A few years ago, as Kate Patay began a presentation in front of an
audience at the San Diego Zoo, she experienced a highly unusual
distraction.
“For the duration of my presentation, the tigers in the cage behind
me were trying to paw me as if I were their dinner,” she says. “It was a
little distracting, needless to say, but a great story. Who co-presents
with tigers?”
Fortunately,
Patay, CPCE, executive director of sales and marketing for Creative
Coverings—which provides high-quality table linen rentals to meetings
groups and others—wasn’t eaten and was able to turn a potentially
negative situation into a positive. But her experience illuminates the
fact that speakers often need to deal with unexpected challenges during
their presentations. They may also face many other unexpected situations
from the time they accept a gig to its conclusion—and their
responsibilities are mounting.
Meeting planners also encounter challenges as they try to arrange top
speakers, given the increasingly significant role they play at meetings
and events. Industry surveys consistently show that the quality and
appropriateness of speakers is ranked as one of the most important
meeting components.
“It’s an age-old form of communication and a tool that event owners
can effectively use to move a gathering and a group toward a set of
objectives,” says Brian Palmer, CMM, president of National Speakers
Bureau, which matches speakers and planners for events. “Speakers stand
out in a program and they’re usually thought about, talked about and
remembered, good and bad, after the event is completed.”
Smart Meetings decided to take a close look at the dynamics of the
speaker industry and offer tips that can help speakers and planners.
New Responsibilities
Traditionally, speakers have been an important attraction at meetings
to inform, inspire and entertain attendees. Recently, speakers have
become even more significant as they’ve been expected to develop new
approaches and more actively promote meetings.
“There
has been a slow and steady increase in the expectation that speakers
will directly address ideas that exist in the mind of the audience and
make prescribed contributions to the objective of the gathering,” Palmer
says. “These things were not common in 1980, when I started here.
“Speakers are also expected to play a more prominent role to help
garner attention, attendance and publicity for an event—and there are
far more events to choose from these days.”
They are also much more involved in pre-event activities, such as
providing brief training for the company’s staff members and creating
short videos to build excitement for the event.
Many speakers also maintain a connection with the company and
attendees well after an event by offering webinars and speaking at
additional events.
David
Epstein, content marketing manager for Bizzabo—a management, marketing
and interaction platform for event professionals—thinks that in the
future, speakers will begin interacting with attendees in new ways.
“More and more, I think we’ll see speakers videoconferencing into
events as conferencing software continues to improve,” he says. “I also
think we’ll see speakers begin to embrace self-created content even
more.
“Some speakers already have taken to live streaming presentations or
sharing snippets with followers on Snapchat and other platforms. I think
we’ll see more of this as speakers become more tech-savvy.”
Getting Started
Besides new challenges posed by their evolving role, meetings
industry speakers face many other challenges. Most speakers and speaker
organization executives interviewed by Smart Meetings point to the same
basic steps that need to be taken to establish a successful speaking
career.
It’s important for new speakers to attend other speakers’ events and
to participate in Toastmasters, speaking classes, acting classes and
other experiences that strengthen stage presence and public speaking
skills.
Some people, such as who
will be speaking at Smart Meeting Mid-Atlantic in Washington, DC, July
20—attained valuable experience through other professions before
becoming speakers.
“I have been a speaker to one extent or another for my entire
career,” she says. “As a litigation attorney, I am constantly addressing
judges and juries. I started training other lawyers in the late 1980s
and then started speaking in the meeting industry in the early 1990s.”
When the leap to speaker is taken, practice and preparation are key.
“Speak
anywhere you can to get better, establish your brand and build your
network,” says Jeff Civillico, an entertainer and speaker who spoke at
Smart Meeting Southern California in Los Angeles on April 13. “Action,
action, action. Course-correct as you go—just get out there and start
doing your thing, and the next step will become clear.”
Palmer encourages new speakers to be bold.
“Speak often, in challenging situations, for local or service
groups,” he says. “Make sure you are excellent on the platform before
you expect to be paid for it.”
Developing expertise on particular subjects and themes is also
necessary, so it’s important to connect with meetings industry personnel
and read relevant informational material.
Market, Market, Market!
Speakers often are challenged to find ways to effectively market
themselves. Since the market is more crowded than ever, it’s important
for speakers to find ways not only to stand out, but to stand out to
people who are most interested in their expertise. Speakers should
consider including special offers that attract planners, such as a
post-event webinar free of charge, giving away books and staying after
their talk to speak in other sessions.
They need to build their profile by including their photo, a bio,
topics of expertise, fees, a video, reviews and available dates, among
other things.
provides plenty of helpful advice on such matters.
It’s also important for speakers to keep their profile updated and to
create short videos explaining how prospective clients can be inspired
and informed by the presentation.
Developing a Message
After being selected to present, speakers need to learn their subject
matter inside out and even more importantly, to craft their own
personal message.
“I have learned that people enjoy being inspired by a simple but
powerful story,” says Dr. Natalie Stavas, who will be speaking at Smart
Meeting Mid-Atlantic. “I used to be concerned that I wasn’t putting
enough concepts of ‘leadership’ or ‘how to be successful’ into my
speech. I thought this was what meeting planners wanted. I would create
keynotes packed with information about success, leadership and
innovation.
“I realized that all I needed to do was stay true to my story, stay
true to what I believed in, and it would naturally move people. I have
found that people embrace the emotion they feel during my speech,
because emotion is the most powerful driver for change. If I can evoke
emotion, then I have been successful as a speaker.”
Palmer also emphasizes the importance of establishing an emotional connection with attendees.
“Audiences want information, guidance and their emotions touched,” he
says. “There needs to be some stories and entertainment amid the
practical information.”
Many speakers draw on their experiences to bring a measure of
education and workplace best practices to events. Jonathan Kaufman, who
spoke at Smart Meeting Northeast in New York City on May 10, is a
thought leader and business strategist who was born with cerebral palsy.
He helps groups gain insights into disability lifestyle.
“Diversity is critically important because it reflects the world that we live in,” he says.
Kaufman’s personal story engages audiences, which is critically important.
“I’ve learned that audiences now crave more engagement and less
lecture,” says Shawna Suckow, who presented at Smart Meeting East
National June 26–28 in Miami. “The more I facilitate audience
participation, the better the session. Audiences don’t have the patience
anymore to sit and listen to lecture after lecture.”
It’s also critical to be receptive to feedback.
“Criticism is opportunity for growth,” says Darren Woodson, a former
star safety for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys before beginning a speaking
career three years ago. “Record your speeches and review your work. Have
other speakers and coaches review your work with you. The critiques
will be healthy. Accept them, and grow.”
Woodson will be speaking at Smart Meeting Southwest in Frisco, Texas,
Nov. 9. He will be joined by Johnny Quinn, a former Olympic bobsledder
and player for the Green Bay Packers and Buffalo Bills of the National
Football League and the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian
Football League.
Quinn,
one of only three people to have competed in the Winter Olympics and
NFL, also is an entrepreneur and professional speaker. He has applied
lessons drawn from his athletic career to develop his approach to
speaking by making sure that a collective game plan is in place and then
executing it.
Challenges for Planners
Just as speakers are challenged to find suitable gigs, planners are
faced with identifying appropriate speakers for their meetings and
events. It’s essential for planners to establish a clear set of
objectives, and then determine how speakers might contribute to
realizing them. Then, planners need to create a set of criteria for
speakers.
“By far the biggest problem is to set out to select speakers with no
clear objectives and criteria,” Palmer says. “It’s extremely challenging
for a group to come together and select someone when there are no
standards in place.”
Planners then need to identify speaker candidates by reaching out to professionals in the industry and using
and Twitter—or by utilizing such sources as the Meeting Planning section at smartmeetings.com.
Once speakers have been arranged, planners need to explain what is expected of them and how they will be evaluated.
“Play to the speakers’ strengths; don’t ask them to do too much,” Palmer says.
Planners then begin gathering speaker marketing material and involve the speaker in event marketing and advertising.
“Keeping track of all the needed collateral can be challenging, as
can getting speakers excited about marketing an event,” Epstein says.
“I’ve seen organizers transform this process by using
“Bizzabo, for example, helps organizers update speaker info in
seconds thanks to an official LinkedIn integration. Tracking links and
email work flows help organizers manage the process of communicating
with speakers, as well.”
Leading up to the presentation, it’s important for planners to give
speakers sufficient time to complete their tasks and to set flexible
deadlines for them. Also, it’s good to maintain regular contact with
them to keep the event on their minds.
Any special needs and requests speakers have, including accessibility
issues and dietary restrictions, need to be identified. Discovering
these issues early on provides the flexibility to plan well in advance
of the event.
It’s also important to find out whatever needs speakers have for the
presentation, including audiovisual and other technical equipment. Event
management software programs can be used for real-time tracking of room
reservations, speaker schedules, equipment needs and more.
For large shows, it’s advisable to have one or more staff members focus solely on speakers’ tasks.
After presentations, planners need to arrange for attendees to
complete surveys about speakers’ performances. The right balance is
needed: Very short surveys might not provide as much feedback as needed,
while long surveys might discourage attendees from filling them out.
Ten to 12 questions is usually about right.
Keeping the Objective in Mind
Planners and the speakers they book play critical roles in ensuring
the success of a meeting or an event, so it’s important for them to
remember why the speakers were hired in the first place.
“People have events to achieve some sort of objectives,” Palmer says.
“They don’t hire speakers to hear what they have to say as much as to
make a contribution to those objectives. It’s a bit of a switch in
perspective that might be useful to those who hire speakers and people
who speak.”
