Lost in the Speaker Abyss? We're Here to Throw You a Bone (and Maybe Book You a Rockstar)
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Will you be booking a keynote speaker in 2024? Here’s a PSA from NYC-based speaking bureau, Outspoken Agency, co-founder and CEO Caitie Bradley Shea, as she shares insights into the strange, but helpful world of outbound sales emails to event hosts and programmers and why using ChatGPT just can’t quite replace a speaking agent!
Whether you regularly book speakers for your annual conference, pitch speakers, handle speakers onsite at your events, or are waist deep in the (always) arduous contracting process, you will know that with the arrival of a new year, inevitably comes the arrival of a new dynamic in the speaking industry. Whether it’s a global pandemic, an industry-wide pivot to virtual, a societal movement towards a cause, or the infiltration of our good friend CHATGPT, we all have to be malleable and nimble, regardless of which side of the contract we exist.
I exist on the Agency side, which means that my goal is to help (and do business with) those on the event hosting/speaker buying side. So if you’re reading this and you happen to exist on the event host side, I’d love to have a little chat with you…. via this one-sided form of communication 😉… BUT hey, if it sparks an actual conversation, I’d love it to go in that direction!
We as agents and agencies are keenly aware of challenges you face when trying to book a speaker by searching the vast abyss of the web. We’re also sensitive to your skepticism towards receiving cold outreach from us to book speakers for your event. If we’ve never talked, let alone met or built trust or an understanding of your needs for your event, how can we possibly have “the perfect speaker for XYZ conference” when that ultra important baseline has yet to be established? Trust. We get it! BUT the thing is, we can’t build that until or unless you let us in. And until you do that, we can’t demonstrate our expertise in helping you find the perfect speaker, which by the way, is literally what we do for a living so we do actually know what we’re doing. Use us!
We also know you are inundated with emails from our competition (or as we refer to each other: "industry partners" 🙂) which is probably enough to make anyone’s head spin and hit auto-delete on every single email you get. I know, because I am tempted to do the same to all inbound cold sales emails I receive. They’re brutal!
I had an extremely informative conversation with a new client the other day that was simultaneously really encouraging as a sales person and also excruciatingly frustrating. She said to me, “Caitie, I’ve been getting all of your emails for months, and I want you to know that I save every one of them in a folder for when I may need the exact speaker or messaging you’re offering. I know I never respond, but please know I read all of them.” My response to her was: “You have no idea how helpful that is to hear Liz, and, just so YOU know, I was one outbound email away from deleting you.”
The takeaway, of course, is about communication and how helpful and powerful even a one word email response can be to the evolution of a working relationship.
So here’s the condensed version of the above PSA: If you’re going to be booking speakers in 2024 and find yourself lost in the abyss of bureaus, agents, speaker fees, etc., please know that we as agents are actually experts in the field and we are actually eager to share that expertise and not just sell you on a speaker that we want you to book. And if you are remotely intrigued by the speakers/content/messaging we put in front of you, but don’t have time to engage with us when you get the email… send back a one word response. It will have WAY more of an impact than you think.
Oh, and one final note for all you CHATGPT converts… You should know that we use it too and in the exact same ways as you. It’s super helpful with getting the brain flowing with speaker ideas when we’re stumped! What AI doesn’t know are things like…. Whether a speaker is easy to work with, how communicative they are, how talented of a speaker they really are, how flexible they might be on fees… and you know, basically the general HUMAN side of working with humans. If you’ve booked a speaker before, you know that those elements are JUST as important as the resume, social media numbers and accolades, and that is the expertise that we’ve built our careers out of. We’re here to share it with you and make your job a whole lot easier.
Thank you for reading my PSA and you know where to find me if you wanna talk speakers!
Outspoken Agency is a women-owned speaking agency representing leaders, founders, public intellectuals, authors and entertainers for paid keynotes, workshops and panels at in-person and virtual events. Learn more about our female founders here.