Armed with just a woman’s seminar, Morgan secured over 40 guest speaking engagements with women’s organizations in Manhattan. Here she had the opportunity to share her message, story and brand to over 1000 women in only a two-year time frame. The process cost her zero dollars and the time required was minimal, all it took was a few hours a week on Google (easily done while watching TV). It was that easy and totally do-able even for those of us a bit technology challenged.
As a new advisor at Morgan Stanley, Morgan had defined goals to achieve. You would think her success would start with thousands of hours on the phone cold calling to oblivion, a skill that was not in Morgan’s repertoire nor did she want to go down that traditional path. By focusing on the women's market, she knew cold calling was not the best way to initiate relationships as most women did not feel comfortable talking with a strange voice over the phone.
Understanding what women want, combined with her interest in speaking and hosting events, inspired Morgan to call her sorority alumni asking if they needed a speaker at an upcoming chapter event; to her surprise she was quickly added to their event calendar as a guest speaker.
After her first event, Morgan was surprised how easy it was. Her message was well received and every woman in the room now understood that Morgan was a financial advisor committed to working with women. This immediately got Morgan thinking… “How can I expand this process?” Her first thought was to call other sorority alumni chapters in the area then she thought, why limit it to sorority chapters, why not all women’s groups?
Morgan began Googling women’s organizations in the Manhattan area. Most all of these organizations had a website as well as a contact person. Morgan would simply send an email to the contact person offering her services as a speaker for an upcoming meeting. In the email Morgan would share the title of the presentation and a bit about her role as a financial advisor. The responses started to hit her in-box. While her process was not yet honed to her liking she realized early on that this was going to be her primary source of marketing and lead generation.
Today she has her process is down pat. Being asked back by a number of the organizations she has spoken at only validates the effectiveness of her process:
And this was just the beginning.