BECOMING THE TOP 20%
Every excellent speaker starts somewhere. The top twenty percent of speakers were once in the bottom twenty percent of speakers. Here are some of the tips and strategies I’ve learned throughout my career by watching others enter the top twenty percent of speakers.
Becoming a Top 20% Speaker
Getting into the top twenty percent requires excellent subject knowledge. You need a subject that people really want and need and care about, and you need to be really knowledgeable on that subject.
The rule in writing is that you must know ten words about your subject for every word that you write. The rule in speaking, which comes from Dale Carnegie’s professional speaker training organization is that you should know about forty or fifty words for every word you speak. This means that planning a twenty-minute talk will take eight to ten hours the first time you give it.
For a twenty-minute talk, I have spent two and three days planning. The second time, you only have to spend a day, and the third time maybe only three or four hours. The fourth time might take two or three hours. But every single time I give a short talk, it takes two to three hours to plan, review it, and polish it. It’s like polishing all the different facets of a diamond.
So number one is excellent subject knowledge, which you never stop learning and developing. Many speakers won’t do this part, which is why they never reach the top twenty percent of speakers. They’ll learn their subject, give a talk that people like, and pretty much stop learning in that area. They just recycle the talk and find a new audience rather than create a new talk or improve the existing one.
There are two types of presentations in paid speaking. One is what I call PTBS: Problem To Be Solved. Every single speech is an opportunity to solve a problem that the listeners have.
As always, clarity is the critical word here. You’ve got to be clear about what problem your speech is going to solve and what answers it’s going to give. How is it going to help people? Even a motivational speech is intended to help people, motivate them, help them focus, and channel their energies.
The second type is JTD: Job To Do. Every talk has a job to do, so you have to ask, what is the job this talk will do? What will people be able to do afterwards?
So let’s say you have a subject that you think is of great interest, and you think business people and even non-business people could benefit from it. Remember that ninety-five percent of speaking is finding an audience. So you have to find an organization that already has an audience. Somebody is already putting meetings together.
Your subject should always answer the question “What is the problem to be solved?” or “What is the job to be done?” A talk is a tool to help people get from where they are to where they could be. So decide on your subject and the problem that your subject solves. The amount you can charge will be determined by how valuable your solution is.
The second thing you need is the ability to give an excellent presentation. You need to get really, really good at conveying your material. There is a little joke that asks, “Do you have to be funny when you speak?” And the answer is “No, only if you want to get paid.” You could probably extend that. Do you have to use stories when you speak? Yes, if you want to get paid. Getting paid is the goal.
If you want to get paid, you’re going to have to make it funny, interesting, and punchy. Some of the top politicians you see on the front pages of newspapers speak all the time to private groups, and every one of them is funny. They speak about some of the most important subjects in our world today, but they make it light and funny. They tell stories, and they give examples. And they get standing ovations. People really enjoy listening to a person speaking about serious subjects when it’s done right.
The next thing you need to do is get absolutely specific about who exactly is the customer who will pay you to speak. Remember there are always two customers when you are speaking — the payer and the payee. The payee is the person who is going to listen to you speak. They are the ones to whom you are speaking. And the payer is the one who is bringing you in. Sometimes the messages these two want are a little bit different.
Once I was booked by a national company, and they wanted me to motivate this group after they had just announced they were cutting all their commissions in half, restricting their territories, and also selling directly to their customers instead of giving out exclusive territories. If their employees sold, they could make a commission, but other than that, the company would use telemarketers to sell to customers before the salesperson got there.
All of these people who had worked for ten and fifteen years building their client base were having their chairs cut out from under them because the company wanted to make more money. They made this big announcement, and then they wanted me to get up and motivate them.
I’ll tell you, I’ve never spoken to a bunch of more negative, glum people in my whole life. So I spoke about having faith in yourself, setting goals, raising standards, and other personal development topics. The company was very happy with my talk. The audience was just angry.
So you always have two customers. You have the people you’re speaking to and the person you’re speaking for. Always ask the meeting planner — the payer — what would have to happen as a result of your talk to make them feel they got really good value. Always find out the answer to that question. Then design your talk so it achieves that result.
Now, your talk has to have a juicy title. For instance, one of my talks is Seven Ways to Maximize Your Income in Any Market. You need a title that answers these questions:
What’s in it for me?
Why should I book you?
What’s the result I’ll get?
It has to be something that causes people to say, “I want to hear about that! I want to know about that!” It has to be something that appeals to people instantly and makes them come to hear you.
The next point in getting into the world of paid speaking is a description of the transformation that will take place. I cannot emphasize this enough. It’s all about what the transformation will be, not what’s in the talk.
When you talk about your speech, always describe it in terms of the transformation, change, or outcome that will occur when people listen to your talk. Never talk about the content. Talk about the outcome.
So the most important words in describing your talk are the words that follow the phrase “You will learn how to.” Then you have bullet points, and every bullet point starts with an imperative verb. “You will learn how to: motivate people under every circumstance; get people to cooperate with each other; build winning teams; focus and channel best efforts on your greatest opportunities.” Every single transformational statement that you offer to teach people in a keynote or in a seminar always starts with these kinds of bullet points.
In one of mine, I say, “Learn how to dramatically increase your sales and profitability in any market. In this fast-moving and exciting talk, you learn powerful, practical, proven methods and techniques practiced by all of the top businesses and business people in small- and medium-sized companies worldwide.” Then I say, “In this seminar, you will learn how to…” I learned many years ago that the most powerful words describing your seminar are the words that follow that colon.
What follows “You will learn how to” are bullet points, and each one of those starts with a verb. Every single bullet starts with a compelling imperative verb.
- Set clear goals for every part of your business
- Determine priorities and work on high-value tasks
- Select the best people and keep them focused
- Create faster solutions
- Motivate people to peak performance
So when a person asks what you speak on, your summary statement is around the result or benefit. The end result sounds like, “I show people how to increase their sales faster and easier in any market.”
In the last paragraph of my talk description, I write “Brian Tracy has spoken to more than 5,000 audiences in sixty countries around the world over the last thirty years and has addressed more than five million people. In this seminar, he will teach you some of the most important things he’s ever learned.”
Those are some proven ideas on how to get into the top twenty percent of speakers.
What’s Your Specialty?
To stand out as a speaker, you have to specialize.
Specialize and focus on a single subject. If someone asks what your subject is, you say “I show leaders how to get the very best out of each person that reports to them.” The response? “Great. All of our managers would like to hear that.”
A friend of mine specializes in one particular aspect of real estate sales. Another good friend of mine specializes in how to generate leads online. Another teaches people how to sell cars. They all specialize.
There are people who specialize in teaching people how to sell high-priced houses while others teach how to sell foreclosures. In other words, what you have to do is specialize in an area where there are people who want to learn that subject and will come to hear about it and pay you for it. So pick something that people really want.
Sell Days, & Sell As Many As You Can
Finally, to get into the top twenty percent of speakers, you have to sell as many days as you can.
My goal and business philosophy is to sell days, and even to sell hours. I look at my year in terms of how many days I’m booked. I just did an interview this morning for Speaker Magazine for the National Speakers Association (NSA), and that was their first question: “How many days are you on the road? How many days do you speak?”
About a year or two after I began speaking and working hard, I met a friend of mine who was very successful in real estate development. He asked me what I was doing and how it was going. I told him I was doing well. He said, “I don’t know anything about your business. How do you define ‘well’ in speaking?” That stopped me and made me think. I realized that the way you define doing well in speaking is how often you speak and how much you get paid each time.
My whole focus has been on how much I can charge per talk and how many times I can charge it.
There may have been a time in our lives or in the market when the fees were high, but the only real measure is if you’re fully booked. You can tell if your price is right. It’s basically the Law of Marginal Utility — supply and demand. If your price is right and you want to speak one hundred times a year, then you can be fully booked at one hundred times a year.
Your job is to increase your speaking time. You’re much better off on the stage at a lower income than you are at home with no income at all. The more you speak, the more income you’ll earn, and the more practice you’ll get. The more practice you get, the better a speaker you’ll become.
Summary
- Specialize your talks in areas that people want to learn more about and are willing to pay you for.
- Each speech has a job to do.
- Give your talk a juicy title.
- You have two customers, the people who want you to speak and the people you are speaking to.
- Speak and focus on one subject.
- Sell days, and sell as many as you can.
