Speak and Get Clients
How to Give a Showcase Speech that Brings You Business

Join us on Wednesday, Oct. 14, for lunch at the Grand Concourse in Station Square, Pittsburgh. This promises to be a great event and is open to all.

Are you a coach, consultant, or service professional who is frustrated by how long it can take to build your professional reputation and find prospective clients? Then, once you find solid prospects, does it sometimes take a real effort to motivate them to work with you? What if you could eliminate much of the time and effort from this whole process? How much easier would it be to grow your business?

Discover the secrets to an approach you can use to more easily open the door to new business. Learn how to attract clients by giving speeches to business and professional groups. If you've ever tried this marketing approach, you know that it's not enough to simply give a good speech. You need to somehow get the best prospects in your audience to see the value of hiring you. Plus you need to know how to use a speech to launch a relationship with prospects you can later cultivate into clients. Learn all of this and more as professional marketing and speaking coach Sam Wieder shows you how to speak and get clients.

You will learn how to:

• Identify your best target audiences.
• Create a talk that delivers solid value to your listeners.
• Establish yourself as a credible expert in your field.
• Sell the value of your services without making a blatant sales pitch.
• Win people's confidence in you and your services.
• Meet your prospects' 6 key criteria for hiring you.
• Use a speech to launch a relationship with potential clients.
• Motivate and inspire your best prospects to approach you.

In addition to coaching and speaking, members of the Pittsburgh Coaches Association conduct workshops and seminars and for several years have also conducted teleclasses on a regular basis. These teleclasses are now held monthly, and are an opportunity for Pittsburgh coaches to share some of their coaching knowledge and experience with participants, as well as their passion for helping others to move forward and reach new levels.

Teleclass topics range from sales and marketing to creating space, leadership, and finding your dreams, and can help people to make important changes and take steps to reach their potential.

If you are looking for ways to improve your communication skills, grow your leadership abilities, increase your emotional intelligence, overcome negative self talk, and triumph over roadblocks to personal or professional growth while finding more balance, joy and fulfillment in the process, Susan English may be the coach for you. She is a supportive companion, gentle listener, creative thinker, stimulating respondent, and motivating guide in helping others achieve success. Some of her favorite clients are academicians and graduate students completing dissertations. Susan specializes in leadership coaching for educators.

Susan expects to use her coaching skills as the 2010 President of the Pittsburgh Coaches Association as she guides PCA with the theme of "Service, Skills and Visibility." She has been a member of PCA for five years and served as Secretary and President-Elect. "I believe that membership in professional organizations like PCA has always been my best investment for personal and professional growth and has significantly contributed to my success." Susan says. Previous to her work with PCA, Susan held numerous leadership positions in state and local organizations.

As a Benedictine Sister, Susan loves working with the poor. She is an experienced program developer and brings these skills to her volunteer work in the Latino immigrant community. In 2006, Susan created the grant-funded Motivadora program where bi-lingual women learn basic coaching skills and then reach out to help newer immigrants. In 2008, Susan proposed the PCA Latino Service Project. This program matches volunteer PCA coaches with Motivadoras to further develop coaching skills and provide personal support.

Susan has over 30 years of experience as a K-12 teacher, college professor, and supervisor who worked in public, private and prison settings. While teaching at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Susan mentored the college honor society, Kappa Delta Pi, to become national award winner as Outstanding Chapter for eight consecutive years. With her coaching, student members successfully developed numerous educational programs on campus, won national scholarships and made peer-reviewed presentations at National Convocations.

Susan holds a doctorate in education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) designation from the International Coach Federation. She is currently in private practice, teaches in the Duquesne Professional Coach Certification Program, and is an associate leadership coach for Avanti Strategies. Susan can be reached at P: (412) 931-0769 or via email.

Website Design that Works - A Bulletin for Business Owners

A few years ago, just before Thanksgiving, I got a call from Martha Williamson, Executive Producer of "Touched by an Angel." She and her good friend, Carol Burnett (legendary actress and star of the Carol Burnett show), were going on Larry King to invite donations for a theatre to be named for Carrie Hamilton, Carol Burnett's late daughter who died at age 38 in 2002. They wanted a website which people could use to donate to the theater. The site would be promoted on Larry King by Larry, Carol and Martha.

My first reaction (unexpressed) was that there must be 10,000 web designers between Pittsburgh and Pasadena, California at least as qualified (and frankly more qualified) as I who could do this work. Martha added that the show would air in three weeks, and she needed someone she could trust to just run with this, think through all the details, take her direction, and ensure that when the show aired on December 16th, everything worked. Clearly their budget and timeframe were both too limited to attract any large design firm. When it became clear that they needed one person they could trust to handle everything from concept to design to implementation - in only three weeks - I started to feel a lot better about being the right man for the job.

The problem with so many web designs is that they are either done by committee with conflicting, often unprofessional, views, or there are people without the right kinds of skills making unconscious decisions about critical aspects of the site. Let's break it down.

Most important are the target audience and the purpose and intended results of the site. If these aren't explored at the onset, they'll be missed at the end. Once we understand these, a lot of other things become easier. For example, if Larry, Carol and Martha are going to be hitting it over the wall - totally teeing people up to donate, then the best solution would be a one-page website which is nothing but a donation page. Why let people get lost in learning all about the legacy of Carrie Hamilton if they are ready to contribute?

But, as Carol was going on to promote "Once Upon a Mattress," we decided that we didn't know how much time the women would have to talk about Carol's extraordinary daughter, so we couldn't assume that viewers would be coming to the site fully ready to donate. We determined the website needed to sufficiently create a motive for people to contribute. As important as anything else is the ability for people to find the website. We didn't know for sure whether the Larry King Show would print the name of the website on the screen. Even if they did, would people remember it correctly? The main website would be carriehamiltontheater.com, but since "theater" can be spelled two ways, we also registered carriehamiltontheatre.com, and for good measure, also secured ".org" and ".net" domains and redirected all to the main site.

Even still, those websites are a "mouthful." What if they misspelled Carrie's name - a not uncommon mistake? Our timeframe was too short to allow the site to be picked up by search engines like Google and Yahoo. To shore up our bets, we sponsored inexpensive pay-per-click ads using phrases such as "Carol Burnett", "Carrie Hamilton," "Cary Hamilton," etc. This allowed thousands of people to find the site who otherwise probably would not have.

The site came off without a hitch, in time for Carol and Martha's appearance on Larry King. I'm happy to say that today, due in part to my support, the Carrie Hamilton Theatre, designed by world-famous architect Frank Gehry, is open to the public.

Besides designing for a targeted audience, being clear on your purpose and intended results, and making it easy for people to find your site, here are two crucial key elements to my website designs; you should make them yours as well. 1.) Make it immediately clear to people coming to your site what you are about. This means, 99% of the time, do not force people to watch time-consuming splash screens - no matter how cool they may be. Typically people will spend just a few seconds, literally, deciding if they'll go any further on your site. 2) Make it immediately clear what you want them to do. This means having a navigation system that is straightforward and clear, with emphasis on the actions you want people to take. It also includes having a clean, professional look that addresses your audience and supports your intended results.

About the Author
Bill Weil is a Principal at Socius Partners specializing in helping emerging technology companies, and heads up Socius Web Marketing designing and implementing web marketing strategies including identifying unique value propositions, designing and building websites, blogs and email newsletters and search engine optimization for all industries. Bill is also the author of New Earth Relationships and From Intuition to Entrepreneurship, both available on Amazon.com. He can be reached at bweil@socius-partners.com.

© 2009 William Weil. All rights reserved.

We invite experienced coaches, as well as those new to the profession, to join the Pittsburgh Coaches Association (PCA). This is an exciting time to be a member! We are a 501(c)6 professional organization, and an International Coach Federation (ICF) chapter.

Additional benefits for member coaches include networking opportunities with other professional coaches, a profile on PCA's 'Find a Coach' website directory, discounts for monthly luncheon meetings featuring interesting and relevant speakers, a forum to offer teleclasses on coaching-related topics of your choice, and special events to raise the profile of coaching within the community. There are many more benefits; please don't hesitate to become a part of one of Pittsburgh's best professional associations.

You can now register to become a member online at www.pittsburghcoaches.org. Join today. Membership now being prorated - you can join PCA for only $65 for the rest of the year.

We would love to hear from you! Just hit Reply to this newsletter with your ideas and feedback. Suggestions are very welcome, don't hesitate.

Not a Coach? Now you can join PCA as an Associate! We invite all professionals in the Pittsburgh area to join us. Are you interested in meeting coaches, supporting coaches but are not a coach? Join us now as an Associate Member of the Pittsburgh Coaches Association. Membership is prorated at 50% for the balance of the calendar year.