Editor’s Note—Recently, I interviewed Mary Berg, DTM, District Conference Chair, about her role as the Volunteer Coordinator for Toastmasters participation as a vendor at the 2005 Orange County Fair. She believes this event offers Toastmasters another opportunity to practice real-world communication skills and that more of us need to take advantage of it.
Q: Why should members want to work our Toastmasters booth at the Orange County
Fair every year?
MB: The Orange County Fair offers Toastmasters multiple opportunities to practice
their elevator speech—something we don’t do enough of in our club
meetings. In general, Toastmasters don’t speak enough about what we do
because we don’t know how to tell people what Toastmasters meetings look
like, sound like, or accomplish. However, at the OC Fair, as an exhibitor,
we have to practice this skill through our elevator speech and respond to questions
effectively. Look, many people can’t even explain to their families what
they do for a living. How do we expect that people just naturally know how
to talk about Toastmasters? At the OC Fair, you get practice giving a sales
pitch to people who are much more interested than the average person. You learn
to answer questions in a way that is succinct and clear enough that people
want to ask more questions.
Q: What types of questions do people ask?
MB: What’s Toastmasters? What do you do at a meeting? These two questions
alone open up an opportunity to share a wealth of Toastmasters experiences
with strangers.
Q: How can clubs best find prospective members at the OC Fair?
MB: Every club with an open membership should do a flyer for the OC Fair. Be
sure to put all your pertinent information into the flyer. Are you a morning,
noon, or evening club? Where and when do you meet? Who should people contact
to get more information about your club? Do you have a website where they
can learn more about you? Do you have a special focus?
Q: What about Los Angeles County clubs? Do you get many requests for these
locations?
MB: The number of leads for Los Angeles County was overwhelmingly greater than
for Orange County. The belief that LA County clubs won’t benefit by participating
in the OC Fair is one of the biggest misconceptions about participation.
Q: How do you handle the leads?
MB: That’s still a problem. We dispense the leads, and we know people
are joining, but we have not yet managed to design a follow-up program that
really measures how successful we are.
Q: How do you get people to sign up to work the OC Fair?
MB: Peg Klinck, CTM, District Project Manager, went to all the Division Council
meetings to discuss the OC Fair. We wrote articles for The Founder. We mentioned
it at all the DEC meetings (where leaders throughout Founder’s District
gather). We asked for help everywhere. Members work 3- to 4-hour time slots.
Most of our workers tend to be repeaters.
Q: What do members who work the OC Fair want the rest of us to know
about what we’re missing?
MB: Once members work the OC Fair, they come back year after year after year.
Many were waiting for me to ask them to volunteer again. One of our volunteers,
Victoria Baker, told me, “I’m so excited about what I got to do;
it’s fun!” You get to tell strangers all about this workshop environment
and what you’ve learned from it. Volunteers can express their own joy
and brag about how they earned a CTM, raised money they didn’t think
they could raise, led a seminar they didn’t think they could lead, or
introduced a speaker at work all because of what they have experienced at Toastmasters.
And there is no jeopardy. You’re not going to lose your job for talking
about Toastmasters when you should be working or driving your spouse crazy
because you’re lingering after church telling anyone who will listen
about Toastmasters. You’re there specifically to talk about Toastmasters
and you can have the pure joy of just talking about Toastmasters. Look, the
people at your kitchen table every night might not be as impressed with your
accomplishments as you are. This is your chance to brag. It’s your chance
to tell a total stranger how proud you are of you.