Many professional speakers who charge a fee for their programs are giving far fewer presentations than they gave a few years ago because corporations, nonprofits and government agencies have cut travel and training budgets.
One way for speakers to rebound is to tweak their topic for the college market.
James Malinchak, “King of the College Speaking Circuit,” says colleges have a huge pot of money otherwise known as student activity fees, and it’s used to pay speakers. James will be my guest during a free teleseminar called “Discover the Secrets to Speaking in The Recession-Proof College Market.” It will be at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, April 14, and you can register here.
He’ll discuss more than a dozen topics that are in demand at two- and four-year colleges, universities and technical schools. Here are four of them, and ways speakers can tweak those topics for campus audiences:
- A speaker who trains corporate executives on leadership can take the fundamental points of the presentation and teach college students how to be leaders, whether it’s within their fraternities or sororities, student government or special-interest groups on campus.
- An expert on corporate recruiting and retention can teach college fraternities and sororities how to recruit and retain members. Greeks, by the way, have their own budgets for hiring speakers, yet another recession-proof pot of money.
- Speakers who specialize in motivating corporate audiences as convention keynoters can take their message to college campuses, where motivational speakers are in high demand.
- Diversity trainers who target corporate America can teach college faculty, staff and students about diversity. At a four-year college, a kid from the inner city and a farm kid from Kansas can suddenly find themselves roommates, with all kinds of potential problems.
I’ll also ask James how speakers can benefit from all the PR and publicity that will come their way when they start speaking at colleges. Lucky for them, the school’s PR department does most of the work.
Hope to see you on Wednesday’s call.
