Читать книгу Speak Out With Clout - Charles Boyle - Страница 10

Shortly after my transition from the broadcasting business into the speechwriting business, a friend remarked that it was too bad that the people who wanted to give speeches didn’t have some way of knowing the program chairpersons who were looking for speakers and vice versa. We pondered that dilemma for a while and came up with an idea to publish a booklet listing all the people and companies who had free speakers available. We would then sell the booklet to program chairpersons in our area. The plan progressed as far as printing a sample page and cover letters explaining the idea. But, in order to make it work, we needed the names of at least 200 volunteer speakers for the book, and we needed them to each pay us $25 to be listed. Neither my friend nor I had the time to go around the city and find 200 people who would be willing to pay $25 to be listed in our booklet. The project was abandoned. But two interesting revelations resulted from the idea:

1. Through casual conversations at the end of business luncheons or meetings, we discovered a number of people who wanted to be listed in the book and were more than willing to pay the fee. One man, a travel agent, wanted to buy two listings: one to talk about alcoholism, and another to talk about travel.

2. One heck of a lot of program chairpersons would be willing to pay two or three times the $5 price we anticipated charging for the booklet. It seemed that through word of mouth, the idea of our booklet reached the ears of a few program chairpersons who, without ever seeing even a sample page, let alone the finished product, were quite anxious to get their hands on something that would gain access to speakers.

It’s easy to understand why. Let’s look at the average program chairperson (PC). He or she is usually a young businessperson or community leader who belongs to the Kiwanis, Soroptimist Foundation, Lions Club, Rotary, or one of a couple dozen other organizations. The club nominates him or her to be the PC for the coming year, and each week or each month he or she must produce a speaker. The first few weeks aren’t too bad because everybody knows a few speakers. But after our newly elected PC runs through his or her friends and acquaintances who are speakers, he or she has to start really working at this nonpaying, second job. It can take this person three, four, or more hours every week to line up speakers — and that’s time the PC cannot afford to spend away from his or her paying job.

Considering the thousands of speeches being given every day in large metropolitan areas and the hundreds of daily speeches in smaller cities, the demand would seem to be far greater than the supply. Actually, it’s more of a distribution problem — the speakers are there, but the part-time program chairpersons don’t know where to find 52 good speakers each year, and a lot of good speakers don’t know where to find a dozen or so program chairpersons willing to risk their reputations on an unknown speaker. The result is frustration for both groups and many of the same local political figures and college professors showing up at luncheon after luncheon.

If my booklet had gotten off the ground and spread to every city in the country, a large part of that problem would have been solved. Someone with more time, money, and energy than I have might very well put out a booklet or an Internet resource for program chairpersons. In the meantime, there are scores of ways in which you can let program chairpersons know that you are available at no cost as a speaker for the PC’s club or organization.

Whatever method you use to line up speaking engagements, make sure never to ask to be a speaker — always be in the position of being asked. If you ask a program chairperson for the chance to be a speaker, you could both be in an uncomfortable situation. In a sense, it’s like inviting yourself to someone’s party — it could be embarrassing and it would certainly be bad manners and in poor taste.

On the other hand, there’s no harm in asking a mutual friend, an employee, or a business acquaintance to suggest to the PC of his or her organization that you be invited as a speaker. This is one way to land speaking engagements and probably the most common for the unknown speaker who has something to sell, such as the stockbroker with a talk on the free enterprise system. I’m not knocking it, and for the beginner, it is one of the few ways to get a start.

The best, most acceptable, and longest-lasting approach to be sought out as a speaker, however, is by having a good program to start with, letting PCs know about it indirectly, and then letting your reputation spread. As an unpaid speaker, you’ll be in demand.

A good program is simply the ability to give a clear, concise speech full of information about an interesting subject (which can be almost any subject) to an audience which knows little about your topic (or has false and incomplete information about it). Most audiences — contrary to the belief that you have to speak in a way about a subject that will catapult them out of their chairs into action or writing letters — merely want to be informed without being asked to sally forth and change the world. I’ll talk more about this as well as provide the method for presenting a good speech in the next chapter. First, we have to get the speaking engagements in which to give our good program, and here are some of those ways.