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The Objective: Showcase Mark Sanborn to prospective clients to secure paid speaking engagements.
The Problem/Challenge: Current collateral was not meeting to client’s expectations. A new approach to selling Mark. Sanborn was needed.
Mark Sanborn’s fee for a speaking engagement is in the range of $12,000 – $25,000 (plus travel expenses). The challenge, therefore, was to convince his audience that he was worth that price.
Mark has had informational packets and brochures in the past, so the challenge was to come up with some new material that would resonate with his audience and differentiate him from his competitors. (More on that in the Writing Process section).
User & Audience: The primary audience for this presentation packet was meeting and event planners of large businesses and organizations.
Team & Role: The team consisted of the marketing manager, Mark’s personal assistant, and me (the sales copywriter). I handled all facets of the copywriting and the general organization of the presentation packet
Writing Process: The first order of business was to have Mark’s team fill out a Design Brief, so I could learn more about his overall objective and his audience. You can see the Design Brief I send out here.
I researched the speakers’ bureaus to see how his competition stacked up. I “lurked around” on meeting event planner forums to see what their trials and tribulations were in regard to booking speakers. (To be perfectly honest, there wasn’t much there).
While keeping in with Mark’s overall theme and his voice, I dug deep to find something that differentiated him from his colleagues that was never showcased before. Mark has two designations on his name (CSP, CPAE) that were never talked about in any of his other marketing materials. Since these are highly earned designations, I chose to highlight them as well as get the audience (event planners) to understand why those designations were so important to the end user.
Additionally, I focused on making the presentation packet “YOU” focused. While previously collateral, focused on Mark’s books, I chose to focus on how Mark can make the event planner look good in the eyes of their bosses and their audience.
I also wanted to showcase that Mark is ranked in the “Top 1% of his peers,” which is something that he’s earned but was never really showcased in his marketing materials. I broke down the numbers so his audience could see how he really was the leader in his industry.
Outcome: Mark was very happy with the final outcome of the project. The overall presentation packet gives a warm and personal view of one of the top speakers in the industry—and shows that any event planner would be honored to have Mark speak at their event.
My Personal Thoughts: I really enjoyed working on this project, and the designers did an excellent job with the whole layout of the presentation packet. Having the client fill out my Creative Brief was very helpful in getting a running start on this project.
The final product can be found here