"Annual revenue increased by a factor of 8X"

Joe came into the program undercharging and under-earning. Listen to his story above. 
Highlights: 

"Made my investment in your program back in 3 weeks"

"Clarity on how to make $10,000 a month and then $20,000 a month"

"I've had a $20,000 WEEK"

"Annual revenue increased by a factor of 8X" 

"Revenue already booked into next year is up 5X"

"Raised my fees from $750 to $5,000 and up"

At Do It! Marketing, we help speakers, consultants, and experts to simplify their speaking-driven business, boost their impact and increase their income by $15K-$25K per month (or more) faster than they ever thought possible.

If that’s something you’re interested in, reach out and schedule a free speaker strategy call with our team at www.doitmarketing.com/call 

On the call, we'll help you get total clarity on the business model, speaking model, and revenue model you really want, how to create it by reaching the exact clients and audiences who matter, and how to fix what's not working right now with your positioning, packaging, marketing, prospecting, outreach, and sales so that you improve your results FAST. 

Go to www.doitmarketing.com/call and we'll craft a plan to help you speak more profitably. 

At Do It! Marketing, we help speakers, consultants, and experts to simplify their speaking-driven business, boost their impact and increase their income by $15K-$25K per month (or more) faster than they ever thought possible.

If that’s something you’re interested in, reach out and schedule a free speaker strategy call with our team at www.doitmarketing.com/call 

On the call, we'll help you get total clarity on the business model, speaking model, and revenue model you really want, how to create it by reaching the exact clients and audiences who matter, and how to fix what's not working right now with your positioning, packaging, marketing, prospecting, outreach, and sales so that you improve your results FAST. 

Go to www.doitmarketing.com/call and we'll craft a plan to help you speak more profitably. 

 Watch this video:

What is the best motivational speaker training? Hmmmm...  OK it's two things. The best motivational speaker training is NOT about being a great speaker. It's about the business. I'm going to give you both: The speaking answer AND the business answer.

The speaking answer, and I'm a firm believer in this, as much as I love Toastmasters, as much as I love public speaking coaches, all of that is great, but if you're just a regular consultant, speaker, coach, trainer, and you want to really ramp up the quality and quantity of your speaking, my firm belief is that you need two and only two things.

Number one is expertise. Deep, significant, thought leadership expertise. Have an opinion, have an idea, have a slant on your topic. Don't just be a book report speaker, but have deep expertise on the philosophies, methodology, training, practices, action steps around your topic. Expertise is number one.

The second thing is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm. You have to be excited about your topic. You have to be excited to spread the word. You have to be excited about helping and serving your audiences and your clients.

Those two things, on the speaking side, will take you miles and miles and miles ahead. So, speaking skill, to me, is really about expertise plus enthusiasm.

Let's talk about the real training you need, which is the business training. Business training on the marketing side, positioning, packaging, messaging, sales, prospecting, getting in the door, negotiating, closing the deal, that's the kind of thing that you need to become much better at. Because if you don't get any at bats, you don't get any prospects, you don't get any leads, you don't make any sales, you don't show up on any stages, then all of those speaking skills that you have become completely irrelevant.

So, I've got some web training for you. It's waiting for you here. 

It is all about the second half of that motivational speaker training, which is the MBA of the speaking business. Everything that you need to be more successful at the business side of speaking. I'll see you over there. Remember, motivational speaker training has three parts: expertise, enthusiasm, and most important - the marketing, sales, and the business chops to get it done.  

How to get speaking engagements. I wonder: How do you get speaking engagements? All right, let's break this down at the macro level. Macro level how to get speaking engagements. How do I get speaking gigs? The first thing that you have to work on is clarity. It's clarity around a couple of questions. Number one, what people do I serve and number two what problems do I solve?

Let's dig into that.

A lot of speakers make the mistake, if they're a leadership speaker, sales speaker, communications skills speaker, career development speaker, everyone needs to be a better leader.

Everyone needs to be better at sales.

Everyone needs to upgrade their career.

Well the problem is, everyone doesn't buy.

Everyone doesn't have conferences, conventions, and meetings.

Everyone is very hard to sell to. Everyone doesn't have a credit card. Usually everyone, whoever "everyone" is doesn't even have pants or a wallet. You're going to have a very hard time selling to everyone.

What you want to do is find a set of specific someones. Find a set of specific someones. Is it architects? Is it accountants? Is it engineers? Is it solopreneurs? Is it mid-level managers? Is it CEOs?

You want to find a specific tribe of people that have common traits, behaviors, interests, wants and needs. Once you've identified that target market, I also sometimes call this your buyer persona.

The second thing you have to think about, what are the problems that they're looking to solve when it comes to your area of expertise?

In order to sell fire extinguishers, you first have to show the fire. Let's talk about what are the pains, problems, headaches, heartaches, challenges, and gaps that your specific audience and clients are wrestling with that they need to solve via your speaking, seminars, workshops, coaches, consulting, et cetera.

Once you've gotten the answer to those two questions, now you're ready for step three.

Step three is specific, targeted, prospecting. Go online. Spend some time researching the specific conferences, associations, and groups where these people are already gathering. Read their blogs. Go to those same portals and communities and online sites. Facebook groups. LinkedIn groups. Where your target market is already gathering and there's probably significant conversation already happening around solving this problem.

It's a listening campaign and you're doing some basic investigative research about what are people wrestling with? What are some of the hot button phrases, concepts, topics, and problems that they're already spending money on solving and they're desperately seeking a solution? You "accidentally on purpose" show up. Send an email. Make a phone call. Get strategically introduced. Get a referral. Get in front of those people who you want to serve.

Now there's a whole lot more to this, of course, I'm just scratching the surface because we only have three minutes together, but listen, there's some web training waiting for you online. It's right here. 

The web training's going to help you figure out exactly how to answer those two questions, what people do I serve? What problems do I solve? And you're getting a whole bunch of speaker marketing strategies, tactics, templates, and tools to help you get more traction as a paid professional speaker. Hop on and get that web training now >>

Many sales people miss out on significant opportunities simply because they are not effective in engaging C-level executives. You can dramatically increase your sales performance by applying these three principles:

C-suite executives meet with sales people all the time. Very few of these sales people, however, get a second meeting. Those that do, do so because they did their homework and were able to have a focused and value-driven conversation with the executive. Prior to meeting, do your best to understand what is happening in the industry at a macro level. Are there certain trends that are creating pressures or opportunities for the players in the industry? Has the C-level executive publicly stated any strategic goals? Is their financial performance publicly available? If so, what does a ratio analysis tell you about their performance trends over the past 3-5 years, and how might you be in a position to improve their income statement or balance sheet? Finally, don’t waste your executive’s time meeting them to conduct a fishing expedition. According to the Corporate Executive Board’s research, C-level executives are looking for value in every meeting. If you simply ask questions, you’re the one extracting value from the meeting, not giving value. In the book, The Challenger Sale, based on research by the Corporate Executive Board, Matt Dixon makes it clear that the most effective salespeople, “the Challengers”, go into a meeting with a well-formulated hypothesis as to what the executive’s issues really are. They challenge executives to think more clearly about the issues they are facing.

2. Find the Gap

CEO’s, and other C-level executives, are leaders who create value for their organizations by taking the organization from where it is now to where it needs to be. Understanding the gap between their current state and their future state is where your opportunity lies to be of service. While most salespeople ask the question, “What keeps you up at night?” sellers to the C-suite are more focused on the question, “What gets you up in the morning?” It is the executive’s drive towards a future state that creates multi-year and multi-million dollar opportunities for sales professionals. Based on the hypothesis you presented in principle #1, the executive will see that you are a professional that’s done his/her homework and will be willing to open up to you. As the executive begins to open up, find out what their specific vision is and where they desire to take their organization.

3. Be a Great Storyteller

C-level executives are inundated with external pressures, internal obstacles and multiple hurdles. Even while in your meeting, they continue to background process how they will address these challenges. Inundating them with facts and figures will not hold their attention. Nothing grabs and holds attention like a good story, especially if it is relevant to the executive’s challenges. Be prepared to tell a great story about an executive in a similar role with a similar goal, including the suspense and drama of what was going wrong, your intervention and the successful resolution. Your story should provide a very clear contrast in the mind of the executive of the before and after states. They should find themselves in your story imagining how it will feel when they overcome their challenges and experience the new future state.

By developing your strengths in these three areas, you will find that at the end of a C-level executive meeting your prospect will be commending you on what a great meeting it was and asking you when they can meet with you again. All the success in sales happens when talented individuals are in front of qualified prospects and they make every meeting count. Imagine if you could make every meeting with a C-level executive count?

This article was originally published on the Salesforce.com blog. https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2015/01/3-secrets-selling-c-suite-gp.html 

Want to apply for your FREE Speaker Strategy Call to see how you can IMPLEMENT some of these concepts right away? Apply for your call here.

Have you noticed?

Email open rates are down - click through rates are down - and sometimes, no matter how large your subscriber list may be, you find yourself asking, "Is anybody out there?"

Bad news: Chances are that if you're doing email marketing the same way that you were doing it 10 years ago, 5 years ago - or heck, even 2 years ago - your email strategy is getting less and less effective.

And you're probably not even sure what's broken or how to fix it.

Here's the deal - email marketing is about relevance.

Email marketing is about value.

And email marketing is about connecting with the right people at the right time for the right reason.

This final element is EXACTLY what's missing in your current email strategy!

Meaning - you are treating all your email subscribers, blog fans, and social media followers in the exact same way.

Some of these folks are receiving their very first communication from you.

There is zero "know-like-trust" factor at this point.

And they might not even quite know how they landed in your world - was it a Facebook ad, blog post, Twitter link, video?

They were just mindlessly surfing and BAM! they found you.

Now, compare that to the communication that you'd send to your very best paying clients. People who already have a deep, trusting relationship with you and who have already invested in your company's products, services, and programs...

Would you treat them the same as a first-time website visitor?

Hmmm...

If this sounds like the way you're doing email marketing, then the missing piece for your business is a well-defined marketing funnel. 

A marketing funnel is simply a fancy word for a programmatic sequence of touchpoints - emails, videos, blog posts, webinars, PDFs, and other helpful communications - delivered in a specific sequence to a specific subset of people specifically interested in a certain one of your products, services, or programs.

A marketing funnel is your lifeline that keeps you connected to prospects who are at various phases of the buying cycle - from merely interested in the topic (browsers) all the way to committed to investing in your solutions/services (buyers).

A well-designed marketing funnel will take a cold lead from initial contact to signed contract in a pre-determined sequence designed to both add value, and invite offers to your relevant investable opportunities.

Without a marketing funnel in place, you will never get off the "feast or famine" revenue roller coaster.

And worse, you risk alienating people who are NOT interested in buying today while completely missing out on sales to the hot prospects who are ready to buy right now. 

Here are the 7 reasons your email marketing is getting less and less effective:

1. Treating all your email subscribers the same - whether they've been on your list for 10 years or 10 minutes
   
   
2. Not segmenting your email list based on relevance, interests, and behaviors
   
   
3. Constantly nurturing and never making any offers (aka selling). An email strategy that's based on adding value without ever making an offer is a surefire path to disappointment and complaints that "email marketing doesn't work"
   
   
4. Constantly selling and never adding value. Similarly, if all that your subscribers get from you is an endless parade of direct sales pitches for your products, services, and programs, they'll unsubscribe in droves ("Buy this - buy that - Buh bye!")
   
   
5. Not being programmatic in your email and content marketing. Who gets what and when and why? Hint: This can easily be set up with a simple marketing funnel and put into operation in your business over the next 7 days.
   
   
6. Not having different marketing funnels for people in different phases of the buying cycle. My friend, Scott Oldford, calls these three phases - people on the sidewalk (first-time visitors aka browsers) - people in your slow lane (interested but not committed to buy) - and people in your fast lane (committed to solve their problem and highly likely to buy from you)
   
   
7. Thinking that marketing funnels are too complex, or only for the "big guys" who have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of emails or get tons of traffic to their website. Nope - marketing funnels are for YOU no matter how large or small your current list might be. As a matter of fact, the sooner you get this right, the faster your list will grow!

The great news: You can start right now - whether you have 10,000 subscribers or 10.

If you want to build your list exponentially faster - and have your subscribers, fans, and followers a. stick around a lot longer and b. buy a lot more, then you'll get busy implementing marketing funnels in your business right away.

 Download your copy of the Do It! Marketing Manifesto for free right here.

Should you speak for free? 

Yes - if you do it in front of the right people who are in the right room for the right reason... 

And along the way to answering this question in more detail, you're also getting your 80-20 Speaking-as-Marketing strategy so let's dig in...

Research from professional services marketing firm RainToday.com shows that the #1 source of new clients and new business is "Speaking at conferences and events."

But how do you get started? And what if you're a professional speaker or expert whose goal is to get PAID to speak (at least sometimes)?

The bad reputation around free speaking is that most people speak for free when they have no idea how to find paid speaking.

And let's define that even further because there are two kinds of paid speaking:

1. Paid to speak = professional experts who speak for a fee

2. Paid because you spoke = no-fee lead-generating speaking to select groups of your ideal clients / focused target market

If you're doing anything other than those two, you are spinning your wheels, wasting your time, and getting frustrated and mad. And I don't blame you!

As I like to say, “Only idiots speak for free.”

In my opinion, in fact, there is no such thing as a "free" speech if you know what you're doing. You are always getting paid - either in dollars (nice!) or in leads (nicer!) or in sales (nicest!!)

Sadly, many executive and entrepreneurs do NOT know what they're doing when it comes to speaking as a marketing strategy. But don't worry - I'm here to help you get this right once and for all.

Here’s a quick checklist to help you decide when you should speak for free - and when you should not. 

Speaking for free is stupid... IF:

1. You've bargained your rate down from your usual fee to zero
2. It's a random invitation to speak to a random group
3. You're creating a whole new speech for a no-fee gig
4. They promise you "good exposure" (hint: exposure has never bought groceries or paid the mortgage. Weird, right?)
5. Other speakers at the same event are speaking free (if they jumped off a bridge, would you follow?)
6. You would not proactively target this specific group / conference / event in your regular marketing
7. They put overly rigid restrictions on what you can do, say, and sell at the event

Speaking for free is smart and profitable... IF:

1. Based on factors that you've identified, there's a high likelihood that your next 2-3 high-ticket clients are hiding in that audience
2. You've researched and found proof that it's an event with the right people in the right room who are there for the right reasons (your people who have your problems and are looking for your solutions)
3. You're delivering your signature speech that implicitly sells your products, services, or programs (consulting, coaching, professional service, etc)
4. The organizers aggressively market to fill the room and offer follow-up to drive people back to your offer (via email, website, blog, giving you the registration database, etc.)
5. Other speakers have generated strong sales by speaking to this same group
6. You have proactively targeted this specific group / conference / event as one of your "dream revenue opportunities"
7. They put very few or no restrictions on what you can do, say, and sell at the event, after the event, and on an ongoing basis

Whether you're an executive, entrepreneur, consultant, or high-fee expert, you need an 80-20 speaking-as-marketing game plan.

It's called 80-20 because even if part of your business model is to get paid to speak, you'll do much better speaking for free 80% of the time and getting paid 20% of the time.

Here's some quick math to help you operationalize this (whether paid speaking is currently part of your business model or not):

PAID SPEAKER model:

GOAL = 2 paid speeches per month @ $5,500 fee

8 free speeches per month to high-probability groups of prospects

= 2 speeches per week with specific call to action, offer, or next step to drive sales

ENTREPRENEUR model:

GOAL = 2 high-ticket clients/ projects per month @ $15,000

8 free speeches per month to high-probability groups of prospects

= 2 speeches per week with specific call to action, offer, or next step to drive sales

So as you can see - the two models are incredibly similar.

Speaking-as-a-marketing-strategy works whether you want to pursue paid speaking OR NOT.

In fact, a whole lot more possibilities open up if you have more to sell than just "another speech" to another group.

Something to think about to help you boost your success:

Think about what YOUR speaking-as-marketing strategy would look like.

Grab your FREE "Speaking Profit Maximizer" Cheat Sheet

Perfect for speakers, consultants, coaches, authors, experts, and thought-leading professionals who want to generate more money from speaking.

Love these ideas? Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star :o)

These don’t need a lot of explanation on my part - especially because you’re getting “copy and paste”-ready emails you can quickly adapt to your specific situation and then hit send!

The first email template is more appropriate for your corporate prospects.

And the second email template is more appropriate for your small business /entrepreneur prospects.

In both cases, the approach and the mantra is “Invest 2018 Dollars for Your 2019 Success” (in fact, that would be a pretty good subject line for a standalone email blast if you wanted to "go big" with this idea).

Here's your template for your personalized 1-on-1 emails to corporate folks:

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Subject: Peter - Invest 2018 dollars for your 2019 success

Peter,

Wow - time flies! Wanted to follow up with you from our meeting back in September. Thank you so much for your kind words about my book and how relevant those ideas are to your team.

AND - here's the crazy idea: I know it's end-of-year crunch time but if you have some "use it or lose it" budget money left over for the US division, would it make sense to order Do It! Marketing books for everyone? Depending on how much I can help you spend that budget (Ha!), we can also talk about presenting customized seminars for your team.

Again - wacky idea. But I didn't want to let November and December slip away without reconnecting and asking you. What do you think?

-- David

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And now for your small business and entrepreneur clients and prospects:

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Subject: Steve - possible icing on the cake?

Steve,

Thank you for connecting with me a few months back about the possibility of doing some work together.

I generally don't give tax advice... scratch that - I NEVER give tax advice... but this is the time of year that my clients, both old and new, tend to start working with me OR renew their marketing program because:

Tax savings - Offset 2018 income OR add business deductions to lower overall taxes due. Let Uncle Sam chip in to help you grow your business.

Credit card or loyalty points - Want to keep that hotel status? Are you just a few thousand points shy of getting bonus airline miles or the next level up on your favorite credit card loyalty program? Invest now and crank up the points so you maximize your benefits.

So if you've been on the fence about our possible collaborations, this is the time to consider one of the following programs:

1. Speaker Profit Formula Mentoring Program

2. Do It! Marketing Platinum Mastermind Program

To see if one of these is a fit for you, please email me -- OR let's set up a time to talk by following this link. (link to your scheduling software - I use ScheduleOnce)

Looking forward to discussing what YOU are up to and how we can make your business more focused, more profitable, and more fun in 2019 and beyond.

-- David

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Send a dozen of these emails starting right now - and then please DO let me know how many thousands of dollars in 2018 revenue you’re able to add to your bottom line over the next 30 days.

p.s. If YOU yourself are in one of the above situations (i.e. considering working with ME either as your marketing speaker or your marketing coach), these reasons are just as valid for YOU to get in touch with me over the next 30 days as they are for YOUR clients and prospects to get in touch with YOU. Click here to book a call with our team.

Just sayin’...

Now get behind that computer and DO IT!!!

And then leave a comment below with your questions, thoughts, and advice on the ideas above.

Are you a DO IT freak? Awesome!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!