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Vickie's Background
Vickie Sullivan is internationally recognized as the top market strategist for experts. Specializing in branding for high-fee markets, she has launched thousands of thought leaders since 1987. Ms. Sullivan is a popular speaker throughout the U.S. and Canada on why buyers buy in lucrative markets and strategies that position experts for those opportunities. Her market intelligence updates are distributed to experts in the U.S. as well as 17 other countries.
Ms. Sullivan has served twice on the editorial board for Professional Speaker Magazine, and currently serves as contributing editor for RainToday.com, a prominent community of 30,000 professional service firms. Her articles have been published in other publications such as Presentations and USA Today magazines and the Handbook of Business Strategy. Ms. Sullivan also has been quoted in mainstream media such as Fortune.com, The New York Times and Investor's Business Daily. Her work and views have appeared in books such as Secrets of Six-Figure Women by Barbara Stanney, Getting Started in Consulting by Alan Weiss and Mastering Work Less, Make More by Jennifer White.
Ms. Sullivan’s groundbreaking work has earned her an appointment on the Women's Leadership Board for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. As a former member of the mentoring committee, she has given three presentations to the student body there on personal branding and prominence.
Vickie opened the doors of Sullivan Speaker Services in February 1987, in search of experts who make the world a better place. With her background in positioning political issues, fundraising and creating a corporate speakers bureau for a non-profit healthcare association, Vickie found her niche in packaging the brilliance of experts to make a bigger impact. Want to know the inside scoop? Below are commonly asked questions about Vickie and her background.
How did your start in helping experts?
In my previous life, I worked on ballot campaigns for a health association in Arizona. I started out in public relations, establishing a speakers’ bureau and a rapid response system for media coverage for my organization. After a year or two, I moved to government affairs and spent a lot of time at the state legislature where I headed up grassroots efforts and made complicated political issues easy for people to act on.
After four years, I wanted to be an advocate for something else, a cause that would help more people. I saw an ad to be an agent and promoter for a personal growth speaker and got that job. Within a week, I knew I had found my passion: helping experts make money from their expertise. Within three weeks, I had begun working with two speakers full time. And the rest, as they say, is history…
So you began as an agent for professional speakers. Why did you decide to become a consultant to experts?
After selling experts for three years, I noticed trends no one else talked about. I would give advice to prospective clients about how to position their expertise based on this information, thinking they would hire me as their agent. Instead, a few adopted my strategies and hired a teenager to make sales calls. Until that happened, it never occurred to me that someone else could implement my ideas! So in 1990, I launched the strategy division under Sullivan Speaker Services Inc. By charging fees for branding and positioning, I didn’t take it personally if an expert wanted to build their empire without me.
Why didn’t you become a speakers’ bureau instead of an agent?
Bureau folks are great and I respect what they go through to get bookings. They are more focused on the buyers, the folks who hire speakers, than they are on the speakers. I wanted to focus on the experts themselves and work with those I felt passionate about.
Are you still an agent?
No, I gave up agenting for consulting full-time in 1998. It was a HUGE change for me personally. I loved being an agent, but found that my consulting clients generated three times more revenue by implementing my branding strategies themselves than what I could bring in working the phones for speakers. (I’m so bad at math, it took me almost a year to run the numbers and compare the outcomes.) I realized I would never be able to duplicate the results my branding clients were getting by dialing for dollars.
It was a tough decision, leaving the comfortable, steady work of agenting for short-term consulting projects. Yet it has turned out to be the best decision I ever made. Because of it, I now know how my clients feel as they hover in mid-air without a safety net.
What did you learn from making that change?
I learned that if I let go, I could find so much more than I had before just waiting for me.
How did you decide to start a business?
Decide? It never occurred to me to start a business. I just assumed a speaker would hire me. But once again, I benefited from a happy accident.
I had agented for speakers as an independent contractor for two years when my only client at the time decided to not pay the $25,000 in commissions she owed me. That taught me up-close-and-personal what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket.
I needed cash in a hurry, so I sent out 100 letters to speakers I knew announcing that I was available to take on new consulting clients. Unknown to me, many speakers knew that my work with a former client led to a tripling of her fee in six months. So within 24 hours of sending out my letter, my phone began ringing. And within a couple of weeks, my schedule was booked with four speakers. That’s how Sullivan Speaker Services was born.
What keeps you working with experts since 1987?
Two things: variety and research.
First, I love the variety of my work. No two clients are alike, so I’m never bored. And our gifts can be used in so many ways. What a client wants from their expertise points down a path that works uniquely for that person. The fun begins when I find that hole in the market that seems just perfect for my client's gifts. When you find the right place for people, the market reaction is just magical.
Second, I’m an information junkie. I love to learn and there are so many brilliant people out there to learn from. So clients get the help they need from me and I get to learn from them. A match made in heaven!!
What do you like the most about experts?
I love their optimism. There is no other profession more trusting in the human spirit as experts who are willing to share their gifts with others. I also admire their courage. Experts are willing to do what everyone else dreads – give of themselves and speak the truth. It’s a vulnerable place up there to be so open and public with their own voice.
What exactly do you do for your clients?
As a market strategist, I help them get more value out of their expertise. I intersect their message, linked to who they are, with what the marketplace wants. I live and breathe the marketplace so my clients can use the latest analysis to make business decisions about how their "expertise empire" can work for them. I also have tools and processes that help them implement that strategy and generate revenue quickly.
Bottom line: I make sure the marketplace serves the expert as much as the expert serves the marketplace.
Why is that important?
First, I believe in the power of reciprocity. When one person gives, he or she should also get. That exchange creates the tide that lifts all boats. Because many experts either aren’t clear about what they want or don’t think they can get it, they tend to settle for less.”
Second, everyone needs someone who believes in them, who is willing to show them the way. My job is to be their advocate, to make sure they get the best opportunities. And the best way to get what they want is to make sure their most profitable market values their expertise.
You advise experts on making changes to create more value for their target markets. What have you changed to offer additional value to your clients?
For many years, there were only two ways folks could work with me – (1) the “do it yourself” way through product development or (2) the “let Vickie do all the work” way through an intense “turbo-charge-me” project that defined the most profitable path to get there.
In 2001, I finally understood that many experts needed something in between these two. So, I’ve lightened up and have created more options. The in-depth project is still my most popular offer and my market assessment and strategic sounding boards help clients implement what I suggest. That's very rewarding.
The biggest change is how I’m working with clients on an ongoing basis on implementation issues, which has really helped my clients in this changing marketplace.
Yes, the world of expertise is changing. What lies ahead?
Two major forces have already turned the market on its ear – and I think the churning isn’t over yet.
First, experts who speak and write for free and bank on back-end product and service sales have many organizations believing they don’t need to pay experts. But attendees and readers are getting too used to being pitched, so I look for fewer experts to get good results from their pro bono speaking and writing.
Second, corporate America is investing in the power of personal brands, so I see more PR firms getting into the expert business both online and offline. This will create a redefinition of who is really an expert. Prominence has played a bigger part than substance. In this economy though, we are now ready for more substance.
Experts are going to have a harder time getting the best opportunities if they don’t get more compelling in both style and substance. And that’s where I do my best work!
There is more to life than business. Do you have hobbies or other interests?
When I got married in 1994, I discovered a life beyond working 24/7. My family is very involved in crafting, so I started there to find a hobby. Nothing really captured my passion until I stumbled onto scrapbooking in 2000. Now I’m addicted, and have made tribute scrapbooks for family members, annual memory books of our adventures and handmade cards. It’s a lot of fun and allows me to put my other passion – photography – to good use.
My husband Larry brought cats into my life, so now I have a "child that meows" Tigger. Between those two, my family and friends, my business and scrapbooking, my life is fabulously full.
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