Archive for category: General

In this video, Brad Montgomery explains his foolproof method of ensuring you get the most value from your speaker.

Selected Posts from Brad’s Past

We found a few posts, videos and stories from Brad’s past, and thought it would be fun to re-publish them here.  So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on some classic rock, and check out this classic blog post from a decade (ish) ago.  

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.

Yours,

Brad Montgomery
Motivational Speaker, Humorist, Seminar Leader

For you folks who prefer to read, here’s the transcript to the video:

How do you get more value out of your motivational speaker? Well, I got some ideas for you. Here’s where this came from. You know, the economy sucks and so my clients are constantly, I think justifiably, asking for discounts. We got problems, we’re laying people off, our association’s getting fewer attendees every single year. We need a discount. Well, I’m not that interested in discounting, but I am interested in giving you more value and that’s something that’s very easy for me to do and so I wanted to make a quick video about it.

If you’re looking to hire a Motivational Speaker and budget is an issue, and isn’t that pretty much all of you? What I’d like you to ask yourself is how can you get more out of your speaker to justify the expense? So for example, one of the things I do is I try to offer more. You want me for a keynote speech? I love doing that, but it’s just really hard for me to do just the keynote speech without offering a breakout session following the keynote speech and I’ll tell you why. The keynote speech is fun. I’m proud of it. It gets them revved up, it buys them into my concept, which is using levity and lightheartedness and humor to create more, to deliver more, to produce more at work. And they’re ready to go and the ideas are swimming in their head and they want to go, but there’s a disconnect sometimes between that feeling that they have and then translating that into action items because I know that they’re going from my keynote right into the next breakout session that’s going to be some high content, Powerpoint-rich, crazy thing and the power already of that keynote will fall away quickly.

So I love having that keynote where we can say, alright now you got the idea, now you’ve got the buy-in, let’s roll up our sleeves, get out your notes, let’s figure out how you’re going to incorporate this into action steps. Now, how are you going to implement this stuff that we gave you earlier?

Got it? So the point is this, what I want my buyers to see is that if you’re able to book me for both, we can add both for a discount. In other words, you could get one keynote speaker and you can get one breakout speaker. But if you get one person to do the same because I’m able to offer a discount, it turns out to be a terrific savings.

But why stop there? I feel like I’m on TV with that. But wait, there’s more.

What else could you have your speaker do? Well, you know, I’m speaking from personal experience. I do a lot of corporate emceeing. I’m a comedian. So it’s not only easy for me, it’s fun for me to emcee a meeting. I just did this for a meeting in Las Vegas and it was a blast because one, I had fun, but really the best part was that the audience really got something out of it and that meant a lot, of course, to the buyers.

And the question is, what did they get out of it? Energy. So here’s what happened. I started the day with a keynote speech and then they were going to have really high content. It was a medical conference. Super high content all day long and this was information their people wanted and it was information their people needed and it was unbelievably boring. Plus, you add in to the fact that our bodies are just not meant to sit in a chair all day long and learn. You know, we can’t do that. It’s just really hard on us, so what they did is they brought me in after the keynote and between every speaker. I came in, I gently teased, but constantly celebrated that speaker. I joked about the medical issues and this medical device is what it was and then told them, here’s your break time, here’s when to come back and here’s what’s going to happen when you come back and what happened is they came back on time, but then also when they came back, I was able to raise the energy up to prepare them for this really important learning they were to do for the next session.

What Your Motivational Speaker Can Do That Makes Him More Affordable

Alright, so what’s the point? The point is that we were able to get more value to this client at a much reduced fee than hiring a keynote speaker and a master of ceremonies. You starting to get it? So ask your speaker, if you’re looking to hire a speaker, I hope it’s me, but if you’re looking to hire a speaker, I’d really like you to ask them what can you do in addition to your keynote speech that will bring me, my meeting, my conference, my people, value in a way that makes this whole thing more affordable? That’s a great question and if your speaker can’t answer that one easily with 15 ideas, they’re crazy and you ought to keep dialing. In fact, you ought to go right to bradmontgomery.com and visit me.

Alright, so added value, that’s what we’re doing all the time now. It used to be, you know I don’t mind telling you this. When I first got started, I was an entry level speaker and I had my speech like this and I hoped you booked me and I came and I did it.

Well, that’s not the way I work anymore. Instead, my questions are: tell me about your meeting, what are your problems, what are your concerns, what do your people need, what does your meeting need and then how might I be of service to help you to get all of those things?

And it might be to come and just deliver a keynote speech, but probably not. Probably it’s deliver a bigger variety, a package of services and ideas of energy and excitement to create an experience from which your people can learn, they can be excited and they can leave feeling like that was the best meeting ever and all of this is a long way of saying there’s many ways to get more value out of your speaker without necessarily getting a discount. I think that’s right.

Alright, Brad Montgomery, if you want a speaker, I’d love to be your guy. You can learn more at bradmontgomery.com. Give us a call and ask the question, well, Brad, if you’re not going to give us a discount, how can we get more value from you? Love to chat.