Media Training Worldwide

The Handout Strategy

Imagine you’ve been invited to speak at an industry conference in front of 2000 people, and a full 15% of those people are ideal prospects for your company’s products or services. What do you do? You can’t necessarily give handouts to that many people. You will lose credibility if you use a lot of your time to give a blatant sales pitch. So how do you make a stronger connection with your ideal prospects hidden in the large audience?

One useful but under-used tactic is to touch on a subject lightly, but then say “If you’d like more information on (subject x), specifically the 7 key things you need to do in order to make (y) happen, I have a handout that I will give to you if you come up to me immediately after the presentation.” It’s a free handout, so nobody can accuse you of being too self-promotional. Now, you have your best prospects coming up to you and asking for more information. It’s not simply a rehashing of information you already covered, so people who are genuinely interested will feel like they need to come up to you.

Of course, your handout will also have all of your contact information, web site address, and phone numbers. As people are coming up to you after your presentation, you will have great one-on-one time with prospects. An added bonus is that because there are more people coming up to you now, you will be perceived as more of a “guru” than you might have been if only a few people had come up to you (without the free information sheet offered). This enhanced credibility can only help your positioning and sales process with the remaining prospects you are speaking with.

So use your handouts, but use them strategically and use them to give out information that is not covered in your presentation.