Why being an Event Organiser is a tough job.

I didn't realise just how tough the Event Industry was until doing research into the typical experience Event Organisers and Meeting Planners go through when engaging speakers.

When I asked the question, 'Have you ever had a bad speaker?', I was stunned to hear the response: 'No.  I only work with good speakers.  I've been doing this for 15 years and I've never had a bad speaker apart from 2 years ago'.

Confused by the double statement, I engaged a little further and the conversation went something like this:

Me: 'How do you normally search for speakers?'

EO: 'I first go through my little black book where I keep the names of all the good speakers I've used'

Me: 'So that will be all the speakers you've used over the 15 years?'

EO: 'That's correct...'

Me: 'And...  the speaker you considered to be bad isn't in your book?'

EO: 'That's correct...'

ME: 'So basically you have everyone's name in your little black book who you've worked with apart from the one that you had two years ago',

EO: 'No.  Not everyone gets in,  only the good speakers do...'

Confused?

This is what psychologists call, 'cognitive dissonance' - it's a state of mind when a person is experiencing two conflicting thoughts at the same time, each struggling to be recognised and dealt with.

In this case, she had two things going on in the brain - a definition wrangling match over the terms, 'Good and Bad' speaker.  And then admitting if she had had a bad speaker or not.

Afterall, in this industry who's going to hire an Event Organiser if they admit to hiring bad speakers?

With this in mind, half of her statements start to make a little more sense....

But, it still doesn't account for the last statement because if she doesn't put in her little black book 'bad' and then says she only puts in the 'good', it implies that there must be another group of speakers who she's identified but unwilling to openly acknowledge as either good or bad.  In a polite way, the lack of a name for this category says it all as this is the 'nameless' category - those speakers who were 'mediocre, boring, forgetful, uninteresting, dull, samey, nothing new etc'.

Now things begin to make sense:  You can't admit to having bad speakers because no one hires an Organiser who hires bad speakers. 

So what happens when there is a bad speaker? Here's the kicker: it seems if the speaker messed up, it's somehow always ends up being the organiser's fault as they are not able to admit the speaker they hired was bad!  This attitude  perpetuates the cognitive dissonance many organisers experience at some point in their career which results in self blame rather than apportioning it back to the true source - the speaker was bad on that day. 

So I started playing around with the opening question to see if if something else was going on...

Results were reviling.

When I asked; 'Have you ever had a bad speaker?', I usually got the response: 'No'.  


But  if rephrased the question to: 'Have you ever had bad experiences working with speakers?' that's when I got a quizzical look and after a brief pause, 'Oh you mean like: them being late, or not turning up, or not sending their slides ahead, or or or or'. Suddenly the floodgates opened with war stories of the experiences they'd had.

Therefore there is a transference almost acceptance that bad experience is not the signs of a bad speaker and that it's this bad experience that is somehow always the fault of the event organiser because they must have failed to have done something even when it was beyond their control!
Cindy-Michelle Waterfield

So here's my question to you: Why keep quiet and accept a Speaker's unprofessional conduct when your client wouldn't accept you doing this to them and neither would you accept it if your supplier did this to you?  My next question: What are you going to do about it from now on?

Co-Founder of iwantaspeaker.com

Blimey. That was Quick! or Why Award Nights are over in a flash!

You've been busy organising for almost a year and waiting for this night to arrive: "The Awards Ceremony" and judging by the way the Host you've hired has just rattled through the categories, it could be the last one your organising too!

And the worse part is, it won't be your fault.  

You've created an atmosphere which is electric, and filled the venue with expectant finalists and party people, all eagerly anticipating to know who's won which category.  The venue staff alongside the catering staff work to perfect clockwork timing and then the Host appears on stage ready to start the Awards Ceremony....

The Host begins their usual warm up routine, only, they don't really stop for the audience to laugh or slow the pace of their delivery either.  Soon, the atmosphere changes from relaxed laughter to short giggles as the audience tries to keep up.

At first, we brush it off without really giving it a second thought....

But as the Host carries on at the fast pace, repeatedly telling us they have to do it rapidly because, 'There's so much to cram in to tonight's schedule!!!'  the giggles get less and less....

And just before it truly becomes annoyingly noticeable, the impeccable timing of the Host sees them bring the audience altogether by grabbing everyone's attention as they start reading out, "And moving on to tonight's Awards and The First of the Categories is...."

But instead of slowing to allow the winners to have their photo taken and have time to get back to their seats, the next lot are up on the stage, photo'ed and ushered off!

What was supposed to be the time to take in the proceedings and time to allow the winners to celebrate and the finalists to congratulate or commiserate now becomes a big blur  and towards the end of the categories, no-one's really listening to the Host accept the last few categories because everyone else is occupied with talking and selfies....

Mayhem? High energy? You decide, but one thing is for sure - you've just lost next years attendees as those at the end won't appreciate not having their 5 minutes of fame.

You've lost the atmosphere of the room as the audience was given no time to savour their moments which means the second the last award is given and the Host leaves the stage, they too won't be that far behind.  Evening over!  Empty room.  No after party business - which is the hidden bonus of these things.  Which means next year you will find this particular audience not really bothered about entering again because it all became, well, a bit of an anti climax.

This Awards Night has just been hit by the Secret Assassin - someone somewhere treated your event or more to the point, your budget as a target and they were not going to let you out of their sight. And because of this, you will have to work harder at getting the attendees to come back next year.

So who was the Secret Assassin in this case?

At one particular Award Evening I was attending, I watched the above scenario and noted the audience's reaction.

To find the Secret Assassin, I asked the questions to find out why the disparity between the Host and the organisers perception?

From the Host's view point they gave good value as they managed to squeeze the proceedings down by 30 mins which meant they could be on time for their own travel arrangements and felt they were giving the audience more time to dance afterwards as that would be far more entertaining than listening to someone droning on!

However, the organiser didn't think they got the value as they had thought there would be time for photos and selfies with the Host, especially as they ended ahead of time and it was only as the Host was running off the stage they found out about 'the diary' issue.....

The organisation behind the awards booked the Host through a speaker bureau, who then went to another bureau who then went to the management agency of the Host.  Between these two bureaus, they had added an additional £10,000 (approximately) between them.  The management agency already has a fee arrangement with the Host so the Host knows exactly how much they've gone out for and how much their agency will be keeping and how much will be in their pocket at the end.   In addition, the Host's agency had made it clear  to the bureau that the diary was already booked for another gig the following day of the Awards night  so the  end organiser would have to appreciate that the Host would have to leave as soon as possible and not spend the customary time with the end organiser and the audience. No one passed this message on to the end organiser and no one could tell me where this part of the communication got lost while only the inflated costs was successfully communicated.

To make things worse, the Host management agency and the end paying organiser didn't know the difference in the two charge fees, nor that there were two bureaus involved either which meant that the Host thought they were providing a value of £x + a small % commission for the bureau and that leaving the moment they left the stage was OK, while the other was expecting £x+£10,000 + some mingle time for their value.

I lost a few friends in bureaus that day as I told the management agency how the two bureaus had brought their Host's performance into question as the end organiser and the audience felt nothing but 'rush rush rush'. Had the end client known the Host had another engagement and needed to leave straight after, they would have thought twice about using them or made appropriate adjustments.

This is not an isolated case either.

It's why we built iwantaspeaker.com because the process would have only allowed the management agency to have registered the Host's profile and not either of the bureaus which means if the Organiser had asked the first bureau to register the profile of the Host in the first place, they would have been alerted to the fact that they are not really managing that Host.  In addition, because only the management agency can register, vital decision making communication would not have been lost and the costs would have been kept down too.

So if you want to make sure your bureau is truly working directly with the speaker, the Host or the expert - ask them to register that person's profile and use the iwantaspeaker process to then hire and book them because if they can't get a profile registered or they want you to then go direct with them once they've registered the profile, they could have something they don't want you to know about lurking in the background about how they truly work and where your funds truly go and they've just realised the iwantaspeaker process will uncover this.

I'd love to hear from you if you've had a similar problem with Secret Assassins.   Lets share knowledge and let others know that this does happen and that they are not alone.

by Cindy-Michelle Waterfield




Get smart, save money, be properly informed, use iwantaspeaker.com as your process to de-risk booking and working with speakers.

The rise of the Pitch-fests!

Even event organisers go to other events and if you are like me when it comes to choosing which events to go to and which ones to give a wide berth, it all starts with a quick look at the programme:
What's the date?
Where is it?
What's the over all theme?
What's the topic?
What's the speakers' title....

And that's when I either continue or stop reading.

If you are like me, you've probably noticed the increase in the amount of speakers who are there to do a pitch than provide information. And because of this noticeable increase, you start to take more notice of who the speakers are and their title and then work out, based on your past experience, if they are more likely to Pitch or Provide content.

Unfortunately, I find myself thinking that if there are more who will do a Pitch than provide content then the risk of going and getting no content is too great so it's a 'no go' event!

But why are the Pitch-fests on the increase?  And what's the big deal?

Several reasons and I predict it will be causing several major problems for the Conference Expo industry within 5 years time!

There has been a steady increase in the growing trend of the new style conference companies that are basically selling everything! By this I mean, they sell tickets to the audience, sponsorship and exhibitor packages, lists to the supplies, charging for speaking slots...

Yes - you read right.  Charging speakers to be there on their stage and present to their audience!

Sounds a great idea and you could be wondering why you hadn't thought of this for your own event instead of paying the speakers and going through all the usual in-house budget related arguments.

But  before you start down this road, here's the issues and the backlash for your event:

Speaking slots are prime estate at any event.

There are a number of different ways to fill this, so here are the current top 4 popular ways and respective outcomes:

1) You Pay a speaker
If you pay for a speaker's services, you expect them to deliver exactly what you want which is their services for your audience - be it entertainment, information or simply a personal appearance.  The audience will receive the speaker's service as they would have expected and the event is then seen as being an acceptable cost of their time and money invested to attend and so are more likely to come back next year.  I call this the 'Pitches not included' method because you know the audience won't be subjected to one as you've pre-instructed the speakers they can't do this and they suffer a consequence if they do.

2) You use an Unpaid speaker
If you are using speakers on a pro bono base, then you are more than likely to get a speaker who is wanting to use this opportunity to provide content to your audience because it's also their target market for their 'post speech' service. When audience and speaker are matched well, your audience will be happy and feel like they've received a value for their time invested and as for the speaker, they will probably be approached afterwards for further information if they've provided the right content for that audience.  I call this the 'Triple Win Pitch' as organiser, speaker and audience get something from it.

3) Paid for as part of the Sponsorship package
While this is a nice method of giving some value to the main sponsor so they feel that they have something for their money, it does leave the organiser at the complete mercy of the sponsor's speaker.  For the audience, they are already prepared that this particular slot will be angled, biased, pitched, selling, or a glorified advert from the sponsor.  This is what I call the 'Forgivable Pitch'.

It's the one time the audience will forgive the event if the sponsor's speaker does indeed accidentally turn it into a pitch while trying to give content.  The good news here is that most sponsors will try and give content as they are trying to raise their profile in a good way too so when they do provide content, the audience view this as a bonus.

4) Speaker pays you.
This is where you know you have a 'hot audience' and have a number of speakers wanting to talk to them, so you decide to let only those who can pay you for the privilege to buy the slot. Sounds a great money generating idea but while you will get money in from this, it's a very short sighted tactic because the dynamics of Speaker:Content:Audience=Value go out the window.  This is because the audience are often unaware that the speaker has paid to be there.  The speaker or the organisation who's paid for this slot however, will need to recoup their outlay so will use this opportunity as best as they can to create business for themselves.  This means that the audience will be subjected to a pitch more often than content and if they've paid to be there too, they really won't appreciate this and will consider this speaker and the event unfavourably, I call this 'Warfare Pitching', as no one is really the winner.  As an audience member looking at the original program details, I wouldn't have been able to second guess this pitch was coming and most likely would have expected it to have been providing content instead.  Therefore, I am less likely to trust the speaker or the event in the same way and next year I know I'd be thinking again about attending....

And yet, despite the increase of the Warfare Pitching due to the organisers going after short term gain rather than long term repeat footfall and growth, the event will see dwindling numbers leading to it's demise or be morphed into something else.  No matter which way it ends, it will give the misleading message that "Events are dead because no one goes" when the truth is - no one likes to waste their time and money which would be very obvious if only events could occur at the same time rate as a weekly shop, because then you could see this particular product line wouldn't survive the standard 3 month trial!

You've worked hard to find and work with the right speakers for your event.  You will be rewarded as successful Event Organisers are only as good as the audience they continue to keep happily returning each year.

Look after your audience, look after your speakers and they'll look after you.

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.

S**t! The Speaker's Overran!

We've all been there - watched and listened to a speaker talking for longer than they should.  Sometimes they are politely stopped by the Chair or MC, on occasion, forcibly ( and fun to watch) while other times you simply can't interrupt.

Sometime, speakers over running can save lives such as the case I heard of 30 years ago about an Army troop due to catch a ferry but first had to sit through a presentation. The speaker, a very high ranking senior officer, over ran, causing just over 300 troops to miss the Ferry.  There is no possible way to stop such a Speaker of this type in mid flow due to their seniority and, as they were not a professional speaker, but merely someone thinking they were 'rallying the troops', they had no concept of the length of their speech and just ploughed on regardless. This presentation was being held in Belgium and the ferry everyone was due to catch: the MS Herald of Free Enterprise. At the time, it was a logistical nightmare for events organiser because of people rushing around scrambling for cars and kit the moment the speech ended,  all trying to get off base at the same time. It's only in hindsight that you realise the impact of how costly that particular event's running over could have turned out.

But while most events won't ever have as a dramatic hindsight bonus for a speaker over running most are never the less left with the issues it causes:

• Audienced stressed for missing travel connections, or prearranged meetings or food
• The Venue's kitchen juggling the timing of the food or trying to keep it hot without spoiling
• Another speaker or speakers having to cut their presentation time down or even step aside
• Quietly trying to admonish the guilty speaker while they feel like they've delivered more value by over running and that you should be grateful to them!

Speakers who over run their allocated time simply are not thinking about you nor the event nor your audience.  Members of the audience do plan things around your event or the speaker they've solely come to see and while the speaker demands respect for the audience not to leave during their presentation, so then must it be a two way street and the speaker must respect the audience's time.

To prevent this, make sure your process:

1. Clearly states what time you want the speaker to go on the stage and to leave by and what they are to do there when on the stage.
2. Make is clear to the speaker what you are going to do as a count down timer incase they do forget about timing or their own stop watch has stopped working
3. Make it clear to the speaker what will happen when they have reached the end of their time - how you will be asking them to leave the stage
4. Tell the audience during, 'House Rules', what will be happening about the speaker's timing notices so they know also what to expect should a speaker over run
5. Do not be afraid to brief even the highest senior ranking official, CEO or celebrity about the timing procedure as most will appreciate knowing they've only got 5 minutes left and will happily wrap things up.

Your process should have the timings in the contract and agreed to before they even get to your event.  But if you are relying on simply email exchange for them to be a speaker at your event, then it will be the little thing of one speaker over running who will ruin your day. 

Don't let speakers who continually over run damage your event and upset your audience: we don't like it and that's why we built iwantaspeaker.com

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. 

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. 

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.