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

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. 

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

How to engage speakers like the professionals

Have you ever wondered how the speaker bureaus manage to find and suggest speakers who are always so professional and won’t let you down?

You are probably thinking it’s because of years of experience in the industry and being so well connected they’ve gained respect and attraction from the speakers as being the reason.

And if you have, I bet you’ve also thought that it would be wonderful if ALL the speakers that didn’t come via a bureau were just as professional as those that did.  And it’s at this point, you’ve probably assumed that because those speakers who are not with a bureau is because they are not professional or famous enough and therefore not worthy of justifying the bureaus hefty price tag.

What you have just done is assumed the “Value + Content = Worth” equation.

The truth is, using a bureau is not an option when you have a limited budget or even no budget. But you can still work out the V+C=W equation with a good speaker management process.

Bureaus and some speakers rely on you making assumptions as this allows them to drive up the price. However, justifying the price is a little more tricky as not all well known famous names are able to deliver a speech of value or with content as much as we would like whereas an unknown but practicing CEO is able to give invaluable insights and content rich and delivers well above their worth.

If you want to book the speakers who can deliver the Value + Content = Worth equation without the additional commission costs, all you need to do is standardise your procedure for booking and working with speakers.

• Have a system where all speakers have to send you the minimum amount of information about themselves which enables you to quickly work out if they could be suitable BEFORE you decide to use them at your next event.
• Have proper Contracts with Terms & Conditions that you send to each and every speaker even if it’s a pro bono slot
• Have a payment method system speakers can understand and trust
• Have a two way feedback process which you are willing to be open about. 

By having a simple process which standardises the way you work with speakers – not matter paid or unpaid, you will find that those who want to work with you will adapt to your process and do what you require.

It’s why we built iwantaspeaker.com – providing you a professional process to standardise working with speakers.