If you’re afraid of speaking in front of a crowd, you’re not alone. According to a Bruskin/Goldring Report, more Americans are actually afraid of public speaking than they are of death!

But what if you had a more motivating factor, a positive one that would make public speaking tolerable, or maybe even enjoyable? A factor that would far outweigh the fear? Would you consider it then?

Here’s the secret – public speaking is an outstanding way to grow your business.

I’ll tell you why:

It puts you in front of potential customers

Public speaking gives you the chance to flaunt your expertise in front of people who are interested in what you have to say, and build rapport with your audience. That’s the first step in the sales process.

If you choose your topic and venue carefully, you can fill a room of any size with a captive audience of potential customers. The key is to choose a topic that educates your audience rather than one that blatantly tries to sell them on your products or services. Chet Holmes does a great job of explaining how to do this in his book The Ultimate Sales Machine.

It positions you as an expert

You may not even realize that you’re already an expert. Think about how often friends, family and associates seek your advice on matters that you deal with every day, and you probably have an answer right off the top of your head. Could you do that if you weren’t an expert?

You have more than enough knowledge and experience to educate people outside of your industry. You can use that to position yourself as the go-to guy (or gal) which then leads to both media and potential customers seeking you out instead of the other way around.

It builds your confidence

Most people are deathly afraid of public speaking, and that’s exactly why you should do it!

When we take action in spite of our fears, it builds our confidence. Think about how you felt when you first learned to ride a bike without training wheels, or the end of your first day of school or resurfacing after your first trip off the rope swing at the lake. You were probably terrified at first, but afterward, you felt like you were on top of the world and couldn’t be stopped.

As adults, we tend to settle into our comfort zones because it’s the easy thing to do. We avoid taking risks and trying new things. The downside is that we rarely grow by any significant measure.

Change that today! Get in front of a crowd even though you’re scared as hell, and speak. Afterward, when the endorphins kick in, you’ll realize that you’re walking a little taller, looking people in the eye and are more sure of yourself than just a few minutes ago.

Remember, people like to buy from people they like and people they want to be like.

It improves your skills as a presenter

If you can speak effectively in front of a group of people and keep them engaged, imagine how much easier your one-on-one sales presentations are going to become! You’ll go from lots of “nos” and half-hearted “maybes” to lots of enthusiastic “yeses.”

You’ll want to pay special attention to reactions you get from the members of the audience. Anything you can learn from a one-on-one sales presentation, you can learn ten times faster speaking in front of a group of people because exponentially more reactions to learn from.

When you first start out, you’re probably not going to be very good at public speaking, but like a manager I once worked for said “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you get good at it.”

Practice until it becomes second nature. Then practice some more. Speak in front of any group can; at networking events, trade shows and anywhere else you’re given the opportunity. If you’re giving a particularly long speech, don’t be afraid to jot down some notes on index cards, or even use a teleprompter. And if you make a mistake here and there, don’t get to worked up about it – you’ll probably be the only one who notices. Just make a mental note and do it better next time.

It won’t take long before you’re an expert presenter, and that means more informed customers, a smoother sales process and of course, more sales.

It’s easy to get tied up with paperwork, developing your next great product, improving your website or any number of other countless things that you have to do to keep your company running smoothly and effectively.

While all of these tasks are clearly important, they unfortunately distract us from the one thing that is absolutely necessary for a company to be successful – sales – because without sufficient income, your company will whither away to nothing.

So what are you doing to sell more today? What will it mean to your income if you sell one extra product or service today? What will it mean to your income if you continue to do that over the next month, and then the next year?

When I hear a message like this: “John Smith, 505-958-5361″ (I received a message exactly like this yesterday), I think the person is either trying to trick me into calling them back so they can try to sell me something, or they’re interested in our services, but aren’t very committed or serious since they aren’t willing to put forth any effort. Either way, my experience has shown me that it’s rarely worthwhile to return those type of messages.

The thing is, they are wrong. There is no one thing that everyone needs.

Worse than being wrong, they are setting themselves up for failure. By convincing themselves that everyone needs what they’re offering, they end up burning out because it takes significantly more effort to convert their prospects into customers. It can be tempting to look at larger segments of the population as your target market, but it all comes down to one thing; conversions. Would you rather spend your time trying to convince 1,000 people who are slightly interested in what you have and converting 50 of them, or trying to convince 100 people who are absolutely passionate about what you have and converting 20 of them?

If you focus on a more targeted prospect, you’ll find that:

• Your sales process is easier and faster, which means you can spend more time finding even more like-minded prospects
• You’ll get more referrals
• The amount of time you spend handling customer service related issues goes down, which again, means that you can spend more time finding even more like-minded prospects

If you still think you can convince everyone, remember, 6% of the US population thinks we never landed on the moon. Good luck with that!

In my own unscientific opinion, I would be willing to bet that most people are nearly as adverse to making a sales call, whether in person or on the phone, as they are terrified of public speaking. But what are they really afraid of? Rejection? Failure? Wasting their time?

Well, let’s face the facts; you’re going to experience rejection. Not everyone needs, wants or can afford what you’re selling. Sales is partially a numbers game, so the more people you get in front of, the more opportunities you’ll have to sell your product or service. You’re also going to face failure, but failure is how you learn. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you get good at it. So far, it sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you; almost everything that you have been looking at as a negative actually creates a positive benefit for you.

Wasting your time, however, can cripple your sales efforts. You could spend countless days calling leads over and over and not receive a single call back. You could spend hours on the phone or sitting down with prospects to learn about their needs, and then find out they aren’t even authorized to make a decision. You could even prepare a detailed custom proposal for every potential client, learning later that they just took your information and cut you out of the equation. The common factor here is quickly learning what type of prospect you’re talking to, and then allocating the appropriate amount of time; nothing more and nothing less.

Everyone has different circumstances, but like Tyler Durden said in Fight Club, they are “not a unique snowflake.” In reality, you’ll find that 99% of your prospects fall into one of 4 groups.

Rubber-neckers

These prospects happened to drop by your trade show booth, visit your website or see one of your ads and decide that they’d like to know more about your company. The problem is they have absolutely no interest in investing in what you’re selling. They may fill out your contact form online, mail in a request for more information or even call you, but you’ll never hear from them again. You can usually spot these prospects pretty quickly because when you start asking them basic questions, they don’t have any answers – they just want you to send them every bit of information on your company. They will typically contact you once, or at most twice, and you’ll never be able to reach them again, so if you can’t reach them after three or four phone calls and an email or two, it’s time to move on.

Tire kickers

When you encounter tire-kickers, they will deluge you with requests for more and more information, which will often span several weeks or months while they are “weighing their options.” If you happen to get to a point where you have enough information to produce a proposal, they will usually drastically change the scope of their project, and then the process starts all over. These prospects are relatively simple to spot if you’re paying attention because you’ll find that the more information you give them, the more they want. Often, they will add to or change the scope of the project at every step of the way. If they are going to act like this before they are even a client/customer, think of how they will act once they are. As soon as you realize that you’re dealing with a tire-kicker, shift gears to spend your time with prospects that are likely to move forward.

Bargain hunters

Sometimes, you’re going to come across a prospect that really is a good person with limited resources, and in those cases, it’s fine to massage the terms of a deal to help them out as long as you’re not hurting yourself. There is nothing wrong with looking for a good deal, but when it comes to negotiating, the bargain hunter wants the world handed to them. When presented with a price, they will usually ask for a discount right off the bat. You may be tempted to cave in order to land the project, but keep in mind, they are just going to keep whittling your prices down until you can’t go any lower, and then they will jump ship for the next company that will do it for $10 less. This prospect will treat you as a commodity and has no loyalty to you, so while you may end up lowering your prices for them, make sure the numbers still make sense for you.

Family and Friends

No matter what industry you’re in, family and friends will always expect favors from you. This is a tough one because there are personal relationships involved, but you need to handle them the same way that you would handle bargain hunters, otherwise, you may end up feeling like they’re taking advantage of you and you’ll end up resenting them.

Go-getters

These prospects are great! They either already know what they want or they trust you as the professional to tell them what they need – and they’re ready to take action right away. Typically they are value-based shoppers, so they don’t mind paying a premium as long as they are getting their money’s worth, and they are usually quick to make a decision, which means that your sales cycle can be unbelievably short, but it also means that if you’re not meeting their needs, they will go elsewhere just as quickly. Spend the time necessary to properly qualify them, develop a proposal that’s tailored to their specific needs, be available and don’t be afraid to ask for the sale. If you spend your time with more of this type of prospect and less time with the others, you’ll quickly see a change in your revenue and you profit margins.

Looking back, you can now probably see some patterns with some of the prospects you’ve worked with in the past. Hopefully going forward, you now have the information to be more selective and work with more of the prospects who will improve your bottom line and less of the ones that will waste your time. Remember the 80/20 rule.

At some point in time, we’re all asked what we do, and more often than not, our answer, also known as your elevator pitch, is not nearly as effective as it could be. Many of us either over-simplify or over complicate our answer and leave the person asking it bored or confused. See if you recognize (and if you’re guilty of) one of these examples:

Example question: So, Dave, what do you guys do?

Example answer #1: We’re a financial planning firm.
Example answer #2: We build assets for our clients by investing in high yield derivatives hedged against municipal bonds to offer tremendous capital gains and tax benefits at a low level of risk.

Example #1 pretty much ends the conversation or at least sends it in a different direction and example #2 isn’t much better since most people will have no idea what it meant and will forget it in 3 seconds anyway. Now, for an effective answer the question, follow these four steps:

1. Keep it simple, but interesting. Tell them what you do and why you do it or how you do it differently.
2. Speak in terms of the benefits to them. If you run an insurance firm, talk about how you specialize in helping protect your clients from unexpected circumstances, not about the insurance.
3. Avoid clichés. If you tell your prospects that you’re better because you care, you might as well get yourself a plaid sports coat because you’ll sound like a used car salesman.
4. Avoid technical terminology unless it’s absolutely necessary – and it’s usually not.

So, what do you do?

Lie about their intentions.

Sadly, it happens all the time, but when people are hungry and desperate, it gets worse.

I was recently contacted by a local organization who wanted me to come speak at their event. The woman who contacted me went on and on about how much they admired our company and were impressed by the coverage we’ve received in the media. She raved about the work we’ve done for some of our local clients. She then went on to tell me about how beneficial it would be for me to speak at her organizations event because they would be heavily marketing the event and me/our company to their members and we would get tons of exposure. At the end of a 15 or 20 minute phone call, her true intentions came out when she said “I just realized you’re not a member of our organization; since we only allow members to speak at our events I could email you our application. It’s only $XXX to become a member, are you interested?” The funny thing is that I had been planning to become a member of this particular organization, but now I will never consider it.

Yesterday, I was contacted by the producer of a national television program that you’ve probably heard of. I got the same spiel from this guy; we’re really impressed with your company and your work, we’ve seen you in the media, we’d love to do a story on you, and so on…then came the truth. “Oh, and we’ll just need a $9,500 affiliate fee to get the program on the air.” No thanks.

Having worked in just about every facet of advertising, I’ve seen first-hand that this happens in every major newspaper, magazine, television and radio company.

While the FTC is strongly considering enacting legislation to force bloggers to disclose if they are being compensated in any way for writing a review, posting a link or in any way providing exposure for a company or product, they turn a blind eye to big media companies. Obviously, the impact of bloggers (Twitter, Facebook or any other social media users too) is taking a severe bite out of traditional media who is retaliating by turning their army of lobbyests loose to stop competition. I guess what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander, but I digress.

When you make a sales call, don’t try to shroud it in some false pretense. You’ll waste your own and the prospect’s time, come off as shady and lose to opportunity to ever convert them into a client. Instead, make your intentions clear, be polite but get to the point. You’ll save time, make more sales calls and most importantly, close more sales.

• New entries in your field often undervalue their work or are desperate to scratch out a living, so they work for less than their skills and knowledge would justify.
• Those who have failed to stay up to date and evolve with changes in your industry will work for less because they don’t have the skills or knowledge to do otherwise.

Are you charging what you’re really worth? Do you know what you’re really worth? Don’t simply base that on what your current customers are willing to pay or what your competitors are charging. Base it on the value that you bring to the table.

Your time is obviously the first factor, but there are many more. You have a special set of skills that you’ve developed over the years. Skills that your prospects and clients don’t have; that’s why they’re coming to you. Along with those skills is your knowledge and experience. That has a tremendous value, but it’s still not the end of the equation. For every hour of work you do, you often spend hours or even days behind the scenes reading, researching, testing and planning. All of that work, even if your client never sees it, brings additional value to their project in the form of better results.

It’s been said that you train people how to treat you. The same can be said for setting expectations of the value of your services. If you base your rates on the value of your skills, knowledge and experience, you’ll earn what your really worth. If you don’t, you’ll simply become another commodity.

It may seem counter-intuitive to turn down potential clients, especially when you need the revenue, but when you look at the long-term implications, it makes perfect sense. A nightmare client can monopolize your time, pay slow (or not at all), frustrate you and your staff and even tie your company up in time-consuming and costly legal battles, all of which make serving your good clients more difficult. This can have a serious impact on your company. The thing is, most of us have at least a gut-feeling long before any of these problems come to pass, but we (myself included) often give the potential client the benefit of the doubt.

Aside from trusting your gut, here are some things to look out for:

• Is the client in an unusual hurry to get a project started? This is often a sign of poor planning on their part and more often than not, it will get worse as time goes on. Things may start off rosy and friendly, but before long they are failing to communicate with you on a timely basis and then blaming you for the delays, making more and more last minute changes and demanding special treatment.
• They ask for special deals right off the bat, claiming they’ll make it up to you on subsequent projects. A spin-off of this approach is when they ask for special deals claiming they will send you tons of referrals. Think about this; people tend to associate with others like themselves and if they can’t afford your products/services, their associates probably can’t either. Do you want those type of referrals?  Save the special deals for your valued clients who have brought your company consistent revenue.
• The client complains that all the vendors/suppliers/contractors/etc. they’ve worked with are incompetent, overpriced and can’t meet deadlines. The chances of this being true are pretty slim, instead, look at the one common denominator; the client.
• The client says their last vendors/suppliers/contractors/etc. won’t return their calls any longer. There is probably a great reason for this.
• The client is flaky. For example, they miss scheduled calls or meetings, agree to project terms but then forget or try to change them at the last minute, fail to provide necessary project information and/or files. If you see this, it’s a sure sign of things to come and you can bet that it’s only going to get worse.
• The client outright lies. Did they contact you claiming to be the sole decision maker, only later to admit that they are just one member of a commitee responsible for making a decision? Did they ask for a detailed proposal based outlining every action, step by step, based on a $250,000 budget, and then tell you that their budget is really just $2,500? If they will lie to you at this stage, the lies will increase and get worse.

You may be tempted by the additional revenue, especially if the figures are quite large, but before you make a decision, look for the signs and trust your gut. You’ll be far better off in the long run.