Booking international speakers and facilitators that are already coming to Australia can give you a great draw card for your event, a fresh point of view, as well as substantially reducing the cost of bringing in an international speaker or facilitator yourself. To see who else will be visiting our shores click here.

Verne Harnish Visiting from: US Dates: 10-20 Sept 2010 Named one of the Top 10 minds in Small Business by Fortune Small Business, Verne has a long and influential track record with entrepreneurial and emerging businesses. MORE			Marcus Buckingham Visiting from: USA Dates: June 2010 Marcus Buckingham's first lesson for teaching CEOs how to get more out of their people: Forget everything you think you know about being a leader. MORE			Gill Hicks Visiting from: UK Dates: August 2010 Gill's own story, told in her book, One Unknown is essentially that of an Adelaide-born girl abroad suddenly caught up in an international terrorism attack. MORE			Tim Gard Visiting from: US Dates: 19-23 June 2010 Tim Gard, CSP, CPAE is a drop-dead funny, laugh-out-loud humorist who consistently delivers a rejuvenating and immediately applicable message to others. MORE

We asked the question, "What is Courage to you?" and some of our speakers and Ovations team answered what courage means to them... watch them live!

NATIONAL SPEAKER SHOWCASE 2010

In a new initiative for the events industry, Ovations will kick off it's National Speaker Showcase 2010 road show in Melbourne next Tuesday the 8th at the Novotel Hotel. The biggest event of its kind will showcase around Australia with it's finest speakers and entertainers including International guest speakers Tim Gard, Steve Lundin and Ngahihi Bidois.
 

OVATIONS INTERNATIONAL YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Check out our latest videos on our very own Ovations YouTube Channel. The Video Channel has been created to provide a place where our speakers who are committed to living their best lives can share positive thoughts and insights and share their experiences with all of us. We hope you enjoy our videos and learn a little more about our fabulous speakers. Feel free to leave your comments.
 

CONGRATULATIONS PROMOTION WINNERS

Congratulations to Veritas! Your name was drawn out the hat from the list of companies who booked speakers with us in May. You have won a fantastic Speex video package to the value of $1,500+. You can use this for your next event invitation, filmed interview or marketing communication.

Congratulations to Philippa Margan from Next Stage Events for sending in your winning tactics to avoid distractions. Look out for your copy of Siimon Reynolds new book, Why People Fail in the mail. Thanks to all who entered last month.

Nescafe Appointments... with Kirsty Spraggon

I remember being in a training session about 18 months into my real estate career. The trainer berated us for wasting our time on ‘Nescafe appointments’, which according to him were appointments where we were wasting our time having coffee with people that weren’t qualified to buy immediately.

However, when I looked at my current client list I noticed something. Out of the 15 clients I had at that moment, I had met 12 of them at a ‘Nescafe appointment’ 9-18 months prior. This was the first time I started to question the sales training and I thought ‘perhaps this guy’s got it wrong and I’m onto something’. It seemed my way of ‘relationship building’ was working.

You see all of those coffees are deposits in your future business bank account and your personal bank account. Each relationship was valuable in different ways...some teach you about relationships! Without the early meetings in my career, how would I have improved my abilities to build empathy, trust and rapport? Some relationships provide support and others become clients and referring partners, and a million other benefits can come from building great relationships rather than focusing on an immediate sale.

In the short-term, it may appear that just closing a sale with someone who has an immediate need is more effective, but you could be missing out on 90% of your potential market!

This is because you would be limiting yourself to dealing only with the very small percentage of the market ready and willing to work with you today. Yet industry research strongly suggests that depending on your particular sales industry there is usually a 9-18 month incubation period from the first point of contact until the time when a new client actually purchases your product or service. 9-18 months! Just like my Nescafe appointments. That means you would be missing out on a lot of business by only working with the ‘right here, right now’ prospects. Not only would you be making things a lot harder for yourself in the long run, but you would also be doing yourself out of all the extra repeat and referral business that would otherwise come your way effortlessly through clients feeling so well taken care of and appreciated.

Kirsty Spraggon's book, Work As If You Own It invites readers into a world of understanding clients through simple yet powerful strategies that develop business relationships that will grow your business at warp speed. For anyone wanting to go into a draw to win one of Kirsty's books, please email your details and let us know if you schedule time in your week to grow or strengthen your business relationships.

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