SOP 218 — Work conferences with the speaking fee, survey close and booth

1. Where this fits

This is one of the ways to get more leads for outreach. Buying lists, scraping them and building them by hand are on SOP 217 — Run outreach as an assembly process, section 4, along with the rest of that process. The list of outreach buckets, with the events process set beside buying leads, is SOP 209, section 1.3.

For high-value targets, LinkedIn outreach and LinkedIn's sales navigator are named. Then there are those, some of you among them, who go after really high-value targets, such as real estate, investors or construction firms. Experience here suggests that attending as many conferences of this kind as you humanly can works very well. That is experience, not a measured rule, and what follows is the tactic offered for it.

2. Set a speaking fee, then waive it

Decide on a fee. Start by settling on a speaking fee. The example is $25,000, and the amount is beside the point, since you will waive the fee. (Two figures appear for the amount; see section 8.)

Tell the organizer. You tell the organizer of an event that you can speak there, and that you have a speaking fee. The fee is what you will trade.

Getting asked. For anyone wondering how the invitations arrive, these help:

making content;
hiring an agent to find them for you;
clips of you on stage, posted as organic content: once you have some, inquiries start coming in.

Accepting the invitations that pay nothing is something this page would encourage. Two reasons: they give you content, and they can be turned, as a trade, into something worth far more.

3. What to trade the fee for, in the order used here

The attendee list. Say an organizer has an event coming up with 1,000 attendees. Offer to waive your fee in return for that list. If an organizer agrees, treat it as a gift: they have probably put $250,000 into promoting that event, and what that money bought now comes to you, while handing it over costs them basically nothing more.
One email to their list. Some of them might not want to part with the list. Fine: step down a level and ask to send one email to it. The list stays theirs. You hand over the email, they can read it, and they send it, and you take the top of their audience that way. Timing matters. The email goes out once the event is over, never before it: you speak first, the stage builds you up in front of the room, and only then is the email sent.
The survey close. If they agree to neither, you still get to speak, and that is good. If they also want no pitch from you, that is good too. This is where the survey close comes in (section 4).

4. The survey close

This is one way of selling from a stage when you have been asked not to pitch, and an elegant one, in this view.

Ask the room whether your slides were great. They say yes.
Give them a link where they can get all of your slides and your free thing.
Behind the link, they answer a couple of questions, and the answers sort them: does this person want to find out more about what you offer, or did they come only for your free slides?
Anyone who wants to find out more can book straight onto a phone call.
If the event is massive, send them to a webinar instead. Pitch on the webinar, and from there push them onto calls, or push them to buy.

The questions. A second practice supplies them, in two versions:

As listed for a workshop of your own: what resonated most today; where they stand now, out of 10; what would bring them up to a 10; and which next step fits them.
On screen, as a form: their favorite part, picked from the talk's own ideas or 'all of it'; a yes-or-no sorting question, such as whether they already work with you; and the next step, with graded answers (yes, already talking to someone; maybe, connect me; sort of, could we talk; no thanks, good for now).

In both, the last answer is a soft way to say no; in the form, the name and email come only after a choice is made. Those answers tell you who the maybes are and give you leave to contact them.

Walk the room through it. In the second practice, if people answer on their phones from a code on screen, you put up each question in turn and go through it with them. In that view, showing a code and standing there is awkward, unless you have had two days to build rapport with the room. A longer form can add screening questions; where one rests on a legal test, such as an investor's income or net worth, the law is not covered on this page. Why a room is worth surveying rather than pitching, and the no-pitch workshop this close ends, are on SOP 65, section 4; building the talk itself is SOP 280.

Flag: whether the room must promise first. The steps above ask whether your slides were great, then offer your slides and the free thing behind the link. The second practice has the room promise the survey at the start, in return for there being no pitch, holds that the close does not work without that promise, and runs the survey after the teaching but before the questions. This page does not settle which reading is right.

5. The same close, for hiring

The survey close also works for getting talent. If you are badly short of supply and want to learn where the kind of people you need can be found, use the survey close on a room of attorneys, say, or accountants, or whatever profession fills the one role you need.

This is outreach aimed at talent, one of the uses of outreach on SOP 217, section 2. Why being short of people is a shortage of demand for talent is argued on SOP 200 — Treat a supply constraint as demand for talent.

6. The booth

Another trade: give up the fee in return for a booth at one of these events or conferences.

The lead magnet is the key. As always, what makes a booth work is an amazing lead magnet or giveaway. An owner who complains that a booth did not pay off is making the same complaint as one whose ad did not: a bad ad fails, and a bad plan for a booth fails too. Building the lead magnet itself is SOP 13 — Choose and build a lead magnet.

There are three things to do with the booth.

6.1 Take the booth on the right

Buy a booth on the right-hand side as you come in the door. The reason offered: 70 percent of people turn right. Organizers will typically charge the same for booths on the two sides, but the one on the right gets more than twice the traffic.

6.2 Record podcasts with the other speakers

There are typically other speakers at the event. Set up a small podcast kit at the booth and ask them to record an episode with you. They are there already, so they might as well leave with content.

What it does for you. Passers-by see speakers whom the stage has already built up, and beside them you, whom it has not, talking in headphones. A crowd forms to see what is happening, because it is live content, and now people are standing around your booth, which becomes far more interesting. You leave with a great deal of content made alongside industry leaders, and you are raised up by default, because their status reflects onto you.

6.3 Run a key giveaway

Give away something amazing. One example is a key to a vault:

Anyone can line up for a free key, and everyone gets one.
They get it by giving you their information.
You hold out a big basket of keys. One key is the right one, and they can try theirs.
If the event runs over several days, put the right key into the basket on the last day, so the winner turns up on the last day.
The prize can be whatever you like.

People will think it is cool and will have a go. Whether they are standing in line or have already given you their information, you now have leads.

A contest in which one entrant wins and everyone else is offered the prize at a discount is SOP 61 — Run a giveaway as an acquisition offer. There the prize is chosen as the thing you want everyone to buy, so the later offer lands on something the entrants have already said they want; the booth game here has no later offer, and the prize is left to you.

7. Do more events

A common thing to hear from owners: they get about a third of their leads from events. Asked how many events they run a year, they say two. The next question is how many a week they are going to do.

The arithmetic offered:

If two events a year bring in half of your business, or else a third, then each one is worth a sixth of the business.
Put another way, every event brings in 17 percent of revenue.
Suppose you multiplied that by 25, which is taken to mean one event a week.
25 times one sixth is given as "a 4x": your revenue four times over, from that change alone.

Where these figures fail to line up with each other is the subject of the next section.

And as you go, you get good at it, and each talk you give brings in more invitations to give talks.

Who it suits. Conferences are picked out because for many of you this will be a very good route: for those whose targets are really high value and who close customers more sporadically.

8. What this page does not decide for you

The fee in the example. Two figures appear for it: $25,000, and "a $25 speaking fee". This page carries $25,000; the amount is said not to matter, since the fee is waived. This page does not settle which reading is right.
The events arithmetic. The figures do not line up:
- The owners' third is a share of their leads; the sixth per event and the 17 percent are given as a share of the business and of revenue.
- Half of a business from two events would be a quarter per event; the sixth follows from the third only.
- Two events multiplied by 25 is 50 a year, close to one a week; the sum then done, 25 times one sixth, counts 25 events and gives about four times. At 50 a year, a sixth each would give about eight.
- Whether the 4x is the new total or is added to what the business already makes is not said.
This page does not settle which reading is right.
Three questions or four. The room is promised a three-question survey; the listed version in section 4 has four. This page does not settle which reading is right.
What the one email says. Not established on this page.

9. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	If your targets are high value and gather at conferences, aim to reach as many as you can, as experience here suggests
2	Set a speaking fee you plan to waive
3	Win invitations through content, an agent, and clips from stage posted organically; accepting free ones is encouraged
4	Trade the fee for the attendee list
5	If refused, trade it for one email to their list, sent by them after you have spoken
6	If neither, and no pitch is allowed, run the survey close: slides and a free thing behind a link, a sorting question, then a call
7	One practice: on phones, put each question on screen and walk the room through it
8	If the event is massive, route the interested to a webinar, then to calls or to buy
9	To hire, run the same close on an audience of the profession you need
10	Or give up the fee for a booth, with an amazing lead magnet or giveaway
11	Take the booth on the right; the reason offered: 70 percent of people turn right
12	Record podcasts with the other speakers at the booth
13	Run the key giveaway; at a multi-day event, the right key goes in on the last day
14	Count your events a year and plan for more; the sum supposes one a week

10. Where this sits

The longer route into someone else's audience, a phased launch with a partner: SOP 49 — Launch through a partner's audience.
Capturing ads at an event that you run yourself: SOP 124 — Produce proof capture at an owned event.
Volume in cold outreach, counted in messages rather than events: SOP 29 — Set outreach volume.

11. What this page does not cover

Hiring a speaking agent, and the law on prize draws, are not covered on this page.