Article: $peaking for Dollar$
For Presentations Magazine, October 2002
By Vickie K. Sullivan
Want to make the transition from respected industry expert to highly paid professional speaker? It takes more than stage presence and funny stories to break in.
You’re the industry star, the one who always gets asked to do the high-risk presentations for your company. For years you’ve given workshops and seminars at state and national association events and trade shows. Each year you get return invitations, rave reviews and long rounds of applause. And each year you see highly paid keynoters on the program and think, “I could do that.” Indeed, you’d love to do it.
Perhaps it’s time to quit giving away your expertise and get paid for it. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Maybe. Maybe not.
The transition from being an expert who speaks for visibility to being a highly paid professional speaker is not as glamorous as you may think. Many talented orators have tried and failed, only to return, disillusioned, to their “real” jobs or businesses. Why? Because too many people believe that having great speaking skills is all it takes to be a professional speaker.
An all-too-common mistake
It’s easy to make that assumption. After all, many veterans of the speaking industry launched their careers by just being good. When the profession was young, the number of events exceeded the number of speakers. If you were good, the word spread fast. Invitations flowed in without much marketing effort.
Not any more. The speaking profession has matured into a competitive, sophisticated business. Now there are far more speakers than audiences, and veteran professional speakers must contend with athletes and celebrities for the most coveted (and highest-paying) spot on the program: the keynote address.
It’s not impossible to make money or develop a second career on the speaking circuit; it just takes more work than most people imagine. The following are four critical hurdles many rookies fail to recognize before it’s too late.
HURDLE NO. 1:
From workshops to keynotes
Because of tight budgets and more interest from nonprofessional speakers, most concurrent sessions and teaching seminars at association conventions and trade shows are filled with vendors, members and other nonpaid experts. Therefore, to get the big fees – or any fee at all – you must compete in the keynote or general-session market.
A keynote speech and a session workshop are two completely different animals. Many rookies assume they can use the same presentation that works so well in the classroom, add a few more stories, and – poof – a keynote is born. You will make this mistake only once, and if you live through it, you won’t make it again.
That’s because a keynote speech is not a short training session with funny stories. Rick Butts, a professional speaker who switched to keynotes from training in1998, advises the potential keynoter to rethink their entire presentation. “The content of a keynote needs to be simple, direct and tied together,” says Butts. “You’ve got to rip out 80 percent of your information from a training session and replace that information with illustration and application.”
It's not impossible to make money or develop a second career on the speaking circuit. It just takes more work than most people imagine.
Another big change: your stories. No matter how good your stories are in the workshop setting, keynotes require stories that are tighter, lighter and more relevant. “You have to refine the stories you tell,” says Butts. “They can be long in a training session, but must be very tight in a keynote. You don’t expand the stories like you do in training, you crystallize them.”
Remember, in a keynote address you have a much shorter time with the audience – usually about 45 minutes. Consequently, story-telling takes the place of diagramming. Humor takes the place of case-study exercises. Even the role of visuals changes. Do you depend on PowerPoint technology to keep you on track? Don’t do it in a keynote, Butts advises. “PowerPoint is a temptation, a crutch. In a keynote, you are into entertaining. You are the visual.”
HURDLE NO. 2:
The selection process
To speak somewhere you have to get invited, and most speaking invitations are extended by the decision of a committee. Furthermore, the criteria for selecting a keynoter are entirely different from those used to select workshop speakers. If a speaker bombs in a workshop, people may grumble but no one gets hurt. But if a keynote speaker makes even a minor mistake, those who hired the person take the blame. Because the risk of failure is much higher in a keynote, planners are much choosier about who they hire. Assuming the selection criteria are the same can be a fatal mistake.
Program committees that focus on expertise and content usually choose nonpaid speakers for regular workshops and seminars. They base their decisions on the more objective criteria of content, teaching methods and speaker experience. Keynote selection is where identity, visibility and reputation rules. And because the hiring decision is more subjective, indirect marketing approaches such as referrals and sponsorships work best for keynotes. Rookies who submit proposals with page-long topic descriptions hardly ever make the first cut.
Speakers bureaus – companies that help find speakers for groups – play a big role in keynote-speaker selection as well. But don’t depend on bureaus to be your marketing department. Bureaus tend to focus on the name speakers who bring in the most money, and if you’re not a packaged expert with all the professional credentials, you won’t even be considered.
HURDLE NO. 3:
Forming an identity
You thought all of the certificates, awards and long hours in the trenches would position you as a respected expert, right? Forget about them if you want the keynote shot. What keynote buyers care about is how much marketing muscle you bring to the table. Have you built a high-profile company everyone knows about? Have you climbed Mt. Everest three times or survived cancer and gone on to win the Tour de France? Are you doing break-through work with cutting-edge companies? Does The Wall Street Journal quote you as an expert in your field? In the keynote market, how visible and marketable you are and how well you’ve been received by other audiences matters more than your credentials or content.
Joelle Hadley, publisher of The Business Journal of Phoenix, has hired more than 30 keynote speakers for company events. “We don’t even look at certifications,” she explains. “We ask ourselves, ‘Does this person have the background that matches the audience? Is he or she unique enough? Did the demo video catch me right away?’”
Does your message matter? Of course – especially if it gets you on “Oprah” or the best-seller list. But a general discussion of “hot topics” won’t cut it. You need a unique identity with a point of view the market is willing to embrace. For many, this means a complete identity overhaul: a new bio and marketing materials, fresh topics and descriptions, a memorable marketing look – everything related to the packaging and selling of you.
National Speakers Association member Mike Hourigan noticed a big change in interest from speakers bureaus when he decided to focus his wide training background into a new identity – “workplace commentator.”
Your long list of previous speeches may be impressive on a proposal, but they won't get you the keynote slot in today's competitive market.
“I had to get outside help to discover what was unique about me and turn that uniqueness into a specific identity the market would buy,” Hourigan explains. It worked. Within 24 hours of communicating this new focus, six bureaus expressed interest in his speaking.
HURDLE NO. 4:
Get a demo video
The marketing tools of the seasoned keynote speaker are also different. Those proposals you wrote to land workshop sessions won’t work in the professional speaking market. The tools of the keynote trade are demonstration videos, promotional “one-sheets” and, of course, Web sites with a focus on identity and ideas.
Your long list of previous speeches may be impressive on a proposal, but they won’t get you the keynote slot in today’s competitive market. Buyers want to sample before selecting, so be prepared to give them a 10 minute video of your best material. Don’t even consider having your cousin record it with his hand-held camcorder. This must be a professional shoot with broadcast-quality sound and video or film – and edited by a pro.
Use the same high standard for your collateral materials, including one-sheets – glossy brochures that must be first class all the way. Big-fee speakers use four-color printing, professional photography and expert copywriting to explain why buyers must select them. Anything less than high-quality professional and you don’t look as though you’re worth the fee you charge. Ditto for your Web site.
Be prepared to invest
All of this takes lots of work and money, to be sure. Marketing consultant Debbie Bermont has been conducting breakout sessions and seminars since 1993, but when she decided to start competing in the keynote market, she knew she had to invest in herself. “I did most of the work myself and still spent thousands of dollars to redo all of my promotional materials and Web site,” Bermont says. She estimates that the effort took close to 500 hours.
If you’re not yet ready for the big-fee keynote venues, however, you can still make money training and keynoting for small associations. Not all groups can afford celebrity speakers, so plenty of opportunities exist if you will accept $5,000 or less per speech.
Many organizations also have corporate “universities” that use outside experts on a wide variety of topics. Sales departments have “sales schools” as well as quarterly and annual sales meetings. Executives use outside firms for their training, coaching and consulting development.
Associations are also open to hiring speakers who will draw a crowd (and high registration fees). If you have high visibility within an industry, think about joining forces with an association for a pre- or post-conference workshop. With formats ranging from half days to full days, these workshops have a separate registration fee that the association splits with the speaker.
Competition is stiff in these venues, so you still need to market your programs. Having a quality demo video is expected even in lower-fee markets, along with one-sheets and Web sites. If you don’t have these tools yet, consider the training option. You can continue to polish your skills and refine your content there before making the big investment in splashy videos and four color brochures.
Do you have what it takes?
Given the formidable obstacles, can mere mortals become big-fee speakers or in-demand professional gurus? Of course. Remember, the Tony Robbins’ and Tom Peters’ of the world were all regular Joes at one time. If you have a passion to get your message out and share what you’ve learned with others, and are willing to do what’s required to make it happen, you can make your mark on the world – and get paid for it.
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Since 1987, Vickie K. Sullivan, President of Sullivan Speaker Services, has generated millions of dollars in speaking fees, book advances and ancilliary income for her clients. Sign up for her free market intelligence at http://www.SullivanSpeaker.com
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