Strategic questions to ask about yourself about your speaking business

As a professional, it is important to have a clear strategy for your speaking business so this week I’m sharing some great questions to consider when developing your speaking business plan.
 
How will speaking fit into your business?
The first question to ask yourself is how speaking will fit into your overall business. Will speaking be your primary source of income, or will it be a complementary service?  Will speaking be a revenue source or a way of marketing other services/raising your profile?  For many speakers, speaking is a route to additional work with clients; a speech is an introduction allowing them to sell in other services and work longer term.  This may or may not be your plan.
 
What is the ambition? What does success look like?
It’s important to know that you are succeeding, so this is a great question to consider.  Do you want to be a sought-after big stage keynote speaker, or do you want to focus on smaller, more intimate events?  Do you want to speak internationally, or do you prefer to stay local?  How many speaking engagements do you want to do per year?  What does that equal in terms of income?  It is important to define what success looks like for you so that you can focus your efforts and track your progress.  You don’t want your business to look like the Monty Python 100 yard race for people with no sense of direction.  Not seen it? Enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15Z5nsyLDbE.
 
Are you going to be a professional speaker or an expert who speaks?
There is a difference.  A speaker speaks, that is their model.  However we have seen in the pandemic that it is advantageous to have more strings to your bow, to set yourself up as an expert who speaks rather than a speaker who speaks.  An expert who offers different options to share their expertise.  Not sure what that could look like?  Then drop me a note and I’ll share my Portfolio of Services Worksheet to get you started.  For the moment you could start with any of the following: coaching, consulting, workshops, and writing.  Offering additional services means you can provide more value to your clients, helping them achieve bigger ROI and create additional revenue streams for your business.
 
Who are your current clients?
Before you develop a strategy for growing your speaking business, it is always a good idea to start with the market that you are in and that you know and understand.  Which organisations have you worked with or for in the past?  What industries do they represent?  What are their pain points and needs?  Could they be customers for your speaking?  Will they pay you for your speaking?  Understanding your current client base will help you identify potential new clients and develop targeted marketing strategies to reach them.  Alternatively it may show you that you need to rethink and look to new markets to get paid to speak.  Maybe, going back to question one, your strategy is going to be to use speaking to move from one market to another?
 
These are just a few questions to ask yourself about your speaking business.  The more you think about these the easier it is to develop a clear strategy that will help you succeed.  These are the kinds of questions I ask when I work with speakers so that I can help them to define their ambition, which is often modest compared to their potential, identify their ideal clients, and develop a plan for leveraging their speaking engagements to grow their business.  

I hope I’ve given you something to think about over the weekend 🧐
 
Let me know how you get on.

Cheers
Maria