This featured article is brought to you by: Jenn Zellers, The Speaker’s Alchemist

You’ve decided: this is your year of getting visible and making moves! 🎉 You’ve outlined your strategy and it includes speaking . . . but that’s waaaay outside your comfort zone. 😬 The idea of speaking – whether on a virtual summit or an in-person event – makes you break out in a cold sweat.

You’ve got two options:

1 | Grab the biggest blanket you have, lay it out on the floor, roll yourself up into a cozy burrito, and never come out 🙈

OR

2 | Get in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eye, strike a power pose, and tell yourself, “I’ve got this. I can become a confident speaker who makes 4-figure sales from speaking.” 💪

And it’s true: you can make 4-figure sales from speaking – and you don’t even have to emulate a sleazy used car salesman to do it. 🙌

Let’s look at three things you can do right now to increase your speaking confidence – and sales!

1 | Prepare For Your Speaking Opportunities

Preparation is one of the keys to confidence as a speaker. When you’re prepared, you’re automatically going to have a confidence boost. Will you be at 100% confidence just because you prepared? No, I’ll grant you that you probably won’t. But you WILL be closer to 100%.

What form your preparation takes will depend on the format of your speaking opportunity. If you’re doing a virtual summit presentation, that’s going to include outlining your talking points, preparing slides, and so on. If it’s a podcast interview, you’ll want to know some of the questions ahead of time, formulate your answers, etc. so that you don’t feel caught off-guard.

The more you do this, the more of a system you’ll develop. You’ll get in the rhythm of speaking preparation and it starts to feel normal. That in and of itself will improve your confidence too! Knowing that you’ve prepared well and are ready to get in front of the microphone will increase your speaking confidence.

2 | Practice Your Speaking Skills

Speaking of doing this more, practice is the next key to speaking confidence. Speaking skills are a muscle that you need to exercise regularly. You won’t start off lifting 50lb weights, like an in-person keynote presentation – you’ll probably start off with 5lb weights, like going live on Instagram once a week. 🏋️

The more reps you do with those 5lb weights, though, the more your confidence builds. You find that you can go up to 10lb weights – maybe going live two times a week, or doing a short guest presentation in someone else’s Facebook group. Each time you add more weight, you’ll put in more reps at that weight level before moving up to the next one so that you’re ready.

As you practice speaking, you’ll find your confidence growing too. “Hey, six people showed up to my Instagram live this week and I didn’t die! I can totally do this!” As your confidence grows, you’ll find that you feel more and more ready to take on ‘bigger’ speaking opportunities – you worked up to that 25lb weight class, your speaking muscles are stronger, and now you’re confident in speaking at a virtual summit! 💪

Practice will make a major difference in your speaking confidence. You’ll start seeing areas for improvement, too, which in turn builds even more confidence as you work through those.

3 | Pointers

One of the best ways to find areas for improvement is to get pointers: coaching and feedback from others. Often, we can’t see our most glaring weaknesses, but we focus on flaws that others may not even notice. It’s not uncommon for my clients to come into coaching sessions thinking that they need the most work in one area, but we end up needing to focus on something entirely different. By getting that jumpstart of knowing what to focus on, they’re able to improve their speaking skills – and their confidence – faster than if they only prepared and practiced.

Getting a coach is the fastest path to conquering your speaking confidence, in my experience. For one, they work with a variety of speakers, so they can quickly pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses, then give you an action plan to improve. The confidence that comes with knowing that an expert is confident in you can be invaluable.

Not everyone can afford or is ready for a speaking coach, though. If that’s the case for you, grab a friend! Just getting another set of eyes on your speaking can give you an action step. They may not be able to pinpoint exactly how to move forward based on their feedback or know the most important things to improve to become a better, more confident speaker, but it at least gives you a starting point. 👍

Regardless of who you go to for pointers on your speaking, take action on their input. When someone else sees what you’re doing well and helps you recognize how you can improve, your confidence will grow. You won’t have to worry anymore about whether there’s a glaring flaw that you’re not seeing. You can go into your next speaking opportunity with confidence!

Lack of confidence is one of the speaking skills that hold many entrepreneurs back from making sales from speaking. After all, if you’re not confident in yourself, why should the audience have confidence that you can deliver when it matters to them? 🤷 When you present yourself confidently as a speaker, it speaks (pun intended) volumes about your competence. Your confidence transfers to your audience and they can then work with you, feeling assured that you’ll provide the value you promise.

Increasing your confidence in your speaking skills can lead to not only 4-figure sales from speaking, but bigger and bigger speaking invites, too. When an event host sees your confidence, they’ll have confidence in inviting you to their stage. As a virtual summit host myself, there are speakers I’ve had to pass on inviting because while their message was valuable, they didn’t present themselves with confidence.

Now that you have three strategies to improve your speaking confidence so you can get in front of the mic on virtual summits, podcasts, and beyond, which step are you going to focus on first? 🤔

This featured article is brought to you by: Jenn Zellers, The Speaker’s Alchemist

Jenn and the Virtual Summit Search team equip online service providers, digital product creators, and coaches to establish a Visibility Ecosystem that generates collaborations, leads, and sales through speaking – without feeling like a sleazy used car salesman!

Jenn’s mission at Virtual Summit Search is to give you the tools you need to make your message truly heard and create ripple effects that make an impact. That includes finding your profitable speaking topic, creating a Sleaze-Free Sales Strategy™️ so you can make 4-figure sales without feeling like a sleazy used car salesman, and establishing a Visibility Ecosystem™️️ that attracts right-fit speaking invites without having to constantly pitch yourself. Jenn and her team work with their clients through VIP Days, workshops and courses, the Speaker’s Gym™️ membership, and more.

>>>>>> Ready to get more summit speaking invites AND make more money from those speaking opportunities?? Jenn has your on-the-go (Netflix style) audio feed with a no-sleaze sales strategy that helps you uplevel your summit speaking system… FOR FREE! Access the FREE audio series right here and start making more $$$ while speaking!

>>>>>> If you’re wanting to take action NOW – Join Jenn’s Speaker’s Gym™️ membership HERE that combines Practice with Pointers: regular reps ‘lifting weights’ with low-pressure 20-Second Talks™️ during the week, along with coaching and monthly Presentation and Mock-Interview Days to increase the weight and build your speaking confidence muscles!

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