Selling Manuals Upfront vs. Post-Speech

I’m not going to waste your precious reading time convincing you of the financial benefits of selling your educational materials as part of your speaking contracts. Every professional speaker knows what a deal it is to include your materials up front and not have to sell them to less than 100% of the audience. I’d rather give you another marketing and pricing strategy that’ll help you make more money.

I don’t typically speak to the types of audiences that purchase my materials up front as part of the fee and contract, but I understand the concept and I have enough experience to show you.

The very element that helps you make a lot of money in educational materials sales, keeps you from including them up front as part of your fee structure—the price.

It was one thing to include your $15 book but it’s difficult, virtually impossible to include your expensive manual—unless you understand your own numbers.

Here’s a real situation in a recent situation of mine. I’m speaking to a group of 60 people in April in Ft. Lauderdale. The meeting sponsor wanted to charge a higher fee than normal to attend the seminar to make a little extra money for his association. I helped him—and made more money for myself as well.

I offered to include one of my $119 manuals with each registration fee of $79. How can that work?

I sold the $119 manuals to the meeting sponsor for $29 each. Why such a huge discount? Let’s do the math.

The $119 manual is full retail, rarely individually sold at that price. Packaged with other materials, most will sell at $99. Let’s assume that 25% of the audience would purchase the manual at $99. That’s 16 manuals @ $99 = $1,485.

$1,485 is a good result for only 60 people, but I will have to sell the materials and I still have to hit 25%.

Because I know my numbers, I can include a manual for all 60 participants for only $29! 

60 manuals @ $29 = #1,7409!

A positive difference of $225 and I don’t have to do any selling!

Here’s the key: As long as I sell 100% of my manuals for more than 25% of the price I am dollars ahead—without having to sell during the speech.

And here’s an amazing benefit—because none of the 60 people at that seminar will pay $99 for that one manual, they will have more money to invest in my other materials. I fully expect to sell an additional $2,655-$3,540 from sales of my other materials, for a grand total of $4,395-$5,280—not bad for a free speech.

Even if I had not tried to sell the manual individually and included it instead in my standard educational materials package at a higher price ($247), I’d still be $690-$1,575 behind.

By the way, including the $119 manual with each registration enabled the meeting sponsor to charge $30 more than what he typically charges for a seminar, adding $1,800 to his association coffers. Can you see the future business value in being the speakers who helps his/her clients make money?

Marketing your educational materials at a fair price enables you to make huge profits even when you discount them by 75%! Are you beginning to see the value of this system?

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