A Checklist for You
There are many reasons why a speaker might not be getting booked. The below tips are just a handful of possibilities for you to work on. These are top-of-list must-haves for your career, so I wanted to focus on them in this list. Read through this list, fix the problem(s) you identify which apply to you, and uncheck them.
Get unstuck and get booked!
NO ONE CAN FIND YOU. I have been teaching this for years – The Importance of Getting Found. Sometimes, speakers are no different than the new, elegant candy shop that opened in the middle of the woods. They carried the best chocolates around. They opened their doors, but no one showed. A truly wonderful product and experience was lost in obscurity. It’s not always like the movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner where “if you build it, they will come”.
In reality, you need to build it, find them, and then they will come. This means marketing. Get yourself in front of your audience wherever you can and whenever you can. Offline and online. Be ubiquitous.
This might include things like: starting a podcast, doing a blog on a regular basis and sharing it, being a guest on podcasts, guest blogging, writing articles for publications, publishing a book or an ebook, interacting on social groups (online and off), starting your own Facebook group, speaking for free, and creating giveaways to grow your list so you can continue to market to your audience and stay top-of-mind.
Get some of these in place and then come back and UNCHECK this item.
YOUR SPEAKER WEBSITE. If you throw up a quick website that acts only as a brochure, instead of setting it up to work for you, you’ve made a huge mistake.
If your website doesn’t convey clarity, if it’s messy and lacks the necessary ingredients for hiring success, you won’t get booked. You must have clarity, so the hiring party knows without a doubt what you do. It must be clean and organized. It must possess all the ingredients a planner is looking for.
You need to have a CTA, or several because you want to take your visitor on a journey. Tell them what to do. You must have an opt-in (giveaway) because growing your list is hugely important and will become one of your greatest assets. Even if it’s just a checklist like this one, make it relevant and helpful to your audience.
Make it urgent. So, if you need to revamp your site, best get started so you can UNCHECK this from the list.
SOCIAL MEDIA. Hang in there, you’re almost done – with this list, that is.
I can’t stress enough the importance of this and the reach you can make. I’ve been working with planners and speakers since 2002 (back in the MySpace era), and the reality is that I know the importance of a branded and well-executed, carefully-tended social media presence.
Scenario: A planner goes to your website or finds you somewhere because of your brilliant marketing, one of the first things they do after viewing your video, will be to check you out on social media.
We, humans, are naturally curious. We snoop, poke, try to see what others are doing.
Planners want to know the “real speaker” behind the face and the short bio. How are you on social sites? How do you interact with your followers? Are your posting regularly? If so, is it quality info? Are you commenting back to people?
How are people reacting to you? Planners want to feel confident that if they hire you, they are making the absolute right decision. Being active daily and branding your social sites helps give planners more peace of mind.
Now go be Social and you can UNCHECK this from the list.
YOU HAVE NOT CLEARLY DEFINED WHOM YOU ARE MEANT TO SERVE. If you’re serving the wrong audience or the wrong market, you’re going to go in circles. You become frustrated, lost, broke, and may very well find yourself back to the 9-5 grind. Be clear about who you should serve, not who you THINK you should serve, or who you feel would be cool to serve.
This takes some work, research, time, and soul-searching before you can have true clarity. Once you nail it, you will find that you can become the “go-to” expert in that field, which translates into a fully booked schedule.
So, if you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall, maybe it’s time to reevaluate? After you’re done, come back and UNCHECK this item from your list.
YOUR PRESENTATION IS NOT CONNECTING. You have found, and have connected with, those whom you are meant to serve. Yay, you! You are hitting it hard, working that presentation and ready to ride!
Hold on there a minute, we need to take a step back and think about this one. Ok, you found your audience, super, super. Now, let’s do some research and soul-searching once again.
I’ve seen it time and time again. Speakers’ presentations do not fit the audience they are serving. Had they done their homework, truly done their homework, they would nail it every time!
So, if you feel your presentation isn’t hitting home, this means the audience is not connecting. It’s time to rethink and rework it a bit. Take your time and make it count. You never know who is in the audience and has the power to hire you.
You won’t get good testimonials and your feedback will make you want to head for the hills. If you are recording a video, you won’t get much reaction from your audience and they won’t be interacting with you. Flat film is all you’ll be left with, and this is definitely not a selling point.
So, let’s nail this one and UNCHECK IT!
Hopefully, this is a good start to help you implement some of those things you aren’t doing yet, or have not been doing correctly or consistently, to get yourself found and booked.
Start UNCECKING this list!
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