Beat Inner Propaganda

Eoin, I wanna start with sales because I think every single speaker needs support with this.

Almost everyone I know is constantly talking about lead gen and sales and getting our keynotes purchased.

We've all felt the pressure of pitching our keynote, and gosh, that can get awkward.

Walk us through what consultative selling actually means and how it changes the conversation.

For me, the most important strategy as a speaker that I use in order to sell is always through the process of questions.

So consultative selling is consulting with the folks that you're trying to sell to by asking them the questions to understand exactly what they want and what they need.

And I think that so often as a speaker, we learn, okay, you need to have your elevator pitch.

I'm Eoin, and I do this, and I'm this type of speaker, and I do that.

And the problem is, is that most of the time they don't care.

They, they only care about that after they figure out what is it that you can do for them.

So whenever I work with a, uh, or I'm having a conversation with a potential client and we jump on a call, my questions are what gets me to the place where I'm able to help them because I'm able to ask them what problems that they have, what are the challenges, what are they looking for, what would the ideal, uh, ending be for this? If I was to walk out of the room afterwards, how would they know that it was a success? And the more that I can ask those questions, the more they'll share exactly what I need to know so that I can make it work.

And I think a lot of times we, as speakers, it's very easy for us to have our, let's say, inverted commas, spiel.

We, we know what we're gonna talk about.

We know the speech that we're going to use.

But if we don't listen and pay attention to what their specific needs are, then our speech is never gonna resonate enough.

And for me, I wanna know as much as I can.

I've worked with clients that, you know, were experts in terms of makeup and, you know, uh, beer and areas that I've absolutely zero knowledge about, and I had to spend a lot of time trying to understand it.

But when you go that extra mile and you do your research and you listen to what they have to say, and you ask more deep, deeper type of questions, which is what consultative selling is all about, you try to dig into what their-- not just their problems, but their pain points, their priorities, trying to understand what matters most there.

The more you get that, the more you understand exactly how to adjust or tweak your presentation to the point that it fits.

So that a lot of times, like I heard at the end of, uh, a recent event, the CEO of the firm, I was chatting to him afterwards and he said, "You know, you really listen." I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "We've got a lot of speakers in the past, and they go up and they do a good stuff." They, what do you call? The dog and pony show.

But he goes, "You really heard everything we said in all the prep calls.

You incorporated so much into it." And that was really impressive for him because again, remember, they're not looking around going, "We need a great speaker." They're looking around going, "We need a great speaker on this because this is what our problem is." And that's what questions do.

Also, I hate talking about myself, so the more that I'm talking about them and plugging that in, they can read my bio.

Okay, I'll give them a couple of sentences when I'm on the call, but my job is not to sell me.

My job is to help them to solve the problem they have.