How do you decide which speaking requests you’ll take up?

Are you better off to grab everything thing that comes your way – adopting a ‘the more the merrier’ and ‘all publicity is good publicity’ attitude– or are there reasons you should pause for thought before you answer?

Here’s a truism about speaking: The more you build a reputation as someone who speaks well, the more likely it is you’ll be sought out and asked to give talks by event organisers. Of course, that’s not surprising, as good speakers are thin on the ground.

And it’s hard to beat the elixir value public speaking gives you when it comes to promoting you, your ideas and/or your business amongst those you want to influence  – especially when it’s integrated with other online and offline marketing communications.  It can really set you apart from others.

However, as true as this is and as flattered as you may be to be asked to speak at events…

…Here’s a really important question you need to consider before you say yes:

Is it a win-win opportunity, where it’s good for the audience and for you?

As I said in other posts, public speaking can offer you:

• Access and undivided attention from those you seek to influence – providing you speak to issues they care about.
• An opportunity to be seen and heard – demonstrating your knowledge and experience, engendering trust and establishing why people should pay attention to you
• An ability to start conversations – providing a means to spark dialogue that can lead to new business or cement existing relationships

But all of these goodies can only be yours if:

• People you want to influence (with the right seniority, experience, networks, interests, expectations, etc.) will be present in sufficient numbers at the event, and
• You have message and ideas you can share with them that they are likely to value (largely of the non self serving variety).

If either of these things isn’t true, you should probably take a pass. Otherwise you’ll spin your audience’s wheels and your own.

Leaving aside that it takes a great deal of time and effort to prepare an engaging speech, and the obvious observation that talking to audiences who’ll never care about what you can do/suggest is a waste of your time – There’s a bigger issue at stake.

You will risk getting egg on your face if you attempt to speak on a topic where an audience senses you don’t know what you’re talking about or trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

As a case in point – I was at a half-day seminar a few months ago and 2 of the 5 speakers who took to the podium were last minute replacements. Both of them bombed. Here’s why:

• The first was a junior person and presented a canned speech her company clearly trots out at other events. And the problem was, what she had to say had precious little to do with the topic at hand. In truth I felt badly for her, as you could see she was upset by the lack of interest she was getting from those who stayed in the room to listen to her. She was embarrassed and I felt her pain!

• The other committed an almost bigger sin. He is someone who I’ve seen give good talks on his specialist topic before, but he was clearly not on ‘home ground’ that day. From start to finish his speech was incoherent and chock full of out of date stats and facts, and generalities. It was obvious that he had no real points to make.

And therein is the point. The latter speaker dented or damaged his credibility with me and other audience members that day by wasting our time. We didn’t get what we expected from him and guess who’s unlikely to be asked to speak at any future events run by those in the audience?

Regardless, neither of these speakers benefited from making them selves available for that event…

…And the moral of the story is this:

Look before you leap and favour speaking about what you know best.

Don’t ever fall into the trap of attempting to be a Jack-of-All-Trades and wind up giving your audiences the impression you’re a master of none. It’s always a better plan be known as ‘the source’ for specific topics of your choosing than trying to be a generalist.

As PR pros will tell you: ‘Few and well’ beats ‘ many and shallow’ every time.

Over to You

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Photo credit: Sir. Mo