For those of you who have done some speaking in seminars and presentations, you know that sometimes you are doing great, you have the rapt attention of the audience and it goes really well. Other times, it may feel as if you bombed, you just weren’t making a connection.
One of the reasons why that may happen is because you didn’t have the right group. If an organization asks you to speak, you need to make sure you are in front of the right people. Find out:
- The number of people expected to attend
- The demographic profile of the audience
- A list of topics from previous presentations
The more you know about the group, the better you will be able to tailor your presentation, and you must avoid speaking to the wrong groups!
You should also remember that there are many different forms of speaking engagements. You could speak at a private client-only seminar where you invite a few of your clients or the clients of a referral partner. Or you could be part of a moderated panel discussion.
You can also utilize current technologies to host an online webinar or web conference where your PowerPoint presentation is what is seen on screen and you talk to your audience via a bridge conference call.
Next, your subject matter has to be educational. People do not want to hear legal jargon, they want practical, useful information without a sales pitch. Now, I can hear most of you thinking that you don’t want to give away the store! I don’t want to give so much information that they can just go do it themselves!
Look, there MAY be some who would try to do that, but they are not your clients! You want to target the people who have the money to hire an attorney so that they don’t have to do it themselves. You don’t want the tire kickers or the do-it-yourself crowd because they will beat you up on your price anyway.
You have to make sure you are targeting the right audience. And if you give a good, educational presentation, the right people will seek you out after the seminar to ask questions, plus in most cases you will be able to get the attendees’ contact information so that you can be ready to contact them later. If it is not you who is sponsoring the presentation, ask them to capture the attendees’ email addresses whenever possible, because as you will see in tomorrow’s post, follow up is the secret ingredient.
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