Doug Luffbrough Project Speaker, Consultant

Goal: How can we create a local business where Doug can speak, never having to travel more than a day from San Diego.

This will include an:

• on line business
  • book sales
    • hand held hard/soft bound
    • tape series
  • DVD/CD/pod cast
  • paid/free webinars
  • e-books (note e-book sales strategy below)
• in house speaking business
  • consulting/training
    • seminars (Doug’s Compass)
    • Doug’s story
    • Corporate training for company leaders, leaders in training, and employees

How does Doug create a relationship with a hotel to avoid fees for speaking space?  What is the language/dialog Doug needs to use to create the right atmosphere to create a win for him and a win for the hotel?:

• First, find a hotel with the right size venue(s)
  • consider that you may have groups as small as 5 to 10 and as large as many hundreds
  • multiple different sized rooms would be ideal for presentations
  • if less than ideal making arrangements with multiple hotels might be the solution
• Offer the hotel to provide management/staff training in lieu of giving you conference room space for your events.
• Be clear from the beginning how many events you will have
• Be clear on how much training you will deliver and discover the hotel’s needs for training
  • some hotel chains do their own training
    • go on line to discover who does their own training prior to engaging a hotel
    • that hotel that does its own training may be open to custom training for that location
• The dialog will go something like this when setting up initial meetings:

Thanks for seeing me Mr/s______.  (After exchanging pleasantries for 60 to 90 seconds, by looking around the office discovering things to interact with to develop a warm relationship quickly move to your rehearsed script.)  The reason for my requesting this meeting is to help you grow your business and discuss how you might help me.  My goal is to create a win for you and in turn your success will be the win for me.  I would like to offer you at no risk of consulting fees on site training for you, your management team, and employees including wait staff, house keeping, maintenance, and any additional staff you may deem in need.  In return I would ask you to waive any fees associated with my using your conference rooms during your off hours.  (Here you could offer the prospect to review an on line training, a free CD to review, hand them a copy of your book.)

My offerings when using your conference spaces will be to local and outside participants across the US.  In my offerings to them I will use your space as exclusive for them to stay during their visit.  I will target your slower times for my offerings to my public to boost your business when needed.

I will also be doing one on one consulting with a face to face component for corporate managers.  They too will be recommended to stay with your hotel.

• Customize the above with your own words.  Rehearse your dialog writing down, saying it out loud so it becomes second nature.

E-BOOK SALES STRATEGY

The e-book sales strategy follows these steps below:

• Create three valuable e-books each having approximately 17,000 words.  More e-books can be added as you mechanize this strategy making it more automatic.
• Post on Amazon each of the books
  • one will be posted for FREE
  • the second will be posted for $0.99
  • the third will be posted for $1.99
• Send notification of the posting of your e-books to your national list of contacts in a contact data base like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact or other (Speak to Amy Hall as to which is the best system to evaluate open rates, analysis, etc.  You may want to use Amy or someone like her to automate this for you.)
• Rotate the offering changing the pricing and initiating a new notification with regular frequency (weekly, every two weeks, or every 30 days.)  It will be important to be consistent as in sending your notification on the same day of the week, same time of day so that your list of recipients will get in the habit of expecting your notification at a given time and day.

CREATING CONTENT

I would keep it simple.  Focus on the existing:

• Your book
• Existing presentation of your life story, Homeless to Harvard
• Compass
• New material as you develop them by living life

DISTRIBUTION OF FREE CONTENT

Again, using a contact distribution system send something of value every week.  It will be important to start by asking people’s permission to send them information weekly.  Include up coming events, new book offerings, short pieces of a recorded presentation.  Be careful, avoid being too salesy.  Value is the key here.  Therefore, having chapters of your book available on line for distribution might be one way to offer free content.  Another idea is to create article content taken from working with clients or things you observe while traveling.  An article of 650 words with your contact information is a great way to get out a message of value.  Chapters of e-books are also great.

DISTRIBUTION OF FEE CONTENT

The key phrase here is “no risk of consulting fees.”

This would be around a three day seminar at the hotel above that you have built a relationship.  You would make this available for their employees and your prospects.  We will convert all your prospects into paid guests before this activity is completed.  All marketing will be done to your constituents with predetermined dates a year in advance.  I would start with a minimum  of quarterly.  One would be just after the Christmas/New Years holiday, one just after school starts, another just before school ends, and the fourth around spring break.

• The event will start on Friday night, be all day Saturday, and wind up Sunday morning, ending around eleven or noon.
• The content will come from the Compass workshop stretching it into a seminar with audience breakout sessions that will last the entire three days as outlined above.  Make this a very interactive hands on three days.
• All handouts and materials will be included at no risk of consulting fees
• On Sunday morning you will end with something like this:

During medieval times when you were an entrepreneur you would often sell your wares in the town square.  Shop owners creating pottery, shoes, blankets, clothing, produce, etc would bring their products to the square setting them out with an offer to, “Pay what you see as the value of my offer.”  A container would be set in the middle of each shop owners area of sale for the purchase of the goods left by the entrepreneur.

Here is such a container.  I would appreciate your evaluation of this three day seminar and the value you received.  Please write your comments in the space provided on the back of this page.  If you would like to give me your contact information and have a follow-up call at no risk of consulting fees then please provide your contact information to me in the space provided with what you would like to discuss.  As you would like to make out a check for the value you received during these three days I will also accept those.

THEN, at the appropriate time (after you have developed a following) you will incrementally start to charge fees for these three day events.  You can find venues at that time to do these events in different communities throughout California and the US (when you and Clare decide it is time to travel.)

FAMILY LEGACY

I see the opportunity for this business to out live you and Clare, becoming an income for your children allowing them to continue to tell your story for those in need.  I still believe your story can change the world if enough people agree that they can do what you did.  Much like Zig Ziglar and Og Mandino who continue to live in death, your legacy can live on too.

Comments are closed.