Whether you work for a Fortune 100 Corporation or you are a one-person consulting person working from home, you have three main ways of marketing yourself or your company whenever you speak. 1. Credentials/position/title 2. Topic/subject matter/process 3. Results you get for people All three are important; they make up three important legs of a stool. But the problem I see with most speakers is that they spend a disproportionate amount of time on credentials and topic/process and very little time on results. Audiences, whether they are investors, voters or customers, tend to care primarily about results. For example, if I am the Attorney General of North Dakota and I tell voters that they should vote for me because I was re-elected by 89% of the voters last time and was voted top Attorney General of the nation for 2006 by Governing Magazine, then Ive covered #1, credentials. If I then say, And I re-wrote the entire criminal justice system of North Dakota and persuaded the legislature to pass it and the governor to sign it into law, Ive covered #2 the subject/process. But if I stop there, I wont convince voters of anything. Why? Because I havent told them of the results of my actions. After all, it is possible to win an award and pass a law, and violent crime could have exploded by 1200%. Ive got to make the final leg of the argument, and thats why violent crime is down 50% in our state and why you and your family are safer in your homes and your communities today. Those are the only results voters are about. Even though my example is political, there is nothing about this process that is specific or unique to politicians. Everyone selling a product or a service needs to tell prospects and customers about the results your product or service will create. If you speak about your results in a compelling manner, your message is much more likely to be remembered and acted upon. If you focus all of your time on credentials and process, it is highly unlikely anyone will remember anything you had to say, although they may take away a general fuzzy notion that you are smart or competent. But if you are serious about selling your services, products or candidacy, you should want to achieve more than a fuzzy notion, you should want real communication to take place between you and your audienceso tell them the explicit results you will achieve for them. |
