Be interested with your audience.
I bet that nine of ten speakers you’ll met are more interested in their stories than your stories. Ask them questions and they’ll give you answers faster than bullet trains in Japan.
Give them opportunities to speak and they’ll be more than happy to tell you about purpose, excellence, dreaming big, their life experiences, and so on. Their interest is their interest, not yours.
They are like those street preachers who approached me last week. They preached that I need to have a personal relationship with Christ, but all through out the 30 minute monologue they never asked for my name.
They were not truly interested to save me from the “damnation of hell”, rather they are more interested in asking their questions and reciting their memorized verses.
And for me to buy booklets.
When was the last time that your company invited a speaker who has real interest in you and in your business?
You can hire a motivation speaker for twenty thousand pesos per hour. But you cannot really put a tag price on the real ones. They do not really start with your capacity to pay. They start with you.
Because you want to be a professional speaker, be interested therefore with your audience’s interest.
Your audience is your client.
In my book, a client deserves my best service and protection. Obviously, the first clients are those who will be listening to you inside the hall. The others are those who will be impacted by the actions of your listeners.
For example, when I spoke to the senior management of the Philippine Business Bank, I knew that my impact would extend to the subordinates of these leaders.
Before this, I researched about the company and asked questions. I did that not only to build rapport with the audience, not only to motivate people, but to align the objectives of my talk to their strategic directions.
As a speaker, you are helping your clients take massive action. You help them make their aspirations happen sooner than they expect. To do that, you have to know your audience.
Of course, if your sole interest is to make more money in motivational speaking, you can do that too. You can make people pay for your every word.
Traditional politicians, swindlers, and scammers do that too.
There is real money in motivational speaking and that is one reason why nine of ten motivational speakers you’ll meet will tell you more about money than anything else. They too feel that they need more money and their main interest is for you to give your money to them.
But you can be one of the ten whom every audience will think to be a genuine professional speaker without you having to remind them.
Jef Menguin
