Tag: Speak to sell

I told you before that you have to know your audience. A similar principle applies when you’re presenting at multi-speaker events. You need to know the other speakers as well.

When I’m speaking at a conference, I always ask for a list of the speakers, and also who’s on right before and after me.

If I don’t know those two presenters, in particular, I do research to find out these things:

What do they speak about? What are they selling in the back of the room? What are their price points? Are they going to contradict my work? Now, you could do your research and still not know exactly what the person before you is going to say ~ or there could be a last-minute change in the line-up.

That’s why it’s absolutely essential that you be in the room to hear at least the speaker who’s going on right before you.

Be in the Room
You need to know what the audience just heard and adjust your speech, if necessary.

Don’t change what you’re teaching, but if you’re going to tell the audience something contradictory to what they just heard, you want to acknowledge that to the audience, so they don’t sit there, confused and uncomfortable.

That can be as simple as saying, “The previous speaker has a different perspective on this, but in my twenty years of working with clients, I have found that…”

Or you might be following someone with an emotional story, and you want to be sensitive and skillful, particularly in your opening remarks.

For instance, a couple of years ago, I was speaking at a conference in Cancun, Mexico, that, due to airline problems, had to make last-minute changes in the line-up. One day, I ended up speaking after Dick and Rick Hoyt, the father and son team, who have competed as a unit in 1,000 marathons and Ironman competitions, Dick pushing his disabled son in specially designed wheelchairs.

When they finished speaking, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room, and no presenter would want to follow them. Getting up there and telling the audience that you’ve got the greatest thing since sliced bread just would not work.

I had to figure out how to transition from their story to mine and still look good.

Because I was in the room, listening to them, and reading the audience, I was able to come up with that thoughtful transition, and we ended up getting great sales that day. If I hadn’t been there to hear their story, I could have seemed insensitive or irrelevant, and our results would not have been nearly as good.

Be Prepared
The Boy Scout motto applies here. Because no matter what you set up prior to going into a speaking engagement, you can be sure they’re going to change something once you get there.

If you’re not prepared, that change could mean the death of what you’re doing.

On the other hand, a little preparation goes a long way toward ensuring that you come out looking like a star with a bucketload of sales to show for it.

When it comes to negotiating with promoters, it literally pays to know your numbers.

By that, I mean, your closing percentage: the percentage of the room that buys what you sell after your presentations.

If you have a high closing percentage, you’ve got clout with promoters.

Think about it. Since the promoters generally receive 50% of your sales, it stands to reason that the more sales you make, the more valuable you are to them, and the more likely you are to get what you want.

How to Correctly Calculate Your Closing Percentage
A common mistake that speakers make when calculating their closing percentage is to use the head count, rather than the buying units. The head count is everyone in the audience. A buying unit is a person, couple or group that can make a purchase.

For instance, if you’re speaking to a room with 1,000 people, but, because of the topic, they’re all couples, you don’t have 1,000 buying units. You have 500, because, typically, a husband and wife are only going to buy one of your programs. Also counted as one buying unit could be a boss and his or her assistant or a small group from the same office.

To calculate your closing percentage, just divide the number of people who bought your product or service by the number of buying units in the room. So if you sold 100 copies of your program, and there were 400 buying units, you had a closing percentage of 25%.

Now, let’s say the head count of that room was 800. If you mistakenly used that figure, you’d get a sales ratio of only 12.5%.

Obviously, there’s a big difference in how a promoter is going to view you if you do 25% in sales versus 12.5%.

Even more important, that ratio wouldn’t accurately reflect your skill and achievement. So you could think that you’re not doing very well in your sales presentations, when you’re actually excelling.

How to Use Your Clout
Knowing your numbers can help you get booked, secure an optimum time slot, and give you leverage when promoters want to make changes.

For instance, if the promoter says, “I know your contract says you can speak for 90 minutes, but we need you to do it in 60. Can you do that?”

“Well, I could,” you’d respond, “but let me tell you what it’s going to cost you. If I do it in 60 minutes, we’re going to lose about 30% in sales. I’ve got an average closing ratio of 20%. You’ve got 500 buying units here. My product costs $1,000.” Pause to do the quick calculation. “That means you, personally, would lose about $15,000.”

“Oh,” your promoter says as the figure sinks in. “Okay. You can have your 90 minutes.”

If your closing percentage were artificially low because you didn’t calculate it properly, you just wouldn’t have the same impact.

Sure, you could insist that they honor your contract, and you should if the situation warrants it.

But it’s far better to turn potentially awkward interactions into win-wins.

Know your numbers and show promoters that it’s in their best interest to give you the consideration you’ve earned.

You could follow my 8 steps to the tee and still shoot yourself in the foot when it comes to sales, if you don’t also heed the advice I’m going to give you over the next several weeks.

You need to set yourself up for a prosperous close before you even touch a foot onstage. Again, “the close” is the time during your presentation when you specifically sell the program or service that will be available in the back of the room after your talk.

The Ideal Environment
The first thing you have to do is to create and control the close and sales environment, so that it’s conducive to selling your product or service.

That means you have to negotiate with your promoter or the person who invited you to speak to make sure that the following things are in your contract. Or, if there’s no contract, that you have a verbal agreement around the following:

1. Dedicated 15-minute break. There must be a break after you speak, where nothing else is happening but the opportunity to buy your product or service. To clarify that even further, I also put in my contract that I won’t speak before lunch or dinner, or before a raffle or a drawing.

You don’t want to compete with their hunger. You don’t want to compete with anything. When you are done with your talk, the only thing you want the audience to do is to dash to your table to buy what you’ve got.

You also don’t want to give your presentation after a cocktail hour. The last thing you want is a bunch of people in the room who have been drinking. I put that term in my contract too.

2. You will break the room. You should be the one to announce the break. You don’t want anyone else getting up there and breaking the momentum you just spent 90 minutes building.

You want to be the one to say, “We’re going to take a 15-minute break now. And I’ll be in the back of the room to answer your questions.”

Educating Promoters
Since you generally will have a 50/50 financial split with your promoters, they’re likely to be amenable to those terms, but sometimes you do have to educate them.

For instance, if they want you to be the last speaker before lunch, you could say, “Well, I could, but then they’re going to be more interested in going to lunch than in purchasing stuff in the back of the room. So, that literally could cost us 30% or 40% of the sales we would have earned. That means you could lose $20,000 or $30,000.” That will get the promoter’s attention. He or she will now be in favor of your doing whatever you say you need in order to get the sales.

Obviously, you’ll have more credibility and clout if you’re not pulling figures out of the air. They should be real and provable estimates.

You get those credible figures by knowing what your conversion ratio is and the correct way to calculate it. (Many speakers do it incorrectly.)

To learn how to do that calculation and get the clout you’ve actually earned ~ and deserve ~ catch my next article in two weeks.

Note to our readers: The last issue of the Ezine had a misprinted article. The article below is what should have appeared in the February 27th edition. Our apologies for any confusion!

When you’re speaking for the purpose of sales, your rag-to-riches story is central to your presentation. Again, this is the tale of how you got to where you are today.

If you present your story honestly, with real emotion, you not only create a connection with your audience that greatly increases sales, but you help them understand what you’re teaching in a deeper, fuller way.

Here’s how that works:

By this point in your presentation, you’ve done Steps 1-5. You’ve grabbed the audience’s attention, told them what you’re going to do and laid down the ground rules, established your credibility with testimonials and case studies, and transitioned to your story. Now, it’s time to tell it.

Typically, in a 90-minute presentation, I will spend about 20 minutes telling my story, which is about being sucked through a dam.

When I tell that story emotionally, I condition the audience to be emotional about it too.

Then I move on to the topic I’m teaching, but I return to my story to drive home the main points.

When I do that, I actually re-elicit the emotions the audience felt when they heard my story the first time, and then they become emotionally involved in what I’m teaching as well.

For instance, if I’m talking about changing beliefs in the subconscious mind, I might say, “Before I got sucked through the dam, I was a very angry person. My subconscious mind was in total control of my life. I was reacting to my environment all day long.”

Remember, people listen with their ears, but they hear with their emotions. So they’re not just casually listening to me, they’re really hearing me. Thus, instead of the subconscious being a dry topic, their emotions are involved in their learning, and they’re understanding the subconscious like never before.

I’ve been testing this for years, and get emails all the time from people telling me that they knew parts of what I was teaching, but because of the way I explained the material, it was completely fresh, as though they were hearing it for the first time.

And students who thought the subconscious was too complex or difficult to understand, finally “get it.” They come to me really empowered by the possibility of applying that understanding in their lives.

For the teacher and the student, that’s exciting.

And do you think that translates into sales? You bet it does.

When you skillfully weave your story into your teaching, you give your audience a huge gift that can transform their lives.

In their minds, they’re already lining up in the back of the room.

And that’s exactly what you want your audience to be thinking as you transition to the close.

PS: The Neagle Code: Directions for Life is a weekly no-cost
program that is open to everyone! Each week, I'll select and personally respond to one question received via the above “The Neagle Code” page that I feel in my heart will help the most people. (You may choose to remain anonymous if you wish, with our full support.) It is my deep, heartfelt intention that ~ in answering your questions ~ I may provide you with the Universal Truths that in committed application, will set you free. Simply submit YOUR burning question at: www.DavidNeagle.com/ask-david to participate.

If you’ve applied Steps 1-6 of my formula for a live presentation that sells, you’re rounding the bases and getting ready to slide into home.

You’re now ready for “the close” ~ the portion of your talk that is specifically devoted to selling the product or service that will be available in the back of the room after your presentation.

Many speakers get to this point and choke.

They’ve done a great job sharing their story and weaving it into their teaching (Step 6), but then when it’s time to transition to the close, they get awkward and lose momentum.

They seem to have forgotten that the purpose of their presentation is not to teach, but to sell.

Structure Your Teaching to Sell

To help avoid that problem make sure that the teaching portion of your talk is tightly related to the program you’re offering in the back of the room.

For instance, you’re teaching them two or three of your seven steps for doubling their income in 60 days, or one of the five ways to have the relationship they’ve always wanted.

Your teaching, then, is selling. It entices the audience, shows them what’s possible in their lives and businesses, and leaves them wanting more.

That way, the close becomes a natural extension of your teaching, and your program the answer to their desire.

Step 7: A Smooth Transition

When your teaching and close share the same goal of selling, transitioning from one to the other is easy. Just say something like this:

“For years we’ve been perfecting this information, doing everything that we possibly can to make it simple for you to implement it into your life right away. And we’re really excited to be able to offer that solution to you today.”

That’s all there is to it.

Step 8: The Close: Make It Doable

Now, just start talking about the specifics of your program, focusing on the results they’re going to get, what they’re going to learn, and how it will impact their lives.

Convey the strong impression that you have laid it all out for them as much as possible. Without being deceptive, emphasize how easy and doable your program is.

Don’t overwhelm or confuse them with extraneous detail they don’t need in order to make the decision to buy.

For instance, if you’ve got a program on relationships, the people in your program are going to have to do internal work to get to the point where they’re having great relationships.

But, during the close, don’t talk about all of that internal work. They know they’re going to have to do some work, so you don’t have to highlight that fact.

If you make your program sound complicated or difficult, your audience will tune out and you will lose sales.

For the 15 or 20 minutes of the close, focus on how they’re going to benefit, and how easily your program will guide them to those results.

By the way, you’re delivering this information before you pass out your order form. I’ll pick it up here next time.

If the devil’s in the details, Step 5 of my formula for a live presentation that sells is a classic example. It may seem like a small point, but ignoring it could cost you thousands in sales.

Step 5: A Smooth Transition
After you’ve established with testimonials and case studies that you’re worth your audience’s attention, you want to keep that attention by making a smooth transition to your story.

For instance, if I had just told the audience how my client Elaine made $96,000 in 18 days, I might then say:

“I know that a lot of you may be thinking to yourself, ‘How can I do what Elaine did? How can I make a lot of money in a short period of time?’

“The answer to that question eluded me for most of my life. In fact, when I first started out, I was sick, broke and had a terrible attitude.”

Then, I start telling my story.

If your transition is absent or disjointed, the audience may get confused. Then their minds may start wandering to what they’re going to have for dinner, and you could lose them for good.

If your transition is smooth, however, you keep all of their attention riveted on you as you move into your story.

Step 6: Your Inspiring Story
Every one of us has a story of how we came to be where we are. If you’re speaking for the purpose of sales, that inspiring, rags-to-riches story is central to your presentation.

Your story may literally be rags to riches. Perhaps you grew up in poverty or were homeless for a period of time. Maybe you lived next door to a drug dealer like I did. Or, maybe for decades, you couldn’t get a date to save your life.

You went through a difficult time, and then figured out how to get out of it, and today you have the riches to show for it. You have a thriving business or a great partner or whatever is relevant for what you’re teaching and selling that day.

People Hear with Their Emotions
Whatever your story, it must come from your heart and be emotional. If you tell your story honestly and dig deep inside, you’ll start to feel the emotions you were going through at the time.

Let yourself express those emotions on the stage. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I pound the podium.

That’s actually very powerful because emotions resonate with the audience. They’ll feel them too and make a real connection with you.

That’s why speaking is such an effective way to make sales. People listen with their ears, but they hear with their emotions..

In fact, unless they’re emotionally invested in what you’re doing, you’re not going to sell them a damn thing.

They’ll just sit there, rationalizing away their genuine need for your program.

But if you get them emotionally involved, they’re much more likely to buy.

In fact, they’re very likely to buy. As I’ve said, 30% of the people in my audiences buy what I’m selling.

And if you transition smoothly to your powerfully told story, the same could be true for you.

If used powerfully, case studies and testimonials from customers and clients prove to your audience that you are worth their time, attention and investment.

To tap the full power of your testimonials, you want to organically weave them into your presentation as points or stories.

For instance, if I simply tell the audience that I can help them double their income in 30 or 60 days, they might listen to me ~ or they might think I’m full of crap.

But if I tell them about Elaine Shaw, who, after a phone session with me, made $96,000 in 18 days, they’re very likely to sit up and listen ~ not only to her story, so that they can learn from her experience, but also to what I have to say.

Thus, by weaving her story into my presentation, I not only prove my point that I can help them double their income, but I firmly establish my credibility as an expert and set myself up for great sales.

How exactly would I do this? If I were speaking to a group of people, here are some of the highlights of what I would say:

“I’m going to tell you why I am so confident that I can show you how to double your income in 30 or 60 days. A woman I’d never heard of before, Elaine Shaw, called me up out of the blue, telling me that she was working her butt off, but having terrible results.

“She called me on April 12. By that point in the month, she had made $5,000 in sales, and she wanted to make $60,000 by the end of April. After talking with her for a while, I helped her tweak what she was saying to herself and gave her a couple of techniques for working with her goal.

“At the end of the month, just 18 days later, she phoned me in tears. Not only had she hit her $60,000 goal, but she made $101,000 in sales! She did more sales in her company than any other person, and won a trip to Germany.

“And, folks, it didn’t take much more effort on her part to apply the things I’m going to show you today.”*

Now, the audience is thinking, “Wow, what did she do? How is it possible to go from $5,000 to $101,000 in sales in just 18 days?”

In order to find that out, you bet they’re going to listen attentively to me. I’m also setting them up for the sale at the end of my presentation.

During the rest of my talk, I’m going to give them some of the information I gave Elaine, but not all of it.

By the end of my presentation, they’re going to be hungering for all of the details of how I helped Elaine get her result.

And they’re going to be willing to pay for my program or product in order to get it.

* FTC compliance is beyond the scope of these articles, but you do want to make sure that your testimonials comply with the latest guidelines.

When you take the stage, your audience is likely wondering, Who is this guy or gal? They want to know if you have the potential to make a difference in their lives or businesses.

With Step 4, you’re anticipating those questions, telling them why they should listen to you.

In some environments, the simple fact that you’re onstage conveys credibility to you as an expert, but that’s not always the case.

You may be presenting at a multi-speaker event with more established people in your field. Or you could have a lot of seasoned (or jaded) industry veterans in the audience. Or maybe you’re in an industry, such as real estate or insurance, where people listen to a lot of speakers.

In those situations, especially, you need to provide proof that you are worth their time, attention and investment.

How to Establish Your Credibility

You can establish your credibility in two main ways:

1. Present Your Qualifications
Presenting your qualifications is usually done before you take the stage. First, you want to make sure that they’re listed in the speaker’s agenda, so the audience has access to them ahead of time. Then you want to give to the person who’s introducing you a paragraph to read that includes your qualifications.

The paragraph should lead with a powerful statement, like in the example below, and then include your relevant accomplishments, experience, education, awards, certification and training ~ whatever will make you look like an expert.

Your introduction should be typed in large print and written like a script, so the person can read it word-for-word. For instance, “I’m so pleased to welcome to the stage the person who showed us the goldmine in social media.”

Ideally, you want the person introducing you to be the promoter. He or she knows you best, and would be happy to do it, since anything that makes you look better can boost his or her bottom line. (Typically, the promoter gets 50% of your sales.)

Before you hand over your introduction, be sure to read it first out loud. Many introductions are flubbed because they look okay on the page, but don’t translate well when heard.

2. The Testimonial
In your presentation, after you’ve delivered your grabber, told the audience what you’re going to do and laid down the ground rules (Steps 1-3), you want to begin to deliver case studies or testimonials of people who attest to the power of your work.

In fact, on an ongoing basis, you should be building an arsenal of positive comments from newspaper and magazine articles, television and radio interviews, awards, emails from clients and customers, even posts to your Facebook page. Any time someone says something complimentary about you, your company, product or program, keep a copy of it for possible use as a testimonial.

Before you actually use the private posts and emails, you need to ask permission (and make sure they’re FTC compliant*), but once you have permission, you can include them along with your other testimonials in your PowerPoint or overhead slides.

Live testimonials are also very powerful. These are clients or customers in your audience who have agreed ahead of time to give you an unpaid endorsement.

Whatever their form, you don’t want to dump all of your testimonials into the audience’s lap at once. You can start with a few, include at least one on your order form, and weave the rest of them in seamlessly throughout your talk. Or you can begin with an extended case study.

Whether long or short, you want your testimonials to feel like an organic part of your presentation.

I’ll show you how to accomplish that next time.

*FTC compliance is beyond the scope of these articles, but do check the latest guidelines to be sure you meet the requirements.

If you’ve followed Steps 1 and 2 in this series, your speaking audience is hanging on your every word, just waiting for what comes next.

What comes next isn’t sexy, but it’s one of the most crucial steps of all.

You have to lay down the rules.

If you don’t, it’s very likely that you’ll lose control of the room.

Since no one really likes rules, refer to them as guidelines. Try saying something like this:

“Here are the guidelines that I have found work best for my 90-minute talk. If we could all follow these things, everything is going to go great. Otherwise, it’s going to take me three hours to get the information out.”

And then you give them your rules, the most important of which is: no questions.

Don’t Take Questions
That’s right. If you’re speaking for the purposes of sales, do NOT allow questions. (This does not apply when you’re teaching a live seminar, teleseminar, or when you’re coaching. Questions are appropriate then.)

When you allow your audience to ask questions, the agenda shifts from yours to that of the person asking the question. You probably, then, won’t have time to complete your presentation, and you’ll most certainly lose sales.

Here are a couple of the other pitfalls of allowing questions:

You don’t know who’s in that room. If somebody has asked you to come in to speak, even if you know the demographics or sociographics of the individuals in the room, you don’t know precisely who is sitting in those seats. And you don’t know what questions they’re going to have.

You could get a real ass in the audience, somebody who would take pleasure in discrediting you and making you look foolish. Then you’ve got a big problem on your hands.

Unhappy customer/unhappy person. You can’t please everyone, so no matter how great your product or service is, there could be someone in the room who wasn’t happy with it, and they may want everyone to know. Or perhaps you say something that triggers someone in the audience. If they don’t take responsibility for their own emotions, they may take out their anger on you.

Unless you’re an experienced speaker, it’s very difficult to come back from situations like those and walk out of that room looking better than when you walked in. The negative impact on your sales can be dramatic.

How to Phrase It
Now, members of your audience will have questions, so you want to be sensitive with your phrasing. Try something like this:

“I want to make sure that you get your questions answered. However, I only have a very short time up here to tell you how you could double your income in the next 90 days. So I’m going to ask that you hold your questions for now. After my talk, I’ll be around in the back of the room, so if you want to ask me questions at that time, please feel free to do so.”

Your audience now understands the reason for the rule, you have their tacit agreement to hold their questions and, most important, you have control of the room.

You can now start to build your foundation for massive back-of-the-room sales. I’ll pick that up next time.