How to Keep Your Pipeline Full Without Spending a Dime

Oct 24, 2018 / By Deirdre Van Nest

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Consistently presenting to groups is a great way to market yourself. But think beyond holding your own seminars. Speaking at events hosted by an outside organization means they handle all costs and event planning. You simply show up and educate a group of new prospects.

One of the biggest challenges you may have in your business is keeping your pipeline full and doing it in a leveraged way.

Consistently giving group presentations (otherwise known as one-to-many selling) is a great way to do that.

Many advisors are afraid of spending thousands of dollars on mailers and people who really only come to their seminar for the steak dinner. Not to mention the time spent and stress of trying to get “derrières in chairs.”

In truth, when you know how to get people to show up and how to create presentations that convert, running your own seminars and workshops can be a powerful source of leads and revenue.

But you don’t have to spend time and money to bring in the leads speaking provides. It fact, it doesn’t have to cost you anything.

With that in mind, I’d like to expand your vision and introduce you to another type of speaking. One that can produce great results without you spending a dime.

Get in the habit of speaking at what I call hosted events.

This is an event that someone else hosts. They get the bodies in the seats, they rent the room, they deal with all the marketing and logistics. You just show up.

You may not realize these opportunities are open to you.

In my experience advisors count themselves out on this one thinking, “No one would want me to speak to their group.” That’s not true!

When I work with advisors, one of the main ideas I hammer home is that they should work on getting booked at hosted events ASAP.

It’s a lot cheaper, less time intensive, and it builds your credibility and visibility faster than any other marketing strategy.

So, you may be thinking, “This sounds great, Deirdre, but where can I find these events?”

To start, there are two strategies I suggest you use:

Strategy 1: Scan your community online

A great place to begin is searching online for opportunities in your community. Regardless of where you live, it’s likely that in your community there are dozens of live events each week that bring in outside speakers.

To get you started, below is a list of groups that commonly host events with speakers, in most communities. Plus, I’ve listed a few speaker directories.

Eventbrite or Meetup
C-Suite executive groups (Vistage, Convene)
Shared co-working space
Chambers of Commerce
Service clubs (Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis)
Special interest clubs (The Woman’s Club, Master Gardeners, social/athletic, country clubs)
Function-driven groups (sales, marketing, leadership development, advertising, architects, lawyers, real estate, etc.)
Business networking groups like Polka Dot, eWomen, Local Business Network
Community education
Churches
Parks and recreation activities
Colleges and universities, especially community colleges
Online conference sites like AllConferences.com
Vendor events
Speaker directories such as Speaker Services, SpeakerZone.com or FreeSpeakers.org
Trade associations
Check the business section of your local paper for networking events

Still skeptical it could work for you and your topic? To bust that myth please read the following list. This list includes just some of the places where advisors I know are speaking. My hope is by reading this list you will realize you too can do this and that it will also get your creative juices flowing on generating ideas.

Chambers of Commerce events
Business groups
Community Education
Community college—individually and as a guest for others who have a course
Divorce support groups
Lunch and Learn events: corporations, nonprofits, government
C-Suite executive groups: Vistage, Convene (Christian CEO peer group)
Industry events and associations
Events for local nonprofits
Brought in to train advisors at other companies!
Church groups
High schools to parents with college bound kids
Women’s groups
Moms’ groups
Public school employees
Frontline employees and managers in corporations
Family-owned business owners
Physicians
Dentists
Hospitals
Senior programming and senior living communities
Vendor events

Strategy 2: Scan your personal network

This is my go-to strategy for getting booked. I find it gets me booked the quickest and in front of high quality prospects. Once I tell you what it is, it’ll seem obvious, but many people never think to tap into this goldmine.

Ready?

Ask your past and current clients for connections to speaking gigs. It’s that simple.

There are two reasons why your clients are a goldmine of speaking lead connections:

Assuming they’ve gotten great results from working with you, (and I know they have!), these people already love you. They are already your fans and more than likely would be happy to help you get speaking engagements.
Because we know the old adage is true: “Birds of a feather flock together.” This means your clients can likely lead you to groups of prospects who are just like them. And I’m going to make the assumption that’s what you want. (If not, you may want to think about getting new clients!)

Now when I say your clients can help you get speaking engagements, here’s what I mean: Just like with any other type of prospecting, word of mouth connections are a major factor in getting booked to speak.

Your clients likely belong to groups or work in organizations that bring in speakers and you can ask your client to make an introduction to the coordinator of the group for you.

For example: Several years ago one of my clients asked me to connect them to the event coordinator for a mom’s group I belonged to at my church. I did. They booked the gig and from this one talk, they brought in 50 new clients! Turns out I fit their ideal client profile to a T. So, predictably enough, the people I hung out with were their ideal clients, too.

I said this strategy is simple and it is, but for many the execution is not easy. Here are tips to increase your success at getting connections to potential gigs:

Sit down and make a list of people you want to reach out to. Start with those you have a great relationship with and would love to clone. Think about:
- Your clients
- COIs
- People you meet networking
- Friends and family
- Acquaintances
Once you come up with your list make a schedule and set goals for reaching out to them. Decide how many per day/week you will reach out to and make it doable. Use a combo of email and phone calls. Like any prospecting this is where the rubber meets the road. If you don’t make a plan and you don’t reach out you won’t get the connections to gigs.
Looking for speaking gigs is typically not a linear process. Meaning, let’s say Doug is a favorite client. He works at a company where you’d like to speak. When you contact Doug about speaking, chances are he is not the person who will book you. More likely, he will introduce you to the person who will book you or introduce you to someone closer, who will then introduce you to the booking person.

So, your leads will come from second- or third-generation introductions. I once had a client say, “I can’t ask the people I know, they all work for themselves!” A light bulb went off when I told her, “You’re not asking them to book you, you’re asking them to introduce you to people in their network who can book you or move you one step closer to being booked.”

Attitude is everything

To profit from the enormous benefits speaking at hosted events can bring you, your mindset matters! You have to be willing to be a detective to find gigs. Don’t ask one or two people and say, “This doesn’t work! Nobody wants me!” Ask 25–50 and then email me if nothing has shaken out yet. Your mindset has to be: I’ll stay persistent and follow the trail of connections where it leads me.

In closing, let me say that like anything worthwhile, getting booked at hosted events will take some work. So why do it?

My client Mike consistently uses this strategy to speak at high schools to parents of college-bound kids. About six months ago he said, “Deirdre, I was calculating how much income my college planning talks have generated for me over time in client business…and it’s north of two million dollars!”

I think that’s a pretty solid reason to do speaking engagements. Do you?

Be sure to keep an eye out for my next article where I will give you scripts to use when asking your contacts for speaking gig introductions. I will also give you a little-used strategy to dramatically increase the chances of getting a “Yes, we’d love to have you!”

Deirdre Van Nest is the Creator of the Crazy Good Talks^® Blueprint, a system that teaches financial professionals how to bring in business faster and impact more lives through the power of speaking. Deirdre is an international Keynoter, Trainer and Advisor Coach. Over the past six years she’s helped thousands of financial professionals become Crazy Good Speakers™. She is the host of Crazy Good Talks^®TV and is called upon for interviews on financially related podcasts and TV talk shows. You can learn more about her services at www.crazygoodtalks.com. For more speaking tips check out www.crazygoodtalks.com/tv.

Comments

I recently signed up for Deirdre‘s Crazy Good Talks” coaching program. It is phenomenal. I have built a $100 million practice on seminars and truly believe that if I had been following Deirdre‘s advice my practice would be twice as big as it is now. The amount and quality of contey on every aspect of giving prensentations is priceless. Whatever topic you want to give talks on, you will be doing yourself a huge favor to go through her program and rewrite your material based on her advice. After 29 years as a practicing advisor and enrolling in numerous coaching programs, nothing comes close to the practical, implementable advice that Deirdre provides.

Marc D Alpharetta, GA
2/10/2019 8:49:18 AM

Sean, I believe that we are mostly in agreement. When I stated "hosted" events I meant that someone else is the host and I am speaking to their membership. If I am hosting the event (i.e. complete control), then I definitely expect 50% or more in appointments. Certainly, with the advice from this article and others such as yourself, I am open to new perspectives and strategies. I believe that all of the materials available at Horsesmouth are great tools, and I'm excited about the prospects of the New Tax Law Program and Retirement Tax Strategy. Any advisor with knowledge of the tax code and strategies is way ahead of the pack in my opinion, and prospective clients will pay a premium for sage tax planning b/c it's so hard to come by. I am open to learning from successful advisors and seeing things in new ways and from different angles. It is not my intent to communicate that HM financial education workshops or the strategies in the article do not work. I especially like Deirdre's comments re: presenting general topics to a "specific niche" captive audience, and has motivated me into rethinking my approach as we head into 2019.

Michael S Atlanta, GA
10/25/2018 4:11:20 PM

@ Douglas Pierce (for Deirdre) - Thanks for your reply! I agree with you 100% that targeting a niche is the best way to go (although it has not been my experience that it's all that easy to get in front of them).

Michael S Atlanta, GA
10/25/2018 8:20:21 AM

Sean, I appreciate your comments. Let's face it, we can give interesting talks all day long, but the question is how many appointments can we set? Are advisors reporting record numbers of appointments? I've delivered several hosted presentations over the years, and yes, I've gotten a few clients here and there, but not nearly enough to offset the time invested. Delivering a good presentation, even a hosted one, takes many hours of preparation. Also, good information is simply not enough to get people to act. People act when they are uncertain (or dare I say fearful) of their situation or future, or an event such as divorce or retirement is looming whereby they must make decisions and they feel constrained by their options. It is deflating to walk away (even with fantastic reviews, feedback, and email addresses for future drip campaigns) without appointments. For these reasons, I am seeking organizations that can afford to pay for a speaker. Of course, I am flexible for an ideal audience, but we've got to start getting paid for our time b/c these organizations are not going to allow us to "sell from the podium" like we could at an event that we're hosting ourselves. The information we're providing is worth more than just access to their membership. Sure, for someone just starting their career as an advisor, or need practice speaking in front of audience, then I recommend doing as many free talks as possible. At some point though, you're going to start recognizing the value of your time and the information you're delivering. I think we need to start thinking of ourselves as public speakers AND financial advisors. Good public speakers are paid to handsomely, and we're delivering much more value in terms of actionable ideas.

Michael S Atlanta, GA
10/25/2018 7:46:47 AM

Thanks for sharing your insights, Mike. I have to respectfully, and largely, disagree with your assessment. We've surveyed thousands and interviewed hundreds of advisors who make presentations for free and regularly add $5, $10, $20, $30 million per year in new AUM (putting on between 8 and 30 events a year). The one take away from all our interviews is that every advisors needs to find the approach that fits their style and works best for them. We see that constantly. There's simply now way that any of these advisors could equal in annual speaking fees the AUM they're pulling from their financial education workshops. (BTW, most of these people are veteran advisors, not greenhorns.) If you're hosting workshops and not getting positive ROI, it's likely there's a kink somewhere and it likely has to do more with actions that are in your control, such as your choice of topic, venue, marketing lists, etc. It also might have to do with your presentation style and the manner in which deliver your talks and engage the audience. (Not things covered in public speaking or Toastmasters.) At a minimum, you should be getting half of the buying units to sign up for a meeting with you and then half of those as clients later. Many advisors get higher sign ups and conversions. Anyway, the other thing that stands out is that advisors who are succeeding are committed. Several presentations over several years is not an effective strategy. Anyway, regarding this article, it's an approach i know some advisors take and it works for them. But if your goal is to seriously grow your business, you need to be in control of the whole thing. Giving "hosted talks" to "captured audiences" is a secondary strategy for most successful presenters. It's not the main driver of their success. We go into all of this in-depth during our two day Financial Educator Marketing workshop. The next one is in Hawaii. See www.horsesmouth.com/hawaii

Sean Bailey Maplewood, NJ
10/25/2018 10:02:54 AM

Michael I agree, it does takes work to get in front of them but it's worth the time to do the up front work. One of the things you must do is to make sure- I will talk about this in my next article -that the way you describe the presentation a.k.a. your title is enticing and outcome driven otherwise you likely won't get booked. In addition as I mentioned in the article above it does take some detective work so you do have to be willing to continuously put it out there and ask to get booked. In my article next month I will give you some scripts on how to ask for bookings and leads to bookings so that you position yourself as being helpful rather than just trying to grow your own business. As for the discussion below on whether or not advisers are setting a record number of appointments and really growing their business from speaking the answer is a resounding yes! I have a client Mark who just started doing his own seminars a year ago, he does two per month, and within this year he has increased his life and health production by 80% and doubled his managed account business. The catch to speaking and actually setting appointments is knowing how to structure and deliver your content so that it's what I call crazy good. That means you have to grab peoples attention right away, you know how to keep their attention, and you know how to inspire them to take action. Developing that skill set takes time but it's a game changer. That's why am excited to contribute monthly because each month I will give you strategies to help you do just that. Finally I completely agree with you I think you should have your sites that are becoming a paid speaker. Several clients are doing just that. It's beautiful thing, in fact I would call it crazy good!

Deirdre Van Nest NYC, NY
10/25/2018 4:21:51 PM

We do a number seminars on a wide range of topics for employer plans we work with regularly. The topics that consistently get the best turnout are Social Security, Medicare, Retirement Income Planning and this year Tax Law Changes. I was shocked how many people were interested in the Tax Law Changes and the response was consistent across different employer groups.

Steve C San Diego, CA
10/25/2018 1:41:37 AM

Good to hear, Steve. Your experience is consistent with others. And thanks for pointing out the surprising attendance at the tax workshop. Adding smart tax planning as part of an advisor's service offering is going to be critical to keeping and winning clients starting right now. Look for Horsesmouth's new Savvy Tax Planning program, which will pre-launch in the near future. This program will enable advisors to educate their audiences about both the new tax rules and, perhaps more importantly, and the need for a retirement tax strategy. This topic, retirement tax strategy, may very well exceed Social Security and Medicare in terms of drawing power and motivation to act.

Sean Bailey Maplewood, NJ
10/25/2018 10:07:51 AM

What are advisors speaking about? You mentioned college planning, but I'm a few months away before I feel comfortable with the topic. What are other topics that are being covered? The challenge for me has been picking topics that will generate leads that apply to the entire organization. For example, only a portion of an organization's members will be interested in Social Security or Medicare. Organizers are very wary of financial advisors speaking to their groups. Cybersecurity seems to be a hot button, although it's not a subject that stirs people to make an appointment.

Michael S Atlanta, GA
10/24/2018 10:49:58 AM

I have the same question. This article is nice, but not actionable without ideas for what to speak on that can get through compliance.

Haider S ,
10/24/2018 11:17:00 AM

Michael, advisors report record turnout for a discussion about the new tax law. The new rules impact every person, family, and business. The public is woefully ignorant about taxes and usually pays more than is necessary. Their CPAs don't do tax planning. So that's a very good topic, with keen interest. Many groups that need speakers are jammed with baby boomers. So all the retirement topics actually have great interest.

Sean Bailey Maplewood, NJ
10/24/2018 12:29:54 PM

I have set up small group presentations from clients like this before. For the first time at a group, I usually do a broad, overall presentation that goes thru creating a budget, investing basics, retirement accounts and taxes, how credit works, life ins, etc. I get a lot of good feedback and it's totally educational so organizers aren't as wary to invite you in. I offer to schedule one on one meetings and usually have a few takers. I also try to gauge interest in other more specific topics so I can have a foot in the door to come back again with a different presentation that's more tailored.

Lynda C San Diego, CA
10/24/2018 12:40:46 PM

Deirdre is having an issue with replying, so until that is resolved, I will go ahead and share her response-- "Great conversation in this thread! The question to ask is not so much, 'What topics are other advisors taking about?' As much as it is, 'What are the topics that will get MY ideal audience thinking, "I want to work with that advisor!"' I will be talking more about this idea in my next article but in the meantime Michael I have found that when you pick a general topic and target it towards a very specific audience, you will increase your odds of getting booked to speak at a hosted event. More so than if you try to figure out a hot topic that will appeal to a broad audience. For example, one of my advisor clients Joe speaks on retirement planning for Dentists. That makes it easy for him to get booked by dental groups. My client Michelle speaks on financial planning for women going through Divorce. This gets her booked at events that support divorcing women. Finally Stephanie speaks at Christian CEO groups. My assignment for you if your willing to take it is to identify your ideal client group and then brainstorm ideas (based on the questions they are always asking you and the challenges they always have ) on which topics will benefit and interest them the most. On a side note, if you do want to go for that 'hot' topic that will interest most everyone I'm with Sean. It's the new tax law and how that will affect their income."

Douglas Pierce New York, NY
10/24/2018 5:01:49 PM

From Deirdre: "Haider: I hope my response above this helps answer your compliance question. Most companies are completely fine with taking a general topic and tailoring for the concerns of a specific audience. Many of my clients are actually allowed to build their own unique topics from scratch too. Obviously you’ll want to check with your compliance offer to see what’s allowed."

Douglas Pierce New York, NY
10/25/2018 9:52:27 AM

From Deirdre: "Great input Lynda. In a future article I’ll share a specific strategy to get more takers on the 1:1 meetings."

Douglas Pierce New York, NY
10/25/2018 9:53:03 AM

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