And we paid you how much?

You’ve hired a motivational speaker for your event and it’s a name everyone recognises.  You chose this speaker because they said they could impart invaluable knowledge and a winning method to your audience. 

You also chose this speaker because you didn’t have to try and ‘sell’ them to your colleagues as they’d heard their name too.

You’ve done your background checks and they seem to have been booked many times before without issues.

Come the big day and the company’s management team are in the auditorium, all primed and ready to hear the famed speaker.  Mics have been arranged around the room to help create an ‘interactive’ feel to the session.  The speaker is on for a period and then opens the floor up to the room to ask questions about the information they’ve just presented. 

You’re pleased as punch when one of the managers asks for the mic. And then they ask a question: ‘We’ve paid you how much for this rubbish?’

Feeling a tad embarrassed, you politely grab the mic and go to the next enthusiastically hand waving in the air.  It’s one of the other managers from another department; ‘And we’ve booked you to do this for 3 of our others areas too?  Why?’

At this precise moment in time, you’ll probably find yourself going through all the process of how you went about finding, selecting and negotiating a speaker the moment you realise the audience has started to heckle the speaker.  You will now be trying to work out what went wrong in the process and at what point you might have missed something because you just know questions will be asked about who wasted the company budget on this!

The sad truth is, you probably haven’t done anything wrong.  Even if you have a strong process, you still have to rely on a speaker understanding their own strength and level of content needed for the audience in front on them and then to say openly if they can or cannot meet your audience requirements.

And because there isn’t a standard process for working with speakers, you have no way to validate the level of audience and content they gave for the previous engagements they’ve received testimonials for.  In fact, each speaker, bureau and organiser has their own way of working, their own process and their own standards – all which increases the chances of someone getting through your process who shouldn’t be getting through being able to be standing on your stage, disappointing your audience and letting you down.

To avoid being put in this position, check:

1. Have they presented to your level of audience before and if yes could they provide you with a Review
2. Are they willing to have a conference call with key people of the audience beforehand to give a presentation outline
3. If they are insisting on being paid upfront, will their Terms & Conditions refund 100% immediately should the audience deem them unsuitable.
4. If it involves more than one area, would they be happy to treat each area as an independent booking.
5. Would they be happy for you to publish a Review of their presentation on Social Media afterwards.

If a speaker is in any doubt about their own abilities and delivery, you will find they would prefer to find a method to steer you towards their process of working which is in their favour only.  If they are confident in their own value of delivery they will be happy to work with you and your process and flexibly enough to accommodate your process.

iwantaspeaker.com is based on the same process as used by the professional bureaus to engage their speakers on behalf of their clients.  This process is open to anyone who books and works with speakers, providing them a professional standard when working with  speakers.  

The iwantaspeaker.com process ensures the speakers will have the experience needed for the audience as it quickly highlights those that do not have the experience required or are unwilling to be Reviewed afterwards.  Giving a perfect process for contracting and working together. 

‘It’s the Celebrity speaker here, can you get me some of the White stuff?’

What would you do? 

I’m not going to beat around the bush.  Without you even realising it, your event organiser has probably just saved your company from an embarrassing, bad press, client losing situation and you probably won’t even know. 

Many organisers are faced with situations that can either bring the company or themselves into bad press.  But more worryingly is the lack of support or understanding they get from their own company and the business world at large and instead of sharing information, they are left to deal with this as best they can and hope it ‘doesn’t come out on their watch’. 

Don’t believe me?  Imagine: You have just spent the best part of a year, organising and overseeing the task of arranging your company’s largest annual event.  All Key personnel have arrived. All helpers and crew are ready to sprint into action. All equipment, AV and everything else is set up for the event to begin in the morning.  The Celebrity has arrived, spoken to the CEO, joined the team for evening dinner and now retired to their room to get ready to do the keynote in the morning.  With the last checks done, it’s now your turn to turn in, leaving some of the team members at the hotel bar enjoying the last of the night before the big day tomorrow.  And then you get a call.  It’s from the Celebrity.  Last minute changes to the speech? An issue that’s arisen and they’ve got to go? Just wanting to thank you and find out if there is anything else they could do for you?  No.  It’s them asking you to get them some drugs!  And I don’t mean the over the counter type either.

Your heart races.  What to do? Who to call? It’s the middle of the night….!

What would you do?

We all know what should happen.  But the truth is scarier – the organiser is left to deal with it and often won’t mention it to anyone apart from a select few they trust.

By this, I mean they deal with it as in they either do or don’t find the drugs – I’ve heard of organisers doing both and sadly for the same reason – because they felt it was their job that’s on the line and the event outcome being ruined. 

And they had to make this tough decision on their own, with seconds or only a few minutes to think. 

Media is littered with Celebrities having indiscretions, but hardly at a conference or at a named business event.  Have you ever stopped to ask why this is?  With over 1.29 million events running each year in the UK alone, the only drugs that hit the media headlines are those mentioned in Pharma events or a Celebrity indiscretion going to, leaving a party or in a hotel!  

To me, I think the answer is simple: instead of being allowed to name and shame, the celebrity will use their high status and, often being good manipulators, will use their social status and dominant personality to intimidate and belittle to get what they want.  A great article by Jenny McCartney on 5^th November 2012 published in The Telegraph highlights this and why people won’t say anything.

But then you have to ask, what would have happened if others had blown the whistle?  To answer this, you don’t have to look too far: in the case of Oisin Tymon and his Celeb run in with them asking for something that was impossible under the circumstances as highlighted in the wonderful article in The Telegraph, by Victoria Ward, 12^th March 2015,  the brand suffered and the Celeb was sacked because of it going so very public.  The public backlash didn’t focus on the behaviour of the Celeb, instead it focused on the messenger.  And no messenger wants to be put under that type of public pressure, especially when we have a bad habit of demonising those who do stand up and call these Celebrity’s behaviour into question.

Recently, I heard yet again of another organiser who received, ‘The Phone Call’.  For guidance, they naturally turned to the person who they booked the Celebrity through.  It was then they found out they were not the agent but a bureau, an intermediary. The intermediary didn’t know about there being ‘a problem’ beforehand either….

I’d like to tell you how it was resolved in this instance, but, seeing as the true agent didn’t tell the booker about the Celeb’s little habit, and the booker won’t ever divulge who it is and neither will the Organiser tell anyone else out of fear of backlash, I’m sorry to say the next Celeb that you book might be them as this collaborative silence allows this behaviour to go on.

And because this silence goes on, the next organiser who books might well be faced with the same phone call and are forced into a position to make that instant decision which could jeopardise your brand.  It only takes one person to successfully inform the public in a way they don’t get a backlash and like a house of cards, it’ll all come out. 

We are not that far away from that moment.

There has long been a need for openness and accountability when it comes to booking speakers and personalities for events and it’s why we put on our site. Iwantaspeaker.com, the opportunity for organisers to give Reviews about their experience after working with the speakers.  At first, we thought we did the wrong thing when a few speakers who tried to register with our site said they didn’t like the Review section, but, after a bit of research - it’s the being ‘Open and Accountable and a fear of Reviews’ that’s keeping them away and more importantly a fear of receiving Bad Reviews because usually it’s been justified!

 

Good. 

It means we are doing what we set out to do and those who do sign up to our site will not be one of those Celebrities who will be making ‘that phone call’, and putting your brand at risk.  What are you doing to make sure you are hiring Speakers that won’t behave badly and more importantly, have you an action plan and a support system in place for your event organiser should they be put in this position? At least those speakers who have signed up with us are happy to be Reviewed which means your organiser will not have to face one of those dreaded late night phone calls….

  

Cindy-Michelle Waterfield

iwantaspeaker.com

trust –convenience – peace of mind