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Speaking to Sales Online Conference

Copyright © 2012 by SmarTrack 1

Adam Urbanski Transcript

Janis: Welcome everyone to the final interview in the Speaking to Sales Online Conference. This is Janis Pettit, your host and the organizer. And our final speaker is just phenomenal.

Adam Urbanski is someone that I highly respect. He is called the Millionaire Marketing Mentor for a reason, because he really is a master at helping people create successful businesses. And Adam has coached and consulted with over 30, 000 business owners worldwide and taught them effective and affordable business development strategies.

And I know that for a fact because I met Adam a few years ago and he and I have two things in common—we both came out of being successful in the restaurant industry; we were both business coaches. And I was so impressed with his brilliance as a marketer that I actually asked him to work with me and help with me with my business and he was an enormous help.

So this is the reason that he’s been interviewed in radio programs, in TV networks. He’s been quoted by numerous magazines and newspapers as an expert in how to create online and offline marketing systems.

Now, Adam built his first million dollar business in just ten years which is an amazing story. He started with only $194 and very limited ability to speak English. And today, Adam’s company, The Marketing Mentors, provides a variety of popular distance learning, marketing training programs. They range from short teleseminars to high-impact workshops, to in-depth year-long coaching engagements and high level mastermind groups.

Adam is the author of several marketing programs including Attract Clients Like Crazy, Overnight Authority Event, From Contacts to Contracts, Info Profit Success and Secrets of Master Networkers. In fact, Adam is an info product genius. He just pumps out, one after the other. But most importantly, Adam’s clients and students generate millions of dollars in extra income each year because they follow his advice.

Now, please wel— help me in welcoming Adam Urbanski. Welcome Adam!

Adam: Thanks Janis, it’s my pleasure being here. I have to tell you I’ve got— I always tell people I’ve got three passions in life—number one is my family, number two is transforming people’s lives, and number three is learning what makes businesses work, what— what makes successful people successful, but more



importantly sharing it with others so I can fulfill the passion number two which is transform their lives. And every chance I get to do an interview like this and really connect with someone and, you know, having opportunity to reach out to even more people and start transforming their lives through empowering them with more effective information about success, about marketing, about building business. It just absolutely just thrills me and I— I still pinch myself really that I get paid really for— for just basically (laughs) living my mission.

Janis: (laughs) And it’s probably your curiosity that makes you so brilliant at marketing, that curiosity that constantly gets inside people to help them figure out why they act the way they do, why they do certain actions.

Adam: Absolutely!

Janis: So, my goodness, I’ve heard you speak a number of times; I’ve heard you on webinars, teleseminars; I’ve heard you speak live, and I’m always amazed by your mastery of English. First of all, I don’t know how you got to the point that you— where you are now. I mean, how did you master the language so thoroughly?

Adam: You know, this is actually a funny story because when I first came to US, I lived in New York for about a year and a half and I ended up working for Hungarian Jews who spoke Russian. And I had to go to I think it was about at least 8 years learning Russian. It was mandatory, you know, growing up and coming from Poland.

So my Russian was exponentially better than English because in English, when I first came to US, I could just say a couple of sentences and I had no clue what people was saying when they replied back to me. So, about a year and a half, I was— I had a Polish roommate and I had, you know, at the work I was able to speak mostly Polish— Russian with some English. And it wasn’t until I— I bought a used car and started driving across the state, from New York to San Diego, that in my first pit stop, I realized, “Oh, my gosh!” you know, “This is no longer New York. I’m going to— (laughs)

Janis: (Laughs)

Adam: I’m going to learn English quickly.” And I think it’s some car problems. I needed to have it fixed and I found myself in deep trouble. And let me tell you, it was an overnight— it was an overnight learning for me. I just became an— an— a voracious student of English and took some classes and, you know, took typing classes and of editing. So I took a lot of classes. They were kind of like subject teaching, not necessarily English learning because I found that was a better way to



learn. And plus, you know, just— just on the job doing what I do. And— and owning a restaurant in the past, I just, you know, everyday I kept learning a little bit more and kept practicing. I think I’ll never be as good as native speakers but I think I’m good enough and I kind of like it. And I often joke that to this day, I pay somebody to— to help me keep my Polish accent because it’s supposedly it’s cute so I don’t want to lose it.

Janis: (laughs) Very true! So if anybody is feeling shy about speaking, just think somebody that came here did not speak worse English and is now building their income through speaking which I know you absolutely do.

So, I’m going to dig right into the three questions that we have because I know everybody really really wants to hear your answers. How has speaking— I’m not going to say just increase your income but build your income?

Adam: You know, I think, that’s one of the most overlooked ways to grow a business. And when I first started to this particular business, like coaching and consulting, in 2000, within less than 90 days, I had enlisted about 2 000 people that wanted to receive my updates. You know, back then, all my newsletters were kind of a novelty so— but still, if it weren’t, you know, all my newsletters would have been giving some sort of report today. But I’ve gathered those 2000 names largely through speaking and networking. And what I mean by networking, I don’t necessarily network in a way that people envision it today which is you go to an event and shake a lot of hands.

My networking was I want to be in front of the room teaching. If it was only for five minutes, it didn’t matter. It gave me a chance to get that visibility, get that exposure and collect information or contact information from people in large numbers, in groups, rather than individually.

So, gosh, where do I begin? Obviously, visibility. And let me tell you, a lot of visibility equals credibility. And those are one of the two fundamental things that, especially when someone is starting out, it’s very troublesome for them. They have no visibility and they have no credibility and they need both quickly in order ramp up their business.

So that was huge for me. Now, another thing is everybody always says you have to have a book because a book positions you as an authority on the topic, but book takes time to write and a book takes time to publish. Even though today, you can do it in as little as a weekend, well, still it takes time. You have to be disciplined. You have to content for it. When you’re starting out, you often have not many of those things.



In speaking, you can instantly go out there and become an authority because just imagine, every time you go and see somebody in front of the room, you may be thinking to yourself things like, “Well, I could do this. Oh, I know more on the subject than they do.” Nevertheless, they were the ones that were invited to be there, often paid to be there. And everyone in the room looks up to that person as an instant authority. So, all of those things are huge.

And what it did for me again, aside from building the list—and everybody knows, list equals revenue—so it allowed me to generate revenue for years and years and years. In fact, today, twelve years later, Janis, I still have at least about half a dozen clients that I— that I’m still in touch with, they still attend my live events, that actually came out some of those very first very few speaking engagements that I— that I gained.

And after the speaking engagements, they connected with me, they got onto my newsletter and ultimately became clients. So it was visibility, credibility, authority, quick clients and then revenue not only instant back then but revenue up to today, you know, twelve years later, from speeches that I’ve done , you know, in 2000, in 2001.

Janis: So, I mean, out of your total sales every year, what percentage do your think comes from speaking in some form?

Adam: Interesting question! I never thought about it, but I would probably have to say that it’s about half.

Janis: Uh-huh!

Adam: And I will show you something, aside from now, I— no one has ever asked me this question and I’m not 100% sure of this number. But I would— I’m pretty certain that it’s— that it’s— that it’s— that if not even more and it’s disproportionally large to the effort that I devote to speaking.

I only look for about four to six speaking engagements a year. And by that I mean, engagement where I actually go and physically speak somewhere. However, the audience that I meet through personal connection at live events is investing disproportionally larger— significantly larger amount of money in my programs and trainings than those who never had live exposure to me. So that is huge.

That’s one of the reason I host live events because it allows many of my product buyers to come and experience me firsthand. And I know, I have documented it over a period of time, after the events, they becoming loyal— much more loyal customers invest more in my programs.



Janis: And not only that but you also use teleclasses and webinars to increase your sales as well, right? I mean that’s—

Adam: Absolutely!

Janis: That’s part of speaking. Absolutely!

Adam: Absolutely! And you know, I use webinars and teleseminars both as sales mechanisms. Actually, I use them in three different ways.

Number one, I use them as lead generators so obviously we either have partners who promote them individually or we just announce them on different websites to generate more leads.

Number two, I use them as sales mechanisms because once people are on my subscribers list, I’m able to invite them over and over and over again to different presentations held over the phone or webcast and introduce them to a good education but also solid sales message. And I think we’re going to talk a little bit about it in a moment.

And the third thing is I use phone and webinars, you know, extensively to train my existing customers, to keep in touch with them. But still, I am absolutely convinced that there is nothing better than live events.

You know, people just can’t get to know you the same way. Even thought they can hear your voice and maybe even see you on video on— online, it’s not quite the same as connecting with you in person and realizing— I have to tell you something— I just— I have my own personal mastermind that I meet with four times a year. And we just took on a couple of new partners and we just met this last weekend.

And one of the people is just this amazing lady, very successful, very powerful. And you know, we met for the first time live. We’ve been connecting over the phone for the last three months. And she says, “You know, you’re totally not like what I thought you would be. I thought you’d be like, you know, much more geeky and—

Janis: (laughs)

Adam: You’re like this powerful leader persona, very tireless and that I won’t like you very much.”

Janis: (laughs)



Adam: And I’m also a lot warmer in person. I’m— I’m al— I’m very intense, I’m very focused on delivering my message. I’m very focused on helping people succeed and that— that’s very intimidating to a lot of people. And in person, I intend to warm them up. I’m just kind of a big, you know, warm, fuzzy bo or whatever you want to call it but it doesn’t come across the same way when I teach on the phone. So I’m a huge fan of live live events and speaking at live events.

Janis: Well, I can attest to that. You are very warm in person. So, I just want to do a little follow up on that question. Because I bet you, we have a lot of people that are listening in and they’re saying, you know, “Here’s Adam. He’s phenomenally successful and he repeats it year after year. But when he first started, how did he get those few speaking engagements?” So when you were first starting your business ten or eleven or twelve years ago, where did you go and how did you get those first opportunities?

Adam: Got it, got it! Very good question because everybody wants to know that. And actually, even before I answer that, I wanted to address one other thing that you didn’t— maybe you’re planning to ask later—but a lot of people, I was concerned with this like, “Well, I’m not a speaker, I’m afraid of speaking.” You know, “Good for you, you can go out there and just, you know, speak for hours.”

Well, yeah, I am gifted with a gift of gab, but still, you know, being able to talk and being able to speak in front of an audience are two different things. And there is this, you know, hugely misunderstood, you know, myth that fear of speaking is— is larger than— than fear of death.

And let me tell you, if I put—just to be really blunt and— and to illustrate this adequately—if I put a gun to someone’s head and I said, “Listen, you’re going to speak for an hour on stage in front of 20, 000 people or I’m going to blow your brains out.” Which one will the person choose? He would go and speak.

So don’t tell me that, you know, fear of speaking is bigger than the fear of death. It’s just— it’s not true. And here is another thing—quickly overcome your nervousness. When you get up in front of a room, your nervousness will disappear almost immediately when you shift the focus from yourself to your message and how much you want to help your audience because you know what you’re talking about. And just focus on this and how much you want to help people.

And it doesn’t matter how many people will be listening to you. You’ll be feeling just as ease as if you were in— in your living room having coffee with your best friend. I guarantee you that.



So now, you know, so— and— and Janis, you illustrated— you mentioned that earlier that, you know, I don’t speak English very well still. I have a huge accent and I just don’t let that get in the way. I have a message to share and that’s what really matters.

So I don’t care what you look like; I don’t care what you sound like; you can find your own individual unique way to become a fascinating speaker that people want to come and see and learn from.

So how do you get those speaking gigs? The first thing that I decided when I decide I wanted to get speaking engagement, I sat down and I identified, I believe it was three, maybe five topics. I just identified five topics that I wanted to get invited to speak. And created the title, and I created three bullet points for each of those presentations. It was like one sentence description and three bullet points.

So all combined, it might have taken me maybe an hour, maybe two hours max to create those five topics with again one sentence, maybe two sentences, very short paragraph description and three bullet points, what the audience would learn. And armed with that, I was now able to talk to everybody that I knew saying, “Hey, do you know anyone that’s looking— that’s hosting events, that’s looking for a speaker?”

And I started focusing on local networking organizations. Now, I do have to cut my blessings. I lived in part of the country that— it’s Orange County, Southern California, at that time back in 2,000 there were about 800 networking groups, just Orange County.

Janis: Wow!

Adam: So, this is like an endless ground to, you know, a feeding ground for speakers. Now, obviously, not all of them bring speakers. Some of them bring speakers for ten to fifteen minutes. At first, I did not care. If I could get in front of the audience for a few minutes, fantastic!

Second, approach, was to go to look at all the associations locally. And again, back then, there was a lady in Orange County who was publishing a directory of all the networking groups and associations that met monthly. It was about a hundred dollars investment.

Back in 200, that was, you know, a chunk of change; I didn’t care. It was a worthy investment. Today, you can look them up online very very quickly and it doesn’t cost anything. It just takes a little bit of time.



And at just picking up the phone, I found someone who would make the calls on my behalf and say, “Hey, listen, I’m calling on behalf of so and so. He’s a fascinating great speaker. He— audience has always rated him the highest on content and his persona restores when he get to the point and get the audience excited about taking audit. When do you have opening to bring him in?”

And so that always scored some engagements. And then I learned how to take every speaking opportunity, excuse me, and converted it into one or two more. And the way I did this, I created a very simple form. And in fact Janis, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to kind of go ahead of myself. I’m going to create a bonus and I’ll give you this bonus to give to your audience. And I’ll give you an example of my speaking feedback form, a couple of them actually and I’m going to give you a blueprint, my crowd— stage crowd persuasion blueprint.

This is something that’s taken me years to figure out. It’s basically minute by minute how I structure my presentations. And I think it’s going to hugely impactful. We don’t have time to cover this so I’ll give it to you as— to give as a bonus to our audience.

Janis: That’s fantastic!

Adam: But in that feedback form, I basically ask the audience a couple of things—what they wanted to learn.

First of all, I ask them how they rated my presentation overall, which is huge. You always want to ask the overall impression first because it will be the best. When you start asking for details, if it [inaudible – 00:18:39] in your presentation, “Well, that wasn’t the best. Well, that wasn’t the best.” So, if you ask the overall rating last, it will always be lower than if you asked it first. It’s a little trick that I’ve found out with time.

Same presentation, you place the question on different position on the survey and it will get different answers from the same person. It’s kind of mind boggling how human psychology works. But one of the things on the form was asking for testimonials. So when I was brand new, I gathered dozens and dozens of testimonials even before I got my first client. And let me tell you, some of those testimonials read like they were actually my clients. They were powerful testimonials, almost results-based testimonials just out of speaking engagements.

And then the last thing was if they were aware of any other meetings that could use me as a speaker. And I said, “There is no such a thing as a free lunch but now there is, because if you— if I get a speaking engagement recommendation because of your recommendation, I’ll buy you lunch.” And I got a lot of



introductions this way to others speaking to other event organizers, club presidents that, you know, I got calls and emails that said, “Hey,—” you know, “— when do you want to come in and speak?”

Janis: Yeah! I mean this is all great stuff. And— and what you’ve really reinforced is something that I would tell my clients, which is, “If you’re starting out and you’re starting out and you’re struggling to get clients, first— the first thing you do is you look in your local market and you find out where you can engage with people in your local market by doing presentations.” It just makes more sense because it takes so much longer to build a presence to online.

Adam: Well, absolutely!

Janis: So that’s great. I mean, that’s a great strategy—

Adam: Well, let me tell—

Janis: That you shared with everybody.

Adam: Let me tell you a story to illustrate this. There is a group, and in fact I just got a message from somebody on Facebook who said, “Hey, are you still part of this group?” And I had to think about what group is it. “What is this person talking about?”

And I remember that back in 2001, there was a group in Orange County, and I won’t tell you the name so that nobody can look it up, so nobody knows; I’m— I’m protecting the innocent here. But it was kind of a gathering of small business owners and I was never a member of it but I was invited to speak. And I knew the person who was kind of coordinating this so I showed up and this person really built, you know, kind of talked this group up. It’s like, “Well, it got some 40, 50 people in the group, some amazing entrepreneurs and they all are kind of home-based business owners.”

You know, so I showed up all decked out and ready to, you know, ready to knock them out with my amazing content. And I show up and there’s six people in the room and they’re meeting at this Mimi’s Café. And let me tell you, out of the six people, four didn’t order breakfast because they’re broke. So they’re just there for the presentation and I was thinking, “Oh, my gosh!”

But you know, I have to do, a quest correction in my own. And I said, “You know what, I don’t care. The most important—people are here and I’m just going to wow them just as if there was a crowd of 5,000. I just don’t care.”



And I gave them my very very best. And let me tell you, I not only got clients out of that, I got one of my biggest, at that time it was my biggest client ever. One of the largest corporate— corporations in Orange County hired me to help them with their online presence and online newsletters back then in 2001.

And that was actually was a large landscape company. And the fascinating thing, the next morning after my presentation, this huge truck pulled up to my— in front of my house—back then, I was using my private address on my materials—and they started unloading all those shrubs and plants and stuff. I’m thinking, “I didn’t order that. What is this?” They said “Oh, so and so sent it to you as a gift. And here is a card. I would like to schedule an appointment with you.” And I’m thinking, “I’m really liking this.”

And, you know, if I showed up and maybe walked away upset and not delivered my best, “It’s just six people? Who cares? And maybe I’m just going to talk to them and leave.” Have I done any of these, I would have lost this huge opportunity to get that client and to get a couple other clients out of that group that again, stayed with me for years and years and years.

So don’t always look for large large gatherings. Even small groups sometimes can give you exactly the breakthrough you’re looking for.

Janis: Yes, and I think there are two other things that— that you just talked about that— that are really important. One is having a really positive attitude and the second one is being really assertive about promoting yourself as a possible speaker. I think a lot of people are afraid to pick up the phone. So those two things make a huge difference.

Adam: Uh-huh! You know, here is something else I did. I just remember that now. I put a tab, one of the main tabs at the top of my website said, you know, “Invite Adam to speak.” And I got a lot of invitations this way. And the same way that I did—I— I put three or five topics right there and then underneath each topic, I included a couple of testimonials that I got from, you know, previous participants.

And that was— that was good enough to get speaking engagements. It really doesn’t take much— you have to start doing something so think about, you know, what’s the least you can do but do it everyday. Maybe it’s a call to an event organizer. Maybe it’s an email to— to people that you know and say, “Hey, who do you know that’s looking for speakers?” you know “I’m available.”

Janis: Excellent! Great! So what— I mean, you’ve spoken at so many events and— and you attend the events, you sit there and there were other speakers, you’ve— I’m sure you’ve attended other teleseminars as well. What are some of the biggest



mistakes that you would say novice speakers make that they could avoid and how can they avoid them so that hopefully, our listeners will not those same mistakes?

Adam: Gosh, that’s a bottomless pit. (laughs)

Janis: It probably is. (laughs)

Adam: But let me just think of the few biggest ones and I— I think the first one will have to be winging it. You just show up unprepared, you don’t know what you want to talk about or maybe just some have loose points put together and— and you’re absolutely totally winging it. And it shows. You know, you don’t know exactly how long you’ll be talking about, you start rambling, and that— that’s not going to get you— not going to score you great testimonials and endorsements from both the audience and organizers and will definitely not get you more engagements or repeat invites to the same group. So that’s huge.

What comes with winging is— is often, this is a huge mistake and— and sadly, I’m still guilty of that one and that is running out of time. And I’m— I’m learning to be better but personally, I’ll tell you, I run out of time for two reasons. One is I always want to deliver more than I promised and two, I, you know, I start teaching one point and I remember an idea and I go off on attention. You know, I come back to the original idea but then still again, I delivered more than I— than I intended and that gets my time out of log.

And especially if you’re speaking at a place where timing is critical—they have a time with meals or they have another speaker or they have a break that can be moved, and you’re running out of time. You know, two things are going to happen—you are going to annoy a lot of people. Some people will leave before you are done which is equal to dud. And then, you know, you will— you will not get to deliver some of the key points of your talk if you don’t time it well.

Janis: Uh-huh!

Adam: But a few other things are these—one thing that I’ve discovered and I see it over and over is people “bite more than what they could chew.” And what I mean by that is, their— they haven’t tested the message especially if they want to sell something. They haven’t tested the teaching selling methodology. They’ve never done this before. They— and they go for large audiences and they go up in flames.

It takes an enormous amount of energy; it takes enormous amount of confidence and poise to do it well. So practice; get in front of smaller groups. You know, one of my mentors said, “Listen, get in front of high school kids and start teaching.” And— and he was teaching our small group and we asked, “Why? What’s the



point?” He said, “Listen, when you’re teaching from the stage, you have to speak in authoritative way. And what’s one way of develop an authoritative way of speaking is speak to kids because you always will speak with authority.”

And Janis, I know you’ve heard this; I see it all the time when people teach, but the way in they enunciate words and the way that they intonate the entire sentence, it sounds like they continue asking questions after questions or they’re asking for assurance. They’re not only making statements and teachings, they’re questioning themselves and that’s not very conducive to either convincing audience to take action or something or to make sales. So get— don’t get ahead of yourself. Practice, practice, practice on smaller venues, smaller audiences.

Janis: Yeah, that’s really another gold nugget because—

Adam: Uh-huh!

Janis: It’s just like anything else. If you’ don’t put in the work, you’re not going to be good at it. So you really have to put in the work. You really have to work it. I— I see a lot of novice speakers, basically, they memorize their speech. And so it feels canned; it doesn’t feel like it’s natural.

Adam: Uh-huh!

Janis: And if they perhaps practiced it in front of smaller groups over a period of time, it would have become so natural for them that it would have been comfortable. It would have felt like it was coming from their heart. At least, you could have felt their passion.

Adam: Uh-huh! I’m going to give you three points to really just kind of counter that mistake, to really get yourself to— to be good at presenting, actually, four, really quick. Number one is sign up with Toastmasters. If you’ve never speak in front of audiences, sign up with toastmasters. And there are— there are local Toastmasters chapters everywhere in the— in the country and most in— in many countries in the world. And here’s why I tell you that’s such a powerful thing.

Look for a group that’s established but fairly small, maybe about twelve members, because it will give you a chance to speak nearly every week. They have hour long meetings, 90 minute meetings; it’s worth. The investment is ridiculous and membership is like $30 or $50 a year; it includes some materials. It’s one of the best trainings you can get. They will start— they will teach you to pay attention to what you say and how you say it. And one of the biggest gifts for me was to learn impromptu speaking. They call it Table Topics. You get a topic, and you don’t know what it’s going to be about, and you have 60 seconds to talk on that topic,



and you can’t say “ah” and “you know” and “um” and any type of sentence fillers. It really teaches you how to structure sentences and— and presentations effectively very very quickly. So you— when you stumble and mumble during the talk, you’ll learn to recover. So, Toastmasters is number one.

Number two, envision your talk. Athletes get themselves in the zone because they— they— they see their performance in their heads. I also like watching Winter Olympics and especially slalom skiing because you can see the athletes at the top of their lift, just before they go on it, you could see them often they have either headsets on, with just the eyes closed, they stand as if they were skiing and you can see them move their bodies and they look like kind of lunatic. What they’re doing is in their head, they see the entire slope going down. They actually go through the slope while standing on the top of the slope. They just go with their emotions. With eyes closed, they see themselves performing. You want to do the same.

See yourself performing. See the key points in your presentation in your head. See the audience responding. See what’s the end of your presentation like. If you can see it in your head, you can deliver it in reality.

And two tactical things—don’t script your presentation. That’s a “kiss of death”. But do list key points. And usually when I— list those key points by just one or two key words that will trigger what you want to talk about. And maybe, you have numbers or statistics, write down a couple of key numbers so you don’t stagger with those.

And then what you want to do is take a piece of paper, 8.5 x 11, and fold it in half but the long way. So you end up with this piece of paper that’s 11” x 4” approximately, right? And only write those key words on one-half. If you have more, then flip it to the other side and on the other side.

Now, here’s why it’s so important, Janis—because if you knew and you need those pointers and there’s no podium or you don’t have a table for a note, if you go with an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, you look like you’re reading from something. But now, if you have—and write it on a stock paper—if you have a card stock paper folded in half and you hold it in your hand, it actually looks like you have a pointer in your hand. And you can very inconspicuously glance at it from time to time and just look at the keywords, and it’s— they’re going to be very effective. No one will realize that those are your actual notes—so very good way to avoid that mistake of being unprepared, winging it and losing your trend of thought.

Now, one other mistake— there’s actually two more that I want to men— mention because they’re really huge, Janis. One is what I call “not— not



matching your teaching to your pitching.” And some people talk about seeding and it’s part of it. But I’ve seen speakers who go out there and they want to sell from stage but their offer has nothing to do with what they were teaching on.

So for example, I would see someone who maybe teaches about internet marketing or making products and then their offer is about getting publicity. And it’s— the audience gets so confused, they go like, “Well, why would I want to buy that? You didn’t teach any about publicity. You only talked about creating products and marketing online.” So there’s huge— there’s a huge disconnect.

You must teach on the topic that you will be selling. And with this, the whole idea of seeding is that you want to teach people what to do and why it’s important to do it. And then, if you want to invite them to continue their education with you and to learn more, your actual programs or products ideally contain a lot more of the how-to information. So you teach mostly what and why and you sell the how-to information.

Now, there’s, you know, when the line gets blurry, you do want to teach a little bit of the how-to but not a whole lot, because the how-to information will actually overwhelm you audience, and overwhelmed audience does not take action. So make it a match between your teaching point and what you’re selling.

And the last big mistake that I see people make—I mean I could go on for days just on mistakes—the last one is a huge mismatch between your message, your tonality, and your body language. This is huge because— espe— especially when you’re selling, because selling is an unconscious process.

Consciously, you’re feeding the logical mind with information it needs to convince itself that it’s a right decision. However, the actual selling happens unconsciously. It happens through stories, it happens through metaphors, it happens through case studies aka testimonials.

So what ends up—and it happens through the tonality of your voice, which is confidence, excitement, clarity, conciseness, all of those things matter in your body language. So what do I mean by body language?

Now imagine this; imagine you’re listening to a powerful speaker and you’re very excited about what they— what they’re teaching. And you’re thinking to yourself, “Gosh, I wish I could continue.” And then the speaker goes, “I want you to take advantage of something with me.” And as they say, “I want you to powerfully step with me to this new, you know, new program and it’s only an investment of $1,000.” What ends up happening is they end up clasping their hands together and start walking backwards on stage.



So what is that happening? Unconsciously, their body language communicates fear and retreat. Rather than opening their arms, embracing everybody and stepping towards the audience who communicating confidence, boldness, excitement, they’re communicating fear and defeat and retreat. Now, they don’t think about it. But if you are not trained and especially if you don’t have confidence in what you’re doing and how you are doing, and maybe you don’t know how to sell effectively, I see a lot of people, especially when they come to the part where they talk about the price, they start walking backwards. It’s a very unconscious process when they are not very confident. And that will cost you massive amount of sales, massive amount of sales.

And again, that’s just small, you know, a handful of few mistakes but they will— they will impact how the audience perceives you, they will impact how the audience relates to you. You know, there’s— we could go on and on not relating well to your audience, not revealing your own failures, not being personable, not sharing personal stories, not recording your presentations and listening to them.

You know, in 2004, I invited a guy to speak at one of my events with that point he spoke at about 2000 events. And about a week after my event, he phoned me up and said, “Hey, can I have a recording of my presentation?” And I’m like, “Yeah, sure! But—” you know, “—we had only a couple of weeks. But what do you want?” I was sending it anyway but I was curious why was he so desperate to get it right away. He said, “Well, because I want to listen to it.” I’m like, “Really? You’ve delivered 2000 presentations. Why would you still want to listen to your talk?” He said, “Well, you know, I made a few changes to it. I just wanted to hear what it sounded like.” And he said, “Plus, I listen to all my presentations; that’s the only way I’d get better.”

And I’m like, “Ting ting ting ting ting!” Here’s a speaking pro who knows exactly how to get better and that’s to track his existing performance. He listens to his past deliveries; he listens to where he stumbled, where he mumbled, what was unclear and he improves it for every presentation. Now that’s how you get to the level of mastery.

And the biggest mistake most people make, they never bother. It’s like they speak it and they forget about it; I don’t know. When you devote a time to create one presentation, create a masterful presentation. If you want to get more business in speaking, be really really really good at it.

Janis: Well, these are all phenomenal phenomenal ideas. Very interesting about the body language and I know that you videotape many of your presentations as I do as well. And I’m sure that that also, I know it is for me, it is great way to look at



where you can improve your body language. So that’s just another way of reviewing what you’ve done on stage.

And I guess I kind of segue into my next question and actually you have already given us a lot of wonderful speaking to sales strategies, but what are some other ways you turn speaking into sales? And what I might be interested actually is—if you can just touch on it for a minute—is actually turning maybe those videos into products. That’s— that’s really something that no one else has mentioned.

Adam: Okay! So that’s actually one of the easiest things to create a product, when you’re delivering your presentation. In fact, when I first started my first few programs, my first few products, physical products for sale, came out of just recording my presentations. And at first it was audio and then I had it audio and a video.

So it’s something— today technology is so easy. Back, you know, a decade ago it wasn’t so— it was cranky and complicated to record your presentation. But even back then, I just found a small digital recorder that came with a lapel microphone and I would just— even if the— the venue offered no recording, I would just stick that little mike in my jacket or in my tie and turn on the recorder in my pocket, and you know 55, 65 minutes later, I had a product that I could sell now online. So that’s one of the quickest ways to speak your product into reality.

But, you know, aside form that, selling from— from stage is obviously a great way to make great money. And again, I mentioned I only do it a few times a year, but when I do, if often means ten if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue to my business. So it’s— it can be hugely lucrative.

And again, some of the things that might help you is this—create powerful introduction, powerful introduction. And in fact, I have to check with my own system because it looks like we did not get to the actual introduction to open this call. You did a good job, Janis, but I have very specific templates that I use for introductions because they’re short and to the point.

When you want to go on stage and especially to someone who’s very accomplished, listen, your audience doesn’t want to listen for five minutes about all your stories and all your titles and all your accomplishments; they couldn’t care less at that point.

So create a nice, sweet, 30 seconds, 60 seconds cue key bullet points. What’s really important to get to their attention, to perk them up and then boom, you go on stage, so powerful introduction that you get introduced with.



And then your own powerful story—your audience cannot learn from you and hear you well until they know you well. So early in your presentation, introduce yourself. That’s— that’s the time to get more into your story because your story becomes teaching points and it also connects you with your audience. I mentioned that earlier.

Don’t be too eager to talk about your success. You know, I always talk about this as one of the huge paradoxes. I get invited to speak now because I’ve achieved a certain level of success. But when I speak, people don’t want to hear about success. They want to hear about the times when I experienced failure. And when you think about it, the reason for this, fewer people can relate to extreme success but we all can relate to times when we were rejected, dejected, when we were beaten in with a tup, when we were, you know, frustrated, when we were stepped on, when we didn’t succeed, when we failed, when we fell down and bruised ourselves that was badly, when we experience humiliation, we can all relate to that. That’s what your audience wants to hear from you that you’re just like them. So many people decide to omit that and because of that, they can’t— can’t relate— the audience, they— you’re “not human” and your audience doesn’t relate to “non-humans”. So this is absolutely huge.

And another thing you want to introduce is stories, again personal stories. Stories are great teaching points. And they can take 5, 10, 15 minutes and your audience will be clinging onto your every word because we are taught to enjoy story telling time. And you can— you can create— you can teach multiple points throughout one story and keep your audience engaged.

But if you go in and you say step one, step two, step three, step four, you’re losing your audience; they can’t remember. But if you tell them the story and at the end of the presentation, ask them to tell the story, they can repeat it nearly verbatim. It’s just how we are wired. So you’ll be a lot more effective in training plus, here’s the thing, the thing, “facts tell; stories sell”. Write that down for yourself—facts tell; stories sell.

Remember I mentioned earlier that most of the selling sub— happen subconsciously. And that’s where stories come into place. They tell about people who maybe were just like your audience, who— who took certain actions and achieved certain success. They talk about your own journey, where you were, what you went through, and what you achieved. And if those stories are a match to what you offer at the end, if the end product is their compensation, compilation and— and packaged wisdom that you gathered through the journey or through helping those clients go through the journey, then most of the audience will want



that package because they don’t want go to the same hassle. They just want a shortcut. And you know, stories are great ways to tell a short cut at the end.

So, yeah, those are just a handful of things when you— you know, one of the things that I’m not particularly good at and when I do it works better is slowing down. And even in this interview with you Janis, I— I caught myself a couple of times just going rapidly rapidly rapidly because I’m thinking, oh my gosh, it’s only a short interview and I want to tell you so much. But at the end it’s a mistake because when you slow down and when you intonate more effectively and maybe when you create some suspension like, “Listen, I want to tell you something very very important and it’s going to be one of the most important points of my presentation.” In fact, I’m going to do it right now.

So what I want you to do is just really if you’re multitasking stop right now, if you’re driving, you know, pay attention to the road but— but focus for I’m going to tell you something very very important. And in fact, this tip is so huge, so huge. It’s going to massively change your results when you teach and when you speak. Yet it’s so simple. Most of you might take it for granted. And I don’t want you to overlook it so I’m creating those suspense because it’s so important. I’m— I’m going to tell you this tip right now. Are you ready for it? I hope you got your pen. I hope you got your pen and paper.

Janis: I’m ready. I’m sure everybody listening is ready. We’re all ready! (laughs)

Adam: All right! Write, write it down—“Slow down your voice to make important points.” All right, so, you know, over exaggerated but you get the point. So just by language and you can you can— you can introduce one idea but take two or three minutes just to set the idea up. And in fact this is a huge pitching point.

When you’re teaching new ideas and you just ramble the ideas off, your audiences write points but they don’t really get the idea. Slow down before you introduce the idea and tell people why that idea is so important, why it’s so impactful, how it’s going to impact their lives and then give them the idea.

They’ll be sitting on the edge of the chairs whether it’s on the phone or in live seminar room going like “Okay, I’m ready. Just give me the darn idea.” And expect— and if it’s something simple then warn them in advanced. “Listen, it’s going to be simple.” It’s deceptively simple we’re thinking like, “That’s it?”, so don’t— when you hear it don’t, you know, don’t discount it. Really give it some thought how it might work for you and only then, deliver the points.

So, Janis, I just wish that we could go on, you know, for a couple of days if we can afford because I’m sure it will be fascinating and I would love to teach you



more on this but that’s just a few big points that just makes a big difference at the end of the day.

Janis: These are huge points and I hope everybody that’s listening does taking notes. I even wrote a few things down, Adam. Really, really—

Adam: Cool!

Janis: Wonderful points. But what’s interesting is that, for all of you listening, you’ve just seen a demonstration of someone that is able to deliver persuasive speaking. So you actually, in this conversation, you demonstrated what your telling people to do. That’s really very interesting!

Adam: Uh-huh!

Janis: I think you’re really the only person that’s done that and it’s really fantastic. So if you listen back to this again and again, you’re going to see Adam in action, what you’re actually doing and what another thing that I know you always do, and just—I know we’re running out of time—but you do a great job when you’re doing a presentation and you’re selling from the stage or you’re selling in a— in a teleseminar of establishing proceeds value so that when people hear the price, they’re saying, “That’s all?”

Adam: Aha!

Janis: “Oh, I think it’s worth more than that.”

Adam: Yeah, that’s a great point and actually, I want to ask you a question, turn the tables around, but I want to address that. That is a huge point. And I’ll just speak very quick because I know we have to go against the clock. And remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so what you think something is worth is irrelevant. If— if you want to create value, you have to think about it in the terms and in the language and from the perspective of your potential client, of your audience, of your listener.

You know I call it “John Smithing” or “John Smithing your business” which is if you want to know what John or John Smith buys, you have to see the world through John or John Smith’s eyes. And it’s not enough to walk a mile and someone shoes. You have to really become empathetically them, live their lives for a day or for a week not physically but in your head like, “What is it like?” Just imagine this person wakes up on Monday morning, what do they do? Then it’s Tuesday, then it’s Wednesday, then it’s Friday, then it’s the weekend. What does— what do they do? What do they hang out with? What worries them? What wakes them up at night? What wakes them up in the morning? What keeps them



up late at night before they fall asleep? When they go to work, what are they thinking about? What frustrates them?

And all those problems and all those desires and solution to problems and— and ways to achieve their desires is what’s most valuable to them. And the language in which they talk about those solutions, is what they can actually hear and understand.

So if you now want, know what those solutions and desires are, and to understand that language and can speak that language because to many— to many of us, if I— if we are not part of our audience, that language truly can be a foreign language, a new language we have to learn. And unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, speakers refuse to learn the language of the audience. It can be small nuisances. It’s kind of a dialect—you’re not being understood; you’re not being accepted.

So learn speaking that language, learn speaking in their dialect and then when you present your offers from that perspective, they— it’s just— it’s natural for your audiences to go, “Yeah, I get it!” you know, “I can— I can see the value because you’re solving my problems.” You know, you don’t— you don’t have to sell; you created the buying experience. That’s the difference.

Janis: Excellent! Well, Adam, I can’t thank you enough; this has been fantastic. Certainly, everyone can see that there’s a reason why you’re our final speaker in the sale— the Speaking to Sales Online Conference and hopefully people probably just took pages of notes today on everything you had to say. And so again, thank you so much. You’ve given everybody great value today and wonderful ideas. Now where can people find you if they want to learn more about you?

Adam: Absolutely! Well, first and foremost, it’s— it’s been my pleasure Janis. I really appreciate that—the opportunity to be here, and share with your audience. The best way to go and find me is actually one of the two sites—either attractclients likecrazy [dot] com. Easy to understand if you spell, attractclientslikecrazy [dot] com. The other website is themarketingmentors [dot] com, themarketingmentors [dot] com. Either one of those two, you’re going to get a lot of value from some of the free stuffs that I give away. And I want to say just one more thing now. This was— now let me ask you a question first. The audience that’s listening to us right now, do they have a chance to get the recording?

Janis: Yes, they do!



Adam: Okay. Perfect! I just wanted do to— to confirm it with you. I just wanted to share something with your audience. Now, listen. Janis didn’t tell me to do that. This is just coming up and I’m— there’s no skin of my nose whether you get the recordings or not. I’m assuming there are some investment attached to it.

Janis: Yes! There is!

Adam: But I’ll share with you---

Janis: Yeah!

Adam: Perfect! I’ll share with you something. I have not watched TV like real TV in—Gosh! I can’t even remember when was the last time—and I don’t listen to radio. I always— my car is my university on wheels. In fact, I can tell you exactly what I’m listening to right now. I’m listening to The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy right now, a fascinating program, in six-disc. I have the six-disc changer. Now, I’ve had this for about a month now and I’m probably listening to it for the fourth or fifth or sixth time.

Janis: Wow!

Adam: Why am I telling you this? Because you just listen to how other many amazing guest presenters, every single one of them has golden nuggets. If you really want to embody that information, if you want to master it, don’t just listen to it. Study it. Dissect it. Learn it. Internalize it. That only comes through repetition. You can’t learn it by listening to something once. And even if you took copious notes you still missed ten times more than what you wrote down. I guarantee you that.

So, if Janis is asking for a small amount of investment to get the recordings I would--- I cannot stress enough how important this. You took this time to lis— to listen to this information. Don’t waste it. Invest that small fee, get the recordings, listen to it, relisten to it, relisten to it again. And again, my gift I mentioned earlier in the interview I’m going to put give you my stage persuasion blueprint for a 90 minute talk. It’s minute by minute, how to put together presentation that teaches and sells.

And why should you listen to me? I’ll give you two reasons. Number one, when it comes to teaching and selling, I am consistently rated as number one speaker for content pretty much nearly every single time I’m coming up as number one. Rarely I show up number two in audience feedback. And number two, I’m always in the top three best sellers from the stage, always in the top three. If I’m not one and I’m at least two, at the very least I’m three. So my system purely works. So I’ll give you the stage persuasion blueprint plus I’ll give you a copy of my



speaker feedback form that I mentioned earlier. It’s going to be my gift, my reward to you for making that investment in yourself.

Janis: Excellent! So we will include that for anybody that decides to buy our conference package which includes all the audios, the transcripts and this amazing bonus that you just offered which are worth the price that we’re charging from the audios and the transcripts alone. Just that alone, it— it’s worth the investment. So, we will be sending out e-mails to everybody. We— we’ve been sending out e-mails so everybody will have that link, which is http://speakingtosales.com/thankyou. But right now, what I’d like you to do Adam, is also tell people where they can find you.

Adam: Ah, okay! Well, I mentioned that earlier. Just go to http://attractclientslikecrazy.com or http://themarketingmentors.com . That’s just, you know, you can find me there. Any other places, Facebook and Twitter. Actually I prefer Facebook; that’s the best way to get to hold of me personally. And yeah, I actually do look at the— my Facebook wall and my Facebook messages personally. So, that’s pretty much the only way to get a hold of me personally. In Facebook, you go to http://adamurbanski.com. I’m sorry, http://Facebook.com/adamsfan, and http://Twitter.com/adamurbanski. It’s like Urbanski— adamurbanski and you’re good to go.

Janis: Perfect! Perfect! And, well I might as well also give people that you are a one more time dividing the conference package, although I’m sure that everyone has received several e-mails from us but that is speakingtosales [dot] com/thank you. Very very easy!

So Adam, thank you again. This has been fantastic and this concludes our Speaking to Sales Online Conference. I hope that you’ve enjoyed it, that you’ve gotten a lot of great tips so that you can start immediately right away to turn speaking into new clients and thousands of dollars in your sales. Thank you so much for listening!

[END OF AUDIO]

http://speakingtosales.com/thankyou

http://attractclientslikecrazy.com/

http://themarketingmentors.com/

http://adamurbanski.com/

http://facebook.com/adamsfan

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