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Our training clients include:
Seminar and Event Promoters
What is the opportunity? Seminars, conventions, and trade meetings are promoted every day in every city in America. Some are for general business people in the local area. Others are regional or national meetings for specific industries. Still others are on specific topics such as “marketing” that strategy can fit into. Still others are for the general public teaching them how to become entrepreneurs, get out of debt, lose weight, find romance, or start some type of business. Still others offer several day workshops on any of these topics. where you can be one of a groups of speakers on a variety of related topics.
Why are promoted events important? This is the beating heart of the speaking business. These event promoters are in business for one reason: to make money. It doesn’t matter if the event is put on by some a regional trade organization or a “for-profit” seminar group, all of them are about making money. All of them charge in some way for access to their community (usually through booths at trade shows), but all of them also need interesting new content to attract attendees. Once you get accepted into the promoted events circuit and build up credentials in terms of making money for promoters, your future as a speaker is assured.
Within a specific vertical market or industry, presenting at these events can create speaking and training engagements in areas outside of your region, but within a vertical market. We encourage you to develop vertical expertise in teaching, but let us know so we can promote your market position and amend you agreement accordingly. All our agreements start out local though we encourage you to grow them into verticals if you desire.
Where do you find these groups? You should ask all your business customers about the events in their industry. Even with just one customer, you can be put in contact and get a recommendation to an event planner. If you develop expertise in your area providing strategy training to a given industry, you have a natural entrée to promoted events in that industry. You should also check the trade magazines for seminars being offered in specific businesses areas. You can also contact through local meeting planners at hotels with convention facilities, city convention centers, and so on. (See Convention and Visitors Bureaus below). You should also check “entrepreneur” magazines for those offering seminar programs in your area.
How to you get invited to speak? First, you must understand the event promoters’ revenue model. Do they pay speakers? Do they expect people to speak for free? Do they share revenue with speakers? Do they charge speakers for room time and equipment? Do they require speakers to buy a booth? All of these models are out there and you don’t know what model a given promoter is working under until you ask someone who knows. At a given event, more than one model may be used. Speakers in the general session may be paid, but speakers in the break out rooms make operate for free, selling their product or services.
You can either ask the promoter directly how they operate, but it is better if you can contact someone who has spoken or who is going to speak at the event. Obtain a past or future brochure for the event and get the speaker’s names. Give them a call and mention that you saw that they are speaking and ask them about it. Contact more than one type of speaker.
The next step is sending a book and a letter (not email) to the promoter introducing yourself. You must make it clear why people at their event would find a presentation in the science of strategy interesting, and that it is something very different than what most people teach about strategy. Representing yourself as a member of the Science of Strategy Institute gives you credibility.
You must emphasize the number of talks you have given at all levels, but ideally at businesses and colleges. Speaking to unaffiliated and affiliated organizations gives you little credibility.
Virtually all event organizers and promoters, use some speakers who leverage their speaking opportunity to promote (which is a fancy way of selling “sell”) themselves, their products, and services. Most speakers are speaking for free to get their businesses better known, even if they are not selling a product as such.
More and more of these event organizers make money from splitting product sales with these speakers. The speakers who make this work are those who know how to present their training so that the entire audience gets good value out of the presentation and enough of the audience buys the speaker’s product to make it worth the speaker’s time. The event promoters who make this work are selective about the speakers they hire.
For promoters that share in product sales, you must tell them your ratio of attendees to sales dollars. Tell them what percentage you can afford to give them of total sales. You make the case with dollars and sense. Don’t be shy about this. All event promoters are in business to make money. Your seminars must generate money for the seminar promoter.
Initially, you must be willing to accept a “break out session” room which has only a part of the audience that your topic draws. Over time, you want to get into the “general audience” stream where you are on the big stage and talking at all attendees.
How do you make money? Again, it depends on the nature of the event. In the best ones, you make money by selling your products at the back of the room and either keeping all the money (because you are speaking for “free”) or splitting it with the seminar promoter. Speaking for a fee can actually be less profitable than selling products at a big event because, when you take a fee, you cannot usually directly promote products. However, depending on the event and, you may even be willing to speak free at these events even when you cannot directly sell products at the back of the room. You do this to establish a track record, get a reference, and for making contacts within your own industry.