Speaking opportunities are public relations and marketing events, not sales opportunities.
If you are the featured speaker at a business or community event, your job is to entertain, motivate, inspire, encourage, or whatever else your contact person wants you to do. Of course, your audience wants to get to know you, so they can learn to like you and to trust you. It is acceptable to list what your business is in a program or have your introducer include that information in your introduction. A little information like that adds to your credibility and that is a big step in forming a relationship with your audience. If the occasion allows, back of the room sales also add to your credibility without being too pushy. Another tip I learned from a professional speaker was one I hadn’t thought of before. He told me about this technique and I saw him use it. At some point during his presentation, he asked for a volunteer from the audience. I was a little surprised when he chose someone from the very back of the room. After the volunteer and he had concluded the exercise, the volunteer returned to his seat. Only then did the speaker say something like he had meant to reward the volunteer with one of his books, or CD’s, or DVD’s, or something. He held up several items, asked the volunteer to choose, and then passed them all back to the volunteer. Of course many people in the audience handled each one. What do you think happened to the back of the room sales? If you guessed that many of the audience members who had seen and touched his materials went back during the break to purchase something you are right. The best part of this scenario was that he was never “salesy”. He merely shared something with a volunteer. It was a terrific example of public relations and marketing.
