3 Reasons for Speaking Virtually

“A talk is a voyage with purpose and it must be charted. The man who starts out going nowhere, generally gets there.” – Dale Carnegie

If you are not speaking virtually, “you are leaving money on the table.” What is virtual speaking? Virtual speaking is speaking to people remotely through your computer using applications such as Zoom, Webex, or Skype.

As a speaker, you might be saying, “But I want to be in front of people speaking live.” I think many speakers feel this way, me included. However, if you are ignoring speaking virtually, you are hurting yourself in “your pocketbook.”

I am going to explore three reasons why you should supplement your live speaking with speaking virtually.

You Can Reach Many More People

Believe it or not, 3.5 billion of the 7.5 billion people in the world have Internet service. That’s 3.5 billion people it is possible to reach with your virtual speaking. If you only reach 0.1% of these people, that is 3.5 million people. If you only reach 0.01% of these people, that is 350,000 people. If you only reach 0.001%, that is still 35,000 people. By leveraging the power of the Internet, you can service an enormous amount of people.

Now, of course, all the people you reach will not become customers. Let’s say you reach 0.01% of the people on the Internet and only 1% are buying customers. That would mean you have 3,500 people who are buying customers and a large majority of these customers are probably repeat customers. What business wouldn’t like that customer base?

Not only does virtual speaking reach many more people than live speaking, it reduces your costs tremendously.

You Can Reduce Your Costs

Because your virtual learning experience happens in the comfort of your office or home, there are no transportation, hotel, or time costs. Time costs are the money you spend to travel to the airport near your speaking venue, travel from the airport to your hotel and check into your hotel, and setting up your laptop computer in your hotel room. When you speak remotely, these costs are saved and can be used for other important things like generating leads, satisfying your customers, or answering critical e-mail messages.

If you are an employer or an entrepreneur, virtual meetings create efficiency because your team could be dispersed around the country and/or around the world. In fact, you may never meet your employees and/or consultants face-to-face.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are real advantages to meeting in person. However, in business, there is a balancing act that is performed by every business owner every day in determining the return on investment of bringing people together in one place or meeting virtually. Only the business owner can decide which is more advantageous for his or her business. However, technology has advanced to the point where it is very easy for anyone set up a virtual meeting and meet virtually.

So, virtual speaking reaches many more people than live speaking and it reduces your costs tremendously. But, did you know that it can provide an additional stream of income when you are sleeping?

You Can Add an Additional Multiple Stream of Income

We all have 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. If you only get paid by your customers when you are speaking live, there will be an upper limit on your business’s earnings. Any service you provide where you are trading your time for being paid by your customers limits the possible income from live speaking.

Virtual speaking is an additional stream of income for your business. We have already talked about the vastly greater number of people you can reach and the costs you can save by speaking virtually. In addition to selling your live virtual speaking, you can sell the recording of this speaking whether it be a webinar, a keynote address delivered virtually, one-on-one coaching, or many other methods of delivering your services.

The best part of speaking virtually is through the technology of the mechanism you use, you can record your virtual speaking and either sell the whole video or divide the video into parts and sell them separately. Here is where the selling while you are sleeping comes in. Post these videos in your web site store so people around the world can benefit and yes, pay for the privilege of watching you in action.

In this article I have touched on but three advantages of speaking virtually. There are many more. Below are links to three articles that talk about the advantages and disadvantages of speaking virtually. They’re a good read.

• Advantages and Downside of Virtual Meeting Services

• The 8 Benefits of Virtual Meetings

• What Are the Benefits of Virtual Meetings?

So, virtual speaking reaches many more people than live speaking, reduces your costs tremendously, and provides an additional stream of income.

Are you interested in earning more income? I am!

Your Call to Action

• Read books and articles on the Internet on how to develop, deliver, and market webinars and then put what you learn into action

• Total the transportation, hotel, time costs and any other costs from having to travel to your last speaking venue to see how much money you would be saving if you spoke virtually

• Develop estimates of how much additional income you will make from selling recordings of your webinars

“Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.” – Robert Greenleaf