5 Gifts Every Event Planner Can Give their Speaker

We all know someone who is difficult to shop for. No matter what doodad or new techno gizmo comes out, they don’t seem to want it or need it. But speakers are much easier to gift. Event planners, if you give your speakers these five gifts, you will be sure to please them.

The Gift of Trust

The time to check up on your speaker’s slides, handouts, or content is before you hire them, not when they arrive at your conference. Even worse, hours before. Do your homework when you are searching for your conference speaker and make sure that they understand what you want and you understand what they can deliver. A good speaker will have a sound portfolio of events, Slideshare channel, blog, or YouTube videos of their performances. By the time your speaker arrives, you should have total trust in them. A speaker who knows they are completely trusted with their program is a confident speaker who can perform to their maximum ability.

The Gift of Protection

Speakers do not enjoy surprises so as the event planner, you can gift them with protection from any. Surprises like asking them to sit on a panel that you forgot to tell them about. Protect them from situations where they are bombarded by attendees without warning. Protect them from criticism as far as it is within your power. And most of all, protect their time. Speakers love to give wonderful programs but these require a massive amount of preparation and energy. Your protection will cause the speaker to deliver a standing ovation worthy presentation.

The Gift of Communication

Speakers want communication. The better informed they are, the better they can inform your audience. Communicating to your speaker about your audience is vital. “The audience will be great” is not useful information. A professional event planner works to make the speaker understand the audience and their needs. Technology give event planners the opportunity to know a lot about attendees before the conference. The event planner can use this information to help the speaker deliver a better program.

The Gift of Social Media Encouragement

Encourage your speaker with social media in two ways. First ask your speaker for a guest blog post for your conference website. They can use the blog to promote and sell and you can use it to promote your conference. Secondly, remind your speaker how important it is for them to be on board for your entire event and a wonderful way to do that is to use their social media sites and contacts. A highly motivated speaker will use Twitter and Facebook to tell their world about your event. After the conference has ended, that same speaker will review the tweet stream posts. Encourage this and work with your speaker to answer any unanswered questions.

The Gift of Detailed Feedback

One of the best gifts you can give your speaker is detailed feedback. Generic feedback like “Your session was great” or “I heard great things” is not beneficial to your speaker. Professional speakers want to know how they performed in detail. Again, with the technology and tools of today, it is possible to give speakers in depth feedback.

When your speaker unwraps your gifts of trust, protection, communication, social media encouragement and detailed feedback, you will have a delighted presenter in your midst. Your conference will be a success and that is a gift for everyone!