Coaches: how to attract and qualify prospects at a speaking gig booth?

Well, I haven't had much luck but here's one. There's expertfile.com (although I've never received a speaking lead through there.) Let me know if there are others you end up finding.

Look into pitchmen. Joel Bauer started as a pitchman, in which he used his magic act to get attention for his client's booth. He understands that the unexpected and entertainment are big factors of attention. Giveaways...hey, it's possible to give away a lot of things and not get anything in return. Build a feedback loop into whatever you give away: if it's a contest, make sure they have to log into your site to see if they won, for instance. Or call you. Then you get another chance to communicate with them. Match the giveaway to the theme and audience. Giving an iphone 7 away to a crowd at a power generation show isn't a great fit and isn't memorable. I've heard an example of co-opting other people's booths. This is interesting because you expand your distribution channel at little cost. The idea is you ask if you can put your brochure on their countertop, and in exchange you'll by their crew lunch. Of course this works best when your products are complimentary and not in competition. Imagine if you got 4 or 5 of these to work with you. "Everywhere" the attendees go, there's your brochure. You must be legit. But the key thing is: make sure you get the conversation AFTER the show is over. Collect business cards; screen a little for fit; book the next conversation. Don't try to do everything at the show. Yes, it's possible to set up big deals right there; however, you probably won't and your objective should be to get awareness of you and your brand into your target market's (distributor's) head.

The route I'd take is to start researching conferences that you'd like to speak at. Find out where and when they occur. Look for a "call for proposals" — lots of conferences ask speakers to submit talk ideas. Find out who runs them. See if you have any mutual friends. If not, see if you can find a way to be helpful to them (without asking for anything in return). Building good will has paid me back many, MANY times over as a speaker. Look for local meetups. Maybe organize your own. Start to get experience as a speaker and build a reputation. It starts slow, but things ramp up quickly once momentum picks up. I used this approach to build my own speaking career. I'd be happy to share my strategy and story with you if you're interested. Good luck!

Great question for anyone who has a newly published book and would like to hit the speaking circuit. I was once in the same boat and here is what I would suggest as the fastest and most effective method to getting your speaking engagements. You must be active on social media. You should give away small tidbits of your book in videos and join FB groups related to your topic. There are millions of groups that you can join which will give you instant access to the people you need to know. When I ran for U.S. Congress, I joined the political groups of my party. Your book was written for someone at some stage of life, so find the groups associated with their interest. I also hired someone to work for me 1 hour a day to make calls to decision makers of associations, conferences and trade shows. They would contact the organizer and send them the videos and one-sheets about me. Use free speaking engagements to build your brand. Take lots of pictures, record videos and use these pictures in your promotional material. Cut and splice them. Be sure to wear different clothing to each speaking engagement, so you can have the appearance of different speeches in the beginning It's always a great idea to have loads of books at any event to sell them after you speak. Bon Chance!

Treat the event like a lean startup landing page. Get people to sign up for a "waiting list" to use your service. Have one or two easily accessible ipads on the side of your booth nearest the walkway, so that people can easily sign up. The ipads should have a nice landing page on it that shows some basic background, a waiting list sign up, and it should say "We're right here to answer any questions!" to draw people in to talk to you. You'll instill confidence in potential customers by how well you present yourself (in conversations with them, in the clothes you wear, etc.) and your booth. You might use a small subset of your sign ups as beta testers that get to see and fiddle with the website before the official release. Don't use them to look for bugs, but have a questionnaire that they answer about what features they like most, etc. Have a newsletter (every week or every two weeks) be sent out to all the emails you collect. Each email should highlight one or two features or progress of your site that has just been completed ("we've just partnered with xyz!", "now completed: feature xyz", etc.). This should be done in a sequence and spacing that presents well, and doesn't have to accurately reflect the exact time and sequence of when things were actually completed. If you'd like finer grained advice based on your actual website and potential customers let me know and I'll see how I can help, Lee