How Quality Scoping Can Win You More Business
Mary Tillson is Head of Speaker Coaching and Momentum, at Speaking Business Academy, helping speakers develop their content and messaging, and maximize their personal impact and delivery style to ensure that they are at all times relevant, memorable and make it easy for their audience to be able to listen to and understand them. Three essentials to getting booked to speak again and again. She co-facilitates many of our workshops with Maria and is the lead tutor on content-specific workshops.
Additionally, she supports speakers in delivering more than “just a speech” and builds on the momentum achieved from their speeches. Many clients are now looking for a return on their investment from a speaker and want the learning from the speech embedded back within their business in some way to bring about the behavioral change they seek.
Questions
- When you talk about scoping, you often say, Scoping, scoping, scoping, which suggests that you are quite passionate about it. Can you explain why so much passion?
- You say that great scoping helps you to beat your competition, can you elaborate for us, please
- Many clients these days are looking for more than “just a speech”. How does quality scoping help the client?
- Is there a particular tool or technique you recommend?
- Can you give an example of where quality scoping leads to more business?
Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript
Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.
James Taylor 0:00
I’m James Taylor and you’re listening to the SpeakersU podcast a show for aspiring and professional speakers. This episode is with my co-host, Maria Franzoni. Enjoy the episode. In a few minutes, we’re gonna welcome onto the stage. Mary Tillson is head of the speaker, coaching, and momentum at speaking Business Academy. In that role, she helped speakers develop their content and messaging, as well as maximize their personal impact and delivery style. This means that as a speaker, you remain relevant, memorable, and make it easy for audiences to be able to listen to and understand you. Three essentials for getting booked to speak again. And again. Mary Coe facilitates many of the speaking Business Academy workshops with Maria and his lead tutor on content-specific workshops. Additionally, she supports speakers and delivering more than just a speech so they can build on the momentum achieved from their speeches. You see, many clients today are booking or looking for a return on their investment from a speaker. clients want the learning from your speech embedded back within their business to bring about the behavioral change that they seek. Please welcome onto the stage. Mary Kelson.
Mary Tillson 1:19
Hello, wow, I am very humbled by that introduction. Thank you, James. is going to rest on my laurels.
Scoping
Maria Franzoni 1:29
Now we need you to live up to that now. Thank you. No pressure, no pressure. And obviously, I know you are very well married but there’ll be a lot of people who don’t, and they won’t know that you are absolutely passionate about this strange thing called scoping. In fact, you’re so passionate. If somebody talks to you about it. You say you say it three times, not once. Explain why you’re passionate about it. Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, it’s
Mary Tillson 1:53
happy crew, I think I probably drive you mad because I’m always going scoping, scoping, scoping, and you’re quite right three times. For me, gosh, I could go on for hours on this topic. But in a nutshell for me if we get scoping right if we do proper scoping. What it enables you speaker me to do is gather what I would call robust data. That’s my keyword here from which you can develop a robust solution. And that solution to pick up on talking to James said, If anybody’s listening to the introduction, that is one of those incredibly important essentials for a speaker, the content that you then develop will be relevant. So that is my core passion for it. And I have often been set up to fail because somebody hasn’t scoped well for me. And so I have been left guessing what I meant to be doing. So for me, and if you want me to carry on yakking if I carry on yakking and carry on carrying on? Yeah, absolutely. Please help me out because I am passionate isn’t it. For me, I also why I like it so much is because I have so often sat and listened to speakers, and sat amongst the audience. That’s my passion as long as the audience that I’m passionate about. And so often sadly, I hear the audience saying, What was that all about? You know, how does that affect me? The so what element is missing? So for me what scoping do if you do it well, and I know we’ll explore that as we progress in our conversation today. Good old Stephen Covey habit, I’m a fan of his habits, seek first to understand this is such a key habit that any speaker should really begin to nail because too many speakers too many people too many trainers, coaches speakers, often default what I call Gi Gi Gi getting information, getting information, getting information, they talk at the potential client, they tell a client what they’re going to do, but they haven’t actually sat back and asked some fantastic questions. done well, if we get the scoping done well, and I’m happy to share how you do it. Well, what it does as well is it ensures with the technique I share that all the stakeholders are set up for success. Because when you’re scoping properly, you don’t just consider the audience you consider everybody who might be impacted or can influence that event you’re doing so for the HIV CEO, it could be the audience without even Booker. It will be the venue. You get thought to all those. And I think, you know, for me very personally, well, I have scoped thoroughly. I actually come away confident, feeling really good that I can then go on I’ve got enough information or not robust information from every angle, that I can develop a really great solution, whatever it be, that really, really makes a difference. It takes the guesswork away and What it does do and I think for me again, I know Marina isn’t passionate about this a word I use, is it really means that whenever I develop the content, or I help a speaker develop their content material, they know what they’re trying to land as a result of the content. So I’m going to stop now. I could go on for hours because I get you.
Maria Franzoni 5:22
Yeah, it’s wonderful, Mary, and I’m gonna make a comment before I hand over to James, for a question. But I’m always surprised at how little time is spent on scoping by anybody, whether it’s a speaker or trainer, anybody who is dealing with a client, they’ve got a prospect or client in front of them, and they don’t go deep enough. And I’m always surprised by that. James, what what did you want to ask Mary
How Scoping Can Beat Your Competition
James Taylor 5:48
was, so I’m going to be very selfish here. Mary, as I’m listening to this, so I’m gonna come on because speak from the speaker’s perspective here. So one of the things that you talk about is how scoping can actually help you beat your competition. And as big as we can be competitive lots. So can you elaborate on that? How can scoping help us be our competition?
Mary Tillson 6:07
Very happy to I guess I’m not a psychologist. I’m an amateur psychologist, but psychology comes into play here. Okay. seek first to understand is your Stephen Covey habit, no praise about that. Okay, so that’s coming back into the fold again, I touched on some behaviors, Gi Gi Gi, well, actually, there are some other behaviors, which are really useful, can I’m just going to share those with you? Because then that will, that will answer your question, if we learn to seek more information, if we learn to test our understanding of that information, and then we summarize back to the client, what we have heard, and our understanding, instead of simply just giving them information, telling them what we’re going to do, what you are doing behaviorally is you are demonstrating and that’s an incredible keyword you are demonstrating to your potential, your client, the book or whomever, that you are listening, you are demonstrating that you’re listening. And when you demonstrate listening, the psychological impact of that is that you’re sending an incredibly powerful signal to the other person, that you genuinely care about them. Now, when that happens, I don’t know anybody on the planet, who doesn’t respond well to feeling that somebody genuinely cares about what they need, what they want. And that, again, the psychological process is that that natural, instinctive confidence in you begins to quietly increase. Listening is the most brilliant tool for an alien in our situation, but it’s a brilliant one for speaking Skyping. And then what also happens, and I’m happy to share some examples, perhaps further on in the chat, the trust begins to naturally form because of this genuine intent, understand, and what always, I don’t know if you can relate to this. But I mean, oftentimes I found myself, you know, you sometimes have to bring up the gas board or the seaboard or that because it’s some supply somewhere. And you get past political posts, and then you get people to ask you then ask any questions. They just sort of ramble on you. And then somewhere in that organization, it finally gets hold of somebody, he starts to ask you some really great questions. And I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but I sat there and quietly thought, hallelujah, I finally found somebody who understands. Now they haven’t told me anything. They haven’t given me an answer. But the idea is to share the power of somebody else can brilliant questions, really instills that confidence. So for me, why, how does it fight off the competition? I guess, as an example, sort of no names mentioned that there was a client I had never ever met before. I was actually stepping on the behalf of another speaker who had enlisted my help to ask, you know, to get involved for something because they have asked for something that he wasn’t comfortable with. So I got involved in the scoping. I said, Please let me do the scoping for you. The point is, for me, they had never ever met me. They didn’t know me from Adam and Eve him very, very well. But I set about scoping, I asked the questions, I use the tools that I will share with you. And as a result of that, never having met me, we want a huge slice of what they’ve never met me. But we won this huge piece of work, which in fact, was handed over to the speaker. My perspective, if you think about the whole psychology is, why would they bother going to anybody else who’s got time to go searching for somebody else? If you’ve got in front of you, somebody clearly really wants to nail it for you. And it clearly has got some talent because they wouldn’t approach in the first place. Why would they
The Never Asked Question
James Taylor 9:54
do it? Right? It reminds me of something you’ve seen there. I was talking to a client last week and it Was there kind of the top sales executives within this particular client, and they use the phrase, I love this phrase I’ve been using all the time, cuz I just think it’s such a great and it kind of relates to what you’re talking about you said, they were saying that when they’re going up against and they’re selling multimillion-dollar things, I wanna see what the company can company has. But these are big deals. And they say one of the things is drilled into all of their salespeople is, show me that, you know, me, show me that, you know, me, I’m always gonna across the client that you. You’re curious, like you mentioned about questions or asking questions as well, that you’ve done the research already. So you, you’ve asked a lot of the questions yourself before you jump on that call with them as well. So that shows me that, you know, yeah, I think it’s such a really powerful. So I’m interested in when you do the scoping course. Is there one question that you ask of that prospective client or that client? The one that they say, oh, I’ve never been asked that. I’ve never thought about that. Is that one of that kinds of questions that you that they have to really pause and think about?
Mary Tillson 11:04
I could give you dozens of questions came. Okay. I guess one, I guess one that would come to mind for me. And this, in fact, is actually the ones that I just alluded to that client that we want to begin to work with is when I’ve asked lots of questions, it’s wonderful that someone will basic questions, and I got a really good feel for them. I simply said to them, what is your appetite for doing something completely different? Oh, he did never cut them to think out of the box. But as I was asking all my questions, because I suppose my experience I did, you know, I had developed the design shedloads of programs and so on so forth. I can visualize something much bigger than that original justice speech. I know we’re not onto justice, creep.
James Taylor 11:48
No, but you know, I like to I like crushes. It does two things. It’s it does open up. But it also from a sales psychology standpoint, it’s almost like as me as a speaker, I would go at the start of a speech. And you might say something like, you know, there’s two types of people in the world. There are open-minded people, and then there are closed, mind-minded people, there are open mind people that people are willing to adopt, think about new ideas and questions. And then these closed ideas, people who are, you know, just not really interested in what’s going to be happening next and where the industry is going. But hopefully, you’re on the right side, or I’m doing two things. I’m, I’m kind of using sales psychology, I’m also using body language, which is a right-left, hopefully, you’re not. So what do you did there as well, by using that phrase? Are you know, in terms of attitude to risk opening up, you’re also setting up for yourself. And I guess, if you’re maybe presenting two or three different artists, that third, two or three different speakers, that third speaker is maybe a little bit more left of field. But you feel I think this, this client should take a charge on this because I think there’s something here. So you’re getting them to open up to that possibility.
Mary Tillson 12:55
Yeah. Because one of them, you know, one of the things around the whole school thing is it really gets it gets some thinking, you know, they start thinking about things because the number of times that you know, people come to you and say what’s on your leadership, and they don’t really know what they want. But when you start exploring deeper and deeper and deeper, they suddenly realize what they hadn’t thought about. You get the wheel thinking it provides them all this health challenge. Not not in a controversial way, but just by asking some really great questions and just digging a little bit deeper.
More Than Just A Speech
Maria Franzoni 13:25
brilliant, brilliant. Before I ask you my next question, I just want to say hello to Tom Morley and Ty Grady Thomas saying that this is very well-timed. I have a gig coming up where they’ve asked if I can simply add in writing a company anthem, 200 people 45 minutes, I will be scoping what they really want on this call this afternoon. Great. And yeah, and he also says, show me that you know me, I’ll be using that. I’ll be using that. Yeah. That James. Yeah. Hi. I’m Tom is added. Again, Tom’s involvement in the show today. Thank you, Tom. He’s saying appetite is such a neutral world word, which also being a call to adventure clever. Let’s talk a bit further about this appetite thing. Mary? You mentioned, sorry. disappeared, then just sorry, I lost, it will disappear. You lost me. So I want to carry on with the topic of appetite. You mentioned appetite. And to do a bit more, and your clients sometimes want more than just a speech done. Then you mentioned that you alluded to that. Talk to me about how scoping can help you in that respect.
Mary Tillson 14:28
Yeah, for sure. And if James mentioned it clearly in that introduction in a more and more I know you’ve seen this guy’s you know, clients want more, more return on their investment they’re looking for and begging, they want more and not and I think the important thing is there’s nothing wrong with a speech. Okay, there’s nothing wrong with the speech events, all that any speaker because that’s fantastic. But what I but what scoping does is open up the opportunity to do more than that, potentially which two things one is anti-war money, which is always great, but also it really gives your client a much deeper, more long-lasting kind of solution and gets something deeper. So for me, you know what, how does it kind of work? I think there are three things, first of all, any speaker should have in their back pocket. Okay, before you even go near scoping. One is, you can remember this one, the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, I’m sure some of you have heard about it, or have you forgotten all about it. The bottom line is, you know, within about an hour of learning something that research says that we were forgotten 55% of what we heard. Now, you know, why would Why should the client then continue to pound on the speaker to know that within an hour 55% ism is gone is forgotten. And in the back of my head, that’s always worth considering. Because I actually will happily share that with a client as part of my kind of scope. The other thing as well, and I don’t know how many of our listeners are familiar with its the fairly common pilot now that the whole 70 2010 approach to learning and development 70 to 10% comes through like formal learning, which is a speech workshop, and only 10%. Okay, that’s the truth of it, no matter how brilliant the workshop of the speaker is, 20% will come from that kind of social interaction that coaching at one to one that kind of time spent watching somebody observing somebody, can you show me how that WhatsApp group start? and 70% of the real learning where the learning happens, or learning happens, that’s when the behavioral change happens? Yep. comes from that whole application of the learning, and then assignments, projects, and, and so on, so forth. And the third thing that I think you should always have in your back pocket, which helps them consider more than just a speech is for anybody areas, we can think about what are the different ways you potentially could deliver your expertise. As it happens, I mean, a lot of speakers will come to me and ask me to help them because I can take their speech and turn it into a workshop or a whole year’s program, if they hadn’t, sort of figured that out for themselves. Because many speakers don’t know that they can do more. But the key thing is well, is that the client often doesn’t know that they can do more. So when I say more than just a speech, only 10% will come from a speech. So when you’re scoping, it comes into learning. So when you are scoping, I would inject quietly into that conversation. What are your thoughts about embedding the learning? Because we, because we know that said that within an hour 55% is gone? And I wouldn’t you know, I really want you to get that in that return on your investment. Can we explore ways that we potentially could embed the learning beyond the work Beyond Today? What is your appetite, that keyword, again, for align with make the speech more interactive, so it’s more workshop-based? Those kinds of things. So there’s any amount of opportunity, if you have a clear understanding in your head before you go into a scoping conversation of what’s possible, and open the client’s eyes to what’s possible that they may not have even considered. And today is just a speech. Fantastic. No problems with just a speech. But you can do more. Sorry.
Maria Franzoni 18:14
Sorry, I’m brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. James, you’ve had experience actually that the market is asking for more? You personally, haven’t you?
Clients Are Wanting More
James Taylor 18:21
Yeah, it’s I mean, what you’re saying mo Mir really resonates. I always got a little bit frustrated, sometimes working with clients, when it was the call would come in, and it would be looking for a motivational speaker. If they start there, then you see, you get on the call, and your scope you do what you’re talking about there. And you can really see that there’s a deeper thing there. And, and really, because what you’re trying you’re trying to go from, you know, not to say, what what do they think they want, but actually what is what could they really use what is actually going to be useful to them, it’s going to make an impact from a longer-term perspective. And then so in the past, you would kind of set these Ellison can do the speech here, they can’t, that’s great. That’s the tip of the spear guess everyone can have about the vision about the idea, that concept. But as you were saying that that Sunday, the 2010 rule, then you’ve got to the kind of embed that. So I’m suggesting maybe what we do is we do a workshop series. I know some people like to learn in smaller bite-sized chunks. So I actually have an accompanying online course that goes with this for those that prefer to learn that way. And then we have some other things that we can do if people are more experiential learners. So we can have like you build those out. And in the past, it’s been like talking to a brick wall sometimes, because, in the conversation, you might only be having a conversation with the person that owns the event. It was difficult to get the learning and development or the HR people in, but now what’s quite nice about this, a lot of events I’m doing is that you’re having those conversations were not just the C suite personal the VP or the owner of the event, but also the HR l&d persons coming in people with the team are coming in there. So you can have a much broader discussion and the person I think, is his otter doing this. Why don’t you work with Tatiana from London Speaker Bureau? What’s nice about seeing what something like Tatiana, what their team are doing is they know going and working with clients they know rather than just get speakers from us, let’s talk strategically, what are your strategic objectives over the next year to three years? What are the key things? What are the gaps in skills gaps in the organization? And then you cascade it down and speakers? Yeah, there we are in one part of that. But we’re just one part, this facilitator with lots of other people as well. So hallelujah. It’s definitely happening. And maybe the whole pandemic is just going to fast forward at this conversation now, because we have to do some of this stuff, because we don’t have a distributed people now not in the same room.
Mary Tillson 20:47
Yeah, sure. I mean, one of those questions that you’ve sort of conjured that around strategic, what’s going on strategic, this is would be one of the questions that I was asked in the scoping. But a couple of thoughts came to mind for me as well, which might be helpful, is I often say to her, I know what you know, but no one has ever had a problem with this ever. I had said to that potential client. Are you happy for me to play devil’s advocate here? I have never had a problem. And people say Yeah, sure. I said, I just because I’m really and he saw the benefit because I’m really keen to make sure we land there. So are you by provide healthy challenges? Do you have an issue with that? No one is ever said, they have a problem with that. And that that gives you the opportunity to get a bit deeper. The other thought as well, because it just came into my mind is he said that there is one of my favorite words in the English language apart from Yes. To most things, and this is a brilliant word. And I would encourage every speaker, to put it in the toolkit is the simple word specific. Could you be more specific, because that is like a laser beam? And what it does is even the sort of the frontline book and perhaps hasn’t got much knowledge. Could you help me be more forgiving, more specific? What specifically are you looking for? And what that does is really force begin to force thinking. And I use that word a lot to dig a bit deeper. Because then and as he was saying, James, what you were talking about them which I haven’t particularly gone on to talk about because more than just a speech, there is a huge potential for a whole blended program. And then I you know, I can take a one-hour speech and I have done it for speaker before now and turned it into a year-long program. Yeah, which evolves as you said at all and I all those elements of that 70 2010
James Taylor 22:38
I’m James Taylor, keynote speaker, and speaker business coach, and this is the SpeakersU podcast. If you enjoy listening to conversations that will help you launch and grow your speaking business fast new thought possible, then you’ve come to the right place. Each week we discuss marketing strategies, sales techniques, as well as ideas to increase the profitability of your speaking business and develop your craft. You’ll find show notes for today’s episode as well as free speaker business training at SpeakersU.com. This week’s episode is sponsored by SpeakersU the online community for international speakers, SpeakersU helps you launch grow and monetize your speaking business faster than you thought possible. If you want to share your message as a highly paid speaker, then SpeakersU will teach you how just go to SpeakersU don’t come to access their free speaker business training. I will use this back it is there a specific tool or technique that you recommend when it comes to talking thinking about scoping?
Mary Tillson 23:33
Oh, great, good. Television James should be a professional. That’s such a good segue. Thank you. God there is I don’t think that these tools I’m very lucky to be something he learns along the way. And this is a multifunctional tool that comes through the stable of a couple of camera fleuri and it is famously linked to Apollo 13. Houston, we got a problem because captain for era problem-solving solution company, they have a whole range of tools. And one of them is good critical questions. I use this faithfully every time I scope. It’s a simple tool, and I think simply has a few elements to it. And I’ll give you a bit of a headline here if you want to know more kind of find the office today guys. But there are essentially two parts of the process. First of all, what you would want to do initially is usually when I’m caught you divert your thinking with a client, you go big, okay, you go big, and you ask the various questions and then you’ll end up and I’ll show those in a moment. And you end up with a lot of information, Okay, and then I have the client fill the wall, and there’s lovely days when you could be in our office with paper and human beings with electronic paper and we have just brain dumped on paper. What you then do is have a long hard look at this and then you what we call converge it down. It’s something I’m not gonna get to detail the process took me Beyond Today, then we want to find out more. I will do that. But essentially the four headline questions. Okay. The core questions and underneath that there is a myriad a lot of other questions and four main questions. And I actually always say to the client, I’d like to use a tool called critical questions to help me really get under the skin of what you’re looking for. It will help me develop a great answer for your solution. Are you happy? If I get on that route? Always say yes. They always say yeah, so the first question, the first headline question is, Mr. client, you know, what results? Are you looking to achieve? You’ve asked for something or leadership, or innovation or resilience, whatever that headline theme is, what results are you looking to achieve? There are a number of questions underneath that. For example, can you help me understand specifically that love the word again? Why do you need it? What are the drivers that sit behind that request? So you’re beginning to dig a bit deeper? Now? I know they’re getting the questions. But that’s just a flavor of those questions. The next question, the next headline question, which always causes every client to think they’d never thought about this, Mr. client, you know, you want something on leadership, you want me to deliver something, or leadership or innovation or whatever it is? What risks Do we have to avoid? So if I, whatever I’m doing, so it could be, for example, you know, are there any other business initiatives taking place that I need to be mindful of that I don’t then, you know, crash into, as a result, whatever I might do, because that’s not the question many people think to ask, and you know, those once a year, if you’ve been busy, most of you have, there’s always so much going on in business and got their global teams, and they’ve got their Europe NBA teams, and you need to make sure that you’re not clashing. The third main question is, sometimes people get a bit, struggled with this one. But when you explain that, what symptoms are you looking to remove? So for example, if you I mean, I guess there’s a number of questions there. But you know, what issues or concerns or behavioral things are going on currently in your business, that you want to actually eradicate take away? You know, what it was, like? Always that what’s the pain point? And actually quite a useful one there when we think about the whole speaking topic is, have you had a speaker on this before? Were there any issues or comments or thoughts around how they delivered it that I need to be mindful of? And then the fourth one, the fourth headline question under which there are gazillions of questions is all around what logistics? and resources? Do we have to consider? Excuse me? So that’s a whole load of stuff around a number of people, you know, their background, that hierarchy from layout, because sometimes not the only one that can really catch you unawares if you’ve got the wrong room layout? And then also, what’s going on in the business? What I would then be finding out what are your company values? What are the events are going on? But you’re digging deeper into that one? So there’s
Control The Controllable
James Taylor 28:32
that discussion with you. It’s interesting those questions. So the immediate thing I’m thinking about here, and I’m just taking the perspective of the speaker, yep. is sometimes when you have those conversations, the people you’re having conversations don’t know, they really don’t know that they’re not a level in the organization. And it’s almost like a little bit different if, if I was a consultant for McKinsey or a consultant for Boston Consulting Group, I think one of the things Boston Consulting, McKinsey, I think maybe only ever deals with the C suite, the top level, because they feel that they if when they ask questions, they’re not going to be able to get the answers they need, and then kind of get the buy-in. So the only ever deal with a top-level in an organization, that’s a strategic decision that they made, while other ones other consultants will work from the bottom, and then gradually try to get up as high as they possibly can in the organization. So I’m guessing that’s the one thing as I’m hearing those, I would love to ask those questions, some people and some of my clients, but sometimes you’re just talking with an event organizer, who doesn’t have a, you know, they just don’t know the client has never told them because they’re not doing what you’re doing, which is scoping normally, yeah, sure.
Mary Tillson 29:46
Well, I mean, that, to me, the simple answer for that is, you know, control the controllable and avoid them. I’m putting one-liners okay. I, the for me, I would actually be saying to that I totally I absolutely understand You know, when it’s apparent that they don’t have any information, which is happening a lot. But I, I have always said, you know, is there somebody in the organization that you can let me talk to you? Is there somebody that I could talk to? And you know what, they may well be able to find somebody because they hadn’t thought about the questions I’ve asked them, they suddenly realize how important it is to understand that information. They’re realizing how little they know. And so again, they have not always, but they have come back in the past. And you know, if they haven’t come back in the past, and you end up having the barest minimum of information to work with, well, I know every speaker that listens to that will be brilliant and will do a great job. It’s just frustrating that we can’t do an even better job. But he does control the controllable. To show happiness.
Maria Franzoni 30:47
Fabulous. I’m gonna just check in with you we’ve got some more comments. So we’ve got Shaquille a Chohan. I hope I’ve pronounced that right, Shaquille, and please forgive me if I have not. I’ve always spoken about embedding the learning by offering further workshops and training so that their initial investment isn’t wasted. The clients love it and the invoice is bigger. tamale has in a quote said your initial investment isn’t wasted genius. So Tom’s got great value out of this session. He’s got the questions he needs to ask. He’s got a couple of great quotes. So, Tom, the invoice will be in the post. I like a drum solo, please do. Oh, yeah. jumps over it. So, Mary, I know that there are lots and lots of examples where quality scoping has led to more business. Could you share one of them with us?
When Quality Scoping Worked
Mary Tillson 31:30
Yeah. Happy to Yeah. Okay. Yeah, for example. Okay, so a client approached us, and they will not meet personally for doing it. But they approached us, okay, the Bureau, okay. And they wanted a speaker on innovation. Now, innovation is a big topic, as I’m sure everybody knows, anybody understands. So I, I got a hold of the client, and I spoke with them. And I worked my way through all those questions. Okay. Now, they initially had come to us because they wanted a speaker on innovation Bay in their head, they were looking for speech. Okay. But I asked a lot of questions. Because also, you’re I know that innovation doesn’t happen overnight. You know, you can teach people the tools of innovation, but this teaching doesn’t make people innovative. Okay, it just gives them the tools. And so when I had asked this question, so again, part of that process is asking all those questions in your results to achieve risks, symptoms, logistics, I then sat back. And the other part of that process, which I’ll just touch on lightly, is you then look at all that all the information that the customer is giving you, and then you look for one called common threads. Now, what was coming through to me very strongly from this client was that they wanted to create a culture of innovation, they didn’t just want to be the preserve of the r&d team. Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist in though that speech is not that great culture. So I, again, basically, in my sort of some, some summary with them, and then ultimately, it became the proposal. I said you know, what is your episode sort of the budget for doing more than just dealing with speech because I think there’s a huge opportunity here that we can really embed this, but we need to do a wee bit more than just a speech. So as I saw a lot of scoping, and they duplicated the Justice speech, a whole blended program was then created. So we had the speech to front-loaded, but it was a workshop, it became its speech was, in fact, a virtual workshop. And then we added in coaching, we added in project teams, because we wanted people to get back into the workplace, and explore the ideas they created in the workshop, okay. And then also, most innovations, which I knew Never Land because they don’t present the word enough, they’re not influential in how they land or presented the CEO or whomever. So I knew that there was an opportunity here to then build into presentation skills training, as well. And then actually, to bring it to real fruition, we put in a piece of the end where they actually want say, use the tools of innovation, had the skills of how to present a land that they sell at various, their idea, they then had to present all their ideas lie to the executive board. And then underpinning all that, we put in a sort of champions program where we could actually use their internal resources to then cascade some of the learning and the theory throughout the business because it was a big business of global and they’ve never been able to afford for the for this program to go globally, but we set them up that they could deliver it internally. So that’s an example and it started as I think just to speak in the mind of the client. But when they like pulled out, you know, this sustainability needed to sustain culture. They began to ask Allah we need there’s another You’re here to do way more than we thought.
Maria Franzoni 35:03
Happiness is fabulous. And it was a huge success. So wonderful, brilliant.
James Taylor 35:08
That’s tip there any speakers listening, because I know this for some very successful speakers have told me this as well. If you want to add some zeros to your overall average deal size with a client, add that phrase, how to a culture of something because the culture moves it one level, you’re almost immediately talking to more senior people in the organization, which is on my culture. Fantastic. Mary, if people want to work with you and to get help with them on their scoping, and they can’t, their content creation, what’s the best way for them to be able to do that?
Mary Tillson 35:39
I think just probably the LinkedIn phase. If you see my name on the screen here, I mean, I haven’t been married that long. So I spent a lot forever the marriage of children. But that is my married name. And that is also the name that’s on my LinkedIn profile. So hook up with me on there, just reach out to me and I am going on holiday for a fortnight, so I might not be jumping onto it straight away. But I will absolutely reach out to you. And then if need be, we can get to tier-one too one and I will scope with you. what your needs are. scope, your scope, and I’d like I’d be very happy to help.
Maria Franzoni 36:10
I can establish James, we love to share top tips. And so we ask our guests if they have top tips here. Mary, do you have a top tip? And do you have a gadget you’d like to share with us?
Mary Tillson 36:22
You’re the gadget guru. I am. I always know one line Mary one line, I’m pulling one-liners mantras. Okay, so for me, first of all, I would encourage anybody to find their mantra. Now I have mantras that kind of roll my life all the way through. And then I might have what I call seasonal mantras if something’s happening in my life, but I have two mantras that I use all the time, okay, which is one of my top tips. So the top tip is a mantra, but I’ll share mine with you set up for success. I can solve and we get set up for failure. So if you have a set up for success, man for it, that means every piece of work I do whenever I’m working with any speaker or a client, I’m always thinking Am I second off success, it guides my thinking. And as Marino’s I can hear another pound going into the box.
Maria Franzoni 37:13
I’ve got a pounding machine a pound so I put money in every time she says I’m gonna buy myself a Tesla. Can you remember? begin with the end in mind. You pinch that from somebody though, didn’t you?
Mary Tillson 37:25
Yep. And I am not a gadget queen. You can probably see I’m not surrounded by green screens and everything else as well. I leave all that to Maria and James. But I am. I never go anywhere without my flip chart patterns by magic. I never go anywhere without my bit job and
Maria Franzoni 37:42
fabulous. James, I think you’ve got a tool you’re going to share with us which is going to blow Mary’s mind because it is a gadget. Would you like to
Tool Of The Week
James Taylor 37:51
Yeah, so just before we’re talking Mary and I were talking about a speaker that I’m a big fan of who recently passed away, unfortunately, Edward de Bono. And I know Mary’s worked with Edward when he was alive as well. So I’ve never seen Edward when I was about four and married Maria, you’ve all worked, I booked him. And so so the thing I was really impressed with when I saw Edward de Bono before, is he wasn’t flashy, it definitely if he was still he would be using green screens now I’m sure. But his ideas were really they had dynamite to them. They’re really breathtaking ideas. And he was a very intelligent man. But he managed to compress these ideas than to knowing that stories will make people listen for visuals make people remember. So what used to do is he used to use this is like in the 80s 90s acetates. If anyone remembers those, everyone’s at school in that kind of time. And I wanted to try and figure out a way of doing a kind of de Bono thing, especially more my workshops less so than the keynotes. And so I invested in a little, another little iPad, and one of these is an apple pen. And what this is really fun, it means that when I’m doing my presentations now, and I get to a point in the presentation where I want to usually kind of talk about maybe kind of some concept, it allows me to just kind of very quickly to get a little bit creative with it and to start drawing. And to kind of explain that thing. And to point to that and to talk about that thing. And if I make a is not particularly attractive the way I’m doing this just now, but it just it gets people kind of sucked in, it’s still a little bit kind of different. But if I do it well and I explained something well and I do some kind of nice visual representation of the concept of my idea, then people are more likely to remember that than if I share a stat or even sometimes if I tell a story, think sometimes visuals just kind of put themselves in the brain. So I have a lot of fun with my apple pen and I’m just doing a very basic version for you just now but sometimes when I do, I’ll actually have my presentation, my PowerPoint behind me and I’m almost kind of annotating my presentation as I go on. So that’s my little tool of the week and the tool that I use for this. Just like You know if for those that are techies is a tool called notability. And we’ll put it in if people go to speaking business.tv. It’s just a little app that I use on it. I use it in combination with E cam, which is the software.
Maria Franzoni 40:14
I’ve made a note because I’ve now got gadget envy. So anyway, we are going to let’s see how to change the view, see, oh, there we go. I’ve changed the view that we’ve not done this before. It’s interesting. It’s like a TV show. So we’re going to be taking a couple of weeks off. And last time we were finishing the show last week, you said to me who’s on the next show, and I didn’t know I’ve looked it up this time. I didn’t know it was Mary, how important is that? So when we come back in August, we will be having new malarkey, helping us with improv techniques. And malarkey is one of the founders of the comedy saw players. So it should be a lot of fun. So James, what are you going to get up to? What are you going to get up to for the next two weeks while we’re not online?
James Taylor 40:56
working good stuff for you. I’ve got a speech like every single day, until we meet again, but I will take a little proper holiday once the madness finishes maybe in September, but so unfortunate, I’m gonna get I’m getting straight back to work after this. I’ve got a speech to prepare,
Maria Franzoni 41:12
blinded by Mary, what did you do for the next couple of weeks?
Mary Tillson 41:14
Well, I’m not doing what we thought we were doing because COVID has completely scuppered all our plans, but very good karma to have time off. So I am not going to be working. I’m sorry, I’m not as conscientious as you guys. I have having two weeks off in the lobby, but we’re going to have a few days I adore say we’re having a night and are really like sexually hibiscus is so lovely. And then we’ll just go for what we walk on the beach, do the garden decent brands, really not?
Maria Franzoni 41:37
Fabulous. I’m off to Cornwall for a week with the dogs. And I’m also going with the first draft of my book, how to how to be more bookable and how to make more money. And Mary obviously has contributed to that. And in fact, you’ve contributed to it. We’ve used you as a case study which is so I hope I like it, and I don’t end up using it as toilet paper. Anyway, folks, have a wonderful two weeks without us, Mary, thank you for giving us so much incredible value. really brilliant. I mean, I’ve heard this news. I’ve heard you use it and we’ve used it was a and I always end up making more notes. It’s fabulous. Thank you, James. Thank you.
James Taylor 42:11
Thank you have a great holiday. Thank you for asking me. You’re welcome. You can subscribe to the SpeakersU podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts while you’re there. leave us a review. I really appreciate it. I’m James Taylor, and you’ve been listening to the SpeakersU podcast.
-How Quality Scoping Can Win You More Business
