This is the latest in the Speaker Academy series, which started here, but it’s also intended for my potential speaking clients.
I do what I call “consultative speaking.” It’s precisely comparable to consultative selling, in which “the emphasis is on what the potential customer wants and needs.” In one sense, I learned this in industry when I worked in marketing – every speech to any meeting has to be focused on the audience’s interests and concerns, or they’ll dive into their emails. In another sense, I learned it from Kent Bottles MD, who said that he always asks clients, “What outcome would make you say that I really knocked it out of the park?” Today, thanks to Kent, with every speaking client I have what I call a “home run call,” and build my speech around that.
Today I’ve uploaded the video of a speech I did in December for The Leapfrog Group‘s annual meeting.
“Listening to patients and the employers who buy for them”: Leapfrog Group annual meeting 2016
On the e-patient blog I’ve written about how terrific Leapfrog is, with the hard hard work they do to collect data on every hospital’s safety and quality metrics and (among other things) publish the well respected Hospital Safety Grade site. It’s been a long hard pull but today most hospitals participate, which is just great, because it rewards those who work hard to do well, in addition to enabling informed consumer choice. How’s that for helping healthcare achieve its potential?
If you choose to watch the 42 minute video of this speech you’ll see that it’s tailored to this conference’s audience: a lot of DC policy people, but mostly employers – the people who buy health plans for their employees, and who have themselves decided to act as empowered consumers by funding the work that Leapfrog does. My notes from our planning call end with this, which became what researchers would call the “primary endpoint” we sought (or the “home run,” as Kent would say):
Now more than ever, this is the time to declare what matters, and particularly to focus on end user value: when the people with the need are empowered by information to recognize the providers who best give them what THEY value.
The proof of the pudding is always in whether the client is satisfied, and I will happily share what Leapfrog CEO Leah Binder said today, looking back on this event:
Six months later, people are still remarking on your powerful speech at our annual meeting. You tell pointed stories that rouse us to act, with some gentle humor and some not-so-gentle tragedy to remind us why what you are saying matters. And it does matter. Patients are the solution, not the problem. You are an educator and a coach, unafraid to speak the truth but determined to use that truth to guide us all in new directions. I don’t think anyone was the same after hearing your inspirational speech.
I would love to do a customized speech with similar results for your organization. Get in touch via the contact page.
(In case you go to the Hospital Safety Grade site – which I hope you will – you may wonder whose opinion goes into those grades. It’s data, not opinions, and the metrics were selected by a truly blue ribbon panel – see the I’ve written link.)
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