Transcript:
A lot of speakers struggle to get booked on stages.
They know their presentation is great, they know they’re worth the money, and no matter how much marketing they seem to do, for some reason, they’re not getting hired to speak.
But then there are other speakers who just keep getting on stages. You might have checked their websites and didn’t think it was all that great. Maybe you’ve heard some of their content and thought it was good, but you realized that yours is just as good. And you’re just left wondering, why are they getting booked?
So what’s the deal?
Why do a lot of speakers struggle?
I’m going to tell you the main reason why a lot of speakers can’t seem to get their speaking business of the ground.
Some speakers have been in the industry for over 10 years and still aren’t speaking as much as they would like or charging what they want. And what they don’t realize is that it’s almost always because of this problem.
Whenever we have a problem, it’s not very obvious to us because we don’t have perspective.
So I’m about to give you perspective on this problem of why most speakers struggle to get hired.
Imagine two speakers.
One speaker is getting on stages. He’s getting hired to speak. And the other speaker is just the opposite, he’s not getting hired to speak no matter how much he tries.
What do you think is the difference?
Really think about it.
You might think that the speaker who’s getting booked has better marketing materials. Maybe they have a better website, better videos, all that stuff. But that’s not the case.
There are lots of speakers who get booked and they don’t even have a website or they have a horrible website that looks like it was built when the internet first came out.
Of course the marketing materials help a lot, but that’s not the root of the problem.
We have to get to the root of the problem to really find a solution.
So what do you think the difference is?
I’ll give you a hint…
The questions they ask themselves are completely different.
The speaker who isn’t getting speaking gigs is asking, “How do I book speaking engagements? How do I get speaking gigs?”
And the speaker who stays booked asks questions like, “Where am I flying to next? Did we send the contract?” Etc.
Now let me explain what I mean because some people might think I’m referring to positive thinking.
What I’m NOT saying is that you can book gigs by believing you can. That’s not how it works. You don’t just say, “Today I’m going to book 5 speaking gigs.” And just believe it will happen. That’s not what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is that the quality of questions change.
The reason speakers struggle to get booked is because they don’t know their process.
Edward Demming said,
“If you can’t describe your process then you don’t know what you’re doing.”
The speaker who isn’t getting booked can’t describe their process for getting on stages. And it’s reflected in the question they ask themselves. The question of, “How do I get speaking engagements?”
That question says, “I’m not sure what actions to take every single day to get hired. I don’t know what I should be doing right now that’s going to book me a speaking gig.” That’s what that question suggests.
But the speaker who books gigs, he asks questions that are suggests he already knows his process.
You can only ask the question, “Where am I flying to next” if you’ve already done the thing that booked you the gig. You can only ask, “Who do we send the contract to” if you’ve already engaged in the actions that produce the result. And that means you know how to book gigs.
It means that you have a clear understanding of your process.
And by ‘process’…I mean that you know what to do ever single day to get booked.
The number one question speakers have is, “How do I get speaking engagements?”
Now there are several problems with this question because it’s not specific enough but at the root of the question, it suggests that you don’t know your process.
There are several ways you can book speaking engagements.
A step up from that question is to be more specific. To say something like, “How do I book speaking engagements using PPC?”
That’s more specific and now someone can actually give you specific actions to take.
But the place where you want to be at is to know your process.
You have to know what to do the second you wake up in the morning…and of course you have to get yourself to do it.
But you have to know that if you contact 50 people per day, then you’re going to book 4 gigs per month, or whatever that number is.
You have to know where you’re going to find those 50 people per day to contact. Which website will you go to in order to find events? You have to know what you’re doing to say to them whether it’s on the phone or in an email.
And you have to know what to do if they say something like, “We already have speakers for this event.” Or what to do if you call and they don’t answer because now you have to put them into a call-back section.
Then you have to know what to do if they say yes. If they say they need a speaker like you and want more information. You have to know what questions to ask. You have to know everything.
And that’s just one process.
Maybe you ask a better question than, “How do I get speaking gigs” and you ask “How do I get speaking gigs using PPC?”
Well now the process changes.
Now you have to know how to find the right keywords. How to bid on those keywords. How to keep track of your campaigns, How you’re going to split test ads, how you’re going to keep track of the amount you spend versus the amount you’re making of the campaigns.
One big thing a lot of speakers do wrong when it comes to PPC is they don’t know if they’re getting gigs through the PPC or if they’re getting gigs because of other things they’ve done. It’s because they’re not tracking it.
You have to know your process and what you’re doing to get booked.
If you don’t know your process then you’re not getting booked. That’s why speakers struggle to get on stages.
In the SpeakPro Academy, you get the process for getting on stages…and I mean everything. That’s why I created the SpeakPro Academy. The purpose was to give speakers the day-to-day activities to get on stages. In the beginning of SpeakPro, it’s all about creating the marketing materials.
Once you have the marketing materials, now you start to get your process down so you know what you’re doing.
Your process is important.
Think about how ridiculous is would be if Tony Robbins woke up and said, “I wonder how to get speaking gigs today?”
If he didn’t figure out a process then he wouldn’t be where he’s at.
The way you know you have a process is if you can tell someone what to do and they can duplicate your results.
Imagine you hired someone right now to do the work for you and to book your speaking gigs. And imagine they worked full time. What would they do throughout the day? What specific activities?
If you have a process then you would answer that question by saying something like, “Well they would go to this website, look at the events, find events with over 100 people, contact this person, say this. If the person says this then they do this. If the person says this then they do this.”
That’s what a process is.
If you can imagine someone working for you and you can give them specific tasks to accomplish that get you booked then you have a process. But if you can’t then that’s why you’re not getting on stages.
You have to be clear in your own mind before you can create the reality outside of it.
So how do you create your process?
Well you can just get someone else’s process like what you would do if you joined the SpeakPro Academy.
Or you can create your own which would take a lot longer.
And the way you create your own is to figure out one way you think would work when it comes to getting speaking gigs.
Lets take cold calling as an example.
If you contacted tons of people every single day then you would probably get at least one person to book you…depending on your marketing materials of course. The better your marketing materials, the less calls you have to make before you get booked.
But at least you know that if you made a million phone calls then at least ONE person has to say yes.
Well that’s the beginning part of creating your process. You know it’s going to work.
Now comes the details.
Now you have to be clear about what you’re going to say when you’re on the phone with them. Then you have to write out what steps you’re going to take if they don’t answer. What steps are you going to take if they say, “Send us your information.” And I don’t mean that you just send them information. I mean what follow-up will you implement. Will you just send them information and never contact them again or will you contact them 2 weeks later.
Then you have to be clear about what questions you’re going to ask when someone’s interested. You have to be clear about what you’re going to do when someone asks how much you charge.
You have to create steps.
And then you want to write down what those steps are so when you hire someone, they can easily follow it and produce the same results you’re getting.
Now there are much more effective ways to get gigs than to cold call but that’s just an example.
You figure out your process by sitting down and doing it, seeing what works, what doesn’t, and refining it.
That’s why telemarketers have scripts.
If you watch the movie Wolf Of Wall Street where Jordan Belfort is selling stocks, you’ll see that he created a script that works. And he takes people who don’t know how to sell and turns them into rockstars because they follow his process.
He tells them to say this, then say that, then do this, and do that. He’s very clear about what they should and shouldn’t be doing.
And of course you can have a process for cold calls, for Facebook marketing, for Twitter marketing, for PPC, and even a process for getting referral gigs.
In fact, my best process is in week 8 of the SpeakPro Academy where I talk about the Loop System. It basically describes how to turn one speaking gig into multiple gigs.
Most speakers speak at an event and basically pray for referrals. Some of them might ask but that’s about as far as they go.
I’ve turned it into a full-blown process for getting referrals and spinoffs.
When I show up to an event, I do specific things before I’m ever on stage. After I’m done speaking, I do specific things that get me tons of spinoff gigs. And I have a process for getting referrals by the right people.
A lot of speakers say they book gigs through word of mouth but they don’t even have a process for it. 99% of speakers who say they get gigs through word of mouth aren’t getting gigs. The reason they say it’s word of mouth is because they don’t know their process…they don’t actually know how to get booked.
I have a process for word of mouth and it’s my most powerful process.
Nothing’s left to chance.
Don’t go about your day leaving things to chance.
Be very clear about what you want and be even more clear about the specific actions you need to take to get there.
Know your process and you will stay booked.
In the next video we’re going to talk about the single most important thing that’s going to get you hired really fast.
It’s the one thing that you must use if you’re not getting on as many stages as you want and it’s easy to get. So make sure you watch the next video.