How To Become a Professional Speaker or Corporate Trainer

Because I get asked so often: “How do you get into the speaking, training and coaching business?” I decided it might be a good idea to put my answer here on the blog. This is a note I recently wrote to a very close friend that is trying to build a training company and get into public speaking. It is a pretty frank and blunt note – but this was a note that I sent to someone I care a great deal about – to try to help him as much as I humanly could. So what you have here is a very honest and straightforward memo on what I truly believe it takes to succeed in the speaking and corporate training business.

First you will need to get a VERY clear idea of exactly what you are trying to achieve. What, specifically do you honestly want to do with your speaking / training / consulting business? What will you offer that is different, unique, special and of REAL VALUE???? How many clients do you want to work with, what sort of clients, what sort of classes/workshops / coaching or keynotes will you offer? How much travel are you willing to do (since I began speaking my schedule has been anywhere from 150 — 243 days on the road a year), to where (for me it has been worldwide – I have gone through 5 passports), how much time do you want to work each week, what price are you willing to pay to succeed? As you think about these things it is important to keep in mind that you cannot be all things to all people—you’ll need a laser-like focus on where you know you can hit home runs…you have to decide what you really want—so you know what to say “No” to. You can get a lot of input about these questions from key folks around you that you respect and trust—but at some point you MUST put a stake in the ground and fully commit to a focused course of action. I would also add – that the only way you will ever be truly successful in this business (or any other) – is if you LOVE what you do. So it is a combination of picking something you really love that is fun for you, that you can do very well, that is also a topic that is highly valued in the marketplace. If you do not have ALL three of those, you will not be able to build a strong speaking / training business.

Once you have a good handle on what you want to be– you MUST put forth a Herculean effort to become as close to an expert on that subject or subjects as is possible. Let me use myself as an example. From the early days when I was named CEO of one of the Rockefeller Foundations (at age 26) I have always been interested in business and leadership and read broadly on those topics to help me be an effective leader of the foundation — but when I decided that I was going to try to get paid to talk about and give advice on those subjects, I made a personal commitment to become as knowledgeable as possible on them. Since 1989 I have read a minimum of 100 business books every year — most years closer to 130 — so that is about 10 books every month. I have also listen to at least 20 or 30 business/leadership/strategy audio books every year (I went through 430 audio business books in a specific 2-year time span when I was commuting 4 hours a day) – so another 2 or 3 audio books every month. I also read close to 10 magazines every month (on my iPad) – Fortune, Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, HBR, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0, Consulting, and Florida Trend… plus a few others I pick up at airports – like The Economist, Wired, and Entrepreneur. I read a local paper from the town I am in every day – and usually read the Wall Street Journal about 3 days a week. I typically get 3 to 5 white papers and research reports every month and also spend several hours each month searching for specific info on the web. I have a library of more than 150 Harvard Business Review and Strategy @ Wharton articles and try to add at least two new articles every month. I receive weekly podcasts from Yale, Wharton, Harvard, MIT, Stanford and the Wall Street Journal.  Yes – I do ALL of these sorts of things — EVERY month – and have for the past 25 years – without fail. For the past 10 years I have also blocked off at least one week each year to attend a very high-level seminar… as a participant. I have traveled to attend the World Business Forum, to listen to lectures at the Wharton School of Business, to go watch Tom Peters, Jim Collins, Gary Hammel, Jack Welch and other top business speakers. I also attend the Ideas Fest at the Aspen Institute and the Renaissance Weekend of Global Thought Leaders each year. I go to these events to learn everything I can and meet as many interesting people as possible. For example, during my recent visit to the Aspen Institute I attended more than 40 lectures by top global business thinkers, I had lunch with Allen Greenspan, sat in a session next to Colin Powell and chatted with him, met more than a dozen CEOs of Fortune 100 firms, got introduced to several folks from the White House staff and spoke with Queen Noor of Jordan about servant leadership.  These trips are expensive, typically about $15,000 for the week by the time everything is said and done — but it is an investment of time and money I MUST make in order to keep building my skills and growing my network.  So, if you add it all up – it is roughly about 40,000+ pages of reading, listening to dozens of audio books, and at least a week of high-level seminars every year for 15+ years straight — specifically on leadership, business strategy, high-performance teams, winning culture and customer service – (the most important topics my clients are interested in – the stuff I get paid to talk about – and things I am also very interested in) — so I can get $25,000 or more to stand up and talk for an hour. If you are not willing to do this level of work – no one will be willing to pay that much to listen to you.  BTW: this does not even include the dozens of hours of research and customization I do for almost every presentation. I look at it this way: if I give a 2-hour talk and I’ve got 120 senior executives in the room — that equals 240 hours of their time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary — therefore I owe it to them to be insanely well-prepared and 100% focused on adding real value to them. For example, I recently gave a keynote talk to a group of about 280 folks from Apple, it was on a topic I knew fairly well but had to do some customization. I added up all the time I spent preparing for the talk and it took me 13 1/2 hours to prepare for a one-hour talk! The key is when you have a group of top executives from a Fortune 500 company… you cannot waste a single minute of their time — so you have to be totally on your game and ready to go when you walk up on that stage — every single time.

You’ll need to develop a very, very clear set of values and key strategies that will drive your business. As an example, in my speaking business our entire company is based on this formula: Research + Real Life + Passion = ROI.  We have based my entire business on the idea that I will do more research, more reading more work than any other speaker that you know of – I will combine that with years and years of real life experience as a business owner, CEO (of 10 companies – three multinational) and working shoulder to shoulder with some of the top business leaders in the world – and every single thing I do will drive for ROI in the meeting – no fluff, no silly stories, I will not waste a minute of your time – everything I do will give you a return for your investment in me. These have been the core values that have driven our business combined with an idea of extreme customer focus and extreme customer service. Therefore, the key to success is creating the combination of a clearly targeted message about exactly what products and services you will deliver – what values they are based on – and then putting that message in front of lots of the “right people.”

Who are the right people? They are potential clients that have a significant need for what you present – and the resources to afford your price… easily. Your key target customer is someone who wants to buy what you have and feels that you are offering them a very good deal for the value you will deliver. So this means that it is essential for you to create a very detailed “Target Customer Profile” of the absolute best potential clients for your speaking or training business (by looking at the people that buy those services now) and building a database of potential clients that meet your key criteria. You might have to buy some mailing / e-mail lists, or advertise in the specific journals or magazines these target people read. But here is the essence: create a powerfully targeted message -> put it in front of lots of the right people, then deliver superior work and great customer service and they will in turn tell lots more of the right people. ***A note - in our firm we have clearly figured out who is the most likely to want/need/afford our services—and we focus all our energy on ONLY them. We try hard not to waste a lot of time with people who do not meet these “key client criteria”— they are usually just a pain to deal with, will complain about everything (especially price), and no matter what we do we won’t be able to make them happy. It is just bad all the way around. So, just as important as deciding who your target clients are – is learning who to say NO to as well.

You will need to get even more clear about exactly WHAT you sell– and make it super easy for those key target people to understand specifically what they are buying, what they can expect as results and how much it costs. You have to take all of the guess-work out of it—make it simple for them to make a buying decision. People will not spend money on what they do not understand and it is often very hard for people to get a feel for what we really do when we sell them a speech, consulting or training – those are pretty amorphous products. Remember, there are a lot of people out there that claim to be trainers / coaches / consultants / speakers – and are terrible! These sort of folks have totally burned our potential clients – so we already have a tremendous hurdle to jump over right out of the starting blocks. Keep in mind that the biggest block to making a buying decision about our sort of products is FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) == so it is your responsibility to remove as much FUD as possible – or people will not trust you enough to invest in your programs. You have to create specific “products” with clear deliverables and outcomes – so they know precisely what they are giving you money to accomplish.**

Another big question around selling is… pricing. Here is how I do it. I collect every single piece of competitive literature I can and scan all of the web sites to see exactly what everyone else is charging. For example, I know that you can go to a leadership program from Fred Pryor or Career Track (the absolute lowest level and lowest priced classes available) for about $195 per person for a 9 AM to 4 PM program. At the other end of the spectrum you can attend an American Management Association three-day class for about $2,495 per-person or a five-day Harvard course for about $9,750 (so that gets down to roughly $1,000 per-person, per-day strictly for the seminar). So I have tried to come in at about $500 per-person for the day, with an average class size of 40 people = $20,000 per day for a complete training program (keynotes to hundreds or thousands of people are priced differently). With the caliber of my programs, my personal background / expertise and the list of clients I have delivered to (GE, IBM, NCR, Pepsi, AT&T, State Farm, Microsoft, Abbott, Merrill Lynch, Qualcomm…) this is a very reasonable price for a “proven” Fortune 100 level program.

After you figure out all of the above—then you have to be an evangelist for your company and programs—not pushy, never overbearing, and absolutely not a pest — but a very professional and polished marketer of your service to anyone and everyone that meets your “Ideal Client” criteria. Know what you sell – know who is most likely to want it/ need it / pay for it—and then spend every waking moment getting in front of those folks and helping them get excited about how you can honestly help them. You’ll need to scan the papers, local and regional magazines and the Internet for possible leads. Send out highly customized and extremely well-written letters and HTML ads. Make dozens of calls and send hundreds of personal emails. All focused on telling a compelling and honest story of how you can add real, significant value to your clients. You have to clearly show them how you can solve pressing problems that they desperately want to have go away or help them achieve great things they have always wanted to achieve. By the way, when you are starting out the close ratio is typically ONE new client for every 100 or so contacts. 10 new clients = 1,000 very well orchestrated, professionally carried out personal contacts (letter, call, meeting, email). Wow — it is a lot of work for the first three years or so. Now, after more than 17 years of delivering speeches and training class all around the world… 99.99 % of my work comes directly from referrals. I do almost no outreach at all and my close rate is nearly 100 %. Which leads me to a critical aspect of your business success…

As part of your sales effort you will also need a HUGE network of people that can recommend you – send you referrals – give you leads. Obviously your past customers are the very best for this (the client I delivered a class for yesterday sent me an email this AM — I got some of the highest scores ever for the groups I presented to – they want to hire me for a number of additional days next year — and have already offered to pass my name on to several of their vendors and associations — that is exactly how it works!!!!). Also—you’ll need a bunch of “hubs” that can help you. Hubs are people who – by the nature of who they are and what they do – come into contact with lots and lots of your key target customers. Get a hub on your side and they can tell 400 people about how great you are – where as a regular person who loves what you do – will tell about 5 people (nice, but not enough to help you build your business). Also, there is simply no way only 2 or 3 hubs will send enough work your way – you need a small army of key folks waiving your banner (I have several agents, quite a few key hubs and dozens of clients that all send one or two folks my way each year—individually not much—combined — 70+ solid and qualified leads a year—more than enough to keep me as busy as I can possibly handle).

Another key factor is that people need to meet you and watch you present in order to trust you and want to hire you. That means for the first year or two you need to get out and do as many presentations as possible. Rotary, Kiwanis, Chamber, business clubs, networking clubs, volunteering to help a non-profit… any organization that will let you put on a program (in front of the right people). You may have to do a lot of these for free or for very little money (I probably did 50 free seminars in my first year — and still do a very select handful every year) — but the more exposure and practice you get — the more work you will eventually get. With what we sell – a big part of the decision rests on whether people like and trust you – and many cannot make that leap until they meet you and see you present – so make it easy for them to see you deliver a superior speech or program – and they will want to hire you right away.

Lastly – when you do land a client… you have to simply dazzle, delight, enthrall and surprise them by delivering a level of excellence they had not imagined was possible (in every aspect of the program: pre-meeting coordination, responsiveness, flexibility, delivery style and professionalism, workbooks, workshops, PowerPoint slides, customization, tools, resources, research, stories, examples, facilitation, follow-up, and “thank you’s” — it ALL has to be amazing.) Then keep in close contact with them, become a real friend and trusted advisor —and nurture the relationship for years and years. I am still in contact and on very good terms with people I did work for in 1989. I talk to them 2 or 3 times a year, send them a note from time-to-time or an article or book — and then out of the blue I will get a call to ask for help or to introduce me to a potential client. As a perfect example: three of my major current clients came from referrals from a business friend I have known since 1990 – we have not actually worked on a project together since 1994 – but in 2005 he helped us land our top three clients that now represent 60% of our current business!!!! Your loyal customers will build, grow and sustain your firm for the long run – I promise it.

The hard part is that no one else can do these things for you. People can help, suggest, guide and mentor you. You can read books on sales, networking, referrals, marketing (a very good idea). But in order to sell your programs and speeches – it MUST be you out on the street, in meetings, at seminars, sending letters, making phone calls, writing emails, sitting down with key decision makers and helping them become excited about the real value you can offer. Excited enough that they are willing to write you a check for $5,000 to $50,000 for you to come in and help their team. A lot of consultants, speakers and trainers know this is the way to build their business — but very few are willing to do the hard work to get it done.

A final little thought: I get dozens of speakers / trainers asking me all the time, “How do you get so many engagements every year – and all at such good rates?” (I did about 90 sessions last year) The answer I give them is straightforward: Do NOT worry at all about selling programs. Worry your ass off about being the best presenter you possibly can be. Worry yourself to death about always delivering maximum value to the client. Drive yourself crazy worrying about being incredibly well prepared and totally focused for every presentation. Have a nervous breakdown worrying that your work is so good that the client will be overjoyed they hired you. Worry about all that stuff – and you will never, ever have to worry about being busy. Your clients will keep you booked for months in advance – at whatever reasonable price you want to request. Be fantastic in the information and presentation and the rest will take care of itself. That is honestly the secret!!!

Well, you asked me — so there is pretty much what I am thinking… and I want to say that I feel VERY comfortable with this information – because it is EXACTLY what I had to do myself for 5 years to get my business in a position… to finally get where it is now… almost 18 years later!!!!!  .

Now that I have given you and honest and somewhat overwhelming view of what it truly takes to do this job, I want to leave you with this thought: I love to go to work!  Yes, I am on the road for 220+ days a year. Yes, it is a lot of reading and study. Yes, the travel can be extremely challenging.  Yes, the job can bring a lot of pressure when there are 9,000 people in the audience and it is your responsibility to make sure they have a super time for the next two hours while you are talking. But at the end of the day… I would not trade my job for any other in the world. The work of being a professional speaker and executive educator has allowed me to travel across the globe, meet incredible people, make lifelong friends and enjoy a very good living  HELPING PEOPLE BE MORE SUCCESSFUL — and there is not a day that goes by that I don’t say to myself, “I can’t believe I get paid to do this!”

Hope this helps - and if it did PLEASE share it on your social networks!!!  

I wish you every possible Happiness and success - John

 John Spence is recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Thought Leaders in America, one of the Top 100 Small Business Influencers in America, and one of the Top 500 Leadership Development Experts in the World. John is also one of the American Management Association’s Leaders to Watch along with Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos. He is an international keynote speaker and management consultant who has written five books on business and life success and has made a career out of “Making the Very Complex… Awesomely Simple”.  www.johnspence.com