Your marketing prowess determines your success in the speaking business. In particular, your marketing smarts affect your fee. I've spoken at dozens of conferences at which other speakers nowhere near my equal as a speaker were paid more money. Why? Because they out-marketed me. I don't want this to happen to you. Here are the steps I recommend so your marketing will be as spectacular as your speaking performance.

Take these profit-boosting actions now:

1. Develop and treasure your niche. Be No.1 at what you do. Create a niche in which you can make yourself No.1.
2. Feature your exclusive niche as your theme in all your marketing messages.
3. Offer special arrangements to your established clients. Offer enticements to keep them coming to you for your exclusive benefits. For example, no travel expenses when you're coming to their city anyway for another gig.
4. Promote widely within industries/markets you penetrate. Write articles for their journals. Speak at their meetings. Let their associations distribute your book. All to make yourself recognized and respected.
5. Include irresistible extras when you do a Keynote or a General Session. Get your full fee, of course. Then throw in a breakout session or host a panel discussion -- even both. Be available to answer questions after you're back in your office. (This assertion -- which took only 10 seconds of a program -- led to a lucrative consulting assignment that, in turn, helped me win my wife.)
6. Triple Guarantee your work.

Love your clients, your decision-makers and the audiences you're privileged to address. Overwhelm them with quality and value. Delight them with little unexpected surprises.

Copyright Burt Dubin - Burt Dubin is president of the Personal Achievement Institute. Burt works with people who want to be speakers and speakers who want to be masters.
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