There are a lot of speakers out there who have a great message, they have great content, a great presentation, all that stuff, but they still don’t get hired.
I’ve seen speakers who are great from the stage, they could win speaking competitions if they wanted, but they’re not getting hired to do keynote presentations. Why is that?
Most speakers tend to focus on their content.
They try to make a really great presentation, great slides, and everything else. They hear other speakers and secretly believe they’re better than them…of course they don’t say it, but they know that they’re a much better speaker than the guy on stage.
So why can a speaker, who has a great message, still have a hard time getting speaking engagements?
Think about it like this…
Lets say you’re going to buy a book online…you’re going to go on Aamzon and buy something new that you haven’t heard of yet.
Now you’re not going to buy a bad book on purpose.
You won’t say, “Hmm, let me find one of the worst books imaginable and buy that book.”
You’re going to say, “I want to find a really good book.”
But here’s the thing…how do you determine whether or not a book is good?
You’re on Amazon, you can’t read the entire book and then decide to pay. You have to pay for the book before you can read the entire thing.
So what do you do? You look at the reviews. Maybe you check the best-seller list. You can read a small portion of it like a chapter of however little Amazon lets you read, but you can’t read all of it.
Once you’ve checked out the reviews, maybe read a tiny portion of the book, checked out the table on contents, now you make a decision. Now you either buy the book or you don’t. If the book seems good then you buy it.
Here’s what I’m getting at…
You can’t be 100% sure a book is good until you read it. Clients can’t be 100% sure your message and your content is good untili they’ve already seen you speak.
But…
You still have to buy the book before you can truly say whether or not it’s a good book. And clients have to pay you before they can truly say whether or not you’re a great speaker.
The difference between you buying a book and a client hiring you as a speaker is that if the book sucks then you’re only out 7 bucks. But if the speaker sucks, then the client is out $10,000. So of course the client is going to pay much more attention to how they spend their money.
The difference is that you don’t need to be right when choosing a book. If it sucks then oh well. But the client needs to be right on the first try.
They’re playing a game of roulette with $10,000 on one number. When you’re buying a book, you’re playing roulette with $1 and it’s just on black or red.
The dilemma that every client is in is that they have to hire a great speaker. But they don’t know if the speaker is great until AFTER they’ve already paid the speaker. And this creates a lot of fear inside the mind of the client because nobody wants to hire a bad speaker.
Your message, your content, your presentation, is just like the book. Your message is all the written pages inside the book…but the client can’t sit down and read the entire book. They have to pay for it, then read it.
Lots of speakers think from their perspective to a point where they forget the client’s perspective.
The client doesn’t know you. They don’t know if you’re good or if you suck. And of course you’re going to tell them you’re good…every speaker is going to say they’re the best speaker for the event. Every speaker is going to say anything they possibly can to get the client’s $10,000.
And that’s why clients speak in a different language than speakers.
Speakers will say, “I have a great presentation for your conference. They’re going to leave with these 3 pieces of advice. Etc etc.” But what the client hears is, “I will say anything to you to get your money.”
It’s like when you’re at a bar and a guy approaches a girl. And then the guy says, “Hey can I buy you a drink?” Or he says something like, “Nice shoes.” Or whatever. The girl doesn’t hear those exact words.
All the girl hears is, “I want to have sex with you.”
That’s why a guy can say, “Hey can I buy you a drink?” And the girl will say something like, “I have a boyfriend.” Or, “Not interested.” It’s because is operating in a different language than the guy…and of course that’s what the guy wants anyways.
The same happens with a client. A client knows that if you’re a motivational speaker and they say they’re looking for a motivational speaker then you’re not going to say, “Hey to be honest, I’ve only spoken on 5 stages and my presentation isn’t nearly as good as it should be. So as much as I would love the $10,000, you’re probably better off going with another speaker.”
Speakers don’t say that.
They’re going to say, “Oh of course. I can give you one of the best presentations your audience has ever experienced.”
And that’s why clients ignore what you say. They might engage you but that doesn’t mean they’re listening to you.
It’s like a girl who says, “Yea you can buy me a drink.” She knows that the guy wants to have sex with her, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to.
I know this to be true because when I sent out an email to the list of speakers telling them about corporate gigs that I’m not available for and asked for speakers to respond, I got tons of responses and 99% of them weren’t ready.
They didn’t have video footage, their websites were horrible, and you could tell they were just starting…they weren’t prepared for a $10,000 gig.
Every client is scared they’re going to hire the wrong speaker. They’re scared that they’re going to spend a lot of money and the speaker is going to suck.
You have to remove this fear.
And the reason why speakers with great messages don’t get booked is because they confuse the quality of their message with the quality of their marketing.
If you took the Bible which is the number one selling book in the world, and you wrapped the Bible in a horrible cover that looked like a 2 year old did it…and then you put 1 star reviews of it online saying it’s the worst book imaginable, then the best selling book in the world would go by unnoticed.
It’s content might be great. But nobody would know because the marketing of it would be horrible. The things that surround it would do everything except the very thing it’s supposed to do and that’s to sell what’s inside of it.
That’s why I tell a lot of speakers to get into the business mindset.
They think that just because they have a great message and just because they have great content, they think that means they should be the speaker on the stage. But if you’re marketing doesn’t reflect how great your message is then nobody will hear it.
There’s this great experiment you might have heard about with this famous violinist named Joshua Bell. Joshua Bell normally plays in packed theaters with tickets selling for a whole lot of money.
Well one day, researches had Joshua Bell play his famous songs in a subway station…just like a street performer with his hat out for tips. And guess what happened? Nobody listened to him. People just walked by, some people threw in a little bit of change, but everyone pretty much ignored him.
And this is a guy who you have to pay hundreds of dollars to see. One of the most in-demand performers out there. And these people didn’t even notice the guy.
His content was great. It’s not like he played worse…he played the same songs. The only thing that changed was the frame around him. When the frame changed, the experience changed.
Speakers focus on their content, their message, when in reality they need to focus on their context. They need to focus on how they’re being framed because people do judge a book by it’s cover…we have to. There’s literally no other way we could operate without judging a book by it’s cover.
Take a look at the context around you.
That’s why the video testimonials we talked about in the last video are important. They help create this context around you. That’s why all social proof is important. It gets people to see the context so they have the chance to experience the content.
Imagine what it would look like if celebrities didn’t have context and they didn’t frame themselves.
Imagine if Michael Jackson went on stage, no lights, no glove, no fancy clothes, nothing except a microphone. All the lights are on, everything is just normal and there’s just a microphone on stage. And then imagine he starts to sing. He doesn’t dance, nothing fancy, no moonwalk, he just sings.
And imagine if every celebrity did that.
Imagine if you pay $200 for a concert and it just looks like a karaoke bar and the celebrity just sings.
You would technically be experiencing their content. Their songs are still the same, they still sing pretty good. But there wouldn’t be any context around them, there wouldn’t be any showmanship so it wouldn’t have the same feel and you wouldn’t go see concerts.
That’s what happens when you’re a speaker and you’re trying to get hired by your message alone.
When you come out and say your message is that you help change the world by getting people to believe in themselves more…what you’re doing is coming out on stage with no lights, no glove, no dancers, no nothing.
You’re coming out and saying, “You guys should pay me a ton of money just to hear me.”
But when you create the right frame around you, when you have the social proof, you get hired.
It’s important that you develop your context just as much as you worked on your message.
Get the video footage, get the video testimonials, get the speaker swag going on.
If you pay attention to all speakers then you’ll notice that everything is pretty much the same but it’s just said in different words.
But what’s different is the way they say it.
Larry Winget is the PitBull of Personal Development so he has an ‘in your face’ style. He has this frame around him where you see the social proof, you see all his videos and everything else but he also has a style to him.
If you want to get hired as a keynote speaker then you need to work on your image just as much as your message and your content.
That’s how you get hired and that’s how you get more speaking engagements.
Now in the next video we’re going to talk about how to increase your prices as a speaker.
It’s great to get speaking gigs but it’s even better when you’re getting paid a lot of money for those speaking gigs.
If you can go from charging $5,000 to charging $10,000 then you can do half the amount of gigs but make the same amount of money. Or you can do the same amount of gigs and instantly double how much you’re making, without doing anything extra other than increasing your prices.
But increasing your prices is easier said than done.
And in the next video I’m going to tell you the process I personally used to go from charging $200 to getting over $10,000.