What is a signature talk? How can you deliver yours? And why do you need a signature talk?

Let’s start with what it isn’t.

• A Signature Talk isn’t a sales pitch.
• It isn’t a guest speech at a networking event.
• It isn’t a tailor-made training session or spotlight.

All these things are valuable and important in the field of public speaking, of course, and these are often the reasons why people originally come to work with me. The question on people’s minds is

How…

• do I sell from the stage?
• can I work out what to say and how to say it at a networking event?
• should I design a training session or a How-To session?

It is true that being able to do these things well and confidently, can achieve great results.

• More sales
• A raised profile and credible reputation that makes you easy to refer and buy from
• The ability to train can influence people’s knowledge and behaviours for life.

When I deliver my Signature Talk, I’ll ask the audience if they want to be successful.  Then I ask them if they want to speak well in public. Every. Time. They Stand up.  The reason I ask this, and the reason people raise their hands, is that the two things are inextricably linked in my view.  To be successful, at some point, you will need to speak in public.  Whether that is a sales pitch, asking for investment, briefing your team, building collaborations, leading movements, or standing in the House of Parliament.

So, what’s the difference between all that, and a Signature Talk?

Let’s imagine for a moment that you have been invited to deliver a talk at a prestigious event.  Often you will have received that invitation 6-12 months before the actual date.  It has been sitting there on your To Do List for some time.  You’ve had a fair amount of time to be planning this and working on it.  Putting aside the fact that some people (not you, I am sure) will put off preparing until they can’t ignore it any longer, that’s a long time to be working on a talk.

And then the work begins:

Writing, scripting, slide designing, more writing, perhaps saying it out loud, more scripting and slide design so that you can remember what to say, and finally, rehearsing. All this time, energy, messing about with slides and, of course, taking you away from the day job.

***If you’d like another, more effective way of preparing, by the way, take a look through my blogs – I’ve put together lots of useful tips for you. 

Either way, that’s a lot of work.

And then the day arrives.  You deliver.  It is awesome (of course).  The audience is complimentary and some of them approach you afterwards to say how good you were.   The organiser writes a glowing testimonial for you.

It is over. Done and dusted.

The following month you are asked to give another talk to a different audience, and the whole thing starts over.

Except for this time, you are tired. It seems like such a lot of effort to come up with something new, exciting, and pertinent – for an hour’s performance.

This is a common experience for people known for their expertise, engaging delivery and story. Requests to speak resulting in tailormade, unique presentations.

A Signature Talk is different

It is a single crafted product that you can promote and pitch to organisers and one which people refer:

You get known for YOUR talk (not just your credibility and expertise)

People want to book you for THIS talk (because they are confident it meets the needs of their audience)

People in the audience say, ‘I need to hire that speaker.’

Think of your Signature Talk as a product

When you think of it as a product rather than simply another presentation, there is a valuable perspective shift.  With a product, you spend time defining the need and designing a solution.  You test it out, fine-tune and amend it based on feedback and then go back and test again. When you have a product that is tested and fit for purpose and brilliant at what it does, you market it, promote it and pitch it.  A robust Signature Talk can be delivered for free, but it can also be sold.

So maybe you’re thinking that this doesn’t sound much like the inspirational and change-making speaking you’d like to be delivering.  It sounds a million miles away from those seemingly effortless motivational speeches you’d envisioned yourself delivering.

A Signature Talk, as a product, comprises two hugely important elements.

Firstly, a Signature Talk is elevated from a How-To talk to a Big Question talk

Secondly, a Signature Talk is eminently referable

What I mean by this is that delivering a consistent and reliably robust talk will generate more speaking gigs.  Either someone in the audience will go back to their organisation and say they should book you. Or someone will recommend you as a speaker because they have seen you in action.  Or an organiser has seen you and decided you would be perfect for their next event.  Either way, you get asked to deliver the same talk again – on the back of that one talk. No more rewriting, reinventing the wheel, or going back to the drawing board.

A tailormade talk will heighten your visibility and your expert status. It will improve your views on LinkedIn, get your vlogs watched and even get you invited onto podcasts.  It will get you one gig.  But not the next and the next and the next.

A Signature Talk will get you more gigs, on the back of that one. It is designed to.

Why would you invest in a Signature Talk? 

Investing in a Signature Talk means that you can reliably deliver a transformative experience for your audiences again and again.  It means you can deliver great insight entertainingly. It means you can develop a reputation as a speaker whose talk questions the accepted and sets out a vision.

If you want to move from informational to inspirational, then a Signature talk is a valuable product to develop.  You want to move away from How -to to Visionary Thought Leader, then a Signature talk can be your calling card.

If you want to move away from occasional requests to speak to regular gigs that extend your impact and influence, then a Signature Talk will pay you dividends.