How to get leads when you can't pitch from the stage

Plenty of conferences keep selling off the main stage. The keynote and the breakouts are for learning; if you want to pitch, there's a sponsored side-stage slot, and the audience there expects one. So you're asked to speak, often unpaid, on the understanding that you won't sell.

Your business still needs the talk to pay off. The way to do that is to give from the stage and sell afterward, which means leaving with the names and emails of the people who want more.

Give, then capture who took it

Offer something useful from the talk, and let people ask for it with their phone.

• Your slides. People photograph them anyway. Telling them at the start that the deck is coming lets them stop taking photos and listen.
• The worksheet or checklist from an exercise you ran.
• The recording, or your notes with the links you mentioned.
• A free consultation, if the event allows it and you sell consulting.

Each one continues the talk without asking anyone to buy. The people who take you up on it are the ones who found the talk useful, and they're the people you want to follow up with.

Why it feels better, too

Speakers who don't like selling from the stage often skip the call to action entirely, or bury "find me online" under the thank-you slide. The self-promotion slide drains the room. One speaker told us that once the end of the talk was a gift instead of a pitch, they stopped feeling "salesy" and started saying yes to more invitations.

An offer is also easier to say with conviction. "I'll send everyone the slides" is a favor. "Visit my website" is an ad.

Make the ask concrete

At the end, people need one instruction they can follow from their seat:

"I promised you the slides. Take out your phone. Scan this code, or text DEMO to 55444, and I'll send them to you."

Say the keyword and the number twice. Leave the slide up through Q&A. For the people at the back who can't scan, walk them through it: open a new text, type 55444 as the number, DEMO as the message, send. The stage ask has the full script, and what to offer has more ideas.

Sell afterward, by email

Someone who texts in gets the slides at once and lands in your email tool or CRM, tagged with the event and the talk. Your follow-up does the selling, a day later and in their inbox, where nobody minds:

1. Right away: the slides, by text and email.
2. The next day: a short email with the one idea from the talk worth acting on, and a link to go further.
3. Over the next week or two: your normal sequence, which is where the program, the service, or the call comes in.

See the event follow-up email for what to send.

Check the rules, then ask once

Read the speaker agreement and see what it actually forbids. Offering your slides is a different request from quoting a price or handing out an order form, and if the wording is unclear, ask the organizer before the event.

How Textiful helps

Textiful turns the offer into a text conversation. People text a keyword or scan a QR code, reply with their email, and get the slides as a handout the moment they finish. The contact goes straight into Mailchimp, Kit, ActiveCampaign, or HubSpot, so your sequence starts while the talk is still fresh. Keywords work on 33777 and 55444 in the US. See Textiful for public speakers.

Try it at your next talk → Start a free trial