Many companies regard the keynote speaker slot as a catering decision. Pick someone credible, get the applause, move on. It makes for a nice morning, and that’s about it. The companies that actually get return on investment from outside speakers approach the issue very differently – they treat it as a business, not a loading-dock problem to solve.
Why inspiration without structure doesn’t stick
Corporate events commonly face the known issue; the excitement and motivation are strong during the event, the speaker is inspiring, but when it’s back to work on Monday, everything goes back to normal. A study revealed that 70% of corporate presentations lack engagement. Moreover, the 30% that manages to engage their audience only yield results when their content motivates behavioral change rather than solely inspiration.
The solution is not to look for an even more inspiring presenter. Rather, it is to demand that your presenter deliver a specific implementation plan in the form of a 30-60-90 day program that integrates their ideas into your team’s current processes. This changes a good presentation into a real implementation tool. Without a solid timeline, however, even the most inspiring ideas will begin to fade after a couple of weeks.
When you’re screening presenters, directly ask: what do you recommend our employees implement and by when? If they can’t provide a structured guide, you know they’re just bringing hot air to town. Using a guest expert in this way is both more powerful and less risky than trying to be at the cutting edge as a single company.
Selecting for the intersection of technology and people
The most impactful speakers today aren’t the ones detailing where an industry’s been. They’re the ones who can lay out where it’s heading and translate that into actionable changes for your team.
For example, take Generative AI. Almost every company is either at the stage where they know they should be looking at it, or they’ve passed that inflection point and they are looking at it. The technology isn’t the problem. But without a salesperson saying it’s the next sure-fire “X%” revenue booster, no one has helped your team figure out the steps to take with it in the real world either.
If you’re hosting an event around these broader topics, that should be your focus when you book an ai speaker. You’re looking for the expert who knows the chasm between what technology can deliver and the implementation changes your team needs to make.
This might also sound obvious, but do a gut check. Does the message the speaker is coming with resonate with how your team feels about these topics? If your team has already tried to implement similar technology, and they don’t get the enthusiasm for it yet, then you don’t want a speaker who’s still selling the sizzle.
Extending the investment beyond the event
An hourlong keynote on its own is the quickest hit, and has the most immediate upside. Then you’re done. Six months later, employees dealing with a specific challenge would benefit from hearing that content again, but it doesn’t exist. Treating it as a one-off event – hit or miss, $50,000 done with no takeaways – massively undercuts the value.
Look at how a keynote can feed the marketing machine. You should produce a press release when you speak at a conference right now. Companies do not. Write the post-event blog. Chat with the PR team about LinkedIn posts. You take 10 minutes from the keynote, fly in on Tuesday morning, and you have a marketing and sales engine. It costs nothing extra.
Ancillary uses of the same video for a speech are a big loss that happens constantly in enterprises. We will fly in a crew and do a keynote for whoever, but then we don’t use it to do the onboarding video for new hires three months from now. We don’t use it as an internal lunch and learn for a topic specific to the engineers two months from now. Your six most promising job candidates don’t get to see that. It cost nothing to make them a different edit that suits their needs better so not doing it is just wasted money.
Treat the speaker slot like any other strategic hire
The criteria by which you choose a keynote speaker ought to be somewhere close to the criteria by which you’d choose a consultant. What’s the deliverable? What changes as a result? How will you know? Organizations that ask those three questions before booking a room tend to get speakers who answer them. The ones that don’t ask those questions tend to get a nice day and not much else.
