A couple of weeks ago, I moderated a teleseminar sponsored by BV Resources on the topic of "Marketing Your Valuation Firm." I was honored to have three very respected and successful business appraisers as panelists: Nancy Fannon, Harold Martin, and Chris Mercer.
I want to share with you Nancy's answer to the question: How did you begin speaking and how do you obtain speaking engagements now? It matters not if you're just starting out or are a seasoned professional or whether you are a business appraiser, accountant, attorney or other professional adviser, this is wonderful advice! Pay attention.
Nancy Fannon: I would say I got started speaking by being absolutely relentless at pursuing it. I was terrified of doing it at first and yet I knew that if I really wanted to go anywhere in this field, I had to keep at it because I was convinced that speaking is an essential skill for this line of work. Whether you're going to be up in front of a judge or jury, or whether you're going to be up in front of a board of directors or your clients, you're going to have to be able to express complicated thoughts in a clear and coherent manner. And I believed that being able to speak and teach was the best way that I could possibly learn and get comfortable doing that. So I was relentless in pursuing places that I could begin to learn how to do that. And where I would do that was in front of groups of bankers or groups at law firms, community groups, and anybody I could get to listen - CLE directors, CPE directors for the state - anybody I could get to listen to me. And eventually, I was lucky and I got some early breaks.
In terms of how I get speaking engagements now, I usually think about where it is that I want to drive my business and then I start researching that area so that I can get knowledgeable enough to present on it. For example, we're in the process right now of undertaking a year-long research project on a particular area that we want to drive more of our work into. And while we're doing the research in this area, we're also preparing articles and presentations so that we can be prepared next year or later this year to go out and effectively sell that presentation to organizations so that we can become the expert in that area.
So again, it's a matter of spending the time, committing the energy, doing the research to become knowledgeable enough and then presenting that in front of the forums that you want to be in front of.
Learn from Nancy and you'll do well.
* By the way, you can purchase the entire teleseminar on CD from BV Resources if you're interested.
Have a great one,
Barbara Walters Price
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