• Are you a thought leader in your field?
• Are you looking to get more speeches?

Do you ever wonder why when you go to some industry conferences some of your competitors are up on stage and you and your company aren’t.

Do you ever notice you read your industry trade magazines, and you see some of your competitors writing columns and articles?

Doesn’t that drive you crazy when you realize your competition has nothing on you.

I believe no matter what your business, you should aim to be a thought leader, contribute to the conversation of your industry, and look to speak where you can add value to the audience.

I was recently asked a question on one of my coaching calls from George Bruno. His dream has been to be on the road as a professional speaker. He wanted to know if I had some suggestions to landing more speeches.

Here are some simple ideas that you can take advantage of:

1. Become a thought leader in your field.
How can you contribute to the conversations already taking place in your industry? What are the issues and problems companies and people in your industry are facing? Come up with solutions and ideas about these challenges.

2) Actively participate with Blog interaction.
Blog about current events, Comment on thought leader blogs Share your best ideas on your own blog. Turn your best ideas into white papers, articles, or case studies.

As I write this, Barack Obama is leading in the polls for the democratic nominee for President of the United States. If you are a communications expert couldn’t you write on your blog key things he is doing that is allowing him to connect with the audience.

3. Write a press release to the media to make yourself available to provide commentary.
There is a body language expert Tanya Reiman who is on Fox News all the time commenting about the presidential candidates and their body language and what it means. The amount of publicity she has gained should boost the number of people who would like to hire her and have her speak to their organization.

4. Create a “Dreamlist” of the top 100 places you may want to speak at and market to them each and every single month.

5. Share research findings with your industry.
One of my friends recently did mystery shopping on plastic surgeons. Then she called the plastic surgeons and asked if they would like to find out the research of Plastic surgeons in their market based on 10 critical marketing factors. She asked if they would like to hear the findings and see how they stacked up against their competitors. That is powerful info that she can share in front of a large audience of Plastic Surgeons, which is her target market.

Some other ideas to speak on would be the Ten biggest trends facing your industry or the ten biggest mistakes (your industry makes) for example the Ten biggest mistakes Plastic Surgeons make when presenting to a first time client.

Share your speech via a teleseminar and ask your audience what the
one question they want to know about ______________

In my example perhaps the question I would ask my audience for a teleseminar is, What is the one question you have in Connecting with Influential People?

I hope that gives you a few ideas to that can stimulate new business and speaking opportunities for you.

What is a best practice you use to stimulate new business and speaking opportunities for yourself? Please share your ideas with me here on my blog comments, as I would like to discuss them with you and learn what works best for you.

Until We Connect Again,
Larry Benet
The Connector

Popularity: 92% [?]