CONCEPT: SALES SUPPORT 

  

RedPropeller, LLC, as Five-Star Speakers & Trainers, used to conduct professional speaker showcases around the country to promote their speakers to meeting planners and others who hire speakers. A showcase provides each speaker a set time (usually 15 minutes) to present a sample of their speech to a buying audience. Five-Star stopped doing the showcases after being sold. I suggested that RedPropeller start them up again since they were a tremendous marketing tool. They gave me the go-ahead if I did all the work.  I agreed.  ​

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There are lot of moving parts to manage such a program including coordinating with 23 professional speakers (and me), creating the promotional pieces, hiring the venue, marketing to the potential audience, and ensuring the showcase moves efficiently throughout the day as well as key tasks following the event.

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Here are several innovations I used to improve upon the showcases:

• I used a special events module from Constant Contact to automate the registration process. Both attendees and speakers could now register for the showcase, share all necessary information and make payments directly on the landing page I created with this app.  

• I hired a videographer to capture all 24 speakers on video. I then used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit each of the videos into individual segments. These were uploaded to a YouTube Showcase Channel I created in addition to creating a Facebook Page. The videos on Facebook were scheduled to be released every three to four days so there was always new content being added to the site. I gave the speakers the option to buy their video with unrestricted use.

• The links to the individual videos were then used by the account execs to contact all their clients even those who were unable to attend in person. The showcases in general made great talking points with clients.

• The Speaker Workbook used to be a simple saddle-stitched booklet created at a local quick printer. It provided the attendees with biographic and topic information on each speaker plus a place to take notes. I opted to improve the quality of the book using the Amazon app CreateSpace. I uploaded the camera-ready art to the site. This provided a perfect bound, full cover which also was published and available on Amazon.com.  Since it is a print on demand service, the books can be purchased in relatively small quantities at the same unit price of buying thousands from Kinkos.

• In addition to the meeting planners in the audience, the speakers were also in the audience.  That enabled me to set up an online referral site so the speakers could refer their clients for additional topics. This created added reach and value of the participants and the bureau.