OMNIPRESENCE
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SPEAKING OUT The perfect synergy for a consultant works something like this: • An executive reads your book or article and asks you to speak to his management staff. • As a result of the speech, you’re asked to consult on pertinent issues. and/or • As a result of a speech you deliver, executives in the audience ask for more information, and you send them articles and/or books. • After reading the material, they ask you to consider several consulting projects. • During a consulting project, you provide copies of articles and/or books to key client managers. • Having read your material and worked with you on your project, they request you to address one of the trade or professional association conferences. These sequences can occur all the time if you are in a position to exploit them. If you have written nothing, or if you don’t “do” speeches, then such potential synergy is academic. In such a case, your marketing will also be anemic and academic. Making speeches before in-house management conferences (that is, the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group), industry trade associations (the American Bankers Association), business associations (American Management Association conferences), professional specialty groups (annual conference of the American Society for Training and Development), personal development groups (the Business Roundtable), and university management extensions (Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management) provides high-impact marketing. The visibility is excellent, the opportunity to promote your approaches is ideal, and you earn immediate credibility merely by dint of having been invited to speak. Here’s some valuable information: the Credit Union National Association has 52 state credit union leagues as members and an annual budget in excess of $5 million, and it publishes seven different periodicals and holds meetings once a year.10
10 All citations in this section about associations are from National Trade and Professional Associations of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Columbia Books, annual). You can also access it on the Internet.