How to Speak at a MassLandlords Meeting

Thank you for your interest in speaking at a MassLandlords event!

No Cost to Present

We do not take sponsorships, donations, advertisements, or anything in exchange for awarding speaker slots. We only award speaker slots to the best, most highly rated companies, service providers, and landlords. We can also grant speaking opportunities to public servants, candidates for office, and researchers affiliated with an academic institution.

What is a MassLandlords event like?

MassLandlords directly manages events for a variety of locations, which are held over zoom or in-person. We offer more detailed descriptions here.

Our zoom meetings have attorneys, subsidy administrators, expert owners and managers, and lots of members and services providers like you.

Schedules vary, but most of our events are either over lunch or dinnertime:

Evening event:

• 5:00 p.m. Networking
• 5:40 p.m. Presentation
• 7:00 p.m. End

Lunch event:

• 12:00 p.m. Presentation
• 1:00 p.m. End

Video event:

• Will remain up indefinitely or for however long you specify, provided content remains accurate during that timeframe.
• When launched, viewers in the first seven days can ask questions and receive your answers.
• Recording requires high resolution webcam and high fidelity microphone.

As a speaker you can come for any portion of the event prior to your timeslot, no charge. Bring as many of your team or guests as you like, just let us know you're coming.

Our "No Sales-pitch Guarantee"

Our mission is to create better rental housing by helping owners. We organize opportunities for education and training. This means your presentation should share information of value even if an attendee doesn't intend to hire you.

• Zero sales pitch. Our members come to meetings to learn how to run their businesses better.
  • Don't offer pricing. If an attendee asks what your products or services cost, you may answer their specific question.
  • Let the sales pitch be implied. Your name, organization, and contact details will be on the final slide for someone to follow up if they have questions or interest. If you don't already have one, you should also create a website that can be found when someone searches for your name or organization name just in case they miss your phone and email on the last slide.
  • Explain the skills needed to accomplish your service, rather than your particular service offering.
    • Good: "To form an LLC, you need to first select which state it should be in. Then you need to draft articles of incorporation for that state."
    • Bad: "My entity-builder package will give you an LLC in the state of your choosing." Even if you do have an entity-builder package, this comes across as salesy.
  • Explain the technology that powers your product, rather than your particular product offering.
    • Good: "A network connected lock operates over zigbee or z-wave, which are radio frequencies like wi-fi but which have better range. Then software, which could be either open source or licensed, is used to manage the locks remotely."
    • Bad: "My locks will talk to one another up to 100 feet using our proprietary software." Even if you do have proprietary software, this doesn't explain how it works well enough for attendees.
  • Explain the ins and outs of your social service or program, rather than your particular desire to find landlords.
    • Good: "HomeBASE offers renters up to $10,000, which they can use for move-in monies, utility arrears, relocation, furniture or any number of things."
    • Bad: "My organization offers a variety of services including HomeBASE." Even if you do offer a variety of services, attendees are there to learn about things that impact their business but not particularly your organization (with rare exception).
• Good examples:
  • An insurance company presents on types of insurance and special subtopics, including whether certain breeds of dogs can be excluded by a policy. This is educational content that fits with our zero-sales pitch policy.
    • Their representatives network with members and talk about their insurance products during networking time.
    • The insurance company has their logo and contact information on the final slide.
    • They use their presentation time to discuss only their educational content about dog breeds. They don't discuss their company history or premiums during the presentation.
  • A hardware store presents about kitchen cabinets.
    • They start by talking about the kinds of abuse they've seen renters put cabinets through.
    • They explain the trade-off between dovetail and miter construction.
    • They talk about the finish choices available, how to tell whether a cabinet can be refinished, and how to evaluate different price points.
    • They have their logo on their slides.
    • They use their presentation time to discuss cabinet selection but not any specific line of cabinets.
    • Their contact information and store hours are on the final slide.

The "no sales-pitch" guarantee also restricts MassLandlords staff. We cannot schedule speakers in exchange for an offer to support the association. We do not take event sponsorship, advertisements, memberships, or trades in exchange for presentation slots.

Making a Good Impression

• Presentations must usually fit into one of two formats: a PowerPoint presentation or a radio style interview.
  • Slides, if any, must be approved in advance. In many cases, MassLandlords has "repertoire" slides that achieve our educational objectives for the topic you'll be covering.
  • If you bring unapproved slides to the meeting, we may switch the presentation format last-minute to a radio style interview.
• PowerPoint presentations:
  • These are perfect for teaching difficult topics.
  • PowerPoint takes a long time to prepare, and speakers need to rehearse or they may be perceived as boring. =( We track member feedback at every meeting.
  • We like to see YouTube videos or actual presentations before we agree to a PowerPoint you have created.
  • MassLandlords has stock "repertoire" presentations that you should consider using. These presentations meet our educational objectives and will help ensure that attendees leave with a positive impression of your business offering, even if you are not a PowerPoint expert.
• Radio style interviews:
  • These are perfect for people who don't want to prepare slides, or who have stage fright, or who don't speak for a living and just want to have a conversation.
  • Radio style interviews can still have pictures or videos. Send us files or links and we can put them up on screen behind you.
  • Radio style interviews require a short phone call to set topic areas.
• Presentation content must be of interest to a large subset of members.
• Timing:
  • Events give presenters one hour including Q&A, with a 20 minute allowance to run over schedule for Q&A.
• Advertising:
  • Speakers at in-person events can bring marketing literature. Speakers on zooms can share links to their website. Dedicated advertising options are here.
• Prepare to show credentials. If you want to teach landlords about rental operations, as opposed to a non-rental skillset, either a member will have to vouch for you or you must be a Certified Massachusetts Landlord Level Two™ or higher.