10 Ways to Sell Yourself as a Professional Speaker in 2023

10 Ways to Sell Yourself as a Professional Speaker in 2023

By Steve Siebold, CSP, CFEd

As a professional or aspiring speaker, your goal is to stand out from the competition and attract new speaking engagements. But how do you effectively market yourself and sell your skills and expertise to potential clients? Here are 10 proven ways. 

1. Develop a Unique Niche: Specializing in a specific area of expertise can help you differentiate yourself from other speakers and make you more attractive to potential clients. For the past 25 years, I’ve specialized in mental toughness training for Fortune 500 sales teams. We’ve helped companies increase sales collectively by $1.3 billion dollars. Our niche markets are pharmaceutical and financial services. The more you niche, the easier it will be to succeed. 
2. Create a Strong Online Presence: Having an engaging and professional website, active social media accounts, and a strong online portfolio can all help you establish yourself as a credible and reputable speaker. Select the social media platforms that most closely identify with your target market. I focus on Linkedin, YouTube and Twitter, because that’s where my customers live. Don’t forget to post personal and professional information to help prospects get to know you. As a professional speaker, nothing beats video posts. This is a way to showcase your content and delivery. 
3. Network Effectively: Building relationships with meeting planners, event organizers, and other industry professionals can help you get your foot in the door and increase your visibility. And don’t forget senior executives who are under enormous pressure to produce. Build a network of these professionals and brainstorm creative ways to help make their jobs easier.

4. Leverage Your Speaking Engagements: Make sure to use each speaking opportunity to showcase your skills and expertise, and to network with attendees and event organizers. The best advertising you can get is when you’re on the platform doing what you do best, which is why it’s critical that your speaking skills are world class. To level up your platform skills, visit www.speechworkshop.com, which hosts the most successful professional speaker training in history. Once you can entertain, inspire and motivate any audience, you’ll always be a busy speaker. 

5. Create Compelling Content: Whether it's blog posts, videos, or presentations, creating engaging and informative content can help you demonstrate your expertise and build your brand. And don’t forget to utilize the most underrated content generator in the industry: proprietary research. When you can go onstage and tell the leaders of a company something they don’t know about their people, organization, or competition, your value transcends your platform prowess. This transforms you from an entertaining keynote speaker into a world-class resource. I’ve been using proprietary research as my main content for 25 years, and it’s generated over $50 million in additional sales for our company. You can (and should) do the same thing. If you want to hear some of our clients talk about what it’s done for their teams at Johnson& Johnson, Volvo, Chrysler-Fiat, Coca-Cola, etc. visit www.mentaltoughnessu.com and watch them on a 7-minute video. 

6. Utilize Publicity and PR: Securing positive media coverage can help you reach a wider audience and establish yourself as an expert in your field. The secret is connecting your media coverage to your specific expertise as a way to showcase your solutions, as well as your ability to communicate them effectively. I’ve been interviewed on over 1,000 television shows over the past 15 years, in addition to thousands of radio, print, and online interviews. Any good publicist will tell you that the key to getting so much press for a non-celebrity is connecting your content to current news cycles. In essence, this allows you to become a part of current events where you have the opportunity to state your opinion based on your background and expertise. Once you have compiled a dozen or more interviews, create a website or page that houses these appearances so you can send your prospects to see you in action. In 2009, I built a website called www.steveontv.com to showcase my television interviews, and over the past 14 years, this site has generated over $13 million in speaking engagements. Media interviews give you credibility that cannot be purchased, because they are an implied endorsement of you and your work. The second best way to get publicity is to do it yourself. The best way is to hire a professional publicist. The best in the business is Bruce Serbin, who is based in Parkland, Florida. He’s been my publicist since 2009, and his work has made me a fortune. His direct email is bruce@serbinmedia.com

7. Create a Speaker's Kit: A professional and well-designed speaker's kit can help you make a great first impression with potential clients and showcase your skills and expertise. The good news is your speakers kit should be online, in the form of a page or website. The site should contain the following: Bio, topics, investment schedule, testimonials, past clients, media coverage (overview) and contact info. The single most important piece of your website should be your demo video, which showcases you onstage, speaking. You should also include media interviews and client testimonials on video interspersed with your speaking. If you’d like to see my speaker’s website and demo video, visit www.stevesiebold.net. 

8. Offer a Unique Value Proposition: Clearly communicating the value that you bring to the table can help you stand out from the competition and attract new speaking engagements. A common mistake that new and aspiring speakers make it assuming that their speech is their value proposition. It’s not. Based on how much you’re getting paid to speak, clients expect your speech to be outstanding. If you go to an NFL football game without knowing who the players are, you expect them to all be incredible athletes. After all, they are world-class professionals. The same is true in professional speaking. That said, this is not you’re main deliverable. Your value proposition should be the solutions you offer the organization based on your content and research. Companies hire smart people with solutions that happen to be good speakers, so that’s what you want to offer. 

9. Utilize Referral Marketing: Encouraging your satisfied clients to refer you to others can help you expand your network and increase your exposure. Deliver such outstanding results that your clients will feel compelled to refer you. In addition to these organic referrals, build a massive network of paid referral agents who serve as birddogs for new clients. Pay them a flat fee or percentage of business for every speech that goes to contract. 

10. Continuously Improving Your Skills: Whether it's through attending workshops, getting feedback from others, or reading industry publications, continually working to improve your skills and expertise can help you stay ahead of the curve and maintain your relevance as a speaker. Speakers are like professional athletes in the sense that they must always continue to improve their skills. Speaking ranks among the highest paid professions, and as a result, it attracts some of the smartest, most talented people in the world. That’s why it’s critical to always be working on your platform skills and stage craft. At the Bill Gove Speech Workshop, the top professional speaker training program in the world, 20, 30 and 40-year speaking business veterans return again and again to refine their skills and boost their ability to entertain audiences. To remain on top, speakers cannot be stagnant in their skills. You must be committed to constant and never -ending improvement. 

If you’ve ever wondered if you have what it takes to become a highly paid professional speaker, take the 3-minute, artificial intelligence driven Professional Speaker Assessment at www.PaidSpeaking.org and receive in instant score that predicts the probability of your success.