Following a Strong Process to Hire Speakers 4/6 - Decision Time !

Your event plan now integrates a speaker plan, you've briefed all the stakeholders, you sought professional advice and followed a solid process of consultation to consider your options; this is the fourth article in the series taking us through our A-F process for hiring professional speakers which you can adopt: 4: decision time (and deal time).

Pressing the Green Button

After a lot of diligent homework and consultation, it's time to make an informed and confident decision which should leave everyone feeling very good and excited about the upcoming event. Making the decision and doing the deal should be a great win-win-win for everyone – you the client, the speaker and most importantly ultimately, your clients or team participants. You've been able to match your requirements, and hopefully at just the right price too.

One of the biggest threats to this stage of the process is time; if you are battling with timeframes, programme publishing timelines, etc, it is tempting to cut corners and potentially stumble at this important phase. Even if it takes a few more days or weeks, it is better to be completely sure you have everyone on the same page than risk discovering this later. And worse of all, accepting someone who is not what really need just because you feel you need someone.

Now to the practical steps that put all the wheels in motion. You think it's all plain sailing from here, but there are many things that could frustratingly delay the actual confirmation; in all this time you've take to evaluate your options, you much go back to re-check something really basic: is your speaker still faithfully holding the date for you? If you've left your speaker in an envelope of silence, they may just wronging assume you've changed your mind. If you are using an agency, and certainly in our agency’s case, we keep a log of all client requests for speakers and of all the speakers whom we have asked for date checks. Some speakers with whom we enjoy a particularly close relationship even share a diary with us so that we can instantly see how tentative enquiries are mounting up around that period, and advise you accordingly. Generally, speakers who are asked to place a ‘soft hold’ on a date will

You may have all your stakeholder buy-in, but precisely how it then takes to get the internal sign-offs and approvals you need? You may find the process to "on-board" your speaker's company or their bureau takes a while and requires certain documentation, you may find that purchasing insist upon a PO number before signing a contract (and time delays risk everything potentially) and you may need to complete non-disclosure agreements and seek various levels of consent to fully start to engage the speaker.

Trust is a great thing, but does never replaces a proper contract.

Trust in this industry -- especially with bureaus -- is critically important, but sadly companies and conferences have shown themselves all too often to hedge too long, or change their plans (or their minds), or find that someone now questions the ‘decision’ to proceed. For this reason, bureaus who are acting on behalf of their speakers are necessarily cautious about what a verbal go-ahead really means. Because of the competition for many speakers’ time, to go back on a verbal confirmation to hire is extremely unprofessional. To back out now is technically a breach of verbal contract, yet in all practicality, it’s only when you get a signature down on the contract that a deal can be considered fully confirmed. Working with our speakers, I have to be very clear with them on the precise status of any particular assignment proposal, moving through weak to strong categories: ‘exploratory’ – no hold on date; ‘proposed’ – soft hold on date; ‘strong interest’ – priority hold on date; ‘verbal’ – firm hold on date; ‘signed’ – firm commitment. In some instances, we have had to be clear with our clients that a proposal and subsequent offer still needs to be conditional upon some level of approval – this happens a lot with editorial people who may only seek that final approval from above once they know that this is definitely going to happen. This is fine so long as we are up front about this and everyone knows the score.

When a deal is at the verbal stage, it is up to everyone involved to move swiftly – immediately – to sign the agreement. Though this can take a while waiting for legal departments to review the documents and for signatories to return to sign off, extended delays in this may leave bureaus in an awkward position and may not be able to resist the speaker’s insistence that the absence of a signed agreement means he or she is free to release the date. We may put in place a provisional signed ‘letter of firm offer’ to solidify the commitment until the full agreement can be signed off by the company’s legal department.

Don't neglect the small stuff at this stage

It's easy to focus on all the big things: fee, flights, date & time etc, and feel that many of the smaller questions or details can wait. They can't. This is the time when a surprising number of other considerations need to be confirmed to. True, these items should not be anything that threatens to be a deal-breaker, but being aware of certain things now and managing expectations and putting them in the agreement document now is critical to avoiding potential arguments later. This is the time we must be crystal clear about all the fees, the method of payment, whether sales tax or withholding tax applies, and how who handles it, the class of flight and any restrictions on carrier, agreed ground transportation arrangements, the number of room nights required in the hotel, which incidental costs in the hotel are covered and which ones are not, and whether this is something to claim back or to be covered on the client’s master account ... In other words, this is reconfirmation of the basic deal, and setting out up-front all the smaller details which could otherwise lead to ambiguity and needless aggravation later.

This is also the time when more specifics are set out in terms of the deliverables of the engagement, e.g. confirming that the main thing is to hire a speaker to deliver a keynote and to agree to a few one-on-one meetings at the conference and to doing a media brief and joining a VIP dinner etc. If all these things are not clear and are sprung upon a speaker at the last minute, this can only cause problems. We are usually very clear on arrival / reporting time, speaking deliverables, other commitments and free-to-leave-by times.

The agreement document will also contain a number of terms and conditions of business relating to the bureau who, remember, is acting on behalf of its speaker and so this will need to cover all manner of potential eventualities, including cancellation, postponement, changes of timing, late payment, intellectual property, confidentiality, etc.

When money changes hands, people take everything more seriously

This is also the time you will be presented with an up-front invoice. This is usually 50% (especially so with a bureau) which doubles as a non-refundable deposit, because technically the agreement is not "fully executed" until or unless this deposit has been paid. It sounds strict -- and it is -- but it's actually pretty healthy for everyone that this is in place. Even though a slightly more relaxed attitude may be taken on this, the payment of the deposit invoice reflects the immediate commitment being made, the start of preparatory work, use of the speaker's name to help publicize the event, and at a time when speakers start to purchase flight tickets. A deposit, no matter what you may think, is quite justifiable. It also psychologically cements everyone's commitments, and gets people to take the entire meeting and the investment of money and time in this project seriously.

Decision check list

• Reconfirmation: get all the basics in place and locked-in: date, venue, fees and costs
• Deliverables; get into the micro details of all that the speaker is expected to do, when to arrive, when to leave, what to participate in, so as to manage expectations right up front
• Agreement: seal the deal with a thorough letter of agreement; this protects you just as much as the speaker and if working through a partner organisation that the speaker is fully briefed by them and agreeable to all the details at this stage too.
• Deposit: this is standard practice, a reflection of commitments on both sides, and really get everyone to take things seriously.

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Andrew Vine is the Founder and CEO of The Insight Bureau, an international speaker bureau working in the area of economics and business.

He is also the author of "Honestly Speaking" a book which provides the insider secrets of hiring professional speakers to deliver outstanding events.