Why someone else's Little Black Book could be fatal for your event.

With all the information at our fingers today, searching for a speaker can be like searching for a needle in a haystack.  With information overload, false testaments, overzealous new speakers and tired established speakers, it’s no wonder we create a Little Black Book of tried and tested names of speakers that we keep going back to, or we use a third party like a speaker bureau who have their own little black book of ‘preferred speakers’, to take on the headache for us.  If you have reached this stage, you are in danger of either having a very bored audience, or getting less value for your money or both!

Keeping things fresh and new always goes down well with audiences.  A very happy audience is a very giving audience and one that returns big style.  The trick is to make sure it’s the right kind of ‘fresh’.

While it is harder, more stressful and creates higher levels of anxiety when engaging new speakers you've never heard or used before, getting the right one will bring more rewards, benefits and a greater ROI.  Simple business rules.  The higher the risk, the greater the gain.  It’s just unfortunate that with some organisations, they also adopt: ‘the greater the fall’, should anything go wrong.  With this kind of added unwanted pressure, it’s no wonder why the little black book method gets adopted so easily.

Little Black Books, whether it’s; the Organisers, the Event Managers, the Directors, or even the Speaker Bureaus, give a false sense of security.  Why? Because no one really takes into consideration the audiences’ experience and expectation.

For a long time, audiences have been told that attending a conference gives them the opportunity to ‘Network’, ‘Create business’, ‘Learn’ and so on when the simple truth is, is that if the speaker or presenter is not engaging enough to grab the audience’s attention, those that recognise that their value of attending is being eroded will seek to address this before the value of not attending becomes greater. You can spot this easily as the audience natural gravitates towards other activities, opportunities or entertainment.  Eg: ‘Excellent event - I’d didn’t want to listen to the speaker so went to the bar and got chatting to someone and now we are doing business’.

When an audience member is tired of hearing the same speaker, the same presentation message and can no longer meet someone at the bar and create business your event is now in danger of low turnout as the equation of ‘valuable attending’ turns towards it being more ‘valuable staying away’.  It is at this point some organisations start to order their employees to attend while others stop the event altogether.  You have now become a victim of The Little Black Book!

In the great scheme of organising a conference, many regard speakers as a small cog.  However it is a pretty crucial one.  One that unfortunately has fallen to the bottom of the ‘To do’ list because the Little Black Book has made it easy for this to happen.  Today, many treat the act of finding or hiring speakers with little thought or effort.  This is crazy and in the long term, costly.  It’s like organising a wedding and once everything is organised and the invitations sent for guests to attend, only then are thoughts turned to whom the Bride and Groom should be!  Just think, if you are allowing your events to be organised like this, no wonder your audience are looking for the additional value as to why they are there and not at their desk!

A good event is one where the audience gets full value, not just partial. Full value means not just spending time at the bar creating their own value of business, but one where they are also there because they want to hear the speakers, the presentations contents, they want to meet the speakers and the authors behind the content, they want to meet the creative geniuses who had the insight to bring these group of people together and find out what else they could do for them and their business.  Now you are talking a conference that has not only delivered full value to your audience, but to also the Host as well as the speakers.

How to engage speakers like the professionals

Have you ever wondered how the speaker bureaus manage to find and suggest speakers who are always so professional and won’t let you down?

You are probably thinking it’s because of years of experience in the industry and being so well connected they’ve gained respect and attraction from the speakers as being the reason.

And if you have, I bet you’ve also thought that it would be wonderful if ALL the speakers that didn’t come via a bureau were just as professional as those that did.  And it’s at this point, you’ve probably assumed that because those speakers who are not with a bureau is because they are not professional or famous enough and therefore not worthy of justifying the bureaus hefty price tag.

What you have just done is assumed the “Value + Content = Worth” equation.

The truth is, using a bureau is not an option when you have a limited budget or even no budget. But you can still work out the V+C=W equation with a good speaker management process.

Bureaus and some speakers rely on you making assumptions as this allows them to drive up the price. However, justifying the price is a little more tricky as not all well known famous names are able to deliver a speech of value or with content as much as we would like whereas an unknown but practicing CEO is able to give invaluable insights and content rich and delivers well above their worth.

If you want to book the speakers who can deliver the Value + Content = Worth equation without the additional commission costs, all you need to do is standardise your procedure for booking and working with speakers.

• Have a system where all speakers have to send you the minimum amount of information about themselves which enables you to quickly work out if they could be suitable BEFORE you decide to use them at your next event.
• Have proper Contracts with Terms & Conditions that you send to each and every speaker even if it’s a pro bono slot
• Have a payment method system speakers can understand and trust
• Have a two way feedback process which you are willing to be open about. 

By having a simple process which standardises the way you work with speakers – not matter paid or unpaid, you will find that those who want to work with you will adapt to your process and do what you require.

It’s why we built iwantaspeaker.com – providing you a professional process to standardise working with speakers.