If you have a luncheon or other event where a motivating keynote speech is needed, the Advocacy Guru can offer your advocates an entertaining and educational look at our political process and their role in it. They'll be laughing all the way to their elected official's offices!

Here are some of the Advocacy Guru's most requested Keynote speeches: (Click here for workshop ideas.)

Any Keynote can be made into a breakout session or workshop and vice versa.

Authenticty Sells:  Lessons in Influence from Washington, DC

 

Every day and in every way we all find ourselves playing the persuasion game. Whether you’re reaching out to employees, members, board members or policymakers, wouldn’t it be great to know how to get them on board – or, at a minimum, to listen to what you’re saying?

In fact, you can achieve this goal and more if you know the 8 critical keys to influencing others. Stephanie Vance, the Advocacy Guru, spent years learning these techniques as a lobbyist and Congressional aide in the most powerful city on the planet -- Washington, DC.  Thousands of people have used her techniques to win the political influence battle. In this interactive and informative session she applies these lessons to the persuasion circumstances faced by the rest of us – from sales to fundraising to board and office politics.

Through this presentation, participants will learn why true, authentic passion for your point of view is essential to your success, how to identify and enlist the right partners, how to develop compelling messages and more. We’ll also discuss the one thing that ALWAYS works in persuasion practices (shh… it’s a secret). This is a must-attend session for anyone seeking that extra edge in getting your message across. 

Breaking the Rules of Engagement

Effective advocacy is less about how many people you can get to sign a petition and more about personal, thoughtful and relevant communications. In other words, you need to engage elected officials in your cause.  Fortunately, the vast array of web 2.0 materials make this easier than ever. In this session, attendees will learn new was to achieve membership participation in grassroots and government relations campaigns that can be both fun and free! We'll talk about maximizing the effectiveness of blogs, RRS feeds, text, twitter, and widgets as well as how to get members talking through YouTube, file sharing, wikis, social networks, flickr, and more! If you want to use fun, free onling tools to break the rules of engagement without breaking the bank, this is the session for you.

Government Isn’t Broken: How to Work the System and Beat the Odds

Given the fact that Congress passes more bills to rename post offices and federal buildings than it does to address substantive policy issues, it’s no wonder that people think government is broken. Think all the partisan bickering and in-fighting points to a system badly in need of repair? The truth of the matter is that government isn’t broken. In fact, it was designed to be completely and totally ineffective. What you need to know is how to work our really bizarre democracy so that you can beat the odds: unless, of course, you WANT to rename a post office. In this insightful and witty keynote, Stephanie shows audiences the factors that influence elected officials, how to talk so legislators will listen and why government is so darned inefficient.

Hello Congressman, This is Your Wake-Up Call: How to Take Your Representative from Information to Action

So you’ve traveled all the way from wherever you’re from to the Capitol, and now you want to talk to someone who represents you. Hey, you’ve seen “Mr. Smith goes to Washington: you know how this is supposed to work. Well, not exactly. Every elected official represents thousands of people, dealing with hundreds of requests per day. It’s no wonder that it feels like they’re on automatic pilot when talking to you about your important policy issues. And they never seem to DO anything. Break that cycle with the Advocacy Guru’s secrets for shaking that “deer caught in headlights” look off an elected official’s face and inspiring him or her to actually take action – instead of hitting the snooze button.

Rebirth of a Notion: How to Breathe New Life Into a Dead Legislative Issue

Of the 10,000 bills that are introduced in a Congressional session, only five percent become law. That’s why anyone who wants anything from government will, at some point, have to administer CPR to a beloved legislative issue. The Advocacy Guru shows you how to get your issue off the respirator, out of ICU and well on the path to recovery.