It is rare to have a speaking engagement that does not require you to produce and supply some sort of printed collateral.  Collateral is any printed piece of material you supply to your participants.  As a minimum, it most likely includes some handouts, and your business card.  Collateral is a huge marketing opportunity for you to take advantage of.  It provides participants with tangible pieces they can leave the presentation, with and refer to later.  To get the most out of your collateral follow these fours simple steps.

1. Make Sure It Tells People How to Find You

The easiest thing you can do and the most forgotten, is to make sure very piece of printed material you give participants, has your phone, email and website information on it.  These bits of paper, that may only be a handout or worksheet during your presentation today, are the only tangible items your participants have to refer back to a month from now, when they are trying to remember your name for an interested colleague.

2. Include Opportunity to Connect

When people are learning a new topic or engaging in a rich dialogue during your speaking engagement, with other like minded people, they want to continue that after the session.  If you provide the opportunity for them to connect with your material and one another after the session, they will most likely take you up on it.  Include a link to your online social community or website on your collateral.  Another, fun tip is to include a place for participants to collect the emails and phone numbers of people they connect with during the presentation.  If they write that information down on your collateral, they are less likely to throw your handbook away when they get home.  This ups the possibility that they will have it on hand to contact you with, when they think about it weeks from now.

3. Maintain Your Branding

You are a speaking brand.  As such you should have a logo, a look and feel and tone of voice that represents you and is easily identifiable with you.  This lends credibility to your message and creates a professional appearance for your participants.  Once you have these things, maintain them throughout your collateral.  Collateral is not the place to skimp on your costs.  As mentioned, these are the things people will have in front of them long after you are gone.  Make sure they represent you, the way you want to be represented.

4. Include Your Own Messaging

Include any marketing messaging you have created like tag lines or frequently used sayings in you collateral.  If there is a particularly memorable story, antidote, joke or reference in your presentation, then make sure it has a prominent place in your collateral.  Participants will read it later and remember how you inspired them.

You live and die by your ability to turn one speaking opportunity into many other speaking opportunities.  A good speaker, must also be a good marketer.  The good news is your biggest potential marketing opportunity is your actual speeches.  It is in this setting that you shine, and you are at your most eloquent. You are also providing everyone in the room a demonstration of your capabilities.  In these settings you are offering up your best marketing pitch, your actual speaking ability.  Finally, the audience is already on your side.  As people already attending your speech, they are predisposed to be advocates of your offerings.  To take advantage of this perfect storm of opportunity, capability and interest there are ten things you can do.

1. Ask for the Job

This seems like a simple thing to do, but way too many speakers, forget to actually come out during their presentation and when talking to participants one on one and let them know they are available for other speaking opportunities and would love the opportunity to book one or more on the spot.

2. Make Sure You Can Be Found

When the presentation is over and done, your participants will leave your presence and go back to their daily lives.  It is often not until a day, week or even a month later that they have some reason to think about contacting you, or passing on your contact information to someone else.  Make it easy for them to find your contact information.  Put it on every piece of collateral you pass out.

3. Offer Value

Make sure every person leaves your presentation feeling like they not only gotten their money’s worth, but that you exceeded their expectations.  That means becoming a master of details.  Make sure your handouts are professional looking and when possible glossy.  Make sure your Powerpoint presentation is well designed and graphically appealing.  Make sure you are eloquent and powerful in your delivery.

4. Invite Attendees to Join Your Club (Social Community)

Online social communities are a great place to win over potential clients as well as create repeat business.  They serve as an active reminder of your value and the benefits the participant gained from your presentation. They ferment a sense of relationship.  Relationship is what sells the next presentation.

5. Master The Art of the Trinket

Small give aways, that have your contact information on them are great tools for marketing your services to participants.  Even better are trinkets that are designed to be front and center in the participants eye line for the near future.  For example, fridge magnets are great, but a snazzy cheat sheet with main points from your presentation that attaches to a desktop computer screen is better.  It is more likely to be used, and it will be right in the participants eye line every time they sit down on their computer.

6. Advertise Your Offerings

You have to let people know you have something new to offer them, then what they just participated in.  Make sure you have a brochure with your speaking offerings on very chair in the presentation room.

7. Collect Contact Information

Don’t leave a speaking gig, without getting contact information including email, phone number, addresses and names from every person in the room. This is crucial to building a lead list that you can use for marketing purposes.

8. Treat Breaks Like Cocktail Party

Get out there and mingle with the participants.  You never know what conversation will lead you to your next job booking.  Ask questions and engage in small talk.  Leave the power sales pitch for later.  During breaks, work on building relationships.

9. Use Subliminal And So Subliminal Advertising

You are a speaking brand.  Make sure people in the presentation know who you are and what you have to offer them  Put posters up around the room advertising other speeches you offer.  Put table tents on the conference table, highlighting your capabilities.  Add brochures and marketing material in your handouts.

10. Give It Away (Use Webinars and eBooks)

When participants leave your presentation, hopefully they are leaving inspired to share what they have learned with others.  What better way to get new clients and create leads to the next job, then by giving your participants a way to share what they learned with colleagues, peers and friends.  Offer free prerecorded webinars of the highlights or tips from your presentation on your website.  Try writing a simple eBook with tips or inspiration from your presentation and giving every participant to your course a coupon to download it for free from your website.

You have a great presentation, you’ve given it before and you are raring to go.  Before hurrying to the next engagement, consider how to set up in advance for the best outcome.

2 to 6 weeks before engagement:

You want to lay the groundwork for your talk with the host or contact person at the agency or company where you’ll be speaking.

If they will introduce you, have you provided clear information for them, framing you in your best light? Avoid giving a long list of places you have spoken, or credentials.  Instead, focus on what you’ve done for your clients or customers, how they’ve received value for their money.

Have you established rapport with the contact person, planted seeds for return engagements and referrals to sister agencies also needing speakers?

Have you inquired about the type of audience you’ll be speaking to?  Speaking to a group of mid level managers requires an entirely different tone than speaking to sales people, or software engineers. If possible, meet and chat with some attendees while at their site.  Observe their style, what is on their bulletin boards, how people are dressed. Consider these observations as you select examples, stories and level of complexity of your information.

If possible, ask your contact what information their people want and need.  Check for what is unspoken. The host may know of a needed training area but hesitate to state it for fear of denigrating their group. Leave it unspoken, but plan to address it delicately in your program—this allows the host to save face.

If they leave it to you to select the theme, ask how they think the audience will respond to it. Consider their comments as you make changes and fine tune your material.

Do they understand the nature and tone of your material and speaking style?  If not, enlighten them, so that they can accurately tell people what to expect.  If you include humor and encourage audience participation, let them know.  The audience will arrive in a light hearted mood. If your style is more lecture oriented, state that.

Have you conveyed that your material is important and well prepared so that they will hold you in high esteem—preempting such problems as letting announcements cut into your time, giving you a weak introduction, or failing to get the groups’ attention before you go on?

Day of engagement:

Get in the zone; Be completely prepared 12 hours before you speak, and engage in something you find relaxing, unrelated to your presentation. About 2 hours before you start, take a final look at your notes—and put them away.  Avoid looking at them again before your presentation.   From here on think generally about the importance of your message and how valuable it will be to the audience. Listen to a favorite piece of music, or carry inspiring mottos with you, for a pick-me-up just before you begin.

Truly believe that what you have to say is worth listening to and your audience is worthy of hearing it; this will put you in a position to spin off multiple repeat performances and to garner many new clients or customers.

(Tip: It Will Help You Book Gigs)

As a professional speaker, you live and die by your ability to convince people that they want to listen to you.  You do that by showing them you have something interesting, unique and valuable to say.  The introduction of social networking and communities, has opened up a whole new frontier to speaking professionals.  They are the perfect tool for demonstrating your value, by allowing you to present unique, interesting and perhaps amusing material on a regular basis.  It also allows you to engage your potential clients in dialogue, which is a great way to build connections and develop trust based relationships.  These relationships lead to bookings.  When entering into the world of social communities, there are five key steps to follow.

Step 1 – Select the right community platform for you and your target audience.

There are several different main stream online social communities, that are easy to set up and engage in. However, each really addresses a different type of user and by extension will address a different type of potential client base.  As a quick primer, consider the following.

• Facebook - Allows for rich and dynamic conversation and easy community building.  Participants have the opportunity to not only engage with you, but also with each other.  This community is valuable if you are targeting a client base that is very relationship focused.
• Twitter – This networking application, allows you to push interesting information to your potential clients.  They can communicate with you as well, but it is not a tool that allows for deep conversations or multiple users cross conversing.  This community is a good place for building a client base that thrives on information and wants lots of tidbits on a regular basis.
• NING – NING has some great features for developing a very dynamic social community.  You can design your entire community to perform as your primary website would, by not only having space for postings, but also allowing you to include longer formatted articles, embedded video etc.  The downside of NING is that it is social community, that you completely create from scratch.  It does not offer the same capacity to collect users who are just hanging out on the application, like Facebook does.  On the other hand if you are targeting potential clients who are information junkies, and thrive on multimedia presentation, this is the place for you.

Step 2 – Spend the time to create dynamic kick off content.

Ok, you have selected your home base for your social community.  Once you have set up your profile, you are not ready to open the doors to potential clients yet.  If you want to get, and more importantly keep, new potential clients interacting with your community, you need to set the stage.  Make sure when those first users come to your site there is something for them to interact with.  This will prevent them from feeling like the first ones who have shown up at the party.

Step 3 – Get some users to register.

• Now that you have selected the site, and prepared it for the rich dialogue to come, its time to go out and get some users.  The biggest tip I can give you here, is that it is not the number of users you generate, it is the quality of users.  You want to collect people who are actually potential clients.  Here are a few things you can do to collect users.
• Send an invite to all of your current contacts.
• Post a link to your site on other like minded communities.
• Add a direct link to your community on your email signature and from your website.

Step 4 – Get the conversation started.

A great community, is defined by how interactive it is.  To enhance the dialogue in your community, post questions instead of just posting content.  Behave as if you are at a virtual cocktail hour.  If you were mingling, you would seek out new people to talk to and engage them in conversation by asking them about themselves, and being interested in what they have to say.  Do the same thing in your virtual community.  Be an active host and seek out users and entice them to join the conversation, by asking them direct questions.

Step 5 – Drive contacts to your community

Finally, once you have the party up and going, its time to open up the doors and get as many people to join as possible.  Here are a few quick tips to get people into the door.

• Put a direct link to your community on every piece of collateral you distribute in your presentations.
• Actively invite speaking participants to join your community, during your speeches.
• Put a poster up during your speeches that announces your community and offers a prize for people who signs up and join in the following week.

There are actually THREE audiences that you must know to make the most of your speaking engagements.  The first audience is one you are familiar with; those faces looking back at you as your deliver your speech.  That audience is the one you sell your message to.  However, selling your message is not the same as selling your talent.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Who does the booking?
• Who makes the marketing decisions for the actual event?
• Who do THOSE people answer to:  a board of directors, an event planning company, a non-profit organization, members?

Once you know who that audience is, figure out what they are looking for and what is most important to them.  Is it flexibility?  Price?  Keeping their job?  Pleasing their superiors? The easier you make their job, the more likely they will be to recommend you for further engagements.

Third is the media audience… those television, radio and newspaper reporters that can give you FREE publicity.  Knowing that audience requires a bit of advance research.  Before you arrive in that town, you need to know WHO does the news there.  The basics include their mailing address, phone number, email addresses, etc.  But there is more…  Find out if there are opportunities to appear on local news talk shows.  Who are the news directors?  Who decides what will go on the air?  Since your speech engagement would be considered “soft” news, find out what days are slower than others.  There are days when news departments are scrambling for news coverage and that is your prime opportunity to get that coverage.  Holidays are often “slow” times for news.

Knowing the media audience also involves making their jobs easier.  Newspaper press releases and press kits are not the same as those you would send to radio and television.  For example, sending a photograph to a radio station with a press release tells that news department that you don’t know their needs.  Your photograph will end up in the trash.  And newspapers are more likely to print a press release if it is short, precise and well written.

Knowing your audience is, essentially, putting yourself in their shoes.  In the case of the media, you need to know what is important to them regarding what types of news stories they generally broadcast or print, what is the local importance and what benefit your story provides to them.  Benefits include viewer ship and interest.

The news media’s job is to inform and educate, NOT to advertise.  When you contact them, it is best to downplay any sort of profit that comes to you, such as books you might be selling.  Instead, focus on the issue that directly impacts their viewers and readers.

As an example, a company was putting on a great event that would benefit a non-profit and help underprivileged children.  Instead of focusing on the event or those children, this company kept attempting to “slide” their name into the press releases.  When they called a radio station newsroom to attempt to get an interview, they identified themselves FIRST as being from that company and then wanted to send a representative to talk about the great things their COMPANY was doing with the event.  This was a very blatant attempt to get free advertising.  Advertising is the media’s profit and income.  Understandably, the company got very little coverage for the event or the cause.

What that company should have done was promote the event and those children first.  They could have sent a rep from their company, but only to accompany representatives from the non-profit as support.

There are tricks to subtly slipping in references to your book, tapes, and workshops, ONCE YOU GET THE INTERVIEW.  The key is, focus directly on the issue that directly impacts the viewers and readers of the media entities to get the interview first.

Which brings us back to knowing your audiences.  You need to first know what issues will impact those viewers, readers and the media in general.  If you can do that, you are almost guaranteed coverage.

Like many of you, I have been on more then one speaking engagement, where the people in the room, although well intentioned, were not the decision makers my message was meant for, or were not the money holders I needed to influence to gain greater access into an organizations speaking opportunities.  Because, this is often the case, presenters who master the art of up-selling, or getting the next speaking engagement with the participant’s boss, are the ones who ultimately gain long term success.  The following are five things I have found help create the opportunity to meet with the boss.

1. Get To The Real Reason They Are There. If the participant sitting in front of you is not the decision maker you need to reach, then there is some reason they are there and their boss is not.  It could be that their boss, just is not the type that seeks out these sort of presentation opportunities.   Or, perhaps the boss sent them to determine if the presentation was worth sharing.  I have also run into more then one participant who is at my presentations, because the real decision maker thinks the participant needs to brush up on their skills.  The classic retraining candidate.  Understanding the real reason each of your participants is the one sitting in the room with you, will give you much needed insight into how to get them to help you get the next, bigger gig.
2. Make Solution Based Statements-Fundamentally, the participants you have in your presentation, are looking for some sort of solution to solve a real or perceived dilemma.  Make sure when you are speaking you are phrasing your summary statements as solution statements.  Help define for your participants what they are getting out the presentation. This will start to spark interest within them to want to create even more solutions, by introducing your concepts to a greater pool of people.  People love to “share” what they have learned, if only to demonstrate to others they have “learned” something.
3. Create a Mutually Beneficial Relationship-Your best entry into the next presentation with the boss, is through the participant you have in the room with you now.  In order to get them to help you get the big presentation, you have to make it mutually beneficial for them.  They need to believe they will either be seen as smart for sharing your services, or perhaps even economical or a problem solver.  Find out what they want in terms of recognition from their boss and help them see how introducing you and your presentation to them will help the participant get it.
4. Generate the Suggestion-Most often the participant in the room is not even thinking about telling their boss about you and your services.  It has not even crossed their mind.  If you want them to think about it, you have to tell them to think about it.  Be bold, make the suggestion.
5. Make the Attendee Look Brilliant-The number one reason the participant in your current presentation would suggest you to their boss, is because they believe you have made them look smart or more capable.  They will often provide the door into the boss, because they feel obligated to do so.  Its the classic you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back scenario.

So what do you think? Please leave a comment below with your experience after trying out any or all of these 5 Upsell Skills for Presenters and Speakers.