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.

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. 

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.