Most Burning Question:

I am giving a 10 minute presentation to my new BNI group this Tuesday. It is incredibly important to me to wow them. I have already set up a volunteer for a demonstration which I am very comfortable giving, but I’m not sure what to do. I have some ideas, but I thought yours might be better!

I want to educate folks on the myths and misconceptions of hypnosis, of course, but I also want to visually demonstrate the hypnotic experience. I have hypnotized my groups before, but I find that they get very sleepy and quiet and that’s not the kind of energy I want to leave them with. I want them excited an talking about hypnosis and what’s possible. Also, I am a big EFT person so I don’t want to leave that aspect out.

I want to incorporate all these things and I only have 10 minutes to do it! Oh yeah, and I’d like to do an indirect suggestion about giving me referrals, too! Any ideas of any of this???

You are trying to do too much. Even if you had an hour it would be too much.

Always follow the KISS rule. (Keep It Simple) And think of what Stephen Covey said in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People… “Begin with the end in mind”

So… what do you want to accomplish with this talk? Me, I always think in terms of

Here is what I want to accomplish with any talk I do… I want to add qualified prospects to my list so I can follow up with, build a relationship with them, and by building the relationship I increase my business. Or…

I want to find JV (Joint Venture) partners and add them to my list, so I can follow up, build a relationship and increase my business.

Do you detect a common objective?

If you think of speaking as another media to reach your target audience (your market), then the ideal outcome is to convert the audience into either hot-leads for you list, or to convert them to a sale.

The more effective strategy (unless you are a master of platform selling) is to use your time in front of the audience to find either people who may want to pay you for your services (prospects) or to find people who can help you find prospects (joint venture partners).

In this case, it would seem that find JV partners would be your desired outcome.

Now, with that in mind… I would structure the entire 10 minutes to help me achieve this goal.

BUT… you can’t do it from the point of view that they are there to help you. It has to come from the point of view of how partnering with you will help their business. In other words, you will need to answer the question of What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) for each of the business owners in the room with you.

Example: the Dentist in the room can benefit by referring phobics to you to make it easier to work on their teeth

Example: the Doctor in the room can refer the stop smoking patients to you who can’t quit on their own.

Example: The spa owner can refer clients who they notice are too stressed out to enjoy their spa experience.

And you want to show PROOF ELEMENTS of how this type of thing has helped other business owners.

I’ve written extensively about the importance of Proof Elements in your marketing, it is the single most important element.

If you want to do a demo etc. I would suggest that you have an ‘open house’ scheduled within 10 days of your talk and invite everyone at the talk to come learn more about how hypnosis works and how referring clients can help their business.

Then close your talk with an offer that gives something of value (related to your theme) in exchange for contact info. Those who request the offer will be your list of people raising their hand and saying “I’m interested”.

Follow up IMMEDIATELY. And follow up more than once in different ways (email, thank you card, letter, phone, fax, etc.)

Key Point: In a 50 minute talk, all I can hope to achieve is to show my audience an idea that can help them and make their business better/easier/profitable/etc.

I can’t possibly educate them on everything I know. But if the idea is compelling enough they will want to know more, and they will want to do business with me.

In 10 minutes, you have 1/5 the time so you need to be tight on ONE idea and get it across fast and powerfully.

I suggest you get a copy of my talk at the NGH last year and model the structure I used. It was called “How to Effortlessly Attract More Clients”

(I’ll be doing two workshops this year at the NGH, both on marketing, both on Friday Aug 8.)

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