The Short Self-Promotion Business Speech

Continued from the previous page:
Overcoming Stage Fright in Your Business Speech 

 Conclusion

George:   
How much speaking do you do now? 

Patricia: 
Maybe 40 or 50 speeches a year

George: 
That’s still a lot

Patricia: 

Well it is but I always need new clients

George: 
And you still find that it works, it brings people in

Patricia: 
It brings people in, and it brings people in immediately.  It brings people in months later and indeed it brings people in years and years later.  I don’t plan on retiring anytime soon but I expect that when I get ready to slow down I can just stop speaking and still have work for five or even ten years.

George: 

Has the speaking idea worked as well for you as you thought it might in the beginning or didn’t you know how well it was going to work?

Patricia: 
I had no idea how well it would work but I’m just amazed at how well it has done. 

George: 
So that’s something you’d recommend for anybody.

Patricia: 
Anybody who’s looking for clients.

George: 
Patricia there are probably a lot of people who listen to this tape and say well if she did that I want to be able to do something like that too.  What advice would you have for those folks?

Patricia: 

Well the first thing that I would suggest is that you write a business plan.  I found that to be most helpful because it focused my attention on the need for marketing.  An overall business plan would include like a facilities plan what equipment and facilities you need.  A plan for your employees for your organization and so forth. 

But the key piece to me was the marketing plan where it really pointed out how much marketing I need to do and outlined the steps that I was going to take to do it.

The next thing I would suggest is setting measurable goals.  For example, so many speeches a week or so many speeches a month because that is something that you can go back and measure and you just work until you get that many speeches set up. 

What I did was I just made phone calls everyday until I set up a speech.  My goal was to set up a speech every day.  So I would just start in the afternoon and call until somebody accepted me. 

Keep track of your success. I think that that’s a very important issue. For many years I kept track of the source of each of my cases so I could go back and say in 1991 I had 25 new cases that result simply from speaking.  I had also tracked referrals. 

Then also keep track of who you’ve spoken too and you can recycle them.  In other words, in two or three years you can call them up again and say I spoke to you three years ago on the subject, would you like to have a speech on a new subject.  That helps to keep you in front of the same people and build your credibility.

George: 
And very often they’ll say something like we’re so glad to hear from you.

Patricia: 
Yes we loved you last time when you were here please do come back. Then you always feel warm and fuzzy when they say that

George: 
In doing market analysis and putting together a business plan was there anything else that was really important, really critical for you.

Patricia: 
Yes, there was.  I did what is called a SWOT analysis.

George: 

Swot analysis?

Patricia: 
It’s analysis of your Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats. 

In doing this you can analysis your personal strengths.  For example I have very good organizational skills and management skills.  Although I wasn’t a comfortable public speaker at the time I had had some experience.  I had computer expertise which was helpful in getting my business off the ground because I could actually type on a computer.  You have to remember this was a decade ago when there wasn’t a computer in every house or three or four of them.  You have to analyze your weaknesses.  For example, I had no customer base. I had maybe one customer at the time.  I had inadequate facilities working out of my back bedroom.  I had spent an awful amount of time doing the clerical secretarial part of the work because I didn’t have any help and rather than focusing on the marketing and the technical part of practicing law.  I had such a small budget to be working with.  Everything had to be considered carefully before the money was spent.

George: 
So you had some obstacles to overcome.

Patricia: 
I did. But there were some opportunities available.  The fact that I was qualified to sit for the board certification exam at that time and that was a big opportunity. 

I had opportunity in that I had a lot free time and could speak on a regular basis and could set up a lot of speeches.  The fact that I had a good target market in my local community helped.

Then there were some threats--all of those other attorneys out there competing for the same clients were a pretty big threat. 

The fact that I was pretty much on the financial edge all the time was a serious threat.

George: 
Patricia where do you think your practice would be now if you hadn’t used public speaking as a means of marketing yourself?

Patricia: 
Well George I think I’d still be in the back bedroom or perhaps I would have given up the private practice of law altogether and gone to work for the state or some other organization.

George: 
I’m curious what’s next for you.  You’ve had success speaking in public.  You’ve done really well with that.  Do you have some other projects in mind that you’re going to sort of play off that and take advantage of some of your successes?

Patricia: 
Well George of course I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing because it’s been so successful.  I’ll maintain the public speaking probably about the same level that I’m doing it now and of course my business takes a lot of my time but I am planning a project.  I’m going to be writing a book on estate planning and probate and hope to be making it a very useful book and I actually am taking the materials from my speeches and my writing and incorporating them into the book. 

So I’m very excited about that.
 

Last thing I’d like to say George is that marketing through public speaking has been a lot of fun for me but sometimes it’s just plain hard work.  I think it’s important to be dedicated to this and that you’ve got to be willing to put some work into it.  Both into getting the speeches scheduled and getting the presentations made. 

But I think those things will show up in the success of your business.

George: 
We have to wrap it up now…Patricia Ann Bath, attorney, frequent public speaker, very successful public speaker, soon to be author and I know you’re going to do a great job at that too.  Thanks for you time.  Thanks for your insights.  It’s been a wonderful hour.