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Effective Speaker Program Management Tips
- 1. Tips and Tricks to Effective Speaker Program Management Amy Scarlino, President & CEO The Catchpole Corporation
- 2. Why start a speaker program? • Achieve visibility. • Reach key audiences. • Advance business goals. • Build your brand. • Enhance thought leadership. • Gain competitive advantage.
- 3. Speaker Program Equation for Success CREDIBILITY + VISIBILITY TRUST
- 4. Credibility A successful speaker program happens when the business objectives of the organization and the personal passion of the executive speaker align. Find out what the executive loves to talk about, where they have the strongest experience, and build their platform around that idea. The speakers excitement and expertise will shine through on stage.
- 5. Visibility Visibility is not just ‘being seen’ but being seen by the right people at the right time It is important to have a mix of new and traditional media forms • Blogs • Interviews • Newsletters • & Speaking opportunities
- 6. 7 Steps to Building your Speaker Program 1) Identify your audiences 2) Recruit corporate speakers 3) Target the right events 4) Develop true ‘thought leadership’ topics 5) Make an appropriate ‘pitch’ 6) Follow up on proposals 7) Track all activity
- 7. Identify your audiences • Who are the audiences you want to reach • Ask yourself and your team: – Do we want to educate customers? – Impress investors? – Meet potential partners? – Get in front of the press?
- 8. Recruit corporate speakers • Matching up your target audiences with company executive speakers • Marketing/sales titles • Media training & Executive coaches
- 9. I Don’t Want to Speak • How do you deal with execs who are reluctant to speak? • Building visibility around them • Proof points – deals done, press coverage
- 10. Recruiting Customer Speakers • When are customer speakers useful? • How to alleviate expensive travel costs. • Understand in advance what is required of speakers. • Explain proposal process and manage expectations.
- 11. Target the right events • Only deal with sources of event information that you can trust. • Evaluate events according to audience, location, background, to weigh the value of participation. • Canvass for all events in a given field; cast as broad a net as possible, and then whittle down according to your standards of selection; develop A-list for premier effort. • Strategic coordination. Coordinate and integrate speaking activity with all other event participation activity.
- 12. Develop true ‘thought leadership’ topics • Remember that people attend conferences to learn something that they can apply once they are back in their offices – share best practices and lessons learned. • Determine which topics each speaker should address for each audience segment. • Build a pool of abstracts that can be tweaked for various opportunities.
- 13. Make an appropriate pitch • Now it is time to reach out to conference managers for a speaking opportunity. • What matters most ? – Finding the most appropriate event contact – Reaching out to them at exactly the right time • Understand the submission process.
- 14. Online Forms/Formal CFPs • Best practices in filling out online forms: – Follow the conferences instructions! – Review the form in advance. – Fill out the form completely – Providing supporting material – Save confirmation emails – Asking for deadline extensions
- 15. Follow up on proposals • When is it appropriate to follow up? • Asking for feedback on submissions that have been declined • What if you haven’t received feedback on anything?
- 16. Track all activity • Keep track of ALL event activity – even those speaker submissions that were not accepted. • Best if you can keep this on your network or in the cloud where everyone on your team can access it.
- 17. Evaluating the Invitation • Success! You secure a speaking invitation! NOW WHAT? – When evaluating an opportunity check speaker’s calendar for dates and surrounding events. – Is the topic still relevant? – If it is a panel, are other speakers of equal stature?
- 18. Post Engagement Evaluation • Seeking feedback. Contact speakers to get their feedback on the event and the engagement. • Audience survey. Contact conference managers to get feedback from session attendees. • Do it yourself. If conferences do not hand out audience feedback forms, arrange to distribute your own on site. • Write it down. Maintain ongoing record of company’s experience with each specific event.
- 19. In Summary… By following the 7 steps and maintaining realistic expectations, you can create an effective corporate visibility speaker program that creates value for your organization and your brand.
Editor's Notes
- Next slide
- How many of you currently work on or run a speaker program for your company or clients? Have you seen any of these benefits since you’ve started working on the program? Successful speaker programs should be an extension of your company’s corporate communications plan. Therefore they should generally accomplish the same goals as that plan. You may have already established specific and measurable goals for the other components, but there are a few ways that a speaker program can specifically benefit your organization. (READ BULLETS) Next slide
- When building a corporate visibility speaker program remember that the equation for success is Credibility + Visibility = Trust Even in today’s hyperconnected world where brands are clamoring to build a strong social media plans and digital footprints, people still do business with people they trust. Let’s start by walking through these two components and what they mean for a speaker program. Next slide
- A successful speaker program happens when the business objectives of the organization and the personal passions of the speaker align. If your speaker is not comfortable in a certain format or on a certain topic, the audience will know. Find out what the executive loves to talk about, where they have the strongest experience, and build their platform around that idea. One way to tie the executive’s passion back to the company’s goals is to find an analogy that ties the two together. (Network security is like baseball, etc.) The speakers excitement and expertise will shine through on stage. Does anyone have an example of a time they were able to use an analogy like this successfully?
- Visibility in the context of a speaker program is not just ‘being seen’ but being seen by the right people at the right time It is important to have a mix of new and traditional media formats as part of your visibility strategy. If you reach out to an event organizer to suggest a speaker and they can’t find the speaker anywhere online – the organizer questions whether that speaker will be a draw for attendees. Speaker programs are as much about elevating an executive’s personal brand as they are about building the brand of your organization. This is why successful speaker programs must be an extension of the corporate communications plan. NEXT SLIDE
- So now that you know WHY you need a speaker program, you are probably wondering where to start. Whether you want to create a corporate speaker program from scratch, or whether you are interested in enhancing your organization’s existing program, the process is most effective when you follow these seven steps. (Read steps) NEXT SLIDE
- The first step in developing a successful speaker program is to identify the audiences that you want to reach based on the communications goals of your company or organization. It is easiest to first determine your company’s target industries and geographic markets, and then identify the titles/functions of the audience members within each market. And remember that it is fine to have primary and secondary target audiences, since some prospects may be influencers, while others may be decision makers. Read Key questions
- Once target audiences have been selected, decide which executives are best suited to speak to which audience sectors. If you want to reach IT managers, for example, a marketing executive is probably not the best person to speak about technology trends. The selected speakers should not only be eager to participate, but should also have experience with their chosen topic, a broad understanding of the industry, and a general idea as to how current trends are affecting the market. It is also helpful to recruit executives with some speaking experience or media training. If they have none, it is often effective to hire a coach who will provide either one-on-one or group media training sessions for potential spokespersons. NEXT SLIDE
- The most successful speaker programs have the total support and encouragement of the CEO and senior most execs, but that is not always the case. Building confidence with local events. Showcasing the success of other speakers. URS example Does anyone have an example of how they were able to change an executive’s mind towards speaking?
- Some event organizers specifically state ‘Vendor proposals are not accepted’ or ‘Not without a customer co-presentation. What events do your customers attend? Where are they based? Provide information in a thorough but succinct way. Understand what is required of speakers. The time commitment, etc. Explain the proposal process – when will invitations/notifications be made? NEXT SLIDE
- The third step in setting up a successful speaker program is one of the most important: developing a target event list, based on the events with the best record of attracting the audiences that you have already decided to reach. This takes a bit of due diligence. Source – Only deal with sources whom you can trust; There is a lot of free information online, but it is not always accurate. Also understand the organizations behind an event- do you have to be a member? Thorough – Canvass for all events in a given field, cast as broad a net as possible; and then whittle down; develop A-list for premier effort. Quality – Evaluate events according to audience, size, location, background, etc. Catchpole uses 12-step metric. Specific placement strategies should be created for the top-tier events, including for keynote engagements. NEXT SLIDE
- (4) Now that we have chosen the audiences, speakers and events, you need to focus on the topics that you want to communicate. Remember that the goal for your speaker program is to educate your audience or start a conversation around a topic. The stage is not a platform for a sales pitch. You should only speak about your products on a conference expo floor. One way to start developing these topics is to ask yourself: What are the questions or issues that your customers, investors, and other stakeholders are wrestling with? What are the various solutions to those problems – not just the solutions offered by your product suite. Once you have these topic ideas figured out, determine which topics each speaker should address for which audience. Finally, develop a pool of abstracts or even just a few talking points that can be easily tweaked for various events. NEXT SLIDE
- Step 5 -Each event has a unique planning process. Some require a formal submission online to be completed by a certain deadline, while others require a more interactive dialogue with the conference manager. Regardless of the process, if the agenda is already full when you contact the event manager, there is little they can do to accommodate another speaker. That is why it is important to track when and how each event in your target list begins its planning cycle. Again this goes back to your source of information. Be sure that as soon as you add an event to your target list, you find out what that planning process is. You can also use tools like Vocus or my company’s Speakware platform, to have this information fed to you directly. Either way make sure you understand both the process and the timing for making a submission. NEXT SLIDE
- The biggest mistake made with online submissions is not following the conference’s instructions. If they say ‘this field is required’ – it really is required. Do not leave it blank. If the abstract is limited to 400 characters – It really is. RSA Security Conference states that one of the main reasons their submissions are declined is because parts of the form is left blank. Supporting material can take any form – but make sure it helps your cause! Good examples of unique supporting materials? Video requirements. If you have a legitimate reason for missing a deadline, alert the organizers right away and be honest. It may not work, but is worth a try. If you do this be sure that you definitely can meet the new deadline and that your submission is complete.
- After pitching an abstract and speaker to the event, whether online or directly to a conference manager, follow up at least once – that is, unless the conference explicitly tells you not to. Highlighting an article or interview that was recently published is a nice way to reengage. And one last thing to keep in mind – It is common that you may never receive feedback on some of your pitches. Often organizers receive so many that they cannot respond to each one. That being said, if you do not receive feedback on any of your submissions or only negative feedback within the first four months, you need to reevaluate the pool of topic abstracts as well as make certain they are aligned with the proper target audiences. Also make sure that your expectations for each speaker are realistic. If the executive has never spoken before, they are probably not going to be asked to keynote the Consumer Electronics Show. Also if all of the speakers on an agenda are CXOs and you suggesting VP level speakers, you probably don’t have a good chance of the proposal being accepted. NEXT SLIDE
- Finally, be sure to keep track of all event activity, even abstract submissions that were not accepted. This will help you analyze the speaker program after the first year and better understand the messages and speakers that resonated and those that did not. This will allow you to constantly improve your speaker program. Provide information to everyone who has event responsibility so that you are all on the same page with every event. A coordinated approach is most effective. NEXT SLIDE
- You are sitting at your desk one day, responding to emails when you see a ‘speaker submission accepted’ subject line flash on your screen. If you have tracked all of your activity properly, you should be able to immediately find the submission. Now you must determine whether it is still relevant.
- Post event evaluation allows you to answer several questions that will help you improve your speaker program in the future. It helps determine whether the event is worth considering again in the future. Maybe it is better for sponsorship alone? Maybe it is only worth submitting a customer? It helps determine whether the speaker is appropriately conveying the right messages. It helps determine whether your topic is resonating with attendees. NEXT SLIDE
- I appreciate your time today and am happy to answer any questions you may have.