CHAPTER 2
ESTABLISHING YOUR MARKET
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WHOM DO YOU WANT TO LISTEN?
SPEAKING IS about listening. Remember the tree falling in the deserted forest? If only the squirrels hear it, has it made a sound?
If you’re speaking to an empty auditorium with only the service staff listening (or to a full house that is sound asleep or busy texting because you’re totally irrelevant or insipid), are you speaking?
It’s vital to determine two facts:
1. Who are the members of your audience? Whose actions and behaviors do you wish to improve?
2. Who are your buyers? Whose condition can you improve by appearing in front of those audiences?
Note: None of this is about YOU. It’s about THEM. If they are not improved, you are not successful, no matter how many stories you tell, how much applause you receive, or the “good vibes” that you experience.
CREATING VALUE PROPOSITIONS
A value proposition is the point on your marketing arrow. It provides aerodynamics. (Too many speakers have a value proposition that’s more like a flying barn.) It is NOT an “elevator speech or pitch.”1 It keeps you and the prospect focused.
Here are its characteristics: it is
• Brief
• Output, not methodology, oriented
• Broad enough to embrace many buyers
• Brief (Did I mention that already?)
Some examples of poor and excellent value propositions are
P: I have a six-step sales process that I teach the audience.
E: I dramatically decrease sales closing time at less cost of acquisition.
P: I provide humor and entertainment throughout the conference.
E: I reduce stress and create superior learning environments.
P: I facilitate strategic retreats.
E: I help your senior team select optimal goals and create accountabilities to ensure that those goals are reached.
You get the idea. Your value is in the outcome, not the input. It’s about the new actions and behaviors that you can engender, and the improved condition for the buyer that they create. (Behind every professional and/or corporate goal is a personal goal. If I want you to improve teamwork, it means that I’m weary of acting as referee between the teams.)
You might have a single, generic value proposition. Mine is, “I improve individual and organizational performance.” Now, that’s pretty wide, right? But if someone says (as someone always does), “What does that mean?” or “How do you do that?” I reply, “I guess it is a tad vague, so why don’t you give me a couple of examples of areas where you’d most love performance to be improved and I’ll give you an idea of how I’d create a speech (or workshop or event) to do that.”
The key is not to defend or explain, but to engage the buyer in the diagnostic. Let’s both talk about how I can help you.
Speaking Up: If you have a value proposition that appeals to true economic buyers, you are already ahead of the game. This is primarily the marketing business.
Some definitions:
• Economic buyer. The person who can write a check or cause one to be produced by the computer. In a small business, it is usually the owner. In a large business, it is typically someone with P&L (profit and loss) accountability, a division or department head, and so forth. In Fortune 1000 companies, there are scores or even hundreds of economic buyers within the organization. In trade associations, the economic buyer is usually the executive director, and sometimes the program or education director.
• Feasibility buyers. These are people who contribute to the decision to buy in terms of finance, culture, technology, trust, programming, or whatever. They can say no, but they can’t say yes. They are often gatekeepers, barring the way. You must circumvent them or blast through them. Human resources people and training people are feasibility buyers 99 percent of the time.
• Meeting and event buyers. Although these people are ostensibly in charge of creating and running an event, it is never their event. They are minions and organizers for the real economic buyer. Always ask, “Whose meeting is this? Who initiated it?” Although industry organizations such as the National Speakers Association place a premium on meeting planners and bureaus, these are people who are charged with conserving budget, not getting results. They will continually ask, “Can you do it for less? Can you do several things for one fee? Will you wash the windows?” You are wasting your time with these people.2
• Speakers’ bureaus. These are middlemen dealing with middlemen. (Forgive the gender exclusivity, but “middle people” sounds like something from The Hobbit and Middle Earth.) They work with meeting planners. They take 25 to 35 percent of your fee, but they rarely market you effectively. In the past decade, they’ve had such a rough time that they’ve begun to charge the speakers and not the clients (for critiquing video demos, inclusion in catalogs, “showcases,” special mailings, and so on). Anything you get from a bureau is gravy, but bureaus should not be a primary marketing focus. Later in this book, when I show you how to turn a speech into a process and quintuple your fees, you’ll see why bureaus are like stegosauruses.
Thus: value proposition, audience, true buyer. Now, how do we approach them?
GET THE DUMMY OFF THE COVER
A few years ago, I was speaking at a “marketing laboratory” sponsored by the National Speakers Association in Tempe, Arizona. The audience was composed of professional speakers who wanted to broaden their appeal and, commensurately, increase their business. I had addressed the need to allow a wide variety of buyers to contact them, a concept that I call “enabling the buyer to buy.” For example, on the practical side, a buyer can’t buy from you if he or she doesn’t know how to reach you. On the conceptual side, the buyer can’t buy if you don’t appear to cover the appropriate topic areas, know the industry, have the experience, and so forth.
It’s startling how speakers interpret the infinitive “to market.” They will plaster their pictures all over their materials, but that doesn’t create more appeal or a peer-level relationship. How many corporate buyers have you seen with their photo on their business card and some kind of motivational nonsense written on the back? Not many.3
At the conclusion of my presentation, one of the participants asked if I would critique his promotional materials. He told me that he wanted to appeal less as an entertainer who appeared after dinner and more as a change agent who appeared as a general session speaker or keynoter at business conferences. His proposition, which was quite logical, was that his entertainment was merely a vehicle to convey his techniques about managing change, and that he was not a humorist per se.
He handed me his brochure, which was an expensive 9 × 12 piece. On the cover was a picture of him seated in a chair with a large dummy on his lap. It turned out that his entertainment was ventriloquism. (I believe they are called “dolls” in the profession, and Terry Fator has made a fortune with them, but no one refers to him as a professional speaker.)
Here was a talented guy who was energetically engaged in turning off buyers.
“Lose the dummy,” I suggested.
“You mean move that aspect of my act to the inside?” he ventured.
“No, lose it altogether. As long as it’s here, you’re a ventriloquist, and you’ll have to work mightily to convince any buyer that you also can deliver a powerful message about change that will be the focus of your value. And stop talking about your ‘act’ unless your buyer is the manager of the lounge at Caesar’s Palace.”
Speaking Up: Your materials reflect how you see yourself. The buyer has no choice but to accept that image if he or she has no other knowledge of you.
He made the changes and thanked me profusely for the advice. Whether we’re new to the business or veterans of the platform, we all get too close to our “act.” We see ourselves from the inside out, yet buyers can see us only from the outside in. Perceptions are reality. The bad news is that our perceptions of ourselves are almost always different from the potential buyer’s. Longfellow pointed out, “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing while others judge us by what we have already done.” The good news is that we can manage that process if we care to take an objective look.
What follows in the next section are the logical, simple steps for choosing the scope of your markets. Notice that I didn’t say “your market.” I advise you to be as broad as possible in casting your net. Experience and circumstances will intelligently narrow it as needed, but that winnowing process is often a gentle erosion around the edges, not a sharp knife slicing a pie into eighths. These steps are equally applicable for the neophyte and the veteran. (In fact, those with a few years’ success in the business might find that they’ve been arbitrarily and unconsciously limiting their growth.)
There are, unfortunately, more speaking coaches than there are good speakers. Most of them make their living giving theoretical and usually bad advice, since they’ve never been successful as professionals themselves. Some examples of what you should run from:
• Specialize or die. Why on earth would you want to exclude buyers? Generalize and thrive.
• Fees are about supply and demand. No, they’re not. Do you want to work 365 days a year? Fees are about your value and the degree to which you improve the client’s condition.
• Audience reaction is the most important metric. No, the buyer’s reaction is the sole metric. Often you’re brought in to discomfit and provoke an audience, not make its members jump to their feet applauding.
• Every speech must be customized. Most speakers merely change the name of the speech when they offer “customization”! Your key points might be the same every time. Change the examples to suit the environment and the audience.
• You must have “bureau-friendly” materials. Fuggeddaboudit! Bureaus are like bank loans. When you need them, you can’t get their attention. When you’re successful, they come running to you.
ALAN’S 12 STEPS TO CREATING MARKET “REACH”
Here are the steps to defining your market scope—that is, how to determine the extent of your appeal to buyers. The wider the appeal to the more buyers, the better off you are. “Specialize or die” is nonsense.4
1. Determine your value-added for the client. How are the buyer and the buyer’s intended audience better off once you leave? A workshop, keynote, seminar, or “presentation” is merely a delivery vehicle. How are people actually improved?
Example: Your people will be able to identify a true buyer earlier and establish a peer relationship faster. For you (the buyer), it will mean far less time spent on corrective action and failure work.
2. Establish who your likely buyers are. In a larger organization, a buyer may have P&L responsibility or head a department or business unit. In a smaller operation, he or she may be the owner or CEO. In a trade association, the buyer may be the executive director or chair of the board.
Example: For the value proposition in point 1, your buyer would probably be the vice president of sales, the vice president of product management, or the owner of a medium-sized business.
3. Examine whether you should focus on particular markets. You may choose to stay within your general geographic area because of child-care needs, an aversion to travel, or a richness of local prospects. You may choose to focus on IT functions or manufacturing firms or financial services organizations because of your background and/or your affinity for them.
Example: You may focus on insurance sales because you began your career in insurance, you still have contacts there, and you are near the headquarters of large insurance companies.
4. Begin to create a body of work. Buyers are attracted to expertise. Start to write, speak, network, create blogs, record podcasts, conduct teleconferences, and so forth to build public examples of your expertise.
Example: Begin a newsletter on selling insurance services and products that you distribute electronically for free: The Insurance Assurance.5
5. Call everyone you know. Once you have begun to create a body of work that displays your expertise, contact everyone you can: family, friends, professional colleagues, suppliers, vendors, past clients, community acquaintances, and so on. Explain the value you are now providing, and ask if they—or anyone they know— can avail themselves of such value.
Example: Send an e-mail to all those people to whom you recommend others—doctors, dentists, designers, accountants—so that they can reciprocate when appropriate.
6. Ensure that you are accessible. Make it easy for people to find you and do business with you. Have a quick and easy answering machine message and recording option. Allow people to send you e-mail via your Web site. Use a full signature file, including your physical address, in your e-mail. (If someone wants to hunt you down and kill you, that person really doesn’t need to rely on finding your address in your e-mail.)
Example: Return all your calls within three hours, and all your e-mails within a day. Responsiveness is a key catalyst for new business.
7. Watch your language. Speak in the buyer’s language of results and outcomes.
See Table 2-1 for examples.
Speaking Up: Shop your own business. Is your Web site user-friendly, or is it full of “philosophy,” “history,” and “background”? Does your voice mail allow for a quick message, or does it insist that the caller hold on for two minutes listening to some motivational pap?
Table 2-1 Translating Speaker Terms to Buyer Terms
8. Learn the present and future “hot buttons.” What are the current and short-term greatest needs of the markets and buyers that you’ve identified? How can you meet and exceed those needs? How can you go beyond just “fixing” (which is of moderate value) and find ways to raise the bar (which is of tremendous value)?
Example: How can senior management best organize, encourage, monitor, and reward a global sales force that it seldom sees, or telemarketing people who work from their homes?
9. Reach out through others. “Cold calling” doesn’t work in this business, even though you’ll hear people boast about calling someone out of the blue and obtaining business. (Do you buy investment securities from the people who call you at home at 8:30 at night?) But finding someone who knows someone who knows the buyer does work. Establish and treasure precious networks of lead sources.
Example: Someone in your club or church or soccer league works somewhere that is attractive for your plans. Ask if this person can introduce you to someone who knows someone who . . .
10. Plan for success, not failure. Too many professionals try to protect themselves against failure, but never plan to exploit success! Look for long-term potential in the markets that you examine and seek to penetrate.
Examples:
• Ability to sustain high fees within your value proposition
• Multiple booking potential (corporations with numerous sites)
• High-level audiences composed of potential buyers (trade associations)
• International potential for expansion (global organizations)6
• Exposure in parts of the country where you haven’t worked (travel is welcome)
• Ability to purchase added products or services (books, consulting)
• Potential for additional value propositions beyond the original
• Trend setters and early adopters in their industries or professions
11. Focus on process, not content. Processes (e.g., decision making, conflict resolution, sales techniques, influence, and so on) are applicable across industries and markets. You are always better off with that orientation than with a narrow one, such as “doctor/patient relationships in public hospitals.”
Example: It’s far too difficult to master content, but processes are easier. I’ve spoken on leadership and strategy for the National Fisheries Association, National Cattle and Feed Lot Association, American Radiological Association, Hewlett-Packard, and Bank of America. Only the examples were changed.
12. Go get bloodied. Some people make plans forever. Others go out, try, fail, learn pragmatically, and succeed the second or third time. Find some lower-threat buyers at first (a small trade association, a medium-size business) and try some of this out. That’s how you’ll advance.
Example: Put all of this in your calendar and try it locally, at the very least. Find out what you’re already good at and where you need more development.
In the old Cheers television comedy, the bartender named Coach once told one of the leads, Diane, that he had been working on a book for six months. Diane was amazed and said, “I didn’t know you were a writer.”
“A writer?” asked Coach. “I’ve been trying to read it.”
It doesn’t take six months to read a book (or to write one). Even veterans procrastinate about that book they want to write, that tape series they want to record, and that radio show they want to host. This afternoon or this evening, start it. There’s no one stopping you.
THE LITMUS TEST OF REAL, IMAGINARY, AND “WOO-WOO” MARKETS
You need three elements to speak successfully:
1. A market need that you identify, create, or anticipate
2. The competency to meet that need
3. Passion
If you have need and passion but no competency, someone else will always get the work. If you have competency and passion but no need, you have a message that no one wants to hear; and if you have need and competency but no passion, that’s what I call a nine-to-five job.
Figure 2-1 Where Do These Paths Intersect?
There is preexisting need, such as areas of teamwork, strategy, sales, customer service, and so forth. There is need that you create, which might be using the Web to create electronic commerce. And then there is need that you anticipate, which might be having to manage people globally who are never together physically. (No one told Akio Morita at Sony that anyone wanted a device carried on the belt that played music through earphones. But the Walkman was a huge hit and the grandfather of the iPhone.)
Competency is the continuing self-development and creation of intellectual property that allows you to at least competently address client issues and, even better, raise the bar to new levels of performance.
Passion is the desire and resilience to keep going because you believe deeply in your ability to help the audience and the buyer, and because the job is so often about rejection.
With these elements in place and correctly oriented, you can address markets such as
• Corporations
• Small businesses
• Educational institutions
• Nonprofit institutions
• Government agencies
• Self-help organizations
• Charities
• Public service firms
• Boards
If your expertise is a process, such as strategy or team building, then you can usually address many markets, since only the content changes. If your expertise is content, such as growing corn or conducting a census, then your markets are severely limited to those who are involved with such content.
Of course, in many instances, you may have expertise in both process and content. The greater your content knowledge (e.g., of the health industry) and your process expertise (compensation practices), the better the results you can generate (higher morale at cost-effective levels).
Speaking Up: If you insist on stacking the deck, at least do it in your favor. Learn to speak the client’s language; don’t try to be better versed in the client’s business. Learn to focus on process needs, not content details. Show me an organization that doesn’t need better communication skills, better teamwork, and improved profits, and I’ll show you that it’s merely a CIA cover.
The litmus test for a legitimate market versus a “woowoo” market7 would include the following:
• Are there people already in this market (which indicates that there is value and the ability to pay—competition broadens markets)?
• Are there common needs spread over a critical mass of people?
• Can the buyer be clearly identified and accessed?
• Is the issue remediable and/or improvable?
• Do you possess the intellectual property, methodology, and approaches to address the topic?
• Is there sustainable business over time (is the population large enough)?
• Are people willing to pay, and will they be able to see improvement?
• Are the interests sincere and nonconflicting (we want you to improve morale while we lay off half the workforce)?
• Is the solution to the need such that speaking or training can be an effective intervention?
I’ve had speakers try to convince me (because they had convinced themselves) that they could make money speaking to college seniors, high school seniors, union workers, attorneys, dentists, theme park operators, and so on. To name just these few, those are very tough markets.
In fact, there are two equally dysfunctional extremes: to talk about something that is merely important for you to talk about and that other people don’t need, and to talk to people about something that is very helpful to them, but that they perceive they don’t need.
ORGANIZING YOUR APPROACH: THE EASIEST ROUTE IS USUALLY THE BEST
William of Occam formulated in the fourteenth century that the easiest route is usually the best, no matter what your goals. This has come down to us through the ensuing half-millennium as “Occam’s razor.” In my terms, too many people travel completely around the block just to arrive next door.
You want to reach true, economic buyers, and/or enable them to reach you. We’ve established that already. So what are your easiest routes?
First, start speaking. Wherever you can, within reason, take on speaking assignments. Speak at the local Rotary Club or facilitate a meeting of your Little League board of directors; moderate a panel at a town meeting; teach as a guest instructor at a community college. Don’t go around the block. Knock on the doors next to you.
This kind of speaking has quite a few salutary effects:
• You can hone your skills through practice.
• You can try out new material.
• You can ask others for solicited feedback.
• You can record the sessions.8
• You can develop relationships with potential buyers and recommenders in the room.
• You can garner testimonial letters.9
• You can obtain referrals from the participants.
• You can send out a press release about the appearance.
• You may be interviewed or write an article for the organization’s newsletter.
• You can invite potential buyers to see you.
• You can provide handouts giving your Web site, blog, products for sale, and so forth.
• You can assess the relevance and attraction of your topic and approach.
• You can network before and after the event.
I think you can see that, even if you’re not paid a cent, there are diverse and attractive marketing advantages to simply getting out and speaking wherever you can where wise people gather.
Speaking Up: There are speaking opportunities all around you. Just open your eyes and your ears.
My dog, Koufax (named after the greatest baseball pitcher in history—American Kennel Club registration: Sanford Van Koufax of Ebbets), is a German shepherd, and is basically a sight dog. That is, he runs out in the yard and looks around immediately to see what’s up. His partner, Buddy Beagle, is a scent dog, and he hits the backyard with his nose to the ground. Between them, they cover a wide variety of clues and information as to what’s gone on out there since their prior visit.
You need just such extra senses to augment your own. I’m not suggesting that you have dogs hunt down speaking opportunities, but I am suggesting that you can let your friends know that you’re seeking them. You can visit major hotels and see who is holding meetings there. You can check the newspapers for listings of meetings. If your town has a convention bureau, let the people there know that you’re a speaker and provide your topics, so that if there is a need for a last-minute replacement at a conference (illness, canceled flight), you might be available (at the same rate as the speaker you’re replacing, by the way).
Use your networks, your friends, community events, and similar sources to help you “sniff out” opportunities to speak. One of the primary errors of new speakers is that they are always waiting for the “right opportunity” rather than seizing every opportunity. The previous list offers very formidable marketing clout with nary a cent of investment. One of the primary errors of veteran speakers is that they become stuck in the rut of their past clients and successes. While veterans shouldn’t be speaking for free (with the exception of true pro bono work), they should be constantly seeking new markets and new opportunities.
At the outset of your career, don’t limit the markets you pursue, because you want to maximize the opportunity to find buyers. Don’t arbitrarily exclude any true buyer. The more adjectives you use in describing your value, the worse off and narrower you will be.
For example, “I help you accelerate sales closing time while reducing the cost of acquisition” is powerful and attractive to a wide array of buyers. But if you add to it, “in the telemarketing, real estate investment field in New England,” you’ve just switched from a trawler’s net to a single fishing pole with a worm on the hook!
If you’re engaging in the kind of marketing I’m recommending—speak wherever you can and allow buyers and recommenders to see you while you improve your craft—you’ll be seriously expanding your opportunity to appeal to the broadest number of needs.
Once you’ve established a successful career, you should have the savvy and the experience to significantly broaden your appeal. Too many veterans fail to do this, but instead simply try to get better at what they’re already quite good at. Moreover, the narrower your focus, the more the rug can be yanked from under you by more powerful brands (a well-known author and speaker writes a new book on your subject), newer technologies (people are downloading, not buying, CDs today and may be doing something else entirely by the time you read this), loss of interest in the topic (diversity), changes in perception (wisdom of financial analysts), traumatic events (recessionary times), and obsolescence (Y2K).
Organize your approach to the market so that it is broadly appealing, simple, and easy. Make William of Occam proud.
SUMMARY
The genesis of a successful speaking career is: “First, there was value.”
Focus on how the client’s condition will be improved as a result of your contributions (not merely “the speech”). Once you know that, you can both attract people to you and reach out to form relationships with them. But you must focus on real markets, not ones that you imagine or that someone claims to be pursuing at some professional chapter meeting. (I’ve often felt that most professional association annual conventions serve the purpose of members getting together to lie to each other about how well they’re doing!)
Keep it simple. William of Occam was right. Your market approach, your dealings with the client, and your delivery should be simple (though not simplistic). Great athletes have the capacity to make the most difficult positions, plays, and performance seem commonplace. We learn how difficult these things are only when we try them (which is why I was such a lousy shortstop).
Keep your focus on your value (how you can improve your clients’ conditions), the true economic buyer (who can pay for that value), how you will pursue such buyers (out-reach), and how they will be attracted to you (market gravity).
That’s how the best athletes play this particular game.