CHAPTER 7
ACCELERATING AND ACCENTUATING YOUR APPEAL
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BECOMING THE “GO-TO” RESOURCE
IT’S NICE when your name is on a list of excellent speakers on a given topic. But it’s far better when the buyer says, “Get me Tom Parsons!” At this writing, people readily identify certain individuals with key business expertise:
Sales: Jeff Gitomer
Coaching: Marshall Goldsmith
Small business: David Maister
Creativity: Seth Godin
Solo consulting: Alan Weiss
People associated strategy with Peter Drucker, and leadership with John Gardner and Warren Bennis. You may have your personal favorites, but no one is going to argue with my examples.
You need to become a “go-to” resource.
THE AMAZING SECRET LEVERAGE OF PROCESS TRUMPING CONTENT
The key to expanding our playing fields and appealing to increasing numbers of potential buyers is to understand that we build content around process.
Process is a sequence, system, design, model, or approach that enables the user to achieve a given, desired result. For example, a decision-making process provides the individual with the ability to arrive at an alternative that will meet his or her objectives. A sales process will allow the salesperson to generate new business more quickly and efficiently. Processes are usually about HOW something is done.
Content is the particular environment, surroundings, subject matter, or specifics within which one applies processes. In other words, the sales process at Chrysler involves selling cars, but that at Northwestern Mutual involves selling insurance. The basic process of selling—identifying buyer objectives, demonstrating value versus investment, and so on—is the same, whether one is selling cars, insurance, or lawn fertilizer. The content differs. Content is usually about WHAT is being created, communicated, and/or consumed.
We should identify what processes we are adept at and then build content around them that relates to particular buyers, industries, audiences, and conditions. For example, I deliver a keynote speech called “Capturing Opportunity” that deals with the processes of innovation, empowerment, and relationships. I’ve achieved great success with this speech in front of everyone from top-level executives to front-line supervisors, from aerospace to newspapers, and from American audiences to Asian audiences. Remember, I believe in huge playing fields.
The following “topics” are really examples of process, applicable to vast arrays of people, places, organizations, and conditions:
• Networking
• Decision making
• Time management
• Spirituality
• Speaking skills
• Team building
• Customer service
• Motivation
• Humor
• Ethics
• Negotiating
• Problem solving
• Planning
• Substance abuse
• Writing skills
• Technology
• Sales skills
• Use of media
• Futurism
• Health/wellness
• Building self-esteem
• Priority setting
• Image building
• Change
• Creativity
• Productivity
• Leadership
• Diversity
• Career management
Expansion Worksheet: The absolute WORST question in the speaking profession, always from people who don’t understand marketing, is, “What do you speak about?” Here is a brief exercise to escape that narrowing trap:
What do you speak about (conventional reply)?
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What type of group do you usually speak to?
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Fill in each of the lines below with topics that answer each question.
• What components of your topic could form separate talks (e.g., listening skills are a component of “effective communications”)?
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• What aspects of the talk involve results that are independent of the talk (e.g., higher close rates are a result of a talk on “sales skills”)?
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• What questions usually arise from participants that you have to anticipate and constantly answer (e.g., “How do I influence my boss?” is always a question that demands a careful response when delivering a talk on “how to set priorities”)?
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• What visual aids do you use that most intrigue participants (e.g., your chart on the differing roles we play at home and at work is part of your work on “managing time”)?
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• Now, reviewing your responses in the preceding categories, list four kinds of groups that can profit from these topics in addition to the one you listed at the top.
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• Now let’s change the dreadful “What do you speak about?” to “What is your value proposition?” How are those groups better off once they’ve heard you in terms of professional and/or business improvement?
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I could go on, but in these 30 topics I’ve probably covered most of you. The critical issue is that “planning,” for example, is the same process whether it is used in a legal firm or a pharmaceutical company, although the content that is plugged into the planning process will be very different. However, I can successfully make these content adjustments as a consultant working on long-term projects, and I can easily make them during the course of a keynote or workshop. So can you.
In Figure 7-1, I’ve presented an example of mine that is process oriented.
In this example of effective actions, I’ve used a traditional double-axis chart to show that cause and effect are intertwined with past and future time frames.1 If you’re trying to remove the cause of a current problem (upper left), corrective action is necessary (e.g., fix the hole in the tire). If you merely want to circumvent the effects of the problem and not fix it (bottom left), then adaptive action is required (e.g., ride with a friend or use another car). If you want to prevent such a problem from occurring (or recurring) in the future, you take preventive action (upper right) intended to avoid it (e.g., check your tires periodically, buy new ones when appropriate, and keep the correct inflation). However, should all your plans fail and you have to deal with the effect of the problem in the future (bottom right), you’d want a contingent action in place to remove the effects (most probably a functioning spare tire in the trunk).
This relationship between cause and effect and the past and the future is applicable to virtually any personal or professional environment. (In manufacturing plants, engineers provide preventive maintenance on the machines; in hospitals, nurses constantly check vital signs to prevent complications; and in newspapers, reporters validate facts from several sources to avoid errors in news stories.)
Choosing your topics as a speaker is a self-limiting and arbitrary exercise based upon what you think you know about your abilities. The real issue is broadening your appeal. Ironically, if you’re relatively new to the business, you’re in a stronger position to identify broad processes because you probably have less to “unlearn.” But if you’re a veteran, you should invest time in “deconstructing” what you do to broaden its appeal.
I have a colleague in New England who listened to me speak on the value of processes and later told me that it had been a revelation.
“I had been doing a seminar on customer service for 10 years,” he said. “I could do it in my sleep. It was well received, but I hadn’t had the success in my business that I’d hoped, and frankly, my heart wasn’t really in that speech anymore. Having heard you, I realized that I had been insisting on delivering it in one format to one kind of business because I had begun using it in that kind of format and that kind of business when I was first hired a decade ago!”
Speaking Up: All of us can readily describe our content. Sadly, that content is a minuscule portion of the total value we’re capable of delivering in our processes.
People hire you to speak to their circumstances, on their turf, to their people, to meet their objectives. That makes sense. But since those circumstances, turf, people, and objectives differ widely from client to client, refusing to change the content of your talks to better convey your valuable processes makes no sense at all.
THE MYTH OF “SHELF LIFE” AND THE CREATION OF LONG-TERM INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
I had delivered a highly successful series of engagements around the country for Coldwell Banker on innovation and creative thinking. After the final one, the president of relocation services told me how much his people had benefited from the approaches.
“But tell me,” he said, “what kind of shelf life do these speeches have? I imagine you must have to change them fairly frequently to keep them fresh. That’s a pretty heavy investment for professional speakers, isn’t it?”
I stammered out some reply that glazed his eyes over because I wanted to avoid the cold, harsh truth: I had been delivering that speech in one form or another for 10 years, and I fully expected to continue to deliver it for another 10 years. Oh, my specific examples would change with each client, and my generic examples changed to reflect timeliness (you don’t want to use tape cassettes as an analogy when everyone is listening to downloads). He had found it fresh and timely. Isn’t that the only test?
Processes don’t change. There are speakers who make their living doing character portrayals of people such as Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin Franklin. One of the central reasons for the appeal of such historical figures is that the wisdom, wit, and lessons that they provide are as applicable today—if not more so—as they were the day they were first uttered. There are really relatively few things new under the sun. But the application of traditional ideas in the face of a changing world, new demographics, novel environments, increased stress, and new technologies is a constant challenge for the innovative speaker. Interpersonal sales skills were once a part of the repertoire of the Fuller Brush or Avon door-to-door salespeople, who have disappeared with the rise of dual-career couples and locked doors. But those same skills in varied forms are still applicable for retail salespeople, telemarketers, and assorted others. Conditions and environments change, but basic processes and skills do not.
Shelf life becomes a problem only when topics are inextricably entwined with some fixed event. If one’s topic involves quality and is woven around the Haitian earthquake disaster, it’s going to suffer from the disinterest caused by distance. However, using the current issues and challenges in the morning Wall Street Journal would solve that handily (as would examples from the client’s actual environment). We’ll talk more about this in terms of specific construction for speeches in the next chapter.
WHY YOU’LL SELDOM GET TOSSED OUT FOR USING COMMON SENSE
For several years early in my career, I was regularly worried that approximately 10 minutes into my speech, someone from the audience would stand up and shout:
“Why, that’s totally obvious! Why are you wasting our time with things we know quite well? Don’t you have anything new to say??!!”
After a few years of sharing what I came to believe were concepts and principles that everyone should already know, and not having been confronted or pulled physically from the stage, I learned a valuable lesson: most audience members don’t always know what you think is obvious, and even if they do, they don’t mind hearing it again.
In the series of Coldwell Banker keynotes I mentioned earlier, it was inevitable that some people would show up more than once because they carried dual titles, had qualified to attend the conventions several ways, or were changing roles. I tried to keep my material fresh and varied,2 but there was some unavoidable repetition. Yet no one ever said a word, nor did I or the buyer ever detect the inattention that follows “having heard this song before.” Finally, toward the end of my series, participants taught me an invaluable lesson.
After the keynote, several participants who had heard me before approached me.
“Why didn’t you tell the story about how you avoid speaking to people on airplanes?” asked one.
“Yeah, and you skipped the one about the time you couldn’t get room service.”
“I have to admit,” I said, “that I recognized some of you and wanted to eliminate some of the things you’d heard in prior sessions.”
“Don’t do that!” one of them shouted. “Those stories are what really make the points work. Every time we hear them, we get something new from them.”
Imagine, people were asking me to repeat stories that they had heard before! In my arrogance, I thought that I knew what was best for their learning and that it did not include repetition. I saw my job as having to be constantly fresh and entertaining. I was working harder than I needed to and achieving less than I wanted to.
When prospects watch videos of my prior speeches, I often expect them to say, “Do the same for us, but make the following adjustments for our industry, audience, and culture.” They usually don’t. They usually say, “If you can do that exact same thing for us, it will be terrific!” They expect that I have the native intelligence not to open a steel convention by saying, “It’s a pleasure to be here with so many accountants” just because that was the group on the video. Clients expect common sense, both in the content and in the process.
Of course, everyone knows that you should set objectives before considering alternatives in decision making. Yes, it’s obvious that you should handle most items only once if you’re trying to be effective at time management. We can all agree that self-esteem is based upon our achieving an accurate view of ourselves and not a distorted picture caused by old “baggage.” But apparently, we can’t hear any of that too often, particularly if it’s integrated into presentations that are unique, energetic, dynamic, and interesting.
Here are my guidelines for avoiding overcomplicating your topic and preventing “fear of shelf-life burnout”:
Do Not
• Hitch your topics to the latest fads.
• Depend on highly industry-specific examples.
• Radically rename the topic for each customer (modifications are okay).
• Use convoluted charts and diagrams.
• Portray your topic as the only way to achieve the result.
• Assume that the audience doesn’t know your topic or doesn’t already do it.
• Pretend that you invented it.
• Acknowledge that some of it may not be applicable to this audience.
• Confuse your ego needs with audience learning needs.
• Use others’ material, even if it’s not original with them.
• Imply that your audience is damaged in some way.
You won’t get tossed out on your ear if you’re honest about your work and your intent. There is little new under the sun, but you are in a position to help reinforce some important processes for talented, interested participants by presenting these processes in an engaging way that is relevant for the participants’ environment and circumstances.
Although I tend to use the corporate world as a frame of reference, note that the premises we’re discussing apply to education and youth, volunteer organizations, nonprofits and charities, international audiences, and public seminars as well as in-house groups, short keynotes, lengthy workshops, and virtually all other combinations of speakers’ “gumbo.”
Speaking Up: Common sense is in amazingly short supply. You will rarely get in trouble for suggesting that people ought to use their heads.
THE USE OF METAPHOR, VISUALS, AND PRAGMATIC CHANGE DEVICES
Sit on your hands. Go ahead. Prop the book open with another book or a stapler or a tire from the car. Okay, good.
Now, describe a spiral staircase. Go on. I’ll wait.
Well, I don’t have that long.
Even if you said, “It’s a staircase that climbs while describing a continuing circle around a common axis,” I’m still somewhat in the dark. But (you can release your hands now) if you merely made that corkscrew motion with your fingers, we’d all immediately relate.
Visuals—and metaphors are simply conceptual visuals—move conversations along, accelerate understanding, and galvanize interest. They dramatically increase your appeal and drive your point home.
One of my primary tenets is that when you’re 80 percent ready, you should move, planning to address the remaining 20 percent only if and when necessary. The final 20 percent, in your quest for perfection, requires a disproportionate share of your energy and investment. Moreover, the readers don’t appreciate that final 20 percent in the book, nor the audience in the speech, nor the observer in the art studio.
Figure 7-2 The “80 Percent Ready-Move” Dynamic
That took 69 words. But it looks like Figure 7-2.
You are always better off creating visuals, analogies, metaphor, synecdoche, and metonymy. This applies to your brand (“The Ultimate Driving Machine”—BMW), your marketing (“Bet you can’t have just one”—Lay’s potato chips), and your delivery (“It was as hot as Georgia asphalt in August”—from Blue Velvet).
I was facilitating at a Hewlett-Packard meeting for a small group of internal and external consultants who were struggling with an initiative that just wouldn’t get off the ground. They argued about research, and design, and field support, and conflicting priorities. It seemed as if the issue was so complex and ambiguous that it was hopeless.
So I drew a rudimentary rocket ship and said, “What you’re lacking is escape velocity. Let’s identify the elements holding us back.”
In short order I had the navigation devices (strategy), the fuel (management support), the stabilizers (stakeholder support), and the aerodynamics (streamline the mission and jettison lesser priorities). In the next month, people talked about the rocket achieving escape velocity and going into orbit, not the initiative per se or the obstacles. “It’s time to release the extra fuel tanks,” was an example of the new metaphor. People began putting small rockets on their desks.
If three fully loaded 747 aircraft crashed into the ground every day of the year, what do you think would result? Well, that calamity would equal the number of deaths caused by smoking—direct and indirect smoke—on average over the past few years. Why aren’t we equally outraged about that?
That paragraph made you think, as it would your prospects and your audiences. Liven up your speech and enrich your listeners, be they potential buyers or participants.
These devices arise regularly. One of the very newest as of this writing is, “There’s an app for that,” referring to the myriad applications available for Apple’s iPhone. The phrase has entered the vernacular. That’s worth a billion dollars in free advertising for Apple, and parallel uses are worth millions for you.
If you’re to be an object of interest for your customers, your audiences, your referral sources, and others, you must use colorful language, resonant examples, and crisp visuals. The danger in being a speaker is that we think that everything should be spoken! But the creation of “word pictures” and real pictures is essential to success in our craft.
Set people’s hearts racing.
15 IMMEDIATE EXPANSION SOURCES FOR YOUR SPEAKING BUSINESS
Here are some quick ideas to expand your speaking business:
1. Network with successful speakers. Don’t ask for business; just act like a peer. My first bureau business came from a speaker who was booked for the date and recommended me.
2. Create six speeches with appropriate benefits for the buyer and audience for each. Provide the buyer with this “choice of yeses.”
3. Pursue popular topics. The reason so many people speak about leadership, for example, is that it’s so important and so often poorly done. Create your own intellectual property and pursue it.
4. Codify your experience. As you learn things or even dream up things, put them in physical or electronic folders under categories. When you have critical mass in one of these folders, create a new speech or pursue a new market.
5. Speak at local events, chapters, and outlets of much larger organizations, and work your way up through the ranks. The local Red Cross operation may introduce you to the state organization, which might be a springboard to the national organization.
6. Offer pro bono talks to local trade groups that have a variety of businesses and professionals represented in the audience.
7. Volunteer to moderate a panel or facilitate a meeting for your community or a school.
8. If you belong to a club, offer to host an evening after-dinner for members who are interested in a given topic (strategy, marketing, sales, or some other area).
9. Offer yourself as a guest expert to the producers of local radio talk shows. (But do not pay to host one!)
10. Place sample audio and video segments of your speeches on your Web site, blog, and any other Internet outlets to which you have access.
11. Volunteer to be a guest lecturer at community colleges, local universities, trade schools, adult extension courses, and so on.
12. Create a blog and include provocative text, audio, and video postings about topics related to your value proposition, expertise, and speaking interests.
13. Create a free teleconference series—one per month of 45 minutes each—on topics that relate to your expertise. Use the Internet to promote it, and use the downloads for publicity.3
14. Let the convention or visitor’s bureau in your town and nearby towns know that you’re available as a backup if speakers miss their flights, are ill, or cancel for some other reason.
15. Volunteer to be master of ceremonies (emcee) at a public event, fund-raiser, or political debate.
There are a great many ways to become known, and it’s all too easy to be forgotten. Keep your name and talent in front of prospective recommenders and buyers.
SUMMARY
Content is what people do, but process is how they do it. Consequently, process is transferable (sales techniques are the same in real estate or auto sales, for example). The more you master processes, the more you will be flexible enough to be a speaker for many organizations and be hired by many buyers.
Because so many processes are constant (e.g., decision making or conflict resolution) and can be used in so many ways (face to face or through technology), there is no expiration date on their effectiveness, demand, or applicability. Therefore, your intellectual property can be lifelong if you focus on the process arena. If you focus on content, you will have obsolescence problems (no one is looking for vacuum tube experts these days).
Accentuate your appeal by using the tools of our trade: metaphor, analogy, and metonymy. Apply process visuals to accelerate understanding and learning. The best speakers speak less, not more. Focus on what the audience and the buyer need to know, not on a “topic” or a “speech.”
Expand your business by expanding your thinking.