Showcasing on a Cruise Ship: Converting Your Cruise Speaking Gigs into Paid Shore-Side Bookings

Speaking on cruise lines provides myriad benefits to you as the speaker including: free cruises for yourself; free cruises for a traveling companion; all passenger perks; and frankly a free way to see the world in luxury. But there is a frequently overlooked benefit that has the potential to lead to paid shore-side bookings.

Of course, I’m talking about treating your onboard bookings as showcases. For those who may not know, a speaker’s showcase is an event in which speakers present for groups of meeting planners, corporate event planners and anyone else who hires speakers.

Showcases are designed for planners to “audition” and evaluate the speaker's talent and is of great advantage to the speakers because if they perform well they can obtain many lucrative speaking bookings from one showcase.

So the question becomes: how do you as a speaker convert your cruise bookings into showcases in order to get paid shore-side gigs?

Truth be known you should consider every presentation you do as a showcase.

Why?

Because every audience you present to either has the power to hire speakers or at the very least everyone in that audience could recommend a speaker to their associations, corporations, clubs, organizations and non-profits.

The same is also true of cruise bookings. The trick of turning a non-showcase (a/k/a your average booking) into a showcasing opportunity is what you say from the platform. What follows are a few pointers to help you make any speaking gig into a showcase:

• Let folks know during the course of your presentation that you travel the country or region as a speaker. This will alert your audience members that you are in the speaking business and that you can travel to their hometown.

• During your presentation drop in a line like: “Last month I was doing a presentation for the (fill-in the blank of your last non-profit or corporation talk).” Again lines like these plant the seed with members of your audience that “hey, I like this speaker maybe my company, organization, non-profit, association etc., can also invite him or her.”

• Work in a referral story into your talk. Say something like, “I was giving this presentation in Phoenix and a gentleman who saw me recommended me to his company to bring me in. What was so remarkable about that talk was… (fill in the main point you want to make.) Do you see how just by inserting this innocuous, short, commercial you again plant the seed that audience members can take you home by recommending and referring you?

There are of course many other advanced strategies for turning your cruise gigs into showcases for getting paid shore-side bookings. But just using those referenced in this article will put you way ahead of the pack. I’d love to hear about your results.

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