Five reasons why your event NEEDS an outside moderator

As an external moderator, I love working with experienced event organisers because they understand what I bring to the table. Honestly, the best feedback I've ever had from an organiser was a hand on the arm and a sincere, "Honestly, Ian, you've saved me so much work."

If organising an event is something you only do occasionally, you might wonder why you need to spend the money on someone like me. The answer is that not only do I make running the event a lot easier, I help you get more value out of the event itself.

ROI can be a little hard to pin down but there are many ways in which I earn the money, and it's not just by turning up. Here are my top five:

Problem finding and fixing

It’s really hard as a business to have conversations that say the unsayable, test the assumptions and honestly say: "what we are doing is not working."

As an outside moderator, I bring what I call the grammar of objectivity - which is a fancy way of saying that when you have to explain your actions to a third party, it changes how you see them.

By being an independent and impartial moderator, I help discussions open up, make sure all voices are heard and make sure the boss hears what they have to hear.

Value added: If we find the right problem, it could save your entire business.

Getting guests to "yes"

If you want to bring people in to your event, guest speakers are a reliable way of building anticipation and excitement. The trouble is getting them to say yes, especially if they’re not being paid.

Speakers aren’t saying no because they’re busy at the time of the speech, they say no because they don't have time to prepare the speech.

If you have a moderator, it's easy to turn that speech into an interview.

There is a huge difference in the burden of speaking on the platform for 30 mins and turning up to answer questions. By tailoring those questions and briefing the moderator beforehand, you can also make sure that the guest speaker doesn't stray too far from the themes of the whole event.

Audiences also prefer to watch an interview rather than have a speaker speak "at" them - particularly if the moderator can field questions from the audience.

Value added: Your moderator can help you secure better guests, which means a better audience experience, better word of mouth, happier sponsors, and it's an easier sell next year.

Smoother events

Perception matters. In business you want to be seen as professional, so a professional moderator acting as the trusted source of information stops the audience from getting mixed messages and thinking you can’t organise an event.

Almost every event has something going awry - I’ve had lunch arrive at the wrong time, fire alarms, missing speakers... how these bumps in the road are handled makes a big difference to how the audience remembers what happened. If they think the organisation was chaotic, they’re going to be hard to bring back next time.

Value added: You want your events and your reputation for organising them to be memorable for the right reasons.

Keeping an eye on the optics

This is a true story: at the drinks reception after a conference, a sponsor wanted to have a prize draw at their drinks reception. Three lucky winners would have their names pulled from a hat and each would win a top of the range new tablet computer.

Just before I went on the mic to announce the draw, the sponsor gave me a piece of paper with three names written on it, explaining these were the winners.

I said this was not going to work: you have to be seen to be fair and draw the names live in front of everyone, otherwise the audience will reasonably assume you’ve just given three iPads to your favourite clients and it’ll leave a bad taste. Even the winners will feel a bit uncomfortable about what looks like a sweetener being offered very publicly.

We quickly printed off a sheet of attendees, cut the names into slips, put them in a box and I drew them onstage in a fair way. The winners were pleased to win, the losers didn't mind losing and everyone was reminded of the generosity of the kind sponsors paying for the drinks.

Value added: In the above case, I'm going to estimate that I stopped the sponsor from wasting about ￡25,000 they had already spent. Instead they got some good leads and generated valuable business.

Staff retention

This is big for me because I’ve pitched for a few internal events and been told, no thanks, the CEO likes to do it himself (and yes, it usually is a man).

How does an external moderator help your business retain staff? People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. If the boss is on the stage, they are not mixing with their people as much as you could. With remote working and busy schedules, one-to-one time is really precious. If the boss is doing my job, they're not doing theirs.

It's tempting for the boss to save my fee and do it themselves but the truth is I'll do a better job of making them look like a star. plus, the average cost of replacing a mid-range employee is ￡11,000. So if the CEO talks to a colleague, learns about a problem, fixes it and keeps that employee - that's a good ROI.

The best leaders are present. Don’t be absent when you don’t have to be.

Value added: ￡11,000 per employee.

Event organisers have a million things to do. An external moderator is able to lift some of the burden and make sure that the most important things that will impact the audience's experience of the event are brought to the organiser's attention. Not only will this give everyone a better experience of the event, it could stop you wasting money you've already spent and give the whole event a more valuable ROI.

If you want to be a better speaker or tell better stories, check out my books, available exclusively through www.allthumbsbooks.etsy.com

You can book me for a speaking skills workshop or to present your next event: more details on www.mr-Hawkins.com