How much should I pay a Speaker?

If you ask a speaker, some will answer this with a retort of; 'what ever they can get away with charging you'.

If you ask a bureau this question, they'll answer with whatever your budget can afford to pay, and some consultants within the bureaus will even try and push you towards a basic entry level of being £5,000 - £10,000 citing that this is the figure you need to start thinking - when really all it means is that's where they themselves want to earn commission so have to start with this budget size (read more about this in my coming Myth Buster about Bureaus which is coming soon)!

If you ask the person who's holding onto the purse strings of the budget for your event, their answer would be as little as you can possibly spend!

The truth is somewhere in between £0 and in excess of £100,000.

However, if you take a few factors into consideration, you can start to work out if you are being over charged or if you have a bargain.

When negotiating, bear in mind the following:  

• Who the person is
• Are they known to your audience already  
• How relevant they are to your audience
• How relevant their topic is to the audience

For example, there is only one Madonna but a high number of impersonators ranging from those that look like her to those that can sing like her to those who can sing and look like her.  But, there is still only 1 Madonna.  Therefore, everyone else must be cheaper. 

Then consider your audience: if your audience does not know what Madonna looks like but have heard her songs and interested in hearing her songs, then an impersonator who can sing like her but might not look like her  would be more fitting over the impersonator who looks like her but can't sing.  And if the audience is not interested in the person - just the music and the vocal style, then paying for the real deal would not necessarily give you any better results.

However, if your audience are Madonna fans and know her well with some attending hoping to talk to her personally afterwards, then using an impersonator to save budget would cost you not only your audience but also future business and reputation because for most organisations, keeping the audience happy is key to future business.

And so it is the same with the business world.  Those business speakers who speak from experience of being there, done it themselves, leading from the front or have in depth knowledge or created new insights from specialist research are worth more than the person who quit their job on Friday, had an epiphany on Saturday, decided to become a speaker on the Sunday and now wants to be in front of your audience on Monday!

And these guys are out there.

And they think they are worth the same fees....

So to answer how much should you pay for a speaker, check out their competition and do a comparison for someone who has a similar background, similar content and similar profile suited to your audience.  And make sure you know exactly what you want from your budget, how much you are willing to pay and never give away how much your actual budget is without doing your homework first.  

Bureau websites have fee groups for a reason so check them out and decide if you like the type of profiles you see within those groups. Remember, Bureaus are not really able to negotiate best deals for you beyond these fee group figures, but they'll try and beat the speaker down and drop some of their commission rate too if you push hard enough for a specific name or you might just find they'll start offering you names from a different lower fee group.  (read more about this in my coming Myth Buster about Bureaus).

Dealing with speakers directly will give you the best value for your money, but dealing direct also leaves you vulnerable to those speakers who will try and take advantage of you too by accept your budget knowing they are usually a lot lower fee normally.  When you deal direct, you are at the mercy of the speaker being honest and openly saying their normal rate - so watch out.  Do do your homework first.

Or to get the best of both worlds, ie the support like a bureau but able to negotiate directly, use a site like iwantaspeaker.com where you can do your homework comparing profiles, get an idea of the fee groups and then use the site to communicate directly with the speakers.  This way you'll get the best for your budget, the support behind you and a speaker who won't let you down but will leave you feeling like you've just got a bargain.

It's why iwantaspeaker.com was built.

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.

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

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. 

How can you stop worrying about a speaker not showing up?

So you’ve put your life on hold for the last 6 weeks while you’ve been busy finalising the event details: going to the venue, checking and rechecking the room layout, ensuring all AV equipment is at hand and working and updating your list of back up AV suppliers, make final decisions and agree sign offs, check the speakers have sent their material in and it’s on appropriate slides…  oh wait… hang on…   You …are…. Kidding!!!

The speaker isn’t coming?  What do you mean they are not coming?

Rather unprofessional of them isn’t it!

For the last umpteen months, you’ve been plastering their name all across your event, raising their profile, marketing their topic and advertising their name to their ideal audience only to have all this hard work and effort undone.  Let alone the cost and time and effort of yourself and your team you’ve put in and the stress it’s going to cause to get a replacement and somehow get literature together and inform the audience ahead of the event because there will be someone who was coming specifically to hear that speaker and if you keep quiet and decide to only let everyone know on the day that the speaker isn’t going to be there, you just know you’ll get complaints…..

Sounds familiar?

You are not alone.  Considering how many events are ran each year and how many speakers there are out there, this does happen.  Sometimes during the beginning of planning before too much time and cost has been sank into promoting them attending your event, while on other occasions, you only hear from them on the day that they can’t make it.

It’s times like this you wish you had a crystal ball or possibly heard from others that the speaker was likely to do this so you could have planned in advance or not even bothered with them in the first place.

There should be at least somewhere a professional standard for speakers and then know if they are willing to stand by it or not.

So we looked around because we too have experienced this and we thought it was about time someone found a way to figure out how you could predict if you are going to be given the run around or have a professional service from the speakers…   we discovered not all the speaker bureaus and agents were honest about who they exactly manage and not all the speakers showed all their testimonials on their website. 

We realised there isn’t even a quantified standard for being a speaker or even booking them!

So… we built one: iwantaspeaker.com

iwantaspeaker.com is the only online Speaker Management software tool that gives you early indications about a speaker’s level of professionalism. 

It is a process that only those speakers who have a minimum standard of experience or expertise in their subject would be able to get through as well as giving you a perfect process for contracting them. 

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.

How Do You Pick which Expo?

It’s Expo season and it’s in full swing.  But which one do you go to?

One of the top reasons is: To Gain Knowledge.  And one of the best ways is to listen to the speakers and the Keynotes as it’s a quick way of learning new information.

So, you do your homework and work out which of the Expos’ breakout sessions and keynotes you want to attend and could be of most value and then you consider that while you are there, you might as well check ahead to see what exhibitors are there and arrange a few meet-ups. 

Come the day and….

You get to the speaker session and….

The room is empty. 

The Speaker didn’t show.

Yes, it’s annoying.

If you had known they wouldn’t show, would you honestly have gone?  It’s only at this point you realise that you will at least be getting something from the day with the meet-ups and the exhibition.  But reality is, if you knew the speaker wasn’t going to be there, you probably wouldn’t be either.

Speakers impart knowledge. This is a great way to learn about what’s hot, what’s trending and what your company needs to have or do right now.

Of the Expos I attended last year, on average, 11% of sessions were cancelled because of no speaker on the day.  5% had alternative speakers from the name advertised simply because the Event Organiser found a replacement speaker at the last minute and in one case, they had a speaker do repeat performances just to ensure that the audience had someone!

Event Organisers work hard to ensure the right people are on the stage to impart this knowledge so you are drawn to the event in the first place.  So it doesn’t help them either when a Speaker decides not to show. Not professional of the speaker and it’s them that’s potentially just wasted your time.

The only speakers the Event Organisers can 99% guarantee of turning up are the Keynotes as usually these are booked via a speaker bureau and are charged big bucks for the privilege.

Now, while you and I know that these big name speakers are interesting as a draw to get us to possibly go, it’s usually the smaller, lesser known speakers in between that we go to hear as we know their content is sometimes more valuable, relevant and related to our own business. But it’s these that are the hit and miss.

Because of this, we decided it’s about time to set a Professional Standard for booking speakers and created a speaker management system that does this –iwantaspeaker.com.

Our online process reduces the risk when it comes to hiring speakers, which means Events ran by your Event Organiser will be less likely to have a “No Shows”. 

If you’ve attended an event with a ‘No Show’, tell the organiser about us as and be assured that if they use our system, they will have our 'Icon logo' on their event which means you can be sure the next time you attend their event, you will get to see the speaker you wanted and know that they will be of a Professional Standard.  No Logo? No gogo! 

That’s why we built   iwantaspeaker.com

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.

“So What if I Leave With Someone?”

Christmas parties. Or to be more precise, The Christmas Club/Association/Office Party.

Organising one of these when it’s not for your own family but a group of people that are thrown together because of being linked via work, hobbies or voluntary environments is not easy.

Not only have you got to find the right venue, theme and good quality food from suppliers who are not taking advantage of the Christmas ‘Good Cheer’ season, but you’ve then got to source the entertainment: music for a quick bop on the dance floor, possibly someone to say a few words, an entertainer to do a slot maybe? And then there’s the ‘Thanks to the audience’ slot. The customary part of giving back and letting your audience know what they mean to the host. A small part of the evening, but until recently, I didn’t fully appreciate just how much this could be a make or break.

While attending a Christmas Dinner as a guest, a local ‘Celeb’ was engaged by the club through their network, to pop along and hand out a few Awards to members of the audience. He’d been on the TV recently and a few of the female guests, a little intoxicated by the Christmas Spirit I suspect, were tripping over themselves to get the obligatory selfies with him.

All was going well.

The local ‘Celeb’ was enjoying the limelight and mixing well with the audience once the Awards were over. The Event Organiser let their hair down and joined in the boogie on the dance floor after first checking everyone all OK and doing the customary photo taking for the club album.

All running nicely like any other event.

Then, just as everything is going well, an argument broke out on the dance floor between one of the Event Team and a guest. Because I knew the Event Organiser and she knew my background, she called on me for assistance.

She told me that the local ‘Celeb’ had propositioned the guest to leave with him and go back to his place and could I help convince her not to go because she was married!

While I’m taking on-board the info, another guest interrupts to say that he’d suggested that she AND her friend leaves with him and what a slime bag he’s being to some other female friends of theirs. The Event Organisers response? ‘You can do what you want because you are single, she’s married and it’s not right for her to go – isn’t that right Cindy…..’

OK, going to a Christmas party and getting involved in someone else’s argument wasn’t my idea of a fun night off, but neither could I stand by and let someone ruin other people’s evening and event. That someone being the speaker!

You see, while the Event Organiser was concentrating on the morals of the problem, they’d forgotten the professional boundary line and if it had been crossed and by whom it had been crossed by. While we all want to protect our audience, you can’t police them. Unless they are doing something criminal or are about to physically hurt themselves; this means telling the 10 ladies who were trying to dance on the table to get off it, is perfectly acceptable. But telling them who they can or can’t leave with is their choice. Christmas Parties are notorious for it. However, the local ‘Celeb’ was engaged in a professional capacity to act on behalf, and as part of, the event and the team and therefore he should have been acting professionally while mixing with the audience and not ‘on the pull’ to coin a phrase.

The Event Organiser had missed this fact and once realised, felt she couldn’t approach him because of his local status and not wanting to upset him and the possible problems he could cause for her. So I did the deed.

Taking him to one side, pointing out that he is at the beginning of his career as a Speaker, there are certain professional rules and conduct and chatting up the audience while being engaged as a Speaker is a big no-no. I was rather surprised when he replied, ‘Why? So what if I leave with a lady? There’s nothing wrong with that!”

Ermmm Everything’s wrong with that!

Considering the recent allegations in the news about Celebs using their status to take advantage, this guy really thought it was OK to do the same. He couldn’t conceive of the possibility of someone waking up the next day and regretting anything or making allegations. All he considered was the ladies wanting selfies with him were really wanting to do more with him and was ‘up for a bit of fun’.

By this point, my polite, ‘let me give you some advice’ face turned into the ‘let me give you a dose of reality’ face. I think the penny dropped when I calmly pointed out that I wouldn’t trust you to mix with any of my audiences and wouldn’t be hiring him and because Event Organisers and Bureaus do talk to each other and share experiences, you are shooting yourself in the foot before you start because others won’t hire you for fearing the same’ seemed to be getting through. After all, bringing down any Event’s reputation and making unwanted sexual advances on audience members is many an Event Organisers nightmare. At this point, the realisation of his actions impacting his potential wallet earnings started to hit a home run as you could see his own self-importance look melt away on his face.

He ran back to his table as quickly as he could.

By this time, 3 other upset ladies had come forward telling the Event Organiser what had happened while the very drunken married lady was still trying to weigh up whether to leave with him or not.

Given the recent moments, you’d think the local ‘Celeb’ would make his excuses and leave.

Well, he didn’t.

Instead, he did what other newbies who believe their own publicity in his position would do: complained to the manager about someone telling him off.

Admittedly I did smile when I saw the manager making his way towards me and so decided to help him out of a tight spot…

You see, when newbie speakers in his position complain, they have worked out that they need to cover their butt so they can continue being hired by other event organisers. But instead of apologising and then behaving, he thought complaining and getting me to be in the wrong would be the best bet.

To him, the event was his playground – not work.

And I was the nasty, bad, lady who’d upset him. Only, he was the little boy who cried because someone had taken the cat who’s tail he’d been pulling away from him.

The Manager was relieved when I pointed out that the local ‘Celeb’ is hired by you and so in effect working for you and as such, should be following the same rules as any other of your staff member and hired help – which for him was not to chat up the audience and keep it professional and so duly went back and reigned in the roaming circle of the local ‘Celeb’ by making one of his team chaperone him for the rest of the evening until he left.

It occurred to me that when it comes to Christmas Parties and Award Evenings and After Dinner engagements where there is a free flow of alcohol, how many other events have been tarnished by unprofessional ‘Celebs’ taking advantage of dewy eyed audience members?

And how many Event Organisers have had the unwelcome job of having to mop up the fallout from one ‘Celeb’s’ indiscretion afterwards?

And because this Event team was fairly inexperienced and had inadvertently allowed themselves to be swept up in the awe of the local ‘Celeb’ gracing them with his presence, what if I wasn’t around to lend my experience and point them into seeing the reality of the problem?

Organising one of these types of events is hard enough and engaging someone you can trust to be professional when the audience is at its most vulnerable is vital.

Luckily the incident in this event was nipped quickly in the bud. But I can’t help wondering what could have happened if he did leave with someone and something did happen? Who would the legal eagles come after? And who would be to blame? Or would there be any blame and it just simply swept under the carpet putting the experience down to too much Christmas Spirit?

As I said at the beginning, organising one of these events is not easy.

I believe Event Organisers are the unsung hero and it’s about time they were given more freedom and more voice so they can do their job and continue protecting the event’s reputation and the audience’s experience without fear of reprisal from predators who hunt in these grounds.