News from NSA Virginia

The Communicator

A Newsletter for Members of NSA VA

November 2011

In This Issue

October Meeting

Notable Quotable

ProTrack Update

What's So Great About NSA National?

Tools of the Trade

NSA VA Member Recognition

Evening of Peace & Joy

Time to Change It Up!

Board Members

Quick Links

Register Now for Nov. Meeting

More About Us

Newsletter Coordinator:

Joan Bowling

We appreciate any comments, article submissions and other ideas.

Hello NSA Virginia!

If it seems like this fall's slate is almost back-to-back

meetings, it is! As of press time, we haven't had Michel Neray visit our Chapter yet, but I'm certain he's going to provide an energetic presentation October 28. And November 11, Todd Cohen, President-elect of NSA-Philadelphia will be riding the rails into Williamsburg to teach us how to sell ourselves as speakers. I've known Todd for a few years, and we are in for a morning of both humor and practical application.

And if you're wondering about this fall's schedule, yes, ordinarily we try to meet every third Friday, but speaker availability, as well as National events, sometimes press us to change up. I'm hoping we've posted the 2011-12 season dates on the website early enough this year for everyone to mark NSA Virginia on your calendars. We miss you when you're not with us!

The final IF: If you have any feedback or suggestions for Chapter activities or you'd like to become more involved, feel free to contact me or any of the Chapter leadership team. We have a page on the website with links to each person, and we'd love to hear from you. (www.nsavirginia.org)

Happy Speaking, and see you soon!

Coleen Kenny

President, NSA Virginia

Everyone is in Sales: Building Your Own Sales Culture

As professional speakers, it is ultimately up to us to sell ourselves. In this highly interactive program, Todd Cohen will help you develop your own sales culture and to help you build your speaking, training, or other entrepreneurial business. Todd will cover Creating your own Personal Value Proposition, Establishing a Virtual Team, and Assessing your Relationship Portability. See Todd's website for more information.

Todd Cohen works with sales leaders who want to create a sales culture so that more sales happen. Since 1984, Todd has coached and led sales teams to deliver more than $500 million in revenue for leading companies including Xerox, Gartner Group, Pensare, Thomson-Reuters, and LexisNexis.

Click here to learn more about the guest speaker.

Click here to register now!

Notable Quotable:

As November guest speaker Todd Cohen says, "Everyone's in Sales" - and it's important to engage your entire organization in the sales process. Skip Ferebee, Director, Admission Sales & Consumer Development at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation shares these "big 3" tenets to the success of their consumer direct sales culture:

Maintain guest-centric focus - "The needs of the guest come first; we then match that up with experiential options here at Colonial Williamsburg. Repeat visitation is high here; therefore focusing on the "lifetime value" of our guests is the appropriate guest-centric lens to apply to our engagement with them which strives to be "relational" more than just "transactional" focused."
Equip our employees - "This includes training, incentives, two way communications that include daily "actionable" reporting; not just on sales figures but also guest service. I qualify the word "actionable" because too many times we are exposed to a myriad of reports that we don't take action on. Our philosophy is only measure the data you can take action on, and take action on the data you receive."
Accountability by All - "Everyone is key to the success of the organization. Each and every employee affects sales; from the beginning of the path-to-purchase cycle all the way to post purchase, advocacy then back to the beginning of the cycle. It is critical that employees know the role they play and, more importantly, feel fully informed on the organizations' objectives and strategies. We find that instead of just telling employees about a consumer offer about to hit the marketplace, we explain to them why we are executing it, who we are targeting, who it benefits and who it doesn't. We then tie it into how it meets the organizations overall objective. We have found that this helps not only sales, but guest service ratings and employee morale as they now feel vested in the initiative and have a deeper knowledge base which results in a more positive guest engagement."

Unfiltered, open communication from everyone in your organization builds trust and establishes loyalty. The commitment to this path establishes passion for the mission of your company.

ProTrackers Making Good Progress

By Ron Chapman, NSA Vice President and ProTrack Dean

The ProTrack class had a good session in September after the chapter's monthly meeting in Norfolk. We spent some time getting to know everyone in the group and identifying the expectations that everyone had for the program. The ProTrack Team (Winston, Vickie and me) will use the information to tailor each session to the needs of the group.

We then moved into a discussion about clarifying the topic for our businesses and speeches. Each ProTracker stood up and provided their 30 second elevator speech to describe what they do. We recorded each and provided it to the speaker on an SD card so they can review it later. We will use video recording throughout the program.

In discussing the results, it became apparent that while each of us knows what we can offer to a client, it is difficult to articulate that in a meaningful and memorable way. After 19 years of attempts, I'm better at it, but still find myself struggling at times when I'm addressing a new prospect.

The homework was to review Marc LeBlanc's book, "Growing Your Business" and focus on developing their defining statement. We will review the results in our next session and work with Gloria Thomas to "Dig Deeper" in finding the true essence of our expertise and how to package that for our markets.

We also assigned mentors for each person and divided the class into to two accountability groups to help everyone make progress between meetings.

What's So Great About NSA National?

Submitted by Mary Foley

Once upon a time, long, long ago, speakers across the land spent thousands and thousands of dollars creating a speaker demo tape that they would duplicate onto VHS tapes or DVDs. These precious marketing pieces would be stacked end upon end in boxes that were also filled with printed speaker kits containing one-sheets, bios and PR bits. Being tenacious marketers, these speakers would ship demo tapes and speaker kits to meeting planners and prospective clients several times a week or month.

Whew, what an expensive, exhaustive load! Thank goodness to today's technology and eSpeakers.com, the first complete business management system designed for professional speakers by professional speakers.

At the very minimum, using eSpeakers' platform you can instantly have a professional place online for your speaker demo, bio and topics. But there's much more.