How to Hire a Speaker Without Losing Your Sanity: 5 Tips For Hiring a Speaker

If you’ve ever been to a live event, you know just how important having a great speaker is. Speakers that engage with the audience and can create a dynamic connection with everyone who attends are worth their weight in gold.

When you’re hiring a speaker, there are five tips that you can use to make sure that you’re investing in the best and most engaging speakers for your audience. Here are some of the ways you can ensure that you have the best speaker possible for your event and can help you expedite the hiring process with your speaker and save you time and potential frustration, too!

Tip #1

Check your budget. If you’re focusing on finding a keynote speaker, generally your budget will need to be between $5,000 and $10,000, but there are often great speakers that can come to your event — depending on the type of audience — for a lesser amount. Remember: there’s a speaker available for every budget type and every venue size.

Also remember that some speakers, depending on your industry or audience, may be willing to trade off their fee for premium space at the venue or for the opportunity to pitch a special product or service during their presentation. This may be something that is workable for you if their honorarium is outside of what you can do, but you would really like to have them on your stage. So when you’re considering hiring a speaker, don’t let the speaking fee stop you.

Tip #2

Check eSpeakers Marketplace. eSpeakers has the largest online directory of professional speakers worldwide and is a great resource for finding general session speakers as well as keynote speakers. By using eSpeakers Marketplace, you can search by availability, expert topic, fee range and much more. Once you have a shortlist of potential speakers, you can connect with them right through the Marketplace system. Then when you decide on the speaker you want to hire, you can sign the contract and pay the all online which makes it fast and easy to get completed.  

See why this speaker search tool is one of the hottest on the market right now, go to www.espeakers.com/marketplace.

Tip #3

Once you find a speaker that you think will work, ask for references. Remember that speakers will make sure that their references reflect their quality of work. If a speaker is not able to provide recommendations to you (which can sometimes happen because of privacy clauses in gig contracts), ask for videos of them speaking that they can share with you. Customer reviews will help you gauge whether or not their style of delivery will work for your audience as well as for your event overall.

This step is vitally important especially if you have a multi-speaker event happening. You want to ensure that all of your speakers are cohesive and in harmony together with one another even if their presentation styles are different.

Tip #4

When you’re asking for referrals or videos from your speakers, be sure to also ask them for their contract–yes, before signing it. Reviewing this before will help you to know if they have any clauses in their contract that may not work for your event. Some speakers require exclusivity to your stage or a specific area of your meeting or event. It’s important to know because, for example, if your venue is limited on space, you may not be able to provide everything that they’re asking for in their contract.

Previewing the contract before you enter into the agreement and also while you’re reviewing their videos or talking to their referrals helps you know even more if these clauses in their contract will be worth the time if they have any exclusivity, because if they’re a great presenter specific requirements may be worth the trade-off for having a great keynote speaker.

Tip #5

Automate the paying & communication process after the contract is signed. Help the speaker have confidence in you and your event by making sure that payments and any communication to them are taken care of promptly. This tip is especially vital when you’re dealing with a keynote speaker, but it’s an essential step for everyone you’ve invited to speak.

Make sure that you have your assistant carbon copied and all of the correspondence with them so that your assistant can ensure that your speakers are getting everything that they need on time. A good assistant allows you to focus on the coordination of the rest of the event without having to worry about if any of your speakers have any last minute questions. Things like, if you need a photo from them, or if you had any problems that you need clarification on from any of the speakers as far as audio requirements visual requirements and so on.

Using these tips for hiring a speaker for your next event will help it be the best experience for you as well as the speakers that you engage.

Using these tips for hiring a speaker for your next event will help it be the best experience for you as well as the speakers s that you hire to speak. You can find more tips on the eSpeakers blog, specifically this post about the type of speaker that will work best for you.