Close with Power

Near end of a speech, slip this into your presentation: "This is the only March 16, 2010 there will ever be. We will never meet again as a group just as we are meeting today. Someone will be absent, someone will have moved on, someone new will be here; we will never have this same assembly of people again. This gathering is a singularity in the universe."

Keep Them on Time

Strive to be the one speaker at their meeting or convention who gets the meeting back on schedule. If you were scheduled for 60 minutes and you're given 42, still end at the original time, on the button.

It's an old saw that few speakers are ever penalized for speaking too little. Many are penalized in the minds of their listeners for speaking too long. You can become a hero to the host or meeting planner and possibly the larger group, by getting them back on track.

Top Bureaus, Great Results

As a professional speaker, I have had the privilege of working with many outstanding bureaus. Among the many traits that excellent bureaus have in common, these seem to show up often: they return phone calls properly, keep advised as to the status of held dates, gather comprehensive background materials from the client, collect fees as originally negotiated, and have a well-developed follow-up procedure in practice.

Think of using speakers bureaus in this way: You use a lot of professional services in your organization and your life, including attorneys, accountants, bankers, computer consultants, and tax advisors. The essence of any good professional is that the price you pay for his or her services is more than justified by the benefits. As it turns out, dealing with speakers bureaus works exactly the same way.

Speakers Bureaus offer Benefits

Five advantages of working with a speakers bureau for meeting planners include the following:

1) Should the situation arise in which you are not happy with the speaker's performance or any other aspect of your interaction with the speaker, you have a legitimate third party, the bureau, to handle your concerns. You are in a position of even greater leverage because it is in the bureau's best and long-term interest to ensure that you are happy.

2) The bureau's loyalty is to you--you are the customer--not the speaker they assign to meet your needs. Some speakers never quite understand that, but the bureaus have a very clear understanding of who signs the checks.

3) In the rare event that the original speaker cannot make the appointed date, the bureau can more easily get you the right back-up speaker than if you face this task by yourself, especially at the last minute.

4) Many bureaus require speakers to sign various pledges indicating, for example, that they will abide by certain travel expense limitations, not use offensive or off-color language, and so on. In this manner, working with the bureau affords many more protections than you might otherwise have when working with a speaker directly.

5) The bureau can also help enforce your policies regarding selling from the platform and engaging in other types of promotional behavior. A small percentage of speakers will flat out upset the tone of your meeting by using a portion of their time in front of your group to engage in aggressive marketing. The incidence of this happening when retaining speakers through a bureau is far less, and for the most part can be eliminated all together.

Don't Offer a False Front

Dr. Dean Ornish once said that the elaborate effort to support a false front is one of the most stressful things a person can do. In the context of speaking, that means be yourself: you'll have more energy and you'll connect better with the audience.

Cruise for Free

Would you like to draw upon your expertise take a cruise for free? Robert Otterbourg, writing for Kiplinger magazine explains exactly how you can do it.

Online Presentation on "Change"

Is managing rapid change a challenge for you? Here's a webinar you may enjoy from the Best Practice Institute featuring yours truly: "Prospering in a World of Rapid Change" schedule for September 11, 2007 at 2 p.m. EST.

This is a LIVE 45 minute webinar. Here's the description: Everywhere you look there are life-long career professionals losing confidence in their ability to stay competitive in our rapidly changing society. Concurrently, no one in society has a long-term lock on any market niche and no body of information affords a strategic competitive advantage for very long. The reality of our times is that everyone is feeling at least a little unsure of himself and in that sense everyone is in the same boat.

It's normal to be confused. In this presentation, I'll lay out what top professionals do to maintain confidence and balance, independent of the frequency of change to which they're exposed, and how they maintain a sense of breathing space along the way. If you work for a living, you won't want to miss hearing this.

Subtopics:
* The roots of uncertainty and what to do about it
* The importance of seeking small victories
* A new approach to learning
* What part self-confidence plays in mastering change
* New choices for new results

Give them Doubles!

When distributing handout material for attendees, offer a second copy to everyone and, in a short note, invite them to share the information with someone who could benefit from it. Tell attendees that if the other party contacts me to run a program for them as a result of receiving my handouts, I will provide the original attendee with a gift of a coaching session or products. This generates new business contacts.

FYI, my other blogs:
* for the time-pressured: www.BreathingSpaceBlog.com
* for the info-whelmed: www.CommunicationOverload.com

Philadelphia Area Invitiation

I will be speaking in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Convention Center for a day long presentation on Sunday June 3, 2007. The topic will be "Time Management in Age of Turbulence" delivered to 65 industrial hygenists.

If you're in the area, feel free to attend even if for 20 or 30 minutes. I promise the trip will be personally and professionally rewarding for you!


Here is the complete course description:

Time Management in an Age of Turbulence with Jeff Davidson
Everywhere you look, there are career professionals concerned with too much work, and not enough time. They are struggling with what is needed to manage the pace, stay competitive, and maintain worklife balance. The reality of our times is that everyone is feeling at least a little unsure of himself and, in that sense, everyone is in the same boat. Even management guru Tom Peters says it's normal to be confused!

In this day-long presentation, mega-author and professional speaker Jeff Davidson gets right to the heart of the matter and asks: "Are you running your life... ...or is your life running you?" Are you striving hard to meet stringent demands, tight deadlines, and awesome responsibilities with a lack of budget and staff resources? Are you wearing too many hats and perhaps not doing any one task as well as you could?

This course is vital because ever-increasing change is here to stay. With all that's happened in the world, in industrial hygiene, and in technology, it's not likely that business or society in general will soon return to a time when the pace of life moves along at an even keel. Outsourcing and downsizing are not temporary phenomena. Outside consultants face dwindling contract work opportunities while corporate professionals face too much work. Concerns abound about injury/exposure to the workforce as a result of cutbacks.

The nature of our times dictates that each of us be more fluid and more open to new procedures and systems for effectiveness in the workplace and beyond. Drawing upon his book, "Breathing Space," and many of his other books, Jeff Davidson will discuss how to "Manage in an Age of Turbulence" and will include such issues as handling rapid change, managing information and communication overload, managing multiple priorities, and, against all odds, relaxing at high speed. Topic Agenda:

1) Change is Inevitable Except from a Vending Machine
Root Causes of the Time Pressure
What Fills Your Days and Why?
Staying Alert and Responsive
Greater Control of Each Day

2) If It's to Be, It's Up to Me
Embracing Goals as Your Own
Doing More With Less
Getting it all Done Effectively
Empowering Those Around You

3) Keeping Your Plate Relatively Clean
There's Power in Completions Big and Small
More Energy from Each Accomplishment
Conditioning Your Environment
How to Maintain a Keener Focus

4) But I'm Already Dancing as Fast as I Can
Gaining a Frequent Sense of Breathing Space
Relaxing at High Speed
Choices That Lead to Mastery

As a result of attending this course you will be able to:
1) Handle Information Overload While Remaining Alert and Responsive
2) Better Manage Multiple Priorities
3) Maintain More Control Each Day and Help Those You Supervise
4) Generate Energy from Your Accomplishments, Large and Small

Equally important, you'll gain:
*A methodology for minimizing disruptions and interruptions
*The ability to achieve more completions all day long every day
*A more frequent sense of breathing space

The Laws of Lifetime Growth

Here are observations by author Dan Sullivan, from his book The Laws of Lifetime Growth: Always make your future bigger than your past, that would resonate with any audience:

Always make your:
Law 1: future bigger than your past
Law 2: learning greater than your experience.
Law 3: contribution bigger than your reward.
Law 4: performance greater than your applause.
Law 5: gratitude greater than your success.
Law 6: enjoyment greater than your effort.
Law 7: cooperation greater than your status.
Law 8: confidence greater than your comfort.
Law 9: purpose greater than your money.
Law 10: questions bigger than your answers.

Your Reputation is at Stake

Every time you retain a speaker to address your group, in many respects you're putting your reputation on the line. What if the speaker is ineffective? What if the speaker bombs? Worst of all, what if the speaker offends - or grossly offends - members of your audience?

You don't want to take a chance, and no one can blame you. You want to select the best possible expert for the program in mind whether it's a conference, convention, annual meeting, quarterly meeting, executive retreat, roundtable session, or any other arrangement. You want to be able to know, with confidence, that your staff or members, executive team, top management, owners, shareholders, or other constituents will be not simply satisfied with your selection, but pleased.

Now envision this. The evening before your special event, the expert presenter you have retained calls to say, "Hi. I arrived a few minutes ago and went immediately to the meeting room. I checked out the facilities, and everything seems fine. I'll be back at the room well in advance of my presentation tomorrow, rested and ready to go."

You put down the phone and think to yourself, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. Here is a speaker who takes care of the little things. Here is a meeting pro."

Next, imagine arriving at the meeting room, seeing that your presenter is already set up and is graciously greeting any early arrivals. Now you're thinking, "Here's somebody who goes the extra mile."

If I may toot my own horn for a moment, I go the extra mile every time.

Bureau's Pet Speakers

Some meeting professionals fear that speakers bureaus will only recommend "pet speakers" -- the ones that they always recommend. This may be true to a certain extent; however, if a bureau recommends the same handful of speakers over and over again, chances are that those speakers are good.

No bureau would risk its reputation on continually sending out a speaker who does not do a stellar job. Sure, in some cases bureaus owned by one spouse will continually recommend the speaker spouse. Ethical bureaus will be up front about this. In general, speakers bureaus and their respective agents do their homework to make sure they have identified whom they believe to be the right speaker for your situation.

These days, with everyone having websites, you could get on a search engine, type in the word speaker, and get hundreds of hits. While it is easy to identify many, many speakers, the task of weeding out who exactly represents the right match for your needs can be a daunting task. All the more reason to turn it over to a speakers bureau.