Have you presented at a live event lately? Perhaps you have a few talks lined up for the fall. Good stuff. Many, many conscious entrepreneurs have a natural gift for building trust when face-to-face, and presenting your material as a speaker in front of groups is a solid leverageable business-building activity.

But here’s the rub.

No matter how great your talk, workshop, training, keynote speech is, if you don’t have things in place to take care of everything that happens after the applause, you’ve only done half your job. Remembering that everything is energy, think of your time in front of the group as prepping the vegetables for your stir-fry. After you’re done, you have to carry through, follow forward - you still have to fry the veggies in order to make a meal.

How do you do that? Pay attention to the table at the ‘back of the room.’ (Or the booth in the exhibit hall, etc.) This is where the proverbial ‘cash register’ lives, yes? Where folks can now sign up for your program, request to be put on a waiting list, buy your book, join your newsletter readership, etc. etc.

Emphasizing: No matter how much caffeine you have in you, or how energizer-bunny you otherwise are, you alone cannot handle the table effectively, even if it’s a small talk. So, best to learn how to enlist help - the good kind - and make the most of that help. Here’s where you imitate an octopus.

A very useful step is to give a copy of the sample note below to every helper you have. Without you having to ‘train’ them per se, you can customize the note so it acts as your ambassador. It will cut down the amount of time you need to spend with each helper - a blessing for time-pressed you - and you’ll marvel and how good a job it does at creating goodwill among the folk who are helping you.

Personally, I’ve found it seems to work even better if I handwrite the note. (Try handwriting it once and then photocopying it.) But remember this is just a sample - it happens to be a short one I used a few times this year - make sure you mess around with and elaborate on it to suit your purpose and personality.

—- Begin Sample Note —-

Dear Multiple Streams Volunteer!

Thank you so much for lending a hand today - you are very much appreciated!

With your extra set of hands and heart, we’ll be able to quickly and simply facilitate folks getting hold of the additional books and CDs they will use to grow their businesses - fun, right?

So here are just a coupld of guidelines in case I haven’t already been able to touch base with you personally - they’re really easy points but important.

(1) When you receive an order form from someone, quickly scan each line to see that it’s all legible. If you can’t read something, especially things like names, credit card numbers, expiry dates, etc., ask the person for clarification and fix the appropriate spots on the form itself.

(2) Keep all completed order forms, cash, checks, etc. in a safe place with you in the folder provided or face down on the table next to you until you can pass these to Andrea/me after everything wraps up.

(3) For cash, we don’t make change at local events so either collect the exact change or let the person know unfortunately we don’t make change - is that okay with them? Of course this is entirely up to them - if it’s not okay, they are welcome to pay by check or credit card.

(4) When we run out of stock, which we often do fairly quickly, we will still take order forms and will ship the items at our cost, just as our gift to them. This sometimes incentivizes people to order while still at the event, that’s a-okay with us.

(5) After the purchase is complete, you can go ahead and invite them to find me - I’m happy to sign their purchases if they’d like. Even if you see that I’m busy or there is a line, that is okay. I will be happy to stay behind if needed so you can reassure folk of that okay?

(6) And last but not least, after things have all wrapped up, please do NOT forget - this is important - to come and track me/Andrea down. I have a final thank you for you - and a big hug - sorry, no slipping out without that okay?
Alright, that’s all - pretty simple right? And if you have any questions at all, do not hesitate to just find me, or ask the person to find me, or last resort, write down their question with name, email, phone and me or my office will get back to them asap. Hopefully that covers everything so that you can enjoy meeting with folk - just remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question AND I trust your judgement on things.

All that remains to say is thank you again…you are making a BIG difference, not just to me through your help but by making it possible for people to take the next step towards multiple streams…

With love and respect,

a

—- end sample note —–

Kinda cool, right?

What other things are you curious about managing after your public appearance? Questions about maximizing the opportunities? Other ‘post-event’ ools or templates you’d like to see here?

Photo credit: Thank you to Byron Van Arsdale who snapped the above photo of me at the ICF Conference last year. Click the photo above to enlarge, or visit the Coaching Electric for slides, notes, visual map and report card from the presentation.