Sunday, August 12, 2007
August 2, 2007 Meeting
The Tri-County Toastmasters club met on Thursday 8-2-07 at the Virden Area Community Center. Club members present at Thursday’s meeting were: Dr. Todd Austin, Jim Blankenship, John Davidson, Liz Mollett from Auburn, Alan Saeger and Bill Watkins.
Alan Saeger served as the meeting’s master of ceremonies. Todd Austin conducted the Tabletopics or impromptu speaking portion of the program. Austin, a shark enthusiast and conservationist, conducted a special ‘Shark Week’ version of table topics, which was very timely since the Discovery Channel was in the midst of it’s 20th Anniversary of it’s annual ‘Shark Week’ event at the time.
The evening’s prepared speaker was Jim Blankenship. Blankenship, a CFP from New Berlin, gave an informative speech that also involved an impromptu role-play with an audience member about the sales ‘cold call’. The object was to inform the audience about the cold call process from start to finish involving a big ticket, high cost and high competition item. Blankenship’s role-play was to sell Austin, a business owner, a security system upgrade. It was the second of five sales role playing speeches out of the advanced Toastmasters ‘Professional Salesperson’ manual. Blankenship’s speech was evaluated by John Davidson.
The Toastmasters club will next meet on Thursday August 16, 2007 at 6:30 p.m. at the Community Center at 105 West Jackson Street in Virden. The scheduled speaker for next meeting is John Davidson. The Area 1 Governor from Springfield is also planning to join the Tri-County club at that meeting. The club also voted to hold the first meeting of September in Carlinville at AgBuyCo. “Our club is a community club, so all area residents are invited and encouraged to attend. Whether your goal is to lead a business meeting, be a more effective salesperson or just to gain some speaking confidence for your next job interview, Toastmasters is an awesome, yet extremely cost-effective opportunity to polish one’s communication and leadership skills”, states club president Les Apps. For more information about the Toastmasters program, please call (217) 965-3100.
