The Short, Self-Promotion
Business Speech

continued from the previous page:
Choosing a Business Speech Topic

Targeting an Audience for Your Business Speech

George:
Did you do anything special to market yourself to groups that you wanted to speak to or did you find that they were more than happy to give you a podium. 

Patricia:
Oh, there was an overwhelming number of them were just delighted to have me come because quite often these organizations have to have as many as 50 speakers a year because they have weekly meetings.  The program chairman is always delighted to have someone fill one of his slots.  Sometimes it would take several weeks before they could work me in but that was fine.

George:
When you started out you set a pretty formidable goal as far as the number of speeches you wanted to do.  How many a year was it?

Patricia:
It was a hundred.

George:
One hundred?

Patricia:
That’s what I was trying for.  That was the third year of my business plan. I had been so successful in the first two years that the third year I just said well I’ll set an outrageous goal, one that just simply can’t be met of 100 speeches this year.  I did actually 98 George and I really consider that to be a goal met. 

George:
How many were you doing when you first started out?

Patricia:
The first year actually I went back and counted them recently and that was 30 the first year and I assume somewhere in between for the second year.  Since then I haven’t had as much time so I don’t try to speak that many times, maybe 40 or 50 times a year now.

George:
But the reason you haven’t had as much time is because the speaking paid off in the beginning and helped you build a practice, right?

Patricia:
That’s exactly correct.

Next page: Researching the Market for Your Business Speech