Can I sue a speaker?

Technically you can, but reality is that it's time consuming and could be cost prohibitive.

After talking to an insurance company about the usual yearly policy update of professional indemnity, I was horrified to learn that many speakers are actually leaving themselves open to not being professionally covered with an adequate insurance policy when they give a presentation.

This means that should they say something that you or a member of your audience then acts upon and it is advice that is detrimental, the speaker is not covered should they be sued.

What does this mean to you?  As an event organiser, you probably think that it's all down to the speaker and nothing to do with you.  But you'd be wrong.  If you have no proper contract in place with them, a clever legal bod could construe that they are a part of your team and as such, you would be libel for their mistake.

But we all rely on that one tough question of "proving the fact" as being the main reason why things don't go too much further as usually this is cost prohibitive.   However, what if it could be proved?  If it could be proved that what they said on your stage was the result of someone suffering from their bad advice, could your organisation be picking up the cost especially if you haven't done the basics?

And it's not just their advice that could be putting you at risk but also their behaviour and attitude.

Take the case of the speaker I mentioned in my earlier blog - the one who was chatting up members of the audience to go home with him.  Because there was no contract in place and the speaker was there as a 'promotion' for the event rather than being a paid professional, he was acting as one of the company's ambassadors - on their behalf.  And because he was there on their behalf, his behaviour of chatting up and making sexual references towards the guests could have landed the company in trouble should one of the guests taken offence and issued a formal complaint.  Had things taken a turn for the worse, the company could do very little towards the speaker as there was no contract, no clear definition of the working relationship and therefore trying to counter sue him would be again, cost prohibitive.

In today's audience experience, I recently listened to someone muttering behind me that they wanted to sue the organiser for having speakers who were not providing the content they were led to believe. Words like 'mis-reperesentation', 'taking money under false pretences' and 'false advertising' were being quietly bounced between her and her colleague.  Whether she will or not, I have no idea, but she did raise an interesting point: who was at fault - the speaker or the organiser?  And who would she sue for poor content / poor experience of the ticketed event - the speaker or the organiser?

After all, if  Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne, can be sued after an audience member complained about his inappropriate comment towards someone else, then the floodgates could start to be opened for more actions to be brought against comedians, after dinner speakers, professional speakers and the friend of a friend of the CEO who's just graced your stage as a favour.....

Most professional speakers have professional indemnity insurance and issue you with terms and conditions.  If you are working with people who are not professional, by that I mean they have a day job and speak because of a passion, or it's related to their job role or they've been asked by the friend of the friend of the CEO, they probably won't have terms and conditions and it's also likely to follow that their insurance might not be adequately covering them when they give information from the stage.

Your process must include a means to guard yourself and your organisation against that 1 speaker in every 100 who will bring your organisation into disrepute - you know the one I mean that traditionally makes the event organiser being put into the position to take the fall and find a new job.

We think it's unfair and unjust and why there needs to be a standard way of working with speakers to guard against this and raise the level of professionalism - that's why we built iwantaspeaker.com.  If you have your own process already - fantastic and I'd love to hear more.  Please do send me an email or comment below and let me know how you've headed off potential issues before they arisen too.   Thank you and l look forward to reading them.

Can a Speaker Sue me even though they didn't perform? And what can I do about it?

The short answer is Yes, a speaker could sue you and win especially if you haven't kept a good enough account of what you needed them to do, even if they performed badly, you could lose.

Obviously the usual reason a speaker would take an Event Organiser to court would be for non payment of their invoice.

For an Event Organiser not to pay is often because they were either relying on ticket sales to raise the funds or they have a policy to pay after the event and decided the speaker’s performance wasn't as expected so withheld payment. 

But, even if the speaker did a bad performance or even failed to turn up because you changed the date and they couldn’t make the new date, and if you didn't check the Terms and Conditions you signed, you could still be liable and still have to pay.

Not fair is it!

Most organisations sign the Terms and Conditions of the speakers who are savvy enough to provide them, many without checking them carefully first.  In addition, many other speakers are reliant on just sending an invoice and a few email exchanges to be sufficient enough which means that while you don’t have to deal with paperwork and it seems a quick way to engage the speaker you want, you are in fact leaving your organisation wide open to paying for a bad performance.

While the industry is and works on word of mouth for hiring and finding speakers, there is still a high need for them so without protecting yourself and putting in place a proper system to limit your liability you could be hugely out of pocket as not only would you be paying the speaker, but the court cost, the time and energy involved and the hidden cost of audience dis-engagement from the event and if you are really unlucky, any potential media fallout too.

To avoid this when you book a speaker, make sure you:

1) Check their Terms and Conditions carefully to find out what happens if something does go wrong so you can fully understand what you would be expected to pay.  And if you don't like any of their Terms, ask for changes and agree to the new terms before you sign.

2) Understand and agree exactly what they will do for you for their fee before the day in writing.  Be reasonable as to what can be measured and what can't. Performance is considered objective unless it is clear they failed to meet requirements.  Remember: what I think is good might not be what you think is good, however them saying they are an expert on a subject and then clearly demonstrating their knowledge to be less than that of the audience is measurable!

3) If they want full payment upfront and you are not happy or able to commit, find a third party format to hold the payment for you: iwantaspeaker, paypal, a client bank account, solicitor, speaker bureau as examples, or come to a payment arrangement where you are happy to take the risk and lose the sum without it being detrimental to your budget.  

4) If the speaker doesn't have any Terms and Conditions, doesn't have any standard contracts and only relies on the ‘sending you an invoice and a few emails’ method, make sure you have in writing exactly what they will do to compensate you should they fail to deliver in all eventualities.  Or insist they use your process which de-risks you and standardises them.  If they fail to get through or won’t go through your process, don’t hire them.

Only by safe guarding yourself against all speakers you work with being a possible failure, will you be able to protect yourself from the actual one speaker who will take you to court and win even though they didn't perform well enough and didn't deserve their fee!

It's why we built iwantaspeaker.com

Four Critical Questions You Must Answer If You Want To Hire the Right Speaker

It can be quite Herculean to surf through the web to get the vital details you need in order to hire a Speaker. The dynamics of effective marketing, PR presentations and social media presence does not necessarily make an individual the ideal speaker at your event. The only way to ensure that you do not settle for mediocre performance at your event is to do your research. One of the ways to get the best results is to get honest answers for some of the questions that will be addressed below. In a sense, getting the right Speaker for your program is not complex if you know how to navigate the tides.

Four Questions you must answer;

1) Is the person someone who speaks for a fee at an occasion or is he a professional speaker?
This question may seem obvious to those who are trying to turn on the lights in their event planning career but it is deeper than you think. Both scenarios are ideal depending on the dynamics of your event. If you are low on budget but want to have a great speaker, you may not be able to handle the costs and logistics that go with a professional speaker. You can settle for someone who will strike the right chord in the heart of your audience without over-shooting your budget.

2) Does the Speaker adhere to a professional code of ethics?
It may be difficult to pin down a standalone speaker who manages his itinerary in this range. Most Speakers do not necessarily operate with rules because they do not belong to a professional body or association. This can prove to be a knotty issue if the speaker derails from the focus of your event when he is called to address the audience. It is Ok to stick with a Speaker if you have done your homework but it is better to run with a Speaker that adheres to a professional code of ethics.

3) How easy is the speaker to work with?
You do not want to have a ‘’great’’ Speaker who makes your event planning tedious. There are so many stories about speakers who make extreme demands that may scuttle the success of the event if it is not properly handled. You can stay clear from this dilemma by booking speakers from a certified platform. This gives you the opportunity to have good knowledge about the speaker and the things you should expect at your event.

4) What impact will this Speaker have on your attendees long after the presentation is over?
The essence of organizing an event is to bring value to everyone who attends the program. You may have the right concepts, designs and marketing prowess but it all comes down to the performance of the speaker. It is important to connect with someone who has the requisite knowledge, charisma and ability to deliver if you truly want to have a successful event.

The safe rule is that you can book speakers only when you have done a thorough research and you have a process in place detailing how you are going to work with the speakers.  Not all speakers will want to use your process which is great because you only want those who do and will suit your event.

iwantaspeaker.com is based on the same process as used by the professional bureaus to engage their speakers on behalf of their clients.  iwantaspeaker is opening this process to anyone who books and works with speakers, providing everyone a professional standard when working with paid speakers as well as Speakers on Pro Bono.  

The iwantaspeaker.com process ensures Speakers who have the right experience needed for the audience are quickly highlighted while those Speakers who do not have the experience required or are unwilling to be Reviewed afterwards.  Giving a perfect process for contracting and working together. 

Signs to look for when finding a true professional speaker

If you are going to get a group of people into a room all at the same time who would all rather be somewhere else, you’d better have a good reason, good content, good information for them to be there.

Often the answer to this is:- "Yes I do".  After all you wouldn’t be doing this now would you!

However, to think this far and then concentrate on venue, the chair layout the seating, the guest list and then think about who is going to be delivering this content, imparting information or being the reason enough for the audience wanting to be there is usually left to last minute or given little credit. 

Well that’s just like organising a wedding, hiring the venue, working out the colour, sending out invites and then working out who the Bride and Groom should be!

In today’s connected world, audiences are wanting more and more ‘content’.

The biggest insight I’ve seen is the growth of Tech being used by the events industry in order to plan, plot and pre-engage with the audience and then use it to try and continue engagement during and after the event too.

Then they think about speakers….

The truly professionals speakers are used to dealing with those who are savvy enough to ask, to help you engage with your audience BEFORE the event, as well as AFTER.  Some professional speakers offer pre event and post event follow-up email messages – (in marketing speaker: we now call it nurture and drip campaigns), while others offer conference calls and mini consultations.

However, the true professional speaker also now understands they have to contend with technology while they are on the stage, but not many can actually handle it.

Traditionally we called it heckling.  Nowadays it’s called, ‘interaction and engagement’.

So for a true professional speaker who can handle today’s fast pace changing world, make sure your speaker can:

•   Manage taking questions and providing answers almost as if ‘off-the-cuff’, if they can’t they don’t have depth of knowledge greater than that of your audience
•  Interact and be comfortable with social media, live feed and audience apps while they are on stage – if they can’t deal with this, it means they might not be confident in their presentation enough to allow for distractions
•  Offer your audience tasters and teasers before the event and provide relevant follow up info – if they can’t, you will have more workload to do in order to get, keep and build audience loyalty.
•  Ensure their message is on task and about your event and not promoting themselves – if you use a speaker’s standard template email, chances are YOU are promoting them rather than the speaker writing something for you and your audience to promote YOU and YOUR EVENT which means you’ve just given your audience’s loyalty to the speaker.

When you engage with a speaker, always think how they can help you, pre, during and post the event and then make sure it’s down in writing in a contract.  It’s why we build such a flexible speaker management booking process to cover their involvement from start to finish of the event and not just for the speaking bit.

Using iwantaspeaker.com will help you standardise the process of working with speakers.

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.