What are the most effective ways to use your professional speaking portfolio for landing engagements?

To maximize your speaking opportunities, kindly consider these 3 key strategies: 1. Highlight Your Expertise: Showcase your niche areas and expertise to attract engagements that align with your strengths. 2. Tailor Your Portfolio: Customize your portfolio for specific audiences or events to demonstrate relevance and value. 3. Social Proof: Include testimonials, audience feedback, and statistics to build trust and credibility with potential clients. By implementing these approaches, you can effectively leverage your professional speaking portfolio to secure more speaking engagements. Good luck!

Who's your speech for? "Everyone." Wrong. There is no single speech on earth that's for "everyone." Even if you feel that way, saying it to an event organizer will make you look naive & unserious. Instead, be clear from the get-go who stands to benefit from your advice, and tailor the speech to them. A speech for mid-career millennials who've worked at 6 different companies since graduation is very different than a speech for Gen X executives who are charting a course to retirement. Be clear.

If you’re like me and you’re someone who is uncomfortable with being pigeonholed and the concept of “niching down” - I get it! Yet, to be a successful speaker it is important to have a target audience who will most benefit from your talents & expertise. Then as you learn more about their needs you can use your diverse skillset creatively to help them solve their challenges. You can’t be all things to all people. But you can be many things to a select few.

Start with your ideal client in mind. What are they looking for in terms of profile and topics? You probably have a wide variety of things you could speak to, but if you try to appeal to everybody you will appeal to nobody. Narrow your focus to widen your appeal.

They’re basically looking for two things: 1. Social proof: Is there evidence that other reputable clients have hired you before? They want to minimise risk. 2. Do I then like his/her style of delivery? You don’t need to post your longest videos or speeches. Short and sweet is fine as long as it captures your personality.

Short clips and highlight reels of you speaking are great. But having some evergreen long-form content is always a smart idea. Something timeless that you’d be proud of if it lived on the internet forever.

Event organizers are extremely busy. If they're working for a big event that receives hundreds or thousands of speaker applications, they might decide in a literal glance whether to delete your application or investigate further. Make it extremely easy for an event organizer to book you. Don't make them dig. Put everything they need to know in one single webpage online: your headshot, full name, bio, pronouns, speaker reel, speech titles & descriptions, past speaking engagements, testimonials, and a speaker reel (if you have it).

It’s not who you know, but who knows you. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. People are so busy that you need to be top of mind otherwise you’re forgotten.

Tell people you're a speaker. Put the word "speaker" in your bio. Most people hate public speaking & will do anything to avoid it. Make it clear that you don't feel that way! If you tell friends, family, and colleagues that you want to speak, they will actively listen for speaking opportunities for you -- and because so few people want to speak, you'll probably be at the top of their list!

Event organizers are busy people. Make it easy to work with you: 1. Respond to their questions ASAP. Don't make them follow up. Just get it done. 2. Give them all the information they need before they have to ask for it. Put your headshot, full name, pronouns, title, bio (in different lengths), and headshots on your website. 3. Give them reasons to book you beyond the speech. Can you sign books in the lobby? Can you do a meet-and-greet with audience members? Can you invite your 5,000+ person email list to the event?

If you don't have a speaker reel yet, fake it. For a few hundred bucks, you can hire a videographer to record you giving your talk in front of a group of friends. Cut together a highlights reel and make it easier for organizers to decide to book you.