One of the first things you should do to improve your speaking career in 2017 – Douglas Vermeeren, The Speaking Business Multiplier

One of the first things you should do to improve your speaking career in 2017

Douglas Vermeeren, The Speaking Business Multiplier

When it comes to a new year everyone is thinking about fresh beginnings, resolutions and setting goals for how they want their life and business to look in the upcoming year. most of the speakers that I come into contact with are setting goals about how many stages they’d like to speak on, which new products they are going to launch, maybe even declaring goals to speak in far away countries that they’ve never visited yet and many are even thinking about how they will increase their income. While these are all valuable and exciting things to think about there is something that I think will help build your speaking business more than any other business goal, product launch or world tour…

Would you like to know what it is? If you’ve been following me for any length of time you know how I believe that the foundation of everything in your speaking business will come back to creating powerful content.  But there is a part of creating powerful content that is often overlooked. If you get this part right then everything else in your speaking business, including the content will come together more easily and all the goals that you’ve been thinking about will fall more easily into place. Well, enough of the suspense. Here it is:

You need to get talking to your audience. In specific you need to connect with individuals in your audience. You first goal will be to discover what challenges they are currently struggling with and which ones they foresee coming in the year. You need to be able to identify how you can best be of service and how your skills, knowledge and tools will best benefit the marketplace.

Some of the key ways I do this in my business are the following:

1)I start with my most profitable and loyally clients. Those that are most profitable for you and most loyal are the audience members you want to keep with you. They are also the kind of people you want to duplicate in your business. It’s a simple reflection of the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule. You don’t need to or ant to serve everyone. You need to find and nurture those who are best positioned to help your business grow. By focusing on the leaders in your tribe you can get the best sense of the needs of the tribe. Your leaders are dialled in and as pioneers they know what’s really going on. If you haven’t identified them that’s your first bit of homework. You need to explore such questions as:

What are their goals for 2017?

What were the biggest challenges of 2016? And what are you doing about it?

What changes are happening for you that will effect your marketplace?

Who are the emerging leaders this year in your industry? Why?

What are the important issues facing you and your business this year?

What is the new products, services and tools you are bringing to market?

What will you need to learn to do that successfully?

What efforts worked really well last year that you will duplicate again?

What efforts did not work?

Naturally these seem like very business oriented connections and I’m sure many of my students who are more focused on the healing arts and heartfelt teachings are thinking that these questions will never work with my people. That may be true but you can always create variations of these questions. Especially when working with individuals who are trying to gain clarity to begin with.

Even those in the healing modalities have clear goals and can identify many of the needs they are trying to solve.

Back to the business conversation for a second. I have found that my top students that I want to interview appreciate these kinds of explorative conversations and questions a lot. In fact, when I am asking for the interview I position it as a strategy session where they will gain and at the same time I am able to do my research.

2) Survey the group. In addition to one on one conversations to discover what my top students are wanting to learn and receive support with I share a survey with my first few audiences of the year and often I will even send out the survey to those in my database. (I actually create a contest for people to get them back to me.) The surveys work really well.

Here’s an example on one I use:

I find that by using a survey especially at the beginning of my events has been very valuable. In addition to helping me gather information it also works as a teaching to tool to get my students thinking about things they need in their business. (But that’s another conversation) For now I want to point out something which you’ve already discovered by a quick look through. It gives me an idea of what students want to learn more about, what they’ve spent over the last while, what they are willing to spend and more. I encourage you to create your own surveys to use to get to know your audience better.  (By the way if you go to my Youtube channel there is a really short video on some additional benefits of using a survey. Check it out.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ3FpuXGieM )

3)Talk to your competitors. This may sound crazy but one of the most valuable tools I use in understanding my audience is to look at what my competition is doing and also talk with them. I have a relatively positive relationship with nearly all of my competitors and the one thing I have noticed without variation is that they love to talk about their business and tell me what their doing. Maybe its a feeling that they want to let me know they are smarter than me, doing better than me, more unique than me or whatever. That’s okay. I love them telling me about what they are up to and often it confirms I am on the right track or gives me new ideas or reveals things that they may be missing that I can take advantage of. I am sure they feel the same way that I do when they talk with me. I don’t want this paragraph to sound like I am trying to be engage in corporate espionage. Truthfully these discussion are often more of a collaboration that an investigation. But I am always paying very close attention. How are your relationships with your competitors? If you are afraid to boldly call them up at least add them as friends on Facebook and you can see what they are doing.

(And I never worry about competition because MASTERY = MONOPOLY and I know most of the other people training speaking are doing other stuff on the side. That’s the secret of why I’m getting such high rating everywhere. This is ALL I focus on. )

All in all the purpose of this post is to really help you understand the importance of dialling into the conversation of what your audience really wants, what’s happening in your marketplace and to help you recognize any areas you should be focusing on this year. If you can uniquely fill a void, deliver high value and service your audience better than anyone else all the other stuff that I spoke about in the first paragraph of this article most speakers thinking about will fall into place.

BEST OF LUCK IN 2017! REMEMBER YOU ARE BRILLIANT! NOW IS YOUR TIME!

 

Douglas Vermeeren,

The Speaking Business Multiplier

Are you ready to level up your speaking business? Douglas Vermeeren is the Speaking Business Multiplier. You can only teach others if you’ve done it yourself and his tool are helping speakers: Create highly profitable speaking businesses, Position themselves as experts, Attract media attention, Get publishing deals, Get more speaking gigs, Speak internationally and JV with other top names in the business. The Speaking Business Multiplier has done this and more and now his systems and secrets can be yours. His clients include beginning speakers all the way to movie and music celebrities, professional and Olympic athletes, top business leaders and other speakers just like YOU! He has been consistently rated by the media as the top speaker trainer in the world today with the most comprehensive and powerful tools available. Other trainers stop at presentation skills while Vermeeren is the only one who helps you build the speaking business systems that you need for success. Come find out why all the top speakers are working with him! http://www.DouglasVermeeren.com

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