Metzler

You've got a brilliant idea and would love to start your own business but perhaps you're apprehensive about approaching a bank or financial advisor because you're worried you might get tongue tied and come across as a blithering idiot! What can you do about it?

Speaking in public or in front of a group of strangers is the number one fear in the world and most people would rather do anything else to avoid speaking in public.

If you want to have a very successful business it's a fear you have to overcome, you may never feel confident enough to address an audience of hundreds but you should be able to speak clearly and confidently to small groups of important people. These might be prospective buyers, bankers etc.

In order to speak confidently the first thing you have to do is understand fully what you are saying. If it's your business idea make sure that you've thought through the whole process and that you can answer any questions people may put to you. If you understand every aspect of your business this confidence will show through your speaking and listeners will be impressed straight away by your knowledge.

Once you know what you want to say, you can work on how to say it.

Rule 1

Open your mouth. This sounds obvious but about 80% of people don't open their mouths as wide as they think and certainly not wide enough for the sound to get out. Try saying, 'high in the pine tree' and make sure that you can put three fingers vertically in your mouth when you say 'high' and 'pine' when practising and two fingers when speaking normally.

Rule 2

Direct the sound where you want it to go. Imagine the words are balls and throw them where you want them to land. This is particularly true if youre speaking out side as the wind can easily carry your words in a different direction. Don't look at the ground unless you're talking to a group of mice.

Rule 3

Pause when you need to. Confident speakers aren't afraid of silence. As my father used to say about a close relative, 'if you never stop talking you're bound to end up talking rubbish'. Don't be frightened to stop and pause - the listener will be very pleased if you do this because it gives them a chance to take in what you've said. Bear in mind that they will be a second or two behind you because their brains need a chance to digest what you've said. This pause will also give you a chance to take a breath and perhaps think about what you want to say next. Try to pause before you start another new line of thought.

Rule 4

The secret to clear speech is good articulation. Sound the beginning, middle and end of every word. For example, bed, beg, bell, Ben and bet all begin with 'be..', the only sound that differentiates the words is the final sound and this is the sound that so many people leave off.

Rule 5

Use expression in your voice. Alter the pitch, pace and power of your voice. Slow down and lower the pitch for serious comments and speed up slightly and raise your pitch to sound excited. If your voice has no variety it will sound monotonous and listeners will switch off (if they don't fall asleep first). If you can learn to vary your voice your audience will not only listen but they'll find it a lot easier to remember what you've said.

Rule 6

If you know you have a habit of saying um or okay at the end of most sentences or when you feel you need to pause but are frightened of the silence, try to think the um or okay instead.

If you follow these rules you'll find your speech will start to sound and feel a lot more confident. Practise speaking out loud - when you take a tin of spaghetti out of the cupboard read the ingredients out loud. Get used to the sound of your voice and feel comfortable with it.

Your voice is your most important asset, emails, texts and letters can convey information but your voice is able to convey information and enthusiasm and controlled enthusiasm counts for a lot!

Serena Greenslade is a qualified speech teacher and runs one day in-house workshops anywhere in the Uk. These workshops cover all the skills individuals need to be able to master to become clear and confident communicators, see http://www.afraid-of-speaking-a-speech.com for details.

Did you know that 80% of all sales are made after the 5th contact?

The biggest mistake we make is not following up with our clients regularly. We not only lose the chance to offer other services and products, we lose the chance for satisfied clients' referrals.

Building your practice needs consistent bi-monthly follow-ups.

If you think this takes too much time, follow my lead and delegate some of it where you will spend only 6-8 hours a week. Remember, only marketing and promotion builds income and business, the rest are expenses.

Here's the top ten ways:

1. Keep track of every one who contacts you, in person or by email about coaching or other service.

Treat email addresses like gold. These are already qualified, targeted future clients. Copy and paste their email note, date, and question into Textpad or notepad under the name "potential clients." Print it out and keep in a hard file named the same.

2. Don't throw away email addresses.

When someone connects with you, copy and paste their address into your computer folder called "eLists." Place the address where you think it belongs. Name one file "potential clients." If they are past clients, create another list and call it "past clients." If present clients, make a file for them too. Categorized into groups, you can personalize your note to each one. Every month you'll want contact one of these groups and offer them something special.

3. Keep track of your ezine subscribers' emails separately.

While you may use a company to send out your ezine, you may also want to have that list handy in your own office. My assistant uses www.textpad.com shareware program to manage all of my different email lists. Since I only send out my ezine on book coaching and business tip monthly, I follow up in between with a thank you or special offer. It takes less than 3 minutes to send out through text pad.

4. Choose the appropriate follow up message for each group.

For your monthly ezine, you may want to send out a mini "marketing survey." You ask 4-8 questions. For any who takes the time to respond, you offer them a fre.e eBook or report. In one follow up I asked, "What are the 3 top questions you want answered about writing and publishing a book?" My subscribers knew I was thinking about them and appreciated it by signing up for the follow up small cost book coaching marathon teleclass.

People love fre.ebies, so when your follow up offers a fre.e tip or question and answer, your potential clients will see your value.

5. Leverage big results from just a little effort.

Don't waste any information that helps you promote. After you get responses to your mini survey, use them again and again. After you answer the questions, keep them in a folder called Q and A. Create a new web site link and post them as new content for your hungry web site visitors.

When other professionals ask me for an interview for their ezines and sites, I get them via email, answer them and get promoted by others through their ezines and Web sites.

At the same time, I divide these interviews into articles under 1000 words and submit them to opt-in ezines looking for free content.

From just one ezine interview, several high power professionals called me to order books first, then to become business clients.

Don't think you are bothering your contacts. If they don't want your news, they can opt-out. Thank you's and free gifts keep your name in front of your buyers. It tells them you appreciate them and let's them know what new things you can offer them. Follow up is good business.

Part two of this article is available at www.bookcoaching.com/freearticles/article-130.shtml.

Judy Cullins, 20-year book and Internet Marketing Coach, Author of 10 eBooks including "Write your eBook Fast," and "How to Market your Business on the Internet," she offers free help through her 2 monthly ezines, The Book Coach Says...and Business Tip of the Month at http://www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml and over 140 free articles. Email her at mailto:Judy@bookcoaching.com

Managing a successful event means balancing your event production with the demanding process of delegate management. Here are five top tips to making your delegate management efforts work smoothly and effectively.

What is delegate management anyway?

Delegate management is the term given to the communications and data processes in the run up to an event such as a conference or meeting, and to some extent on site at the event.

Why is delegate management important?

To be successful your event must have an objective, and this objective will normally be related to revenue generated or whether a message that the stakeholder wanted to communicate to delegates was communicated. However, many event managers will lost track of the objective as soon as invitations have been sent.

Why? Well, when you invite people to an event you are undertaking a complex management task that is often underestimated. Rather than concentrating on your objective, you'll most likely find that you're dealing with questions from delegates, changes to their registration data, and communicating these details to the venue and third party suppliers.

To be effective in managing the event you must be able to make sure that the amount of time you dedicate to these tasks doesn't impede on your ability to meet the original objective. To do that you should invest time on implementing a robust and scalable delegate management strategy before you even think about publicising your event.

So how do I set up a delegate management strategy?

Here are the five top tips to successful delegate management;

• Delegate your delegates!
  If your budget withstands it, think about hiring an outside delegate management specialist to handle your pre-event communications and registrations for you. Although it may appear that you can save money by doing everything in house, hiring a specialist will mean you don't have to invest in new technology, and it will give you the flexibility to add more people on to the job if needed.
• Make sure your database software is up to the job
  Spreadsheet software is great for managing data that only one person works on, and where you don't need to keep a record of changes.

  Unfortunately not many events fit that profile. You may well need to have two people working on a delegate list (possibly in different locations), and you can't afford to run the risk of one user saving their changes over another's file.

  If you're running your own delegate management, give a lot of consideration to using a database software package rather than a spreadsheet. Databases are normally designed for multi-user environments, and if they've been built for events they should also automatically keep a log of each delegate's registration history. This is invaluable when queries come up as it quickly highlights if mistakes have been made and need to be put straight.

• Make good use of the web
  The web is a real blessing for event managers, so you really should use it to the max.

  Firstly, it's the ideal place for your event information to be displayed. Your event web site soon becomes the first point of reference for questions from delegates about the event content and location. And unlike traditional media, you can change the content after the invitations are sent, e.g. you can post answers to questions that you're asked that you hadn't originally expected delegates to ask.

  Secondly, it's a great way to allow delegates to register. As well as the obvious advantage of 24/7 availability, using your event web site for registration saves you the job of inputting all the data, and means that the delegates are responsible for the accuracy of their own data.

  These days there are some excellent web based event registration solutions available that are ideal for managing your event data. Being online they will be a huge help if you need to give access to data to third party suppliers (keeping caterers up to speed with dietary requirements, for example).
  

• Log everything!
  It's important to keep a record of every change that occurs with a delegate's registration, including when it was actioned, what changed, and who made the change. This information will be invaluable if there are any question marks over whether a change should have been made or not. For instance, if a delegate disputes whether they should be liable for the cost of a hotel room she didn't use, your logs should be able to highlight when and why the room was booked.
• Stream your correspondence
  Having a helpline that delegates can use to reach you by phone is great for them. It's not so great for you if you've got a large workload.

So look to delegate or outsource your helpline, or if that's not possible then make sure you 'stream' your correspondence down the routes that will work best for you. For instance, in your event correspondence list your web site first and largest, so delegates see that before they see the helpline number. This will usually mean the delegate may find the answer they were looking for on the web site, and they're more likely to make the enquiry by email or web form, which you can deal with at a time that suits you.

Nick Thompson is Head of Events at London based delegate management specialists Dataflow Events. The company provides event registration services such as bulk emailing, conference call centres and email handling, and feedback collection and reporting.