatever a particular audience is seeking.
A Word about PowerPoint
Once at a speaking gig in New Jersey, I did my usual thing, which typically involves talking to and interacting with my audience without the aid of charts, slides or overheads. After I finished, one attendee came up and thanked me profusely “for not using PowerPoint.” She’d gotten so tired of trying to follow keep all the bullet points on slides most speakers insist on including.
The development of PPT overuse coupled with just-plain-bad PPT presentations has given birth to a PowerPoint resistance movement. Tom Kennedy, a speech coach in Boston, actually refers to PPT badness as “Death by PowerPoint.” He recommends that speakers either give up slides altogether or at least put your presentation together first, then choose your slides later. “If it’s not truly a visual aid,” Tom says, “then it becomes your competition!”
So practice speaking without your slides and speak wherever you can, wherever you can. Via practice, you’ll learn to communicate directly and fluidly with your audience, and spontaneously, comfortably and confidently. One day you’ll find yourself actually looking forward to a chance to share your knowledge and ideas with an audience, showing off your “expert’s edge.” When such day comes, public speaking will be in your blood, deepening your career, furthering your ambitions, and accelerating your connections and profits.
“How to Overcome Public Speaking Fears – Ten Strategic Tips From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach”
Why Do We Fear Public Speaking?
Public Speaking Business: How to Get Speaking Jobs
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Article Tags: adult education centers, attendee, business development, community adult education, dilemma, folding chairs, maxim, mundane situations, national speakers association, new business, personal connections, personal experience, professional association, prospects, public speaking courses, smart professionals, survey takers, toastmasters international, value proposition, woodwork
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About the Author: Ken Lizotte RSS for Ken's articles - Visit Ken's website Click here to visit Ken's website   Can Becoming a Thoughtleader Give You an Edge Attempts to Quantify Its ROI Say YES Turn to Your Customers to Solve Flat Sales and Customer Churn Customers Determine Your Value Public Speaking Its Many Benefits Can Grow Your Business Publish a Book and Leave Your Competition Behind To Advertise Your Ideas Publish Articles |
Related Forum Posts
Public Speaking and Presentations
- Hi all,
I am a local business women who does not travel...but would love to be a resource for anyone needing help or suggestions on speaking/presentations and just plain old communications on the platform and off...I've recently had some training by two former World Champs of Public Speaking...It was the best weekend of my career life.
Annette
New Small Business Topic
- Hello everyone,
I'm on the lookout for new topics to add to my site. We just launched a Franchising section and are planning Human Resources section. Do you have any thoughts for a new section?
Here's a list of what we currently have:
Angel Investors
Branding
Bank Loans
Business Coaching
Business Plan
Franchises (New)
Insurance
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Marketing
Public Relations
Sales
Small Biz Loans
Venture Capital
My entry
- 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read
- this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody.
2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto.
3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book
Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: My 3 best business books
- 1. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
3. Permission Marketing - Seth Godin
Think and Grow Rich seems more powerful each time I read it or dip into it. The 7 Habits not only offers some very effective ways to organize your life (which I have yet to master!), but also some great quotations and thought provoking statements including this by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl:
[i:2naxzsom]Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.[/i:2naxzsom]
Seth Godin's Permission Marketing is a good read for anybody seeking to understand how to approach doing business on the Internet in the right way with regard to winning people's trust.
Library to Meet
- Has anyone ever tried the Public Library? they have meeting rooms there too and Toronto has over 30 locations with Free Wireless Internet.
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