Episode 35: How to Pitch Yourself to Generate More Leads Before the End of the Year

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Six Figure Systems podcast. Today we are going to be talking about creating ways to strategically pitch yourself for business to business speaking opportunities in presentations. This is something that I had an idea to do a podcast about because it is something that I'm talking to pretty much every single one of my clients about, especially during the time of year when you might be listening to this live. So first and foremost we're going to be talking about why it's so important to be getting on the radar for other businesses and creating opportunities for yourself to make sure you're planning out that throughout the year. Then we're going to talk about what do you need to do to actually create a good pitch and create something that's valuable and also talk about how to make sure that the situation is a win win for collaboration. So the reason why I thought about this is twofold. Within this time of year, if you are listening to this podcast live, it is full and I, uh, we're in the end of November approaching the end of the year and this is the time when I see the majority of businesses sleeping on opportunities. This is a lot of times because towards the end of the year things change. You are out of your routine. You might be experiencing the holidays so your children might be home. If you have children, you might be going on different vacations. You might be, even if you are working full time and have your coaching business part time, you might be doing things that are, you're trying to get towards the end of the year, but you also have a lot of things going on with your full time job that might be getting in the way of running your business behind the scenes in your part time hours. And what I've seen happen is this is the time of year when people slow down. And I mentioned last week in the podcast that I want you to create a holiday plan so that you don't have to to focus on your business as much during the holidays. You can actually enjoy time with family and be uh, rested and relaxed and then ready to start strong in the new year. But what I see is right now you have an opportunity to be utilizing two very pivotal months of the year. The first is the end of the year. In these December months, people are typically doing more things than ever. I was just invited to be a part of a giveaway. I also have been found that a lot of organizations are also like you and they kind of forget that the end of the year exists and they might need or be required for certain companies to have professional development for their employees in order to get certain grants in order to maintain a solid status for their company. And they might be hustling like you to try and get some opportunities for their employees to make sure that they've got different speaking engagements for them to have good content and have a good professional development for their employees or pd. Also, there are other content creators. There are people like you that are creating content that have niche adjacent businesses. So when I talk about your niche as a general life coach, you have the niche of being a general life coach. It doesn't mean that you need to be a coach for moms. You also have a niche of just being a coach. And there are other communities that you could collaborate with that are also local looking to get some content out for the holidays that don't want to be thinking about it too much over the holiday season. And you have an opportunity right now to pitch them and figure out good ways for you to collaborate. And what I see people doing is waiting till the last minute and they're like, oh, let me just kind of coast by, I'll hit them up when January starts, hit up the companies, hit up potential collaboration opportunities. And what I see happening is you're missing out on this opportunity. And this goes throughout any time of the year. I think people for forget how many opportunities there are for you to collaborate with other businesses, which is what's called a business to business connection. And it's one of the main things I focus on with my clients because you need to be getting out of your audience no matter what stage of growth you're in. So if you are just you founded your business and you uh, haven't even made, you're in the 0 to 10k range where you are pre 5 figures. You need to be getting out there and finding people that you could help with urgency. You need to find ways for you to get out there. Getting in front of more people is something that's really important, especially if you have a smaller audience. When you are at the 10 to 50 range, you're usually uh, doing a really good job of nurturing your current audience. That's typically how you get to your first five figures. And then what happens is you need to branch out of your current audience. This is a great way to do that. And especially as you scale from 50 to 100k, you need to be getting results and you need to compel people that are strangers that are going to see you on the Internet and want to decide to work with you and book a consult with you in order for you to scale. So what we need to do is we need to think about really strategically figuring out ways to position yourself as a leader, as an expert in your industry, which is most likely coaching and creating opportunities for you to get in front of people that could use your support. So one of the things that I would recommend is making a point within whatever month you're listening to this in. And I want to challenge each and every one of you listening to this podcast to get in front of four different, to create four different business to business opportunities this month. I want you to think about whether it is a giveaway, whether it is a collaborative Instagram Live, whether it is a, uh, presentation you do for professional development for a company, whether it is just becoming a referral partner with someone like an accountant, or maybe you become referral partners with a dietitian. And you help people with their life and they help people with their fitness. You could do personal trainers. There are so many opportunities, but I want you to create four of them. I want you to be thinking, uh, maybe getting to be a guest speaker on a podcast. There's literally a website where you can, or I think it's a Facebook group where you can pitch yourself to get on podcasts. I want you thinking about getting out of your audience and generating new opportunities for you to bring in new leads. Now when you do this, what you want to do is you want to think first and foremost about how to pitch yourself. Because I think a lot of people don't think about this. And actually I just got off a call. Um, um, I was connecting with a dear friend of mine, Jewel, and she, we were talking about how she actually hosted. She's a connection coach for people who experience stress and social situations and she helps them connect with other people. She's amazing. And my friend, one of my clients, Amber, she was actually on her podcast and pitched her with this exact strategy I'm about to teach you right now. And she was like, yeah, I actually, I did get a message from her and we did that. So this is really important for you to think about doing the other thing. I just, and before I get into like, actually what to do for your pitch, how to highlight your expertise and creating the win win opportunity. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I, uh, had one of my amazing clients was talking about how they were annoyed that other businesses were following them. They actually are a business coach themselves and they got followed by another business coach and they felt irritated. They were like, I'm a business coach. Why would you follow Me. And that happens for so many of us. We're like, oh, I don't want to, I don't want a virtual assistant. I don't want a social media manager. I feel like this person's trying to sell me something. So instead of being frustrated about these opportunities, think of them as just that, an opportunity. When you're thinking about your audience right now, they might have, there might be other businesses that you could collaborate with. At the very least be a referral partner and you can message them back and forth and see if they'd be interested in doing something like that. What I told her is I was like, worst case scenario, best case scenario is you actually do something with that person and a client comes from it. Because for every one person they know around 300 people, so they have a huge audience base that you could tap into. And who knows, there could be something that you could help them with. If this business coach was helping them with Facebook ads, let's say she doesn't help them with Facebook ads. Perfect. So they could do a pitch on her page about Facebook ads. She could do a pitch on their page about how to create more work, life balance and time management. As a mother with business, boom. You know what I mean? So there, there's so many opportunities and you just might not, you might even have them literally sitting in your Instagram friends and you might not even know how to use them. So we're going to talk about how to do that today. So for you, the first thing that you want to do is you want to think about how to tailor your pitch to fit their needs and their pain points. So for me, I knew when I was doing general life coaching, I was like, who could use general life coaching? Who could use somebody to work with them? And I thought of, and I was like, oh my goodness, I could. If I had had coaching in college, my entire life would have been different. I know that for sure. And so I was like, where can I get in contact with people that could use my help? And I thought of, uh, you know what, I have connections at, ah, my alma mater, which is NC State University. Go back. And we, I was like, I could reach out to their first year college. Maybe these students could, their parents could pay for coaching. And this is definitely a need for the students who are undecided freshmen. And I can definitely help talk them through where they want to be, help them feel more grounded and centered, feel less burnt out, help them manage their time, all those things. So what I did is I researched the first year college at NC State. And I gave them a pitch. A pitch is just an email or if you're doing this on Instagram or social media, it could be a dm and I just send them a message saying hey, here's who I am. I'm a life coach. I would love to do a presentation for your freshmen about time management. Would you be interested? And uh, I said that I was like could we get on a call for, I think I said 15 to 30 minutes to talk more about if this would work for you or if I could do any other presentations for them. I am here to help. I want you to notice the clear things that I did in that I researched them. Um, I knew that if the first year college was for freshmen who were undecided and I knew that they were struggling with time management, I knew that was something that most college students struggled with. I also talked about how I'm a coach and I help people with that and I customized it to say that speaking in front of them would be something that could help solve their students problems in a unique way that they hadn't thought of before. The other thing that's important about this is I also knew that the first year college when I was thinking about researching it, I knew that every month they had to have a speaker because I was leading organizations at NC State. I worked for Habitat for Humanity. I also worked for a women's organization, my sorority. I also um, worked for my. I lived in a living and learning village and I was a part of UM Students Advocating for Youth, which is an educational, um, business or an educational community within campus. And I also was a part of a service organization where we supported St. Jude. So within each of those organizations I knew that I had to get guest speakers to be a part of my um, to be a part of my curriculum when I was leading these clubs. And I knew they needed other people too. So I want you to think about other organizations, women's organizations, um, companies. They are required to bring in people. So you could just be like, hey, I know you need people. I'm good at speaking to people. Let's talk about how we could work together. Another thing that I did is I pitched myself to another company and I said hey, I know that you are required to give um, I think that they had a fund for, I think they called it like um, like employee development. And each employee got like $700 in order to put towards their just betterment. They could use it for like a gym membership. They could use it for counseling. You might not even know that these are opportun. I also asked around and I asked my clients and I was like, hey, do any of your companies have something like this? And some of them found out that they had funds and they actually used those funds to help pay for coaching with me as a general life coach. And, uh, that was also really great for them. But what I wanted to. The thing is, you need to know that ahead of time. And a good way to do that is by utilizing your current network and utilizing your past experience. Think about places where you've already given presentations, places where you're already working, working with people, places where would be a good fit for referrals. And, uh, think about how you can tailor your pitch to be something that's valuable for them. Again, it doesn't need to be fancy, doesn't need to be anything crazy, but you could also. It's going to be valuable for them. The second thing that you want to do is if you get that meeting with them, you also want to be on that meeting. You want to talk with them about how you've actually created results. So for me, I had to get my foot in the door with a couple of speaking engagements, so it meant I needed to do some of my own. So I was like, hey, I've done speaking engagement. I've done presentations on time management, work, life balance, burnout. Uh, I've done all these presentations and I mentioned time management because that was something I really struggled with as a student. But I'm open to talking about other things. So you want to be like, I've done this before. And you can find some sort of proof that you've done something like this before. Whether it's coaching people to give use for their professional development, whether they, they need speaking engagements, whatever they need. You want to be like, hey, I've done this before. I am not just a typical life coach. I have a unique skill set where I can. I have tools that specifically help with stress management. And I know I can help your client with your employees with this too. So you want to talk about how you've been able to do that yourself. You can also include client stories, you can include testimonials, you can include different, um, things that set you apart. As you know, life coaching is something that is an incredible, incredible investment. There's actually a study done by Sunny Smith where she found there were 201 physicians that did life coaching for eight sessions with clients. And they were. It's. It was found that 77% of them had started with an issue I'll include a link to this. And then by the end of the study, after eight weeks, 33% of them had persisting issues like burnout, career fulfillment and um, oh, there was a third one. I just pulled up the study because I was like, this is so important and I want more of you guys to think about, oh, an increase in self compassion. So when you're thinking about this, life coaching works. It's data based, it's scientifically driven, and if you are presenting yourself to a company, you can be like, the companies that hire life coaches are able to make more money. You want to be thinking about how your proposition actually helps them do they haven't. And you might have to make assumptions for the first couple, but you'd be like, are they having an issue with sales? Are they having an issue with retention for their clients? Are they having an issue with um, let's say it's marketing and you're a business coach and you teach marketing. What are things that you could help them with where it's a win win situation. Okay, so you want to talk about your credibility, but then you also want to make it a win win for them if they need help bringing more sales. You need to do a presentation on how getting coached and managing and uh, not just saying managing your mind. I swear, if I had a dollar for every presentation I've looked over of my past clients where they're talking about managing their mind and going into thought. Work deeply. Don't do that. You don't want to do that. You will keep it more high level. But when you're thinking about creating these opportunities, you want to be like managing your employee. Stress will help you make more money. What are these? What are the decision makers that decide who gets to do a presentation and who doesn't? What do they want? HR might need to get a um, dei. They might be focusing on DEI and you're like to provide inclusion. I would like to do a presentation for the women in your company and that can get them in DEI credit. Like you gotta find out what they want and then you already can give them what they want. This isn't like being like figuring out a way to make it work for them, but they don't. They need to hear it in a way that makes sense for their company. No one wants to just take time and energy, message all their employees and be like, hey, come to the stress management thing. That's not like something that people are like, can't wait for this. But if you're like, hey, I want to help you teach them how to manage stress so that they can finish the fourth quarter strong, start the first quarter stronger. That, that's something that they're like, we do need that, that is something that we're interested in. So you want to find those stakeholders and you want to message them and you want to get your information out there. When you're proposing the collaboration or the partnership, whether that's a webinar presentation, a, uh, giveaway pd, which is short for professional development, you want to think about again how people will gain value and also ask them ahead of time if it's okay if you do a pitch or if you talk with them about working with you. And I did that for the companies that I did it for. I did a presentation for an insurance company. I did six, um, presentations for NC State. I did a presentation for three other, uh, women's organizations for other organizations just in 2022 alone. I also did one for, um, Women in Television and Communications in New York City, which is a really cool random, um, opportunity I got because a friend of mine from college saw me doing presentations and invited me to speak to her, uh, entrepreneurial organization. And so when you start doing these speaking opportunities, you want to highlight it, you want to get news out there, you want to talk about it and also talk about how it's going to help them. And like, if you're doing like, let's say you collaborate with a nutritionist and you're like, hey, we could both be mutually beneficial being like, hey, I will post on my story, tell people that we're about to do this live, and I'll keep my live on my page where you're just selling your, your business and that's how you can get these opportunities for different, um, speaking engagements. I want you thinking about how can you reach at least four new business to business, um, opportunities a month. I want you thinking about how you can get in front of more people because what you do is so important. It is so amazing. And in that year I did presentations, I think every month for my community. And then I also did presentations for a bun of other organizations. But that was my first 120k year. I went from 47k to 120k just part time, 2021, 47k to full time 120k in 2022. And I know that this is possible for more of you and I would love to see you getting in front of more people. So also, if you have any questions about that, I'll include my email. I feel free to respond with any questions you have about, uh, how to get more of these opportunities, how to pitch. I'm more than happy to help you because what you're doing is such important work in this world, and I cannot wait to see you help more people.