5 important questions to ask your professional speaker to maximise their audience impact.

How do you maximise your audience impact and engagement with the speaker you would like to book (or maybe have booked already)? Below are five key questions to ask:

1.    Have you spoken to a similar audience in the past?

If the speaker has, what did they include in their presentation that resonated with this audience? How did the audience respond? It’s also important that the speaker understands the audience profile including understanding any challenges the audience may be facing currently.

2.    How will you engage with our audience during your talk?

Is the speakers talk interactive? What is the style of the presentation (hopefully you will have a feel from their wonderful promotional video they have provided you). Understanding a speakers style is important as knowing your audience. Not all speakers will resonate with all audiences, so it’s worth trying to understand a speakers presentation style and match this with your audience profile.

3.    What are the messages our audience will take away from your presentation?

You will hopefully have some clear expectations of what the speaker should deliver to your audience. During the selection process, writing a quality brief for your speaker will help align your expectations with the speakers capability to deliver on these.

4.    Will you include relevant audience specific material?

Depending on the speaker, some will include some very relevant audience specific material. Most business speakers (and by ‘business’ I mean business success, economists, futurists, leadership, sales, speakers etc.) will do this to varying degrees. For example, an economist speaker will usually have audience specific economic information.

5.    Do you provide any follow up material?

For example, a short-personalised video, access to online content etc. Ask the speaker if this is included in their fee or could they include? Some speakers will quite happily do a follow up video post conference for you to send to the delegates. Some will also give your audience access to complimentary online content, provide worksheets or offer other assistance to help your audience take action following their talk.

These are only some suggested questions to ask. Depending on the type of speaker you engage (motivational/inspirational vs business) will determine the types of questions you will need to put to the speaker. For those that have booked a professional speaker before, I encourage you to post any other questions you think are important to ask speakers so others can share in your knowledge. Thank-you!