Mo asks Michael Port: How can the audience create and close more opportunities? All sales offers should be proportionate to the amount of trust we've earned. When Michael started as an entrepreneur who wasn't very comfortable making big sales offers so he started thinking about what people responded well to. This led him to the idea of inviting people during a weekly teleconference call. He started speaking about ideas that would help people think bigger about who they were and help advance their professional goals. He found that after six months of doing those calls, they had brought in 85% of the clients he had at the time. The interesting part was that although he made no sales offers during the calls, people were raising their hands to discuss working with him as a natural extension of the process. Rather than trying to sell every time you meet somebody, think about what you can invite them to that would add value to their lives and that you can do on a regular basis. You will start to find that it will begin to create business development opportunities for you. Using speaking as a promotional tool is one of the most effective tools you can employ, because there are very few environments that immediately infer credibility. The mistake that most people make is believing that they should be selling during the presentation, so Michael focuses on helping people deliver transformational speeches. If the audience has a transformation in that period of time while you're on stage, all they need to know is that they can work with you and they will ask to work with you. If you have a truly transformational product, you don't need a lot of marketing or selling because the product will do it for you. When you are delivering a speech, you should be getting stage-side leads every single time and if you get those leads, you will get clients and referrals for additional speaking opportunities. You can mention your services but keep it a light touch. Deliver something that people want, and if they want more of it they will book you as a consultant. Speaking live allows you to affect the way the audience feels and that's the most important aspect of connection. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com heroicpublicspeaking.com