Toastmaster:  David Flach

General Evaluator:  Cindy Cannon

Grammarian:  Merrilee Morris

Timer:  Kelly Vandever

Camer Person:  Manola Robison

Speakers: 

• Linda Hall (for Iris Grimm)
• Ericka Butler
• Richard Kirby

Thanks to Keith Schroder, our Toastmaster for the evening,our Speakers Round Table meeting was a total success.  Come to think of it, our speakers, ourevaluation team and every member present actually contributed to making this entire evening a huge success

Linda Hall led us down the bridal path with her speech, “The Little Black Book.”  We definitely felt we were in for some salacious stories, until she produced the club’s Guest Book, which just happensto be black with silver border scrolling. Linda did a thorough analysis of our guests, even built a spread sheetof those who had attended at least one time. Of the 142 signatures, she tallied 90 one time visitors.  Of these 90 club visitors, nine went on tojoin Speakers Roundtable.  These guests turned members are:  Cindy Cannon, Ericka Butler, Richard Kirby, Shea Ellison, Tom Nixon, Minola Robison, Mimi Williams, Craig Keyworth, and our speaker for the evening, Linda Hall.  In other words, 10% joined and became successful club members and officers! Our hearts swelled with pride until Linda mentioned the remaining 81 folks that we still needed to reach out to. Not to worry, Linda has this in plan. By the way, we found this club information much more interesting than some smutty little black book story. Didn’t we?

We were blessed to have David Flach deliver his “Cold Calling Success Part III: What to Say.” Members and guest hung on his every word, and wrote notes fast and furiously as David spoke.  He briefly recapped Part I:  Cold calling is the most effective and proactive way of reaching prospective clients, and Part II:  Pre-qualifying your prospect list until it is well meshed.  David moved right in to Part III:  What to say.  This part delves into creating and customizing scripts.  Yes, we’ve all had telemarketers call reading their scripts monotonously into our ears, but real cold calling is clear, concise and appeals specifically to the intended client.    We all use scripts.  Dave refers to the 2P’s; prepare the script and practice the script.  One script does not fit all prospective customers or their unique situations.  Next we learned that there were two types of script formats, the first is the live call. Part of this script includes your reason for calling, who you and your company are, the compelling reason why you are calling, and then agreement on the next action.  David acted out his side of a demonstration script. The second script is shorter and intended for a message machine or voice mail.  David’s presentation was loaded with encouraging, well thought out, and powerfully presented information.  We all went home with our heads bulging with David’s wonderful information, especially those members making cold calls this week.

Following break, Keith led us into Table Topics and “The Secret of My Success.”  Briefly, it went as follows:  Cindy Cannon:  Just do it! Shea Ellison:  Learning and growing.  Mimi Williams:  Meditation and affirmations.  Cindy Light: Do it anyway, don’t be afraid.  Donna Lange:  Fear is my friend.  David Flach:  Do what you love, love it back and deliver more than you promise.  Linda Hall:  Talk to people, use humor, and listen.  Iris Grimm: Do it.  Share yourself, expand yourself, make a contribution in life. Erick Butler:  Breathing!  Yoga, be in the moment.  Get the voices out of your head.  Merrilee Morris:  Attitude, ethics, and gratitude.  Keith Schroder:  Starbucks. Make a to-do list each morning over that first cup of coffee.  Accomplish what is on your list.

General Evaluator Mimi Williams called for reports from her team.  Cindy Cannon gave a thorough grammarian report of our so’s, you knows and ahs.  She commented on several interesting words that had been used during the evening. Iris Grimm had one full evening of timing and did an excellent job keeping us all on track.  Mimi felt we’d had an evening of ‘”great take a ways.” President Shea Ellison thanked Keith for a successful meeting.  See you next week!