The right speaker can make or break your event. Whether you are hosting a corporate conference, leadership summit or sales meeting, the person you choose to take the stage sets the tone, energy and impact of the experience. Here is what to look for when hiring an event speaker to ensure your audience leaves inspired, informed and engaged.
Motivation or information?
In the planning stages, it’s important to establish a clearly defined goal for the event, which drives planning and decision-making, including choosing a speaker. Then, consider your audience – should they feel encouraged and motivated? Does the team need new strategies for collaborative work and conflict resolution? Are attendees trying to understand a new concept or subject? Clearly understanding the strengths of a speaker that matches the event’s needs will simplify the process and make for a successful event.
Maintaining Audience Engagement
Each public speaker uses different strategies to engage with their audience, such as the clever use of rhetoric and intentional body language, or statistically driven visuals. But as an audience member, it’s most memorable to be included in the keynote – speakers who build their presentation around storytelling and engage every single member of the audience by directly addressing them often draw the most captive audiences.
Choosing a speaker that matches the style you’re looking for is crucial in setting up both the event and the speaker for success. An audience at a leadership summit needs different things than one at a corporate retreat. On the spectrum of team-building hype-man to subject-matter lecturer, identify which style best fits your audience.
Presentation Style and Areas of Expertise
Whether the keynote is a speaker by trade or a subject matter expert, they bring a specific kind of credibility and appeal depending on the event. As you plan your event, it’s important to understand what kind of credibility fits your audience.
For instance, at a corporate retreat, having a professional speaker whose area of expertise is corporate leadership and team building could go far. But sharing important company information for an internal audience should probably come from the C-Suite. Understanding which topics will land with your audience and who is the best person to deliver that information is key to narrowing down your selection of potential event speakers.
Planning your next event and looking for a keynote speaker? Reach out to Boaz to schedule a consultation to see how your event goals and details match his range of expertise.