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The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Representation for Securing Paid Speaking Engagements

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1. How do I find a good agent?

You grow her. You run an appropriate ad and interview your candidates a minimum of two times. You test her on basic skills and lastly, you rate her. She does not have to have previous experience in booking anyone. But you must have a system in place for training her depending on her relevant experience. You do not actually have to have a representative or a person that books you. You can do it yourself. But you may not have the time or the inclination to do so.

2. What background experience does she/he need?

If you find the right characteristics, personality and attitude in a candidate, hire her or him. Those traits can come in the high school graduate or in the college graduate. It’s the attitude that will prevent them from excelling, not the lack of experience.

So, you don’t have to hire a marketing major or superstar from another company. If she is scripted properly and held accountable and provided with a list of organizations in your target market, she can excel.

3. How should I pay a person to represent me?

Depending on her experience in a related field where skills are transferable, you pay her a flat salary plus a commission. In my product, Your Booking Agent: How to Hire, Interview, Pay, Train and Keep Your Booking Agent, I refer to three stages of development, from no experience to experienced, in paying your agent.

There are geographical/regional differences in compensation. You’ll hear some advisors say that the agent should not make enough salary to live on and that the additional commission structure should be the motivating factor to increasing prospecting efforts. I disagree.

If you have done an effective job of interviewing and screening your candidate, you’ll know what motivates her and what strengths and weaknesses she has. If you carefully calculated the risks you were taking in hiring her, you should not have a problem in paying her a salary on which she can live. The bonus is the commissions. She should not have to suffer inadequate compensation while going through a learning curve.

4. What is the real key to getting booked?

It begins with your expertise. If you think of speaking as the end result of your knowledge, you’re always dependent on being able to go out and speak, no matter what your health is like and no matter what the economy is like and no matter what the meetings industry is experiencing.

But if you think of your knowledge as your intellectual capital, there are multiple ways that you can share your expertise – all of which generate income.

One way is speaking at an event. Other ways are with your books, e-books, ghost writing for others, audio books and video trainings --one speaker I know of is getting $10,000 every time his video is played at a large pharmaceutical company with multiple divisions!

There are also manuals, CDs, teleseminars, coaching programs, short-term and long term consulting contracts, public seminars, self-sponsored boot camps where you can host other experts and industry publications where you can be the resident expert in your field and licensed products. Did you know there are over 40 licensed products from Chicken Soup for the Soul?)

The key to getting booked is to identify all of the various ways that you can be of value to your target market through your products and services. You can either be an indispensable resource for others in your field or you can be a cultural hero that has overcome odds or has an inspirational message that will put others in the frame of mind that will absorb lots of company or industry information at a conference. You’ll find one motivational speaker at most major conventions.

5. Can’t I just use bureaus to represent me?

The primary purpose of bureaus is to serve the needs of the organization seeking a speaker. They are not in the business of creating name recognition for a speaker. You will most likely find that the point at which a speakers’ bureau is interested in you is the point at which you don’t need them to fill your calendar. An agent, as opposed to a bureau, represents the interest of the speaking, rather than the hiring entity.

Bureaus don’t want to be used as guinea pigs. They want to create long term repetitive business with an organization and continue to funnel speakers to them.

So, my advice here is for you to do what you should do on a daily basis to bring your expertise to the attention of your target market. If you’re doing your job, bureaus will find you!

6. I’m hearing about speaker management companies. What are they?

A speaker management company generally handles all inquiries and bookings exclusively for speakers, meaning they answer incoming calls, web inquiries, e-mails and letters regarding a speaker. No matter where the lead originates, they get a percentage of that speaker’s speaking fee or in some cases a monthly retainer for their administrative support.

This is great for professionals who are still involved in their field of expertise (such as medical personnel, politicians and journalists still on the job) and do not want to be bothered by answering inquiries. But generally speaking the management company does not prospect or solicit for engagements.

A speaker’s bureau works in much the same way if they have an exclusive with a speaker. They take 20-30 percent for handling the engagement. If they do not have an exclusive with a speaker, the hiring entity can call the speaker directly without going through a bureau. Bureaus may be asked to make recommendations of speakers in a certain field and can sell either their exclusive speakers or others depending on the meeting planners’ needs.

7. There’s so much happening now about working with promoters for their events open to the public. How does that work?

Promoters rarely pay a speaking fee or expenses- there are exceptions- and they generally want to take 50% of your gross product sales. If it’s a one day event, the promoter will be looking for speakers who have deep based content to offer to the audience and who have extensive lines of product or high end products for sale. There’s no reason to do these events unless you have a high closure rate on your product sales. You may say that you’d do it for the exposure, in which case, you bring no value to the promoter, so your chances of getting on his/her stage are low. If it is a long event, perhaps a three day boot camp sponsored by a speaker turned promoter, the same is true. There can be up to about 12 speakers all of whom make it profitable for the promoter.

One famous or high profile person or someone in the news, may be speaking at these public events – only for the purpose of increasing attendance and may not have products to sell. But his value lies in attracting attendees.

8. I recently heard one expert say that prospecting and cold calling for speaking engagements is a waste of time. What do you think about that?

I’m familiar with that perspective. There exists a very opinionated group of experts who say that prospecting is a waste of time and that you’re foolish to cold call meeting planners. They make an excellent point that it’s better to position yourself strategically than prospect it’s better to attract clients than pursue them it’s better to use tools such as media rather than manual labor.

If you can get that kind of media, that’s great. And you should create a campaign through the Internet to help you establish it. If you can create a viral marketing campaign and you have the bucks and the savvy to do that, more power to you. Your phone will ring for a while. But even if you’re a bestselling author today, you’d better be keeping your name in front of the buying public later because out of sight, out of mind.

I think it’s good to have both a marketing campaign, say, using direct mail, the ASK campaign technology, press releases, special opt-in strategies to your strategic website AND to contact prospects - whether they have heard of you or not!

I’ve booked approximately 2,200 paid speaking engagements and most of them were generated from prospecting with nothing but a promotional package and a video.

Here’s why prospecting is not a waste of time: If you know exactly how an organization can benefit from what you have to say, they’re waiting for your call. Meeting planners want experts for two reasons:

• You are either a name draw of national or international renown that will increase attendance
• You have intellectual capital from which their audience will benefit.

9. Should I advertise for a booking agent?

Sure. That’s one of several ways you can go. Referrals from associates and friends are great. But why not run an ad on Monster.com? In the ad, you should tell the truth and screen each candidate thoroughly. If you cannot handle the process objectively, hire someone to do it for you. I have a sample ad to run in my manual.

10. How do I get started with an agent?

You create a system which rewards performance. List the daily duties, expectations, scripts, accountability checklists, expectations and phases of increased responsibility. Inspect what you expect! There are checklists, forms and documents to help you with this in Your Booking Agent: How to Hire, Interview, Pay, Train and Keep Her.

11. Where do I begin?

You can start with knowing that Internet technology by itself is not enough. You must have consistent representation to respond to inquiries and build a relationship with meeting planners and organizations who can benefit from your products and services.

There needs to be one person who knows your core competencies, your strengths, your solutions to industry challenges, your unique selling proposition and knows what you will not do for money.

I believe that you can do that for yourself if you have the time and inclination or you can grow that person into a superstar. Internet technology can do a lot to help you qualify prospects for speaking engagements. You can have all kinds of traffic to your website, but if you do not have the customer service, or virtual assistant or representative to help you, that person that has the confidence in you to champion your expertise, you’re not making the kind of progress in growing your speaking business that you can make!

Mary McKay is a booking strategist for speakers, experts, leaders, top producers and cultural heroes who want to secure paid speaking engagements. She systematizes the booking process to uniquely position the speaker, optimize the appearance, generate referrals and enable more revenue potential through product sales. Visit http://www.gettingpaidtospeak.com or call 949-429-6646.

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