Why I Speak to Smaller Organisations
Regular readers of this blog will notice that many of my speaking engagements are for smaller clubs and societies (although I'm not sure that the audience of 200 at Romsey U3A last month falls into that category!) but, over the years, I have certainly had a decent number of corporate bookings, whether from speaker bureaus and entertainment agencies or booked directly by the organisations themselves. Some have involved provided training for others, such as the Home Office, ICL Fujitsu, Christchurch Borough Council and many more, while others have been purely for entertainment, for example, at the Glass NTO, the Marsh Business Breakfast Club and various others.
Some people think that public speaking is only about big-money motivational workshops or after dinner speaking but these are just one, highly competitive element of the business of giving presentations. The huge fees generally only go to celebrities - and the number of them competing for the limited available bookings seems to increase every year. A while ago, I was talking to a very respected speaker I know who has a high profile thanks to regular broadcasting and being a prolific author. They told me that despite this, bookings were down from twelve the previous year to just four!
I love public speaking and would not want to be limited to just a handful of corporate bookings per year.
Public Speaking Tip #58: Be realistic about markets and fees if you are not a celebrity (or at least very well known within the corporate circuit).
But to stand a chance of getting any of this work, and making a reasonable success of it, you have to gain experience and stay in practice. There is a man I know who decided to become an after dinner speaker in the early 90s. He persuaded a number of agencies to take him on and book him into functions at very respectable fees. Unfortunately, he had little in the way of speaking experience or original material and immediately came unstuck, especially as many of these bookings were for 'lively' audiences that even seasoned comedians might think twice about, such as armed forces and police annual dinners.
So he started giving talks for Women's Institutes and retirement clubs, stuck with it and gained valuable experience. He now combines corporate and smaller bookings with great success.
Public Speaking Tip #59: Don't try to run before you can walk! You need to gain experience as a speaker before you can aim for the bigger bookings.
When I started as a speaker, I took every booking I could get, whether paid or not. I gave live local radio interviews and also spent a year doing stand up comedy (which included national radio and on cable TV). Some of this work was paid well, some modestly, some not at all, but the result was that in my first couple of years, I got up in front of audiences around 100 times (not including my LAMDA exams or the adult education classes I was starting to teach) and gained a great deal of invaluable experience very quickly.
And it's a habit I've never got out of. Ok, so I'm not so likely to travel 100 miles for little or nothing any more, but I would still rather be speaking somewhere for a reasonable fee than not at all. Someone suggested to me recently that I should sharply increase the amounts I charge for talks, the idea being that some people would still book me and I would earn the same for less speaking.
He missed the point completely: I love public speaking and I would rather have a booking to go to than be sitting at home. It's a break from the solitude of writing - plus I never stop learning.
And when the slightly better-paying arts and literary festivals or the much more lucrative corporate engagements come in, as they do from time to time, well, they are a very pleasant bonus!
Public Speaking Tip #60: When you are a beginner, you need to gain as much speaking experience as you can - whatever the fee; it's never a waste of time. You cannot help but learn from speaking to a wide variety of audiences (in terms of size, age group, background, etc) in a variety of styles for varying lengths of time. The times of day, venues and areas in which you speak will also vary considerably.
Even when you have had years of speaking experience, you will need to stay in practice.
Remember: you never stop learning as a public speaker.
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Saturday, October 27
And now the small talk
by
Nick R Thomas A.L.A.M. (Public Speaking)
on Sat 27 Oct 2007 05:20 PM BST
Tuesday, October 23
If you would now like to look at your papers
by
Nick R Thomas A.L.A.M. (Public Speaking)
on Tue 23 Oct 2007 11:14 PM BST
There have been a couple of interesting news stories relating to public speaking in the past couple of days. He got laughs and a standing ovation but the longer term outcome of his speech was a billion-pound turnover slashed overnight, £500 million knocked off the valuation of his company and, ultimately, the loss of his £650,000 salary and position running the family firm he had been involved in for 30 years. He has since rebuilt his career (hence the book's title) but his name will always be associated with that speech. As a speaker, I am a great advocate of self-effacing humour, after all, making yourself the butt of a joke means you are unlikely to offend anyone else but the problem in this case was that the jokes weren't self-deprecating - they made fun of an entire business empire and its customers which affected its shareholders and staff, not to mention Mr Ratner's own family. Public Speaking Tip #52: All jokes have a victim so self-effacing humour can be the safest variety - just make sure that no-one else can get caught up in any fallout! A Nasal Spray to Fight Public Speaking Fears? Monday's Daily Telegraph carried a story about researchers at the University of New South Wales who have developed a nasal spray which may help people with social phobias overcome their fears of attending work parties, performing karaoke - or public speaking! As part of the study, 23 shy people (who had also had exposure therapy) were asked to make a speech and the results, when compared with those who had received no help, were described as 'astonishing'. Of course, there are, as yet, no nasal sprays to help with selecting and structuring content, stance, voice projection, etc. Medicines can take years to come onto the market and when they do, may prove to be costly or have side-effects. If you visit the website of the Stage newspaper, in their Advice section, the showbusiness life coach John Byrne has written an excellent advice guide on How to Cope with Nerves: Public Speaking Tip #53: The world of showbusiness may seem far removed from the formality of public speaking but tips for entertainers of all kinds can still apply to us. He writes that medication tends to suppress symptoms of nervousness rather than deal with their root cause. The university researchers stress that their spray does not work on its own but has to be combined with therapy. I have more reason than most to believe that exposure therapy beats medication hands-down. Public Speaking Tip #54: As far as public speaking is concerned, regular practice is exposure therapy for those who are nervous about it - and far more effective in the long term than medication. And as for partygoers and singers, well, there are far too many of them putting substances up their noses already! Write-up in the New Milton Advertiser and Lymington Times Somewhat lower down in the circulation figures is a wonderful weekly newspaper sold in the New Forest area: The New Milton Advertiser and Lymington Times. It comes out every Friday (price 30p!) and is a good old-fashioned, local broadsheet. It gives details of many of the talks that have taken place in the area it covers and I have had a couple of further positive mentions recently to add to the many that they have published about me over the years. I wrote in my posting of 10 October about making use of testimonial letters. Positive write-ups from local newspapers, church magazines, company newsletters and websites can also help publicise your speaking, enhance your CV, etc. Their content is often brief (press officers sometimes send in hundreds of words about a speaker only to see just a couple of sentences actually published!) but they reach a wide audience and, in the case of online testimonials, can be viewed for a long time afterwards - sometimes even years. Public Speaking Tip #55: Positive reviews of your speaking performances from publications and websites can be used in your promotional materials and can sometimes even lead directly to further bookings. Public Speaking Tip #56: Local newspaper write-ups about other speakers can also be a useful guide to available markets for you. There is a temptation when quoting from these references to put the date they appeared so people will see how recently the speaking engagement and praise occurred but this can also have the unfortunate effect of making your publicity look out-of-date if you are not revising it regularly. It may also give the impression that you are not very often booked to speak if the last testimonial is dated six months ago. It shouldn't matter to anyone interested in hiring you whether somebody wrote in complimentary terms about your presentation two days or two years ago - only that they meant it! Public Speaking Tip #57: There is no need to date your testimonials - the important thing is that you have received this unsolicited praise. Tuesday, October 16
Next, we come to the category for Best Small Audience of 2007
by
Nick R Thomas A.L.A.M. (Public Speaking)
on Tue 16 Oct 2007 10:42 AM BST
Kington Magna WI
After updating this blog last Thursday, I set off for a talk in North Dorset. The Wilts and Dorset X3 service was being driven so slowly up the Spur Road from Bournemouth that I began to wonder whether I'd reach my destination by the following day, let alone that one, but at Ringwood our driver seemed to transmogrify into a Lewis Hamilton wannabe who took sharp bends on country lanes at what felt like quite alarming speeds for a double decker. Nothing seemed to be happening quickly in Salisbury, where I walked out of the bank without transacting any business after wasting several minutes in a seemingly stationary queue and then had to wait ages to buy a ticket at the station where only one of the three ticket windows was open and that was busy with a passenger's long and complicated enquiry. But none of these factors were allowed to affect my forthcoming talk. Public Speaking Tip #49: A professional should not let personal frustrations or difficulties affect the quality of their speaking performance. Believe it or not, public speaking can actually offer an escape from the stresses of everyday life! It was also fortunate that I knew I had caught the correct train because the guard kept dropping his voice on 'Gillingham' as he announced our list of stops; he could benefit from some lessons in voice projection! Public Speaking Tip #50: Experience in public speaking means that you soon become aware of the shortcomings of other speakers of all kinds and can resolve to avoid these pitfalls! I was met at Gillingham by the husband of the Treasurer of the WI at Kington Magna, a delightfully unspoilt village which I would probably never have visited if I wasn't a public speaker. Its church, which is part-Norman, has a medieval fishpond, while the houses date back as far as the 1600s. Kington Magna has no school, pub or shop but it does have a village hall and a Women's Institute, despite having a population of less than 400 (I have known of WIs in much more densely-populated areas which drew smaller numbers and were eventually forced to merge or close down). There were 15 members in attendance but, as I told them at the end of my talk, their laughter sounded like a much bigger crowd - they gave me a great response! Public Speaking Tip #51: Audiences deserve the same quality of presentation, whatever their size. You may be accustomed to addressing large numbers but small groups can be surprisingly rewarding to speak to. |
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