Who wants to be a Millionaire?

OK, hands down. I spoke last night at the Millionaires Business Club, just outside London. It was a very enjoyable evening, with well-organised networking between people who run multi-million pound businesses. It's the sort of event that makes me glad to be a professional speaker. As well as speaking to the group, I enjoyed a fine meal and was able to chat to all of the audience about business, in the splendour of the dining room at Moor Park golf club.

An obvious question, which I was far too polite to ask anyone there was "So how did you manage to become so successful?" The answer, of course was obvious. Everyone there was a good communicator, who not only spoke about their own business, but was genuinely interested in what other people did, and how they could help each other.

Like me, you have probably been to networking events where people drone on about what they can do, delivering their "elevator speech", with no regard for your interests at all. I'm afraid this doesn't work any more, if indeed it ever did. No-one is interested in what you do, unless it is something they could benefit from. And how do you find out their interests? You ask them. So, if you have an "elevator speech", then stop boring people with it. Ask them what they do, and explain how your business might help them do more or better. That's exactly what people in the Millionaires Business Club were doing last night. That's how they got there.

Gissa job...

The PSA is a wonderfully supportive organisation, through which I've made many good friends. Sometimes, I receive a call from one of them, telling me that they have referred me to a client. I'm very grateful. I refer people too, whenever I am asked to deliver a speech or a training course that is not part of my core business (media). I think that referrals are part and parcel of being in a profession. It's what we do for one another.

However, there is a limit. Recently, I have been approached by several speakers (prospective, rather than actual, PSA members), asking me if I can help them find paid gigs. I'm always as helpful as I can be, suggesting ways in which they can market themselves in order to generate paid work. One particular individual has called me several times, asking for more detailed advice on each occasion. During the most recent call, he said "Look Alan, you're a successful speaker, and you seem to get lots of work. How about signing up a client, and then giving the work to me, to get me started?"

I won't tell you my exact reply, but I'll paraphrase it. All of us in the speaking business have to sell ourselves. No-one will do it for us, not even speaker bureaus. We can get advice from others, go on marketing courses, and learn how to close a sale. But clients are buying us. If you can't sell yourself, or employ someone to do it for you, you can't rely on professional colleagues to do it. That is not what the PSA is for.

But we've always used it....

I've been getting involved recently in yet another debate about the use of PowerPoint. OK, it's a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but that's only because people tell me they "have to use it". What they usually mean is "We're expected to use it in our organisation". Well, OK. That may be a rule. But left to your own devices, you don't "have to use it" at all. The debate usually goes to and fro, until my co-debater says "OK, Alan, let's agree a compromise. There are some people who use PowerPoint badly, and they're in the majority. But some people use it really well, and it really does enhance a presentation".

Alas, I still say "no". I'm not trying to be dogmatic (I know it sounds like it), but I don't see why I have to "compromise" on the use of PowerPoint. This is a tool that has existed only since 1987 on Macs, and since 1990 on Windows. For some reason, it has now become de rigeur for corporate presentations, and worst of all, for conference speakers. What did these people do 20 years ago? Maybe some of them used overhead projectors, or even flipcharts. However, most of them just spoke to their audiences, and handed out any detailed information on paper.

At last there is a corporate rebellion under way. Even Bill Gates is reported to have banned PowerPoint from meetings, and asked his staff to "just tell me what is happening". The report into the Columbia Shuttle disaster included this telling sentence - "The (Columbia Accident Investigation) Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA"

.....And everywhere else, in my opinion.

A room with a view

I had a splendid time a couple of days ago at the annual conference of the Association of Marketing Directors in Independent Schools. I was the after-dinner speaker, and was well looked after throughout the event. My room was paid for by the organisers, so I can't complain about value for money. Well, maybe a little. Over to the left is the view from the window of my room. It's a ten-foot high breeze-block wall, lightly suffused with algae and rainwater. It was three feet from the window. I wasn't expecting (as Basil Fawlty used to say) "Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The hanging gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically..." , but I did expect to see further than three feet. Oh well. Worse to report, I was in an "executive suite" with two king-sized beds (who knows what executives get up to in Coventry?). I wonder what the view was like from a standard room?

Anyway, as I say, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. We itinerant orators have to take the rough with the smooth. For example, I once had to spend ten days in a luxury desert spa in Dubai. The view was pretty spectacular, albeit mostly sand.

The high point of my stay in Coventry (yes, back there again) was the breakfast service. Faced with the standard buffet of bacon, sausages, scrambled egg and fried bread, all cooked some hours before, my heart sank. But salvation was at hand, in the person of Florence, one of the waitresses. She saw me looking at the buffet, and asked if I would like any freshly-cooked food from the kitchen. I requested two lightly-poached eggs on brown toast. Five minutes later, a smiling Florence arrived at my table, with a wonderful plate of hot, delicious food. I thanked her, and made a point to drop a note to the hotel manager praising her for great customer service. I left her a tip on the table too, since wages in hotels tend to be close to the minimum.

So, if you ever stay in the Hickley Island Hotel, don't pay extra for a suite, and ask for Florence to wait on your table at breakfast.

Sent to Coventry

Well, yes and no.. I am off to Coventry today, to do an after-dinner speech to a group of marketing directors, so it's true in a literal sense. In a figurative sense, the opposite is true, since rather than being ignored, I have been overwhelmed by messages of support and encouragement (with the odd request thrown in). Keep 'em coming, I say. I'm trying to respond quickly to every message I receive (other than the ones that tell me I need to help someone get 8 million euros out of a country far, far away). However, I am keeping my responses short, so if you receive only a two-line email from me, please don't be offended.

I'd like to thank both Mike Southon (the Beermat Entrepreneur, and a Fellow of the PSA) and Coutts for inviting me to a splendid event on Friday evening. Many of you will know Mike, of course, and if you ever get the chance to hear him speak, take it - no-one knows more about being a successful entrepreneur than he does.

I met some fascinating people, including (to the great excitement of my daughter) Jamie Mitchell, the "Chief Squeezer" and Managing Director of Innocent, who make those very tasty smoothies (no, they don't sponsor this blog either). Now that's what I call a cool brand.

I also met an inspiring woman, Molly Bedingfield, who runs Global Angels. Apart from bringing up some rather successful singing children, Molly is passionate about championing the needs of children around the world. Have a look at her site and see if you can help her. I certainly will.

Hey, ho, off to Coventry.... Talk to you again later.

So who do you recommend?

I'm very good at what I do. But I'm not very good at lots of other things, so that's why I recommend people. One of the great values of having a worldwide network of fellow speakers is that I always know someone who is a perfect fit for any event. That sounds like I'm an unpaid speaker bureau, which I'm definitely not, since speaker bureaus do a great deal more than find speakers.

For example, in the past few weeks I have recommended an after-dinner speaker for a large corporate bash in London, a keynote speaker for a product launch in Las Vegas, and a workshop leader for a couple of days in Dubai. When I was approached about these gigs, I was asked "is this something you could do?". In each case, I had to admit that it wasn't really my specialist area, so I'd rather pass it on to someone else. Sometimes the reverse happens, and people recommend me for gigs, for which I'm extremely grateful. But I don't recommend others to get a recommendation back. It doesn't work like that.

I hope everyone in the PSA recommends people too. That's one of the benefits of being a member. We're all in this together, and we help each other. That's the spirit of the worldwide community of professional speakers. So who do you recommend?

Do speakers have to travel, then?

Well, that's a good question (as I teach my media clients to say, to give them five more seconds of thinking time). Basically, the life of a professional speaker revolves around travel arrangements. The nature of the job is that we need to be in lots of different places, some of them quite remote, and possibly never visited before by people from more than ten miles away. The speaker's job is to locate the venue (and the audience), delight them with eloquence, and find somewhere to eat and sleep before heading home or (if lucky) to another gig.

Charlie Watts, drummer with the popular beat combo The Rolling Stones, was once asked what it was like being on the road for twenty-five years, playing in the best rock and roll band in the world. "I haven't done that for 25 years" he protested "I've only played with them for a year. The other 24 years, I was hanging around in a hotel or an airport".

So, in order to be a good speaker, you need to get a good travel agent. Whenever I travel overseas, I call my chums at Trailfinders. They always answer the phone quickly, remember that I called before (I know, they've looked me up in the contact database, but it still makes me feel good). Most of all, they know that I'm 6ft 3, so always tell me where the seats with good leg room are on the plane. That's what I call service.

No, this blog is not sponsored by Trailfinders, or by anyone else for that matter, more's the pity.