Bill Gates is a member of the club. So is Steve Jobs. So are a lot of people you've never heard of. Nothing, that is, except their self-marketing savvy and their willingness and ability to talk about a subject. But no matter where you are on the professional ladder, if you want to become a member of the speaking class, one of the best ways to do so is to adapt some well-known branding strategies to your own personal and professional cause.
People become sought-after speakers by three basic approaches.
One way is to become famous, the way Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Colin Powell or Tom Peters are, but most people don't have that option. He begins by challenging his clients to take a stand on an issue or develop a strong opinion about a subject. The goal is to create a point of view that can take on a recognizable life of its own and, thus, be developed, packaged and marketed. For instance, Pfaff was approached several years ago by a man named Charlie Kreitzberg, who is now CEO of Cognetics Corp., a consulting firm in Princeton Junction, N.J. Kreitzberg had noticed that many people are frustrated by the software they use every day, and that they tend to only use a small part of any given software's capabilities, which adds to their frustration. What's more, Kreitz-berg thought businesses and consumers worldwide were wasting valuable time and money trying to get their minds around software that was unnecessarily difficult to learn.