Sales Presentations Training

Are you a Public speaker, trainer or consultant? Have you ever sat there waiting for your phone to ring-with a request for your brilliant keynote at full fee? Come hither to our June meeting here in Denver, Colorado. The focus of the meeting will be how to work with speakers bureaus and meeting planner! If you don’t know what a speakers bureau does or what a meeting planner is-you still need to be at the NSA Colorado meeting.

In addition we will have the pleasure of hearing Mark Sanborn our past chapter president as well as past National President of the National Speakers Association. Mark will share with us: The Encore Effect™

How to Give a Remarkable Presentation that Makes Clients Want More

This is a first, not just for NSA Colorado: Mark Sanborn will be sharing a sneak preview of his new book The Encore Effect: How To Give a Remarkable Performance in Anything You Do (copyright) that will be released by Random House in September of this year. Not only will you be the first to hear Mark speak on the new book, but he’ll apply it specifically to professional speaking. You’ll get strategies and tactics you can use to make clients want more of you and what you do.

Mark will share six components of any encore performance and what it takes to go beyond excellent to become distinctive. The components are familiar and easy to remember; the magic is in the way they are combined and applied to achieve remarkable results.

You’ll also get insights into how Mark creates new material for his book and speeches. And you’ll learn why you need to aim higher than “the next level” and how to go for 2LUL two levels up.

We will also have the pleasure of being entertained by Tim and Kris O’Shea. The O’Sheas are known for their business humor and corporate comedy. They are a great act and not to be missed!

We will have two panels to inform you about how best to work with meeting planners and speakers bureaus. Our first panel will feature Laura Stack as emcee. Laura is a past President of our chapter and known around the world as The Productivity Pro. Our first panel will cover:Understanding the Customer from the Meeting Professional’s Perspective featuring:

This panel of meeting planners will consist of:

1. Evan Goulding - Executive Director of Special District Association of Colorado
   Tim Litherland - Director of Sports and Group Sales /Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau
   Gary Schirmacher, CMP - Senior Vice President of the Western Region /Experient

Meeting planners should be some of your favorite people as a public speaker. They hire public speakers and arrange all the details of a meeting. Your goal should be to endear yourself to meeting planners and make them look like a hero for hiring you!

Our second panel emcee will be Mark Sanborn. Our second panel will cover: Understanding Speakers Bureaus:

This panel will consist of speakers bureaus and the members are:

• Maureen Brooks - Brooks International Speakers Bureau
  Tim Mathy - Speak Inc
  Debbie Taylor - Taylor Made Events and Speakers

Speakers bureaus can be a professional speakers best ally. They really do call you when they have a speaking or training engagement for you-and they take care of all of the details! Learn how working with speakers bureaus is a two way street built on trust and integrity. One more thing-You must have the “goods”, a bureau is not a place for you to hone your speaking skills.

This will be the last meeting of the year for NSA Colorado until we start up again in September. Come learn with us and register today for this fabulous meeting.

PS Our current President Gina Schreck was just awarded the designation of Certified Speaking Professional (CSP). This is a highly coveted designation and well deserved for my friend Gina! Please make a point to congratulate her. Yours truly, Steve Mertz, will have the honor of being the President for NSA Colorado next year. Please join us for this great June meeting.

Humorous openings are appreciated by audiences and a great way to create immediate rapport. A humorous opening is even better when the audience least expects it-for example, all of you who deliver technical presentations. Just because you have specific, technical information you don’t get a pass on not boring your audience to death You know who you are!

For example, I recently was delivering a presentation on search engine optimization (SEO) for websites and blogs. This can be a technical presentation but it doesn’t have to bore the bejesus out of the audience. When I started my presentation I mentioned the President of the Association, who was sitting in the front row

I went on to say how “Pat” shared with me that she had a side business and had made an additional $75,000 dollars last year-every time a cell phone went off in one of her presentations, she confiscated the phone and sold it on eBay!

While this is not any earth shattering humor-the audience loved it because they did not expect it from me and I could tell they were at ease with me. More importantly, the President of the association was flattered that I made a point to remember her name and include her in the presentation.  I have mentioned before the magic of drawing your audience into your presentation and always introduce yourself to the front row before you start your presentation!

For those of you who give more technical presentations please consider developing a humor file. If you use humor in your presentations your audiences will love you and I guarantee that your humorous presentation will be more memorable and repeatable-these are very good things if you wish to continue to be hired!! Humor just doesn’t happen and you may find the need to hire a coach to inject some humor in your presentations-this is a good investment! My speaker buddy, Steve Rizzo, spends the first several minutes with nothing but humor before he goes forward with his presentation. He has found that once an audience embraces you and your humor they are much more receptive to your presentation.

So, for all you CEO’s and Propeller Heads who are boring your audiences to death…stop it! Use humor in your presentations and we will laugh and learn with you!