How to Connect with Your Audience with Joey Coleman.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. I'm Peter George, public speaking trainer, speaker, and award-winning author of The Captivating Public Speaker. My guest this week is Joey Coleman. Joey helps companies from around the world keep their customers. An award-winning speaker and best-selling author, he works with companies ranging from small startups to major brands such as Deloitte, Hyatt, Zappos, and Whirlpool. His first 100 days methodology fuels the remarkable experiences his clients deliver and dramatically improves their profits. His Wall Street Journal No. 2 best-selling book, Never Lose a Customer Again, offers strategies and tactics for turning one-time purchasers into lifelong customers. Here's my chat with Joey Coleman.

Never Lose a Customer Again

Peter: Tell us a little bit about your best-selling book, Never Lose a Customer Again.

Joey: Most companies spend the majority of their time, money, and effort on acquisition — how to market, how to sell, how to fill a funnel. Very few spend much time on customer retention. In writing the book, I found that somewhere between 20 and 80% of new customers will decide to stop doing business with you before the 100-day anniversary. So what I set out to do was create a framework and philosophy for how to think differently about customer experience — specifically, what happens after the sale. If you get to day 101 and the customer is still feeling fantastic about the relationship, the typical customer will stay for five years. No period is more valuable, or more dispositive of a customer's lifetime value, than those first 100 days. The book is filled with 46 case studies from companies of all sizes from around the world.

Peter: I'll give you a case study right here. When I read the book, I realized that if someone registers for one of my workshops a couple of months out, I wasn't hearing from them again until the day of. Once I stayed top of mind with them in between, they started referring others. So thank you.

Joey: Most folks have heard of buyer's remorse. Every hand in the room goes up when I ask about it. But when I ask who has a system designed to address it, not many hands follow. Customers feel neglected after the sale — which is why they leave. It doesn't take a ton of time or effort. Just a communication here or there to remind them you're still there, they still matter, and you're looking forward to seeing them. Not only does that make them feel appreciated, it often turns them into your best salespeople.

How Joey Got Into Speaking

Peter: You have an incredibly diverse background. How did you get into speaking?

Joey: I've been a speaker really my entire life. I grew up the son of a criminal defense lawyer — I joke that my dad was judge, jury, and executioner when it came to going out on Friday nights, so I was persuading juries from a very young age. I was on the high school speech and debate team, sang with a group in college doing announcements and presentations, and in law school competed on the mock trial, moot court, and alternative dispute resolution boards nationally and internationally. By the time I became a criminal defense lawyer, I had already given over 4,000 speeches — and I define a speech as me standing in front of an audience speaking for more than five minutes where they came to the room to hear me speak. So when I later decided to become a full-time professional speaker, I had already done a great deal of it.

The Challenges Keep Growing

Peter: What was your biggest challenge early on?

Joey: The challenges haven't changed that much — they've just increased in scale. Before it was, how do I give this speech in front of a room of other debate teams? Now it's, how do I walk on stage in front of 6,000 people and convince them to change how they think about their customers in 40 minutes? As a shift from my criminal defense days, I joke that the stakes are actually lower now — if I misspeak, I get lower scores on the feedback sheets. Before, if I misspoke, someone went to prison.

Three Types of Speakers

Joey: I believe there are three types of speakers: those who make you think differently, those who make you feel differently, and those who make you act differently. While I certainly hope my audiences think and feel differently after hearing me speak, if they don't act differently, I don't feel like I've earned my fee as the keynote speaker. The bar I'm always trying to clear is: have I positioned my message in a way that compels them to take action after the talk?

Presentation Style — Be Yourself

Peter: Your presentation style has been described as warm, funny, and inviting. What advice do you have for our listeners when it comes to developing their own presentation style?

Joey: The most important thing is to present in a way that's in alignment with who you are. There are many speakers who are warm and inviting on stage and the second they step off, they're anything but. In my experience, those folks don't develop long-term careers. The best speakers craft their own style. My uncle is a Shakespearean actor and director, and he shared this with me: when someone is on stage sleeping, there are two types of performers. One you look at and say, "That person's sleeping." The other you look at and say, "That person's sleeping — and I can tell they're having a dream right now." I strive to be the latter. When a speaker's persona isn't in alignment with who they really are, audiences figure it out — and on stage, that realization is compressed and amplified. It takes less time, and the consequence is greater.

Seven People in Rome

Peter: You've said something powerful — this might be your 89th performance this year, but for this audience, it's the only one.

Joey: So true. In college, I had the opportunity to sing with the Notre Dame Glee Club. We traveled to Europe the summer after my sophomore year, and our first stop was Rome. The conductor asked me to sing the solo in the Ave Maria — I had never sung a solo with the group before. We're in Rome for Pete's sake. This was amazing. Five minutes before we went on, I sneaked a look at the audience. There were seven people in the basilica. Seven total. We had 50 guys on the tour. I was crestfallen. Then an older member of the group gathered everyone together and said:

That changed my focus entirely. And I think of it often when I take the stage as a professional speaker. It doesn't matter how many people are in the room. This is my moment of time with them. For many of them, this is the only time we will ever be in the same room. I want it to be magical, remarkable, and memorable. And that gives me all the juice I need to take the stage and deliver.

The Power of Storytelling

Peter: Throughout your book you use relatable stories. What do you see as the power of storytelling?

Joey: Storytelling is the oldest form of communication — the cavemen huddled around the fire and told stories. This is millennia old. It is an intrinsic part of any presentation and a huge opportunity to shape the experience. And stories make points portable. If I give you six steps and ask you to memorize them, that's one thing. If I tell you a series of stories that let you find those six steps in the story every time you retell it, now I've given you something you can use long after I've left the stage. We can't digest nuts and bolts. Stories we can digest, internalize, and remember.

Moving People to Action

Peter: What does it take to move from being just a speaker to one who makes a difference?

Joey: Several things. First, acknowledge the different audience personas in the room — some want to be entertained, some educated, some inspired, some given clear action steps. Design different parts of the speech to play to each of those needs. Second, pacing. I don't ask audiences to take action in the first two minutes — rapport hasn't been built yet. Most of my action steps don't begin until about halfway into a 45-minute keynote. I use the opening to build rapport, tell stories, and convince the audience there's a problem worth solving. If they don't believe there's a problem — or if they believe their situation is an exception — they'll never take action. Design the arc of your presentation. Take them on a ride — faster, then slower, then faster again. The audience has been kind enough to give me their time. It's my job to give them an experience.

Three Audiences

Joey: I believe there are at least three audiences. There's the audience in the room. There's the meeting planner or event coordinator who helped wrangle the logistics. And then there's their boss — whoever wrote the check and gave you time on the agenda. Each has different needs. When you shape your engagement to address all three, you get zealous advocates at every level. Think beyond the chairs in front of you.

Final Advice

Peter: Do you have one last piece of advice?

Joey: Be gentle with yourself. It is always a work in progress and a work in process. There will be times when the AV gods aren't smiling on you, or the audience has just been lulled into complacency by the speaker before you. See those moments as gifts. When we're given the chance as human beings to stand in front of another group of human beings with a microphone, we should see it as an opportunity. Be a student of the craft — of speaking, of storytelling, of persuasion. And let's be candid: if we're not having fun doing it, why are we taking the stage?

Thank you for listening to this episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. To learn more about Joey Coleman and his book Never Lose a Customer Again, visit joeycoleman.com. Are you ready to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then visit petergeorgepublicspeaking.com and let's make it happen. I'll see you next time.