Lisa Wilber(^)
WRIGHT
So you think that some of these ideas can work for people outside of
direct sales?
WIL BER
Absolutely, because to me marketing is marketing. I actually speak
to companies outside of direct sales. When they see that I do well in
direct sales, they ask me about it. When they find out that it’s just
re gular marketing, I’ve been asked to teach classes. One of my recent
ones was for frame shop owners—people who assemble frames and sell
th em to customers. So I think marketing ideas and the way that people
come up with them applies to all kinds of businesses.
WRIGHT
I see that you’re a member of the National Speakers Association;
how did y ou get involved in the speaking business and what do you
sp eak on?
WIL BER
It’s funny—when I started to have some good results with my Avon
business, Avon themselves were asking me to go around the country
and speak for them and it was taking a lot of time away from my own
business and my own sales, and I thought to myself, “I wonder if people
do this for money?,” That way it would be worth it to take all that time
away.
I did some research and, sure enough, people do speak for money. I
found the National Speaker’s Association that way and in 1998 I
contacted them and asked them how I could get professional
credentials. They told me that to qualify I’d have to do twenty-five fee-
paid speaking engagements in a twelve-month period. So I went into
the speaking business backward.
I like their motto, which is, “Experts that speak.” It’s not that you
are speaking about something you don’t know about—you know about
something and that ’s why you’re speaking about it.
But I personally like to go around, in direct sales in particular, to
make sure that people who need to or want to do this full-time know