Make Marketing Suck Less

How to Make Your Signature Keynote Speech WORK for Your Business

Do you have a feedback system in your speaking business?

When I first started speaking, like many of you, I was in high school and I joined the speech and debate team because I wasn't naturally good at speaking at all.

I joined the team because I sucked, and I knew that the only way that I could get better at speaking is if I got help and feedback.  

And, boy, did I get a lot of feedback from my coach and from my peers.

Every Saturday morning I would get up at five am, board the yellow school bus and go and compete where strangers that I didn't know gave me feedback on my speaking.

This helped me grow exponentially as a speaker because I could figure out what I was doing well, what I was improving on, and what needed a lot of work.

I have noticed a disturbing trend in the speaking industry.

Speakers are not actively seeking out feedback on their speaking.

They figure, “Oh, man, I got a standing ovation, the audience loves me, and that's good enough.”

If you want to succeed in the speaking industry, you've got to be the best and to be the best, you're going to need feedback.

So, let’s set up a feedback system for you.

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Don’t Pay Attention to the Vanity Metrics

After working with speakers for over 25 years and really working at giving great feedback and constructive criticism, one thing I know for sure is that audience love is a terrible measure of speaking success.

Why?

Audiences are not there to give you constructive criticism, they're not there to tell you if you could be doing better or how to have a better introduction or if they wanted something different from your speech.

[Tweet “Audience love is a terrible measure of speaking success”]

They're going to do what all audiences do, they're going to applaud.

If you're great at delivering your speech, you could even get a standing ovation.

They'll tell you, good job, and be on their way because after all, even if you're not great on stage, they don't want to bring you down from your speaker's high.

They're not going to tell you how to improve. Really, an audience shows up at an event to be transformed in some type of way, to be changed, not to make you a better speaker.

Applause, standing ovations, while they feel really great, they're a vanity metric.

It's like counting your social media file followers or the number of retweets you're getting, those things are vanity metrics.

What should you focus on to measure your presentation success? That is the feedback loop I want you to create.

[Tweet “A standing ovation feels good but you can't take it to the bank”]

How Many Referrals for Speaking Gigs Did You Get in the Past 12-Months?

The first stop of creating this feedback loop is to look at your numbers. The numbers don't lie.

There are two numbers that I want you to be tracking in your speaking business, the first is tracking the number of referrals you get each time you speak.

When I say referral, I mean a referral for another speaking gig or somebody sees you speak and says, “Oh, man, I need to hire you for my organization.” That's a referral.

If you look back over the past 12 months, count up the number of speaking gigs you had and then count up the number of referrals, and then divide the number of referrals by the number of speaking gigs and that will give you a percentage.

Ideally, you want this percentage to be somewhere in the 90% to 100% range because every time you speak you want to be booking more speaking gigs.

Actually, this number can be higher than 100% because there's no reason you can't be finding multiple speaking gigs from speaking just one time. So track those referrals.

How Many Audience Members Want to Work With You?

Then, the second number to track, especially if you're speaking for your business and you're looking for clients is your client conversion rate.

For each speaking gig you had for the last year or the last three months, what you want to do is look at the total number of audience members, and you can give this a best guess, and then divide it by the number of people who said yes to taking their relationship deeper with you, who acted on your call to action.

Now, this number most likely won't be near 100%, but it should be in the 60% to 80% range.  

If you're creating a lot of value along with a curiosity gap, that should make people want to take the relationship deeper with you.

To get your client conversion rate take the total number of people who said yes to your call to action and divide it by the total number of people in your audience.  

If you're in that 60% to 80% range, you're doing amazing. If not, you've got some work to do on the speech.

Step Outside & Get Some Constructive Feedback

You have the numbers, that leads us to the second way to create this feedback loop: now it's time to get an outside perspective.

A great place to get an outside perspective, if you're starting out in speaking, is Toastmasters International. This organization is set up to give you a lot of feedback on your speaking.

Toastmasters is especially handy if you're just starting out or if money is tight right now.

Go to a meeting and find a club that's right for you. Your club will give you so much feedback on your delivery, on your content, you can even tell them what kind of audience you want them to be and they will assume that role and give you feedback from that point of view. Toastmasters is great.

Getting Serious & Going Pro by Hiring a Speech Coach

However, if you are serious about making a difference with your speaking and earning an income, you're going to want to invest in a coach.

I've been giving feedback to speakers for over 25 years so I intuitively know what is wrong with the speech and how to fix it so that it converts better.

Those are the type of eyes you want on your speech.

You want a coach who can help you up your conversion rate, up the number of gigs that you're getting or the number of clients you're bringing in from each and every speaking gig. If those numbers aren't where you want them to be there is likely a problem in your speech.

If you want my eyes on your speech so that you are getting more clients and getting more referrals for speaking opportunities, then go and book a strategy session with me. It's completely complementary.

We can pinpoint what's going on with your speaking, why you're not getting the clients you want to get or the gigs you want to get and come up with a plan to fix it. Go to doctormichellemazer.com/speak.

[Tweet “Serious about making a difference with your speaking? Invest in a coach.”]

Round up Your Feedback Posse

One final way that you can also get some outside perspective is by getting a feedback posse together.

Maybe you have three or four speaker friends and you guys can get together once a month and get some wine and give your speeches and get feedback.

But the important part is, no matter if you join Toastmasters, you hire me to get my expertise, or you're getting your own feedback posse together, you've got to have a feedback loop in your speaking business.

You've got to figure out if your speech is working for your business.

Track your numbers, pay to get feedback, always be improving because a standing ovation feels good but you can't take it to the bank.