SPEAKER SERVICES http://speakerservices.com Newsletter, February 2001 #28 Get Listed in the Directory: http://speakerservices.com/adv_pkt.html Content: 1. New & Renewing Speakers 2. Publishers Note 3. Promotions/Advertising Articles: 4. How To Choose Your Topic, Jack Barnard 5. How Well Do You Listen?, Linda Coleman-Willis __________________________ New & Renewing Speakers for Free & FEE 1. Linda Clements: Hypnotherapist offers practical techniques for self-transformation 2. Dana Ehrlich: Consultant/coach's "from-the-heart selling" approach transforms buyer-seller relationships 3. Parker Hulbert: Businessman proves that success lies in asking the right questions 4. Pat McGrew & Bill McDaniel: Business team offers crash courses on coping with the technology squeeze 5. Albert Mensah: Face your "snakes"--and maximize the opportunities of a lifetime! 6. Jeff Rubin: Journalist-entrepreneur creates success by combining marketing and basic human values 7. Dr. Sharon Yoder: Motivational speaker uses humor to inspire competence and confidence _______________________________________ Publishers Note:...Susan Levin Please notice in this months newsletter that I've added a new section: Promotions/Advertising. I am always asked for referrals and often pass along leads and now with this service 2,500 folks can benefit from the resources. This is an inexpensive advertising method for folks who have services or products for speakers or meeting planners. Please support our advertisers and check out our rates at the bottom of this newsletter. Our Speakers' Showcase in Los Angeles on February 25th is full. We have 20 speakers doing their presentations. If you are in the area and would like to be in the audience e-mail me at susan@speakerservices.com and I will forward you the directions. Our next shoot is scheduled for June 10th. Have you registered for February teleclasses? We have a great line up of classes. Can't make it? Buy the audio tape. To register and full description: http://speakerservices.com/teleclasses/index.html Wed. Feb 7 Mastering Media Interviewing, Mitchell Friedman Tues. Feb 13 8 Success Secrets of the Motivational Superstars, Michael Jeffreys Wed. Feb 21 How to Publish & Choose Your Book Format, Judy Cullins Tues. Feb 27 E Books Update, Dan Poynter I've chosen two interesting topics for you to read in this issue: How To Choose Your Topic by Jack Barnard and How Well Do You Listen? by Linda Coleman-Willis. Virus Alert: SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN DWARVES, also known as W95.HYBRIS.GEN. This attachment named DWARVES4YOU.EXE, also goes by many names. If your anti-virus software is out of date, a giant spiral (psychedelic-looking moving thing) will open on your desktop and you won't be able to see your programs, let alone stop or delete it. By then it is too late to stop it from spreading to your friends. More information can be found at Symantec.com . Be warned and update your anti-virus software immediately. Regards, Susan Levin _______________________________________ PROMOTIONS/ADVERTISING My NSA customer John Alston, CSP, gets REQUESTS from bureaus and clients for MORE copies of his newsletters. My NSA customer Kevin Davis got a MAJOR BOOKING from his newsletter. Need help with your newsletter? Turnkey services -- writing, editing, design, printing, mailing. Great sample packet. Jeff Rubin 877/588-1212; jeff@put-it-in-writing.com http://www.put-it-in-writing.com ___________________ INSPIRE OTHERS TO EXCELLENCE! AvidLearn is seeking experts to present live, online seminars. Enjoy tremendous exposure and unparalleled convenience. To find out more, register for our free "How To" course at www.avidlearn.com. For further information, contact an Account Executive at (888) 493-2100 or experts@avidlearn.com. ___________________ NEED NEW CLIENTS? Want to increase your business in the New Year? Get support on utilizing speaking as a marketing tool for your business, presentation skills, sales training, speech development and communication skills. Heidi Parr, internationally recognized seminar leader and executive coach offers individual and customized packages in person in Los Angeles or telephone consulting. Call 310-915-0094 or e-mail heidiparr@aol.com for more information. ___________________ GRAPHIC DESIGNER with 20 years experience and great references. Website design, Flyers, Catalogs, Brochures, Newsletters, Stationery, CD, Audio, J-Card Packaging, Book Cover and Text Design, Corporate Identification and Logos. Free 30-minute consultation: Dotti Albertine, 310-450-0018, http://www.dotdesign.net, dotdesign@earthlink.net _______________________________________ HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR TOPIC BY JACK BARNARD Excerpted from We Get Our Cue From You: The Communication Approach to Public Speaking, Available from Speaker Services If you want to become a nationally known speaker, there are two typical ways to get there: 1) promote yourself; 2) promote your topic. Unless you're a White House intern or some other kind of celebrity, emphasizing your topic is significantly better. But, let's assume you don't have a topic. How do you get one? Here's some criteria: 1) Untapped market. Find a market that no one else has tapped into and design a talk that provides the antidote. I'm sure you've heard the old saw about finding a need and filling it. Research the marketplace. Go to meetings that in any way relate to your field and listen to what people are saying. When they talk about problems, challenges or unmet needs, write a speech that meets them! 2) Pain/Dreams. The old way of finding a topic is to look for the pain your audience is going through, find ways to alleviate that pain, and voila!, you're in the groove. I say: get clear what dreams and deep desires the audience has, find a way of helping them get there, and you're the pied piper. 3) Hot item. Some speakers (writers/producers/artists) peruse the market and figure out what's hot at the moment. This can work, but it's only part of the quest. If you want to be a speaker that has lasting value to us, stay a step ahead of the curve. What's going to be hot tomorrow? 4) Life experience. The best speakers speak from personal experience. Is there something in your life that imparted valuable lessons, that would have value for us? Audiences are turned on by seeing themselves - especially their potential - in a speaker's life. 5) Personal test. Does the topic keep popping into your head? That's a good sign. Do you get ideas as to how to develop this topic into a longer speech, workshop, book or work book? Good sign. If two ideas seem equally strong, which one can be presented with the most originality? Good sign. 6) Hold all topics up to your personal mirror. Do they work for you? Do you care about them? Because, if you don't, we definitely won't. We get our cue from you. If you're really interested, we will be too. MESSAGE "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something." Plato As Plato said, there are two kinds of speakers: those who have something to say and those who have to say something. What matters to you? What can you share with us that will make our lives richer? What do we need to know? What do you have great energy and enthusiasm to tell us about? What's burning in your poor beleaguered soul that wants to get out? There is nothing more exciting than a speaker with passion. An audience can be very forgiving. You don't have to be the classiest, the most erudite, the most polished - if you have passion, we want some of it! Maybe it's more mundane than that. Maybe your talk is business related, maybe you want your audience (one person or more) to buy your product; or to ask for more information about your seminar; to approve your recommendation; to agree to a second meeting; to ask for a prospectus; to show up for work on time; to quit hanging around the coffee machine. EXPECTATION "Well, what I really want is that the whole audience will really love me and some cute chick invites me home." A speaker in touch with a clear intent This is the most important question you can ask when preparing a talk or performance: When it's all over and done with, what do you want to happen? Your entire talk, your approach, your attitude depends on the answer to this question. Clearly identify your true objective(s) for your talk and you're home free. (Or at least you're free on the way home.) Do you want a standing ovation? To sell your services or the books you've written? To rally people to your high-minded mission? To save the planet? To save stamps? To convince the board or your boss to make you the project director? To generate interest in a political cause? Or do you just want the whole audience to really love you and some cute chick to invite you home? Here's the key point: everything follows intention. Most speakers do not ferret out their true expectations and consequently, their intention is muddled, and so are their results and so too everybody's enjoyment. No need to struggle with this, answer the question this way: When I'm finished speaking, my listeners will ___________________ Fill in that blank with one active verb. (As a result of your presentation, this is where you want your listeners to be or what you want them to do. You want them to buy something, or to be something, or to ask for more information, or to approve something, or to agree to something, to respond, to act, to vote, to call their congressman, to eat more spinach, to eat less spinach.) It can be a little tricky to reduce your intended outcome to a single active verb. But one verb determines one destination and from that comes the clear focus and intention you need to do the rest of your work. Discipline yourself at the beginning and the rest of the journey is much easier. Define your intended outcome in a single sentence with an active verb, from the viewpoint of your listener: "When I finish my masterful talk, my audience will ." Try to pick an outcome that is measurable. Now, for the hidden agenda. Ask yourself what else you want to accomplish- what else is at stake for you (and maybe your company) in this presentation. Identify your hidden agenda, both business and personal, so that you're not run by it. So once you've selected your Message, deciding what content to include in your talk is much easier. Just answer the questions! And it's not only easier to choose your content; the content you choose will work more effectively for your listeners because their involvement drives it. Their questions move it forward toward Point X. Your presentation unfolds, then, not as a lot of information, or a series of points in no particular order, or ideas that you want to share with your listeners, but as the answers to questions in their minds, questions whose answers they want to know because your Message hooked them. From Speak and Get Results by Sandy Linver As regards the message in our talks, there are 3 problems that crop up consistently: 1) no message, 2) too many messages, or 3) the message comes too late. No message. When a speaker decides to "share" some information with an audience, the audience isn't very involved. The speaker tells us what's of interest to him, but his point of view doesn't include the audience. There is no real reaching out to the listeners, no attempt to give them an incentive to listen. A message makes listeners into active participants as the talk unfolds. Multiple Messages. A presentation should focus on one, distinct message. Otherwise, the audience gets overwhelmed with detail and will find it hard to connect and ultimately take action. More than one message usually means that the speaker couldn't decide what was most important to the listeners or wasn't willing to take the risk of trusting only one message. Message Too Late. The message of a speech is not like an orgasm. It shouldn't wait till the end. Listeners want a reason to hook in at the beginning of your talk. If they don't get involved, they may not get the message at all. "My message is...that...I...have...no...message." Far too many speakers Message vs. Mission While we're on the subject of messages, let me say for the first time in this ambitious little book: there is a monumental difference between a message and a mission. A message is something for us to listen to. A mission is something for us to do. If you want to speak, impress us, feel good about yourself: develop a clear message. If you want to change our lives: really care about what you're telling us. The day your message becomes a magnificent obsession instead of simply a speech, will be the day your results move from information to transformation. You can see it, and feel it with the best speakers out there. They roam the stage like uncaged lions; they have passion and intensity...and we can't get enough of them! ___________________________ HOW WELL DO YOU LISTEN? Lindaspeak@aol.com, www.lindaspeak.com Listening is the "receiving" part of communication. We spend countless hours of our lives engaged in listening-related activities such as, using the telephone, giving and receiving instructions, helping clients, listening to the radio, etc. According to many experts there is only one thing we do more of than listening and that is breathing. It has been said that effective listening is the basis for all good human relations. If listening is so important, why is it that so many people are poor listeners? For one thing listening is hard work. It requires deliberate, conscious, consistent effort. Most of us think we are good listeners and that overconfidence could lead to a false sense of security. Also, more focus is put on talking or speaking than on listening. Most people think it is something that comes naturally. Hearing comes naturally, but listening effectively is much more than just hearing. Listening is the ability to receive, interpret and respond to verbal messages and other clues like body language, in ways that are appropriate. It is caring about the person and/or the message, being able to understand the message and focusing our attention. The biggest contributing factor to miscommunication is people tend to filter out or change the intended meaning of what they hear. In other words, we tend to hear what we expect, or want to hear, and filter out that which is not consistent with our feelings and attitudes. We listen at about 25 percent of our potential, which means we ignore, forget, distort, or misunderstand 75 percent of what we hear. Four Key Elements of Effective Listening 1. Hear The Message. Care about the speaker's opinions and beliefs. Listen not only to the content but also the intent. Ask for clarification when you don't understand. 2. Interpret The Message. Pay attention to the tone of voice (voice convey 30 percent of the meaning of a message.) Watch facial expressions or gestures. Notice if body language, tone and words all convey the same message. 3. Evaluate The Message. Do not jump to conclusions. Weigh and analyze all information before responding. Evaluate the information rather than judge the person. 4. Respond To The Message. Look and act interested. Repeat information for clarity. Response should let the speaker know the message was heard and understood. Linda Coleman-Willis is a professional speaker, author, trainer and freelance writer. To contact Linda, call (213) 243-8258 or email: Linda Coleman-Willis is a professional speaker, author, trainer and freelance writer. To contact Linda, call (213) 243-8258. _______________________________ PROMOTIONS/ADVERTISING RATES: Get your message out to speakers 2,500 plus and meeting planners in this fast growing newsletter. $50 a month, 25-50 words of text and a link to your website, or 6 months for $275 paid in advance. 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