Secrets To Getting A Standing Ovation

Leanne Christie is the Chief of Everything O, that is the House Of O. She founded Ovations Speakers Bureau many years ago and several years ago, ODE Management, which is a speaker management company. She’s proud to be the only true global speaker management company in the world. With staffs in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, the company manages speakers in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.

She has been coaching speakers under the banner of Standing Ovations and she has often been referred to as the Million Dollar Maker having steered and coached many speakers throughout their career to earn over $1 million in their speaking revenue. If you know anything about the business, you know that is an elite group of people. Leanne, first of all, huge thanks. It’s lovely to have you, connecting with me in Austin and you in Australia.

My favorite opening question for guests is to ask your own story of origin. You could go back to childhood, school or wherever you’ve got the interest of like, “I find this concept of managing speakers and getting people to hire speakers interesting.” I’m guessing there was something along your own path that first made you think, “Hmm.” Most people don’t wake up and might say, “I want to be a doctor or a lawyer.” I’m sure there’s a great story of how it all started.

I worked for a trainer and I was selling training. Where my bureau is a little bit different is that I had that passion for what I call the long tail and staying of service to clients for a long time because of my training background. When I was doing that, I was 25 years old and I was earning $25,000 a year. I thought that was good because I worked out. I was clever. By the time I was 30, I might earn $30,000 a year. I started waking up when I started selling and thinking, “I’ve got to see how I was thinking small.” I asked the guy I was working for if I could on commission. He got a consultant in and the consultant looked at the red sports car that he bought and had a look at the tractor that went on the farm that he bought and he said, “I don’t think that would work out well for you.” I went on commission myself and that’s where my speaker’s bureau started. You can’t be on more commission than starting a speaker bureau.

You are all in on yourself. You are betting on yourself in a big way, aren’t you?

It’s true. My husband didn’t want to mortgage the house or anything at the time. He felt it was too big of a gamble but I had $200 in a separate account. I started with $200 on the kitchen table, 100 calls a day, every single day. Fifty calls, you can have lunch. Fifty calls, you can knock off. If I hadn’t done 50 calls and I was getting hungry, dial faster.

That is funny to dial faster. There is a reward in there and it worked.

A lot of people look at, what is the one thing that maybe I haven’t been doing enough of that I don’t want to talk about? It’s speaking of fun and talking to people. It’s connection. That’s what the business was based on.

A lot of people know what a speaker is. We know that they are speaking bureaus but this concept of a speaker management company, there are some similarities between the world of acting having agents and managers. I would love you to explain to the readers what the distinction is and how you are able to do both.

First of all, the distinction. My cofounder in ODE helped me get this because it’s quite a simple way of talking about it. It’s like the other side of the same coin. A speaker bureau finds speakers for their clients. A speaker management company finds clients for their speakers. It’s the same industry but it’s the complete other side of the coin. It’s a very different viewpoint.

There might be a lot of overlap. For example, if a client comes to you and says, “We have a big meeting coming up. We are looking for a sales speaker. Do you know any?” You were like, “I do. That’s my job.” You give them some suggestions. On the flipside, a speaker comes to you and I’m guessing, you can correct me if I’m wrong, before they get management, they usually have to have some track record and some success under their belt. They said, “I’m looking for someone who can manage my brand and my career.” Does it require them to be exclusive with you or no?

Management is more than exclusive but we manage their business. Does that make sense?

Yes.

I already always had a non-exclusive bureau and our point of difference was unbiased advice. That’s what we sold a lot. For me, to put the management company inside the bureau made it too exclusive. This is just a personal choice. By the way, my speaker bureau does have exclusives because there are people who come to me in the management company that isn’t quite at that level yet, so they joined the bureau. One of the differences that I have chosen to do with ODE is speaker management, is it’s a completely different brand, company, database and business. We only sell the speakers we manage. We do not sell anybody else. We cannot. That’s our choice. It’s like an exclusive bureau. All our efforts and energy are only for those sixteen speakers that we have.

Those are speakers around the world, so you are calling on people around the world. Just because someone’s not in Australia, doesn’t mean you would manage them if they were successful enough and were a good fit. What I find fascinating is this survey you did for everything from a speaker starting over 100 of the speakers you surveyed. The criteria were they had to have been in the business for ten years and this question of, “What would you like to know about the business of speaking?” You have been able to curate a fascinating list of topics.

The one that I want to jump into is selling. A lot of people love speaking and hate selling themselves. They go, “Isn’t my video and testimonials enough? I have to convince an event planner or client. Can’t you do that?” You were like, “My job is to get you the chance to pitch yourself,” or tell them why. You have some real techniques here that I would love to know. We can talk about this concept of getting comfortable in selling ourselves.

For me, it starts with a mindset. Most people don’t want to be pushy. How do you help your team when it gets to that final three? Comparing it to acting from my days in LA, sometimes, it will be between 2 or 3 actors for the lead in a series and then they get to go in front of the network executives. Sometimes, it’s not even an audition. It’s an actual conversation. What is it that you see that the successful speakers are able to do? They could be talking about artificial intelligence or something not at all related to sales and yet, the successful ones have figured out a way to sell themselves.

There are two things that I want to talk about and break down. The first thing is it’s not all about you. I want to talk about that. The second thing I want to talk about is strategy. You put those two things together. Let me start with it’s not all about you. A lot of ways speakers can relate to what I’m talking about is that many of them, not all of them are because someone loved being on stage, as a way to overcome nerves, when they are on stage, had to realize, “It’s not all about me.” What am I here to do? I’m here to serve. Take it all off you and onto the audience, then not only did the nerves go away and you are more comfortable but you are a much better speaker.

Without diving into that too much, take that into sales because it’s the same feeling. It’s the nervousness. It’s like, “Am I doing it right?” What is it all about? Me. “I don’t feel like doing it that way.” It’s all the I statements. What if you are worth it to serve your client? Let’s take it back to service. Many speakers love to be of service on stage. If I could talk to that part of your heart and say, “I know that when you are on stage, you truly want to be of service to that client. These are people you haven’t met yet. Start being of service to them now. Let’s think about them. What are their needs?” If you focus enough on them, it all goes away. Can you see how it leads into strategy?

Absolutely.

I’m a bureau owner and I work in bureaus for many years. Back to my training routes, whether they be speakers or even bureaus, what I feel one of the biggest misses that we have as bureau salespeople is that we think, feel, know and act like we are selling a 60-minute transaction. That is sad because you cannot be of service in a 60-minute transaction. If speakers could hear and know that I’m a bit kinesthetic, so I’m talking to people’s hearts a little. If they can take that in, you will never be scared about making sales again because you want to sit like that. You want to jump on a 60-minute transaction.

The amount of preparation that goes into a talk and interviewing some people and getting a sense of what’s important to them. If you offer some follow-up, all of that allows people to go, “You are not just in and out. This is a relationship.” The impact continues long after the talk is over. That alone puts you in a different set of people you are talking to.

John, that’s true impact. You need to meet their point of pain. You’ve got to do that if you are somebody who’s coming in for a 60-minute transaction and you are thinking about you being a salesperson and you are thinking about how do I make this sale? This is what I talked about. There were a lot of cold calls. I didn’t have a database, did I? This is in the olden days. Many years ago, I spent $200 on letterhead. Do you remember we used to type things on pieces of paper? This was before computers. Forget Zoom. I didn’t even have a computer. The idea was to start connections with people.

You think about when you are making a friend. You often start with, “Tell me about your family.” You and I had a lovely conversation about your gorgeous property before we started talking about business. We often start with those things. The same things happen in a corporate marketplace. If I met generally, what job do they have and who makes the decisions perhaps? “Tell me a bit about your event. You are going there. How exciting.” It’s more frivolous compared to what’s keeping you awake at night? We don’t ask that question explicitly. Implicitly, we are looking for what’s going on in that company? If you listen closely enough, for example, you will hear people who have staff afraid to go back to the office and corporations scared. How are we going to get them there? We have staff that is like, “I have proven I can do my job from home. Why do I ever have to go back?” There are all sorts of points. You mentioned AI before. People are afraid that their job is going to be done by a robot or whatever your topic is?

It’s fascinating you brought that up, Leanne because I was talking to a healthcare medical regional VP and he said, “My job is to keep these highly skilled salespeople happy and loyal to the company. By not seeing them for over a year in person at annual meetings, we feel like that bond is slipping away. We are looking for solutions for how to bond virtually that we never needed before.” That creates a whole separate conversation beyond just what’s the top going to be.

I was saying to you before we come on here and I will share this with people as a positive, so coming back. I emceed in Melbourne one time and there are 450 people in the room. This is happening a lot here in Australia. None of us with masks or anything. That’s where we are at. John, for many people, it was their first time in a room with that many people. Even as an emcee, I had to come to it, not just about that one sheet.

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