Today’s guest on Episode 439 of The Speaker Lab podcast, part of our Student Highlight series, is proof that you can become a speaker at any stage in your career, even if you’ve spent your life doing something different. William Quigg is one of those speakers – after a decades-long career in broadcasting, he found his way via sales and corporate training into the speaking industry with the help of our Virtual VIP program with Erick Rheam. In this conversation with director of student success Maryalice Goldsmith, William shares his story along with unique insights about everything from how many emails you have to send to get an answer to nailing a sales call.
William, like many of our students, came to TSL after he realized there was a missing link between where he was as a speaker and where he wanted to be. COVID gave him the opportunity to massively expand his speaking business virtually, and he continues to speak both virtually and in person. If you’re looking for an easy answer for how to scale quickly, you’re not going to find one. But if you want hard truths about how to hone your sales pitch by prioritizing the needs of the customer–William dishes out those hard truths and more. As William focuses on corporate clients, you will also learn a lot in this episode about the massive opportunities hiding behind smaller speaking gigs like HR workshops.
Often, speakers think their networking potential is limited to speaking-specific organizations. William joined the National Speakers Association even before he took his speaking career seriously, so he can speak to that experience. But perhaps more importantly, William is great at networking within non-speaking organizations. He is on several boards in a wide variety of industries and has been a member of many professional organizations which led to fruitful speaking opportunities. You’ll want to take notes on his strategy for finding referrals in these spaces!
You’ll also hear all about:
- The importance of an abstract that fully captures your speaking business (and how TSL can help with that).
- How to adjust your sales pitch to address clients’ pain points.
- When it’s better to use phone, email, or both to reach out to leads.
- Which situations make it worthwhile to offer your speaking services for free.
- What kinds of conventions and conferences are a worthy investment into your business.
- How to turn keynotes into workshops.
- …and so much more!
