Professional speakers a waste of money?

With the kind of investment you’re going to make in a speaker, surely the least you should feel at the end of the address is “I’d definitely use him/her again” or “That was hot”. But in reality this is not always the case and all too often, companies throw money at a “problem” and end up disappointed. This despite the fact that in South Africa we have a huge talent pool, many of which are called on to address international audiences.

No direction

There are several reasons for the disappointment, the overriding one being that all too often conference organisers are often unsure of what they want to achieve through the hire of the speaker. Mercifully the speaking community (including clients) has been forced to mature and shape-up largely through the influence of the National Speakers Association of South Africa (NSASA). The stringent membership criteria ensure that if you’re booking an NSASA member or accredited speaker, you get someone who has earned their stripes.

An excellent starting point when considering a speaker is to ask, “What’s our purpose or objective in having a speaker at the event?” Your answer might be any of the following (all of which are sound reasoning), in no particular order:

1. We want to be entertained
   
2. We want an outsider’s perspective on the issue
   
3. We’ve heard so-and-so is a good speaker
   
4. We need someone to fill the ‘graveyard’ shift
   
5. The speaker is a subject-matter expert
   
6. We want someone to motivate our team
   
7. We need to start the conference off with a keynote talk
   
8. It’s professional to have outside speakers
   
9. Leading organisations always have speakers at their conferences.
   

There will undoubtedly be other reasons. With that clear it makes finding the right match of speaker easier and certainly ensures the delivery is in keeping with the objective.

The speaker fee, even for a top-end one, is usually a small percentage of the overall conference budget. Unless you’re doing a non-residential, one-day event, in which case the budget might be small and if numbers are low, the cost per head investment in the speaker can appear steep. But if that speaker is going to positively influence people into some new thinking or change process, ask yourself whether that same investment per head could be achieved as cost-efficiently, any other way. Probably not.

Does a speaker fit the bill?

There’s nothing wrong with having an entertaining speaker. Indeed all good speakers should be entertaining to some or other extent, or they’re simply not packaging their material attractively enough. But if it’s pure entertainment you’re wanting, why go with a speaker, unless that person is an utterly hilarious after-dinner raconteur? There are cross-over entertainers – people who primarily entertain but also embed a message of some sort, but they’re in the minority. So think carefully: If you want entertainment only, then hire an entertainer.

I recall having once been given my speaker brief by the FD of an organisation with an upcoming annual conference. It was packed with legit strategic objectives and requests and I was pleased that they’d so carefully thought it through. The day we finally got to meet with the CEO to agree pre-conference finishing touches, I asked him the question I ask all clients: “What do you want to happen in the minds of your people when I leave the room?”

The CEO’s answer was: “I want them to have fun.”

That response, which was totally out of whack with what the financial and marketing teams had envisaged, had us back at the drawing board, revisiting the actual reason for the conference in the first place!

Hitting the keynote

There’s a caveat built into this anecdote. You’d better be darned sure that the person booking or briefing a speaker understands what the key players in the organisation want from your conference speaker. I’ve had briefs (of the non-lingerie kind!) from PR ‘poppies’ as I call them, with one and half brain cells. Yet, on meeting the actual client, I find that said poppie has the proverbial bull by the udder. There’s nothing more dreadful than the hapless speaker revising talk or presentation material overnight before a conference, because they’ve sat the previous evening at the chairperson’s table and she or he has a very different concept of what they’re all expecting from the keynote speaker!

There are a good number of speaker bureaus in South Africa. Most are run by ethical, service-orientated people. They will listen to your need and try to match you with the best person for the task. Listen to them at least. If you simply demand an individual, they’ll try to get you that person. But sometimes that speaker isn’t necessarily the best available for the task. The good bureaux will know who is. So let them earn their speaker-fee commission by recommending and then justifying that recommendation! You don’t have to accept who they suggest, but you might be pleasantly surprised to find that you have options.

Bang for your buck

Next time you want to book a speaker, remind yourself that you’re about to make an investment. Make sure you know why you want to make that investment and what exactly you want from it in terms of both return and deliverables. Finally, if you want a professional, make sure he or she a professional member of the National Speakers Association of South Africa.