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.