by J. Stephen Pope
Developing and utilizing presentation skills can result in increased income for you. Here are a few ways that you can turn your public speaking experience into business profits.
1. Free Speeches to Promote Your Business
A lawyer might make a speech to a group of business persons, free of charge, about the advantages of incorporating their businesses. This could result in obtaining new clients. It could also cause existing clients to purchase additional services, such as incorporations, minute book work, income tax election filings, and so on.
2. Paid Seminars, Workshops and Teleclasses
You could charge admission fees to attend a seminar entitled “How To Incorporate Yourself Without a Lawyer”. This seminar could detail the considerations and mechanics of incorporating your own private corporation.
3. Sell Information Products
The information presented during a speech or seminar could form the basis for information products such as books, courses, special reports or folios, audios, videos, DVDs, electronic books, and so forth. For example, you could write a book entitled “How To Incorporate Yourself Without a Lawyer”.
Including such products as handouts at your seminar would increase the value for the attendees (which you could charge for). Even if you gave a free speech to a group, you could still receive back-end income from the sale of such information products.
Obviously, your public speaking skills will be especially important when producing an audio or video cassette. Your listeners and viewers will make certain judgments based on your personal appearance, poise, audience contact, use of gestures, enthusiasm, how informative the material is, and many other factors.
Your information products establish your credibility as an expert, resulting in even more business. As well, you can market those same information products through mail order, direct mail, Internet marketing, and other methods.
4. Consulting and Other Opportunities
As your reputation as an expert in your specialized field grows, you will become more in demand. Clients may seek you out for lucrative speaking engagements. You may be invited to write magazine articles, consult for large corporations, act as an expert trial witness, become a syndicated columnist, et cetera.
Therefore, whether you are a novice or an experienced public speaker, it pays to increase and utilize your public speaking skills.