Supercharge Your Speaking Program
Key Templates and Strategies
“This speaker agency is a waste of our money - why can’t our PR team just do it themselves,” I once said. As a PR person at an early-stage startup, I pitched my CEO to speak at conferences with some success. Why did we need a speaking agency?
“They have relationships and insights that multiply our effectiveness,” my PR leader assured me. She was right. Now I’ve seen it over the years: if I have the budget, I’d prefer having the help of a speaker agency.
One team I’ve found particularly interesting is Caitlin Bartley and her team at cred. They help companies formalize their speaking programs and run key events - for instance, SaaStr worldwide. Running event and sponsorship management gives them insider knowledge and relationships that aides both sides of their business. Being an agency fully dedicated to events and speaking gives them dedicated resources and expertise that outpace many alternatives. Their broad market perspective on what’s working benefits their clients’ pitches and placements.
When I pitched alone, I often just got acceptances or rejections. With the relationships of a top speaker agency, I have seen a ton of back-and-forth about what the conference really needs and what will get you the most visibility. The speaker agency can help you and your executives see beyond your own echo chamber, even breaking the news to powerful executives that their angle isn’t yet interesting enough to win a main-stage keynote. But then they can help them get there.
Here’s what I like about using a speaking agency alongside your PR team and some guidance (and templates) from cred. Thanks to their team for the collaboration.
How to Build a Speaker Program
The “secret” of marketing is that the best of it is just educating and entertaining your ideal buyer. In the constant bombardment of emails, ads, phone calls, and more, getting time and emotional connection is hard. Speaking at the right events in a high-visibility format can be an invaluable way to cut through the noise. But it can be hard work to filter which events are worth your time, create a pitch that secures a great spot, and then come up with session that contains provocative thought leadership.
When cred works with a client to build a holistic and effective speakers’ bureau, they go through the following steps:
STRATEGY
Goals: Start with the why. What are we really trying to achieve with speaking? Some frequent responses:
Awareness: Visibility for the company, the brand, the executives, not just the CEO but across the executive team.
Recruitment: Some companies want the VP of Engineering to speak more to attract top talent by showcasing their innovative technology or approaches.
Investors: Many founders want to be visible to investors for future fundraises.
Sales: Sometimes, companies want to do big product launches at key events to drive buzz, visibility, and new sales. (There can also be a crossover with the PR angle since launching a product at an event like TechCrunch might also earn you a choice article).
Expansion: Some companies may want to speak in a new region where they intend to serve new audiences.
Influence Policy: cred has seen crypto clients, for instance, try to influence policymakers through thoughtful education on the context.
Audience: Be specific about the target audiences and industries that forward those goals.
Metrics: Identify the key measurements of success and set metrics goals.
Speakers: Identify the right executives to forward the company’s speaking strategy. Having a speaker bench to field different opportunities of differing value is helpful. In my experience, it can take time to groom several top executives beyond the “naturals.” Don’t forget to add supporting speakers like key customers or influential partners who can improve your impact.
Benchmark: Is another CEO or company doing their speaking program well? Where are they speaking? How often?
Speaker Platforms: Once you’ve identified the goals and speakers, cred recommends establishing 2-3 “platforms” per speaker to provide different angles to pitch. This might include your core market (AI/Security/Collaboration), the functional expertise of the person, and an interest of theirs or a trending topic (DE&I, for instance). Develop 2-3 key talking and proof points and then map events that would be effective for that platform.
Determine the Right Conferences: Based on your goals, speakers, and benchmarking, you or your agency will create a list of target conferences based on audience, scale, location, and angles. Some lower-profile conferences aren’t worth your CEO’s time but could be worth another speaker’s time. The speaker agency can also be really helpful here by giving insights into which conferences are on the rise or the decline, avoiding the dreaded CEO’s scathing, “That wasn’t worth my time. Why did you send me there?”
Templates!
Do you want to see this approach laid out in awesome templates? Of course, you do! Thanks to cred for sharing these two templates. The real benefit of their work is the insights that help you populate it well.
EXECUTION:
Use an Events Tracking Template and Meet Regularly: Running a strong speaker program takes sustained, regular work, which can all be captured in the amazing template above—secured speaking, all consideration events, speakers, speaker availability, speaker materials, and benchmarking. These can and should be updated regularly to be a ready-to-go guide to everything you need to be successful.
Pitch Appropriately: To have success in proper pitching, you both have to be far enough in advance (big events schedule 6-9 months out, media-hosted events plan 2-3 months out). You also need insights into what types of pitches are getting overdone (“AI for…” in this market). How can you spin your idea to stand out? This is where the speaking agency can really offer value, seeing trends across their clients and conferences. Speaker agencies also have ongoing dialog and relationships with conference organizers. They know if they need a more diverse keynote panel or if they are trying to get more and less of this kind of topic or this type of company.
Format Selection: Fireside Chat, Panel, or Presentation? Many CEOs thrive in the fireside chat format. It’s casual, more entertaining, and the easiest to prepare. A stiff CEO I worked with really warmed up in conversation in a way that was hard for him in presentations. If a Chief Product Officer or Engineering lead is trying to recruit, a presentation might be better to get into more technical depth to impress and persuade potential candidates. I was recently at a marketing conference where all of the dedicated keynote presentations received the highest audience ratings and the panels much lower. Some audiences prefer depth and helpful material over high-level surveys of a market. Panels can be great in the right situations to give you the opportunity to co-present with a key customer or partner.
Develop Company Inflection Points and Meaty Materials to Support Speakers: This is more in-house work than the agency, but the best way to give your CEO on-stage meat for the presentation is to have it ready. Is there a big “State of the Market” report or “[Tech] Maturity Benchmarking,” massive partnership, product launch, etc., that will give your speaker something phenomenal to speak about? Thinking of events and the timing of other materials is critical. See my blog on the best C-Suite corporate calendar planning template.
Create Great Briefing Docs: Your executives deserve fantastic backgrounders on the conference, the other speakers, and their Q&A or presentation messaging. It can be a lot of work and much easier for an agency that already has them on hand. I unpacked some other items you should organize and put in the briefing docs here: Maximizing Your Conference Impact: A Strategic Guide for CEOs and CMOs..
Avoid Some of the Biggest Mistakes
There are too many to list in this short article, but a few biggies:
Ineffective Pitch: Pitches can’t be just about your product or your company. They need to include thought leadership, market insights, or be practical and helpful. You also need to know and avoid stale topics that are just getting overdone. What’s unique and different?
Session Timing and Placement: Sometimes, a conference accepts your speaker but at a less-than-ideal time or on a less-than-ideal stage. You often don’t want to be the last session of the day, right before happy hour, or even first thing in the morning if there’s a commuting audience. You don’t want your CEO on a side stage. It’s helpful to deeply understand the conference so you can know what’s bad and negotiate - lesser stage, alternate speaker to the CEO.
Competitive Insights: Does a competitor have a main stage or the best time, and is your CEO a lesser one? You might forget to check, but your CEO will be livid when he sees it in person.
What’s Worth the CEO’s Time?
Some CEOs want to speak once a month, while others only speak two times per year. Outlining a strategy ahead of inbound requests for your CEO will help you quickly decide what’s worth the time and money. The strategy steps above give you a clear decision matrix, an understanding of alternate speakers, and a perspective of the real trade-offs of other events. Overall, I’ve seen my CEOs enjoy smaller, high-profile events and bigger events on the biggest stage. I’ve seen events be more valuable when high-profile customers, investors, partners, or peer CEOs are at that event or in that city for add-on meetings. I’ve seen events be a great use of a CEO’s time if they are a time-based forcing function to help the entire company launch a product or strategy.
Conclusion
Supercharging your speaking program can be a lot of work! You can start small in-house, or you can get a PR agency to add on support. Even better, you can get a dedicated speaker agency that’s an expert in the space to help you navigate the complexities with insights you just don’t have access to yourself. Someone who spends all their days working with the top events worldwide across multiple clients can bring you new ideas, filter events to make the best use of your time, and help you refine your message into something that will secure the spot and land. They have their finger on the pulse of what’s trending.
By leveraging the expertise of a speaker agency, you can elevate your public speaking engagements, ensuring they align with your business goals and effectively reach your target audience. Whether you want to increase brand awareness, attract top talent, impress investors, or drive sales, a well-crafted speaking strategy can significantly impact your success.
With the provided Strategy Doc and Events Tracking templates, you have the tools to build and execute a comprehensive speaking program. The key to success lies in strategic planning, regular tracking, and continuous improvement based on feedback and market trends.
Happy Speaking!
Carilu Dietrich is a former CMO, most notably the head of marketing that took Atlassian public. She currently advises CEOs and CMOs of high-growth tech companies. Carilu helps leaders operationalize the chaos of scale, see around corners, and improve marketing and company performance.