We now present the ninth in a series of video articles about: How to work with your motivational keynote speaker to get the most from your conference investment 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. […]
We now present the tenth in a series of video articles about:
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.
Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Follow-Up Fanatic
Related Articles:
Brad’s books and other products for creating change
For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery. I’ve got another idea for you, another tip on how to work with your motivational speaker. One of the mistakes I see a lot of clients do is they don’t really fully invest in their hired keynote speaker and in lasting change, and by that I mean they fail to invest in resources or some type of follow up from their motivational speech.
So here’s the deal; I’m a motivational speaker. I love it when clients come in and say, “You got 45 minutes or 75 minutes or 90 minutes with my hour, go nuts.” I love it. And we can whip them up into a frenzy, we can give them specific ideas for creating change in their lives, and we can send them home with a ton of energy.
But having said that, I’ve never been to a course or any type of learning event where there was lasting change without some sort of follow up resource, without a book, without a packet, with some sort of accountability. Have you? I’m guessing you haven’t.
So what does that mean? I’m thinking it means you ought to be thinking about what can we do to follow up.
So here’s your homework: when you’re talking to your potential keynote speaker, motivational speaker, I want you to ask this question, “What could we do for follow up to make sure that your message, the one that we’re investing heavily in for you to come in and deliver to my audience, what can we do to make sure that there’s some follow up and stickiness with your message?”
Give your conference attendees something they can bring with them to re-inforce the motivational message
That’s a great question, isn’t it? What are you going to do to follow up? What can your people leave with or what can you reach back and touch them with that message? I get a lot of ideas for all my clients, and we’ve had some really cool success with lots of different types of follow up. Not just product, but call us and we’ll tell you.
So I think follow up is important and I think additional resources are important, and I think to really get the most out of your speaker is up to you to say, “You’re the motivational speaker. You’ve done this before. What can we do to make sure this is not just a flash in the pan? What can we do to work as a team to create lasting change?”
All right, I’d love to be your guy. Give us a call. You can find us at funnymotivationalspeakers.com or bradmontgomery.com.Hope to see you soon. Give us a call. Let’s make them laugh, let’s make it meaningful, let’s make it last.
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 custom keynote presentation for your event? Contact me here.
Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Customized Presentation Expert
Related Articles:
More from Brad about the art of Customizing and Tailoring a Keynote Presentation
Laugh-out-loud funny video of Brad interacting with his audience
For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from bradmontgomery.com with another idea on maximizing your return on investment with your motivational or inspirational speaker.
So this tip is easy. Pick somebody who customizes their program for you. So why? Well audiences are hip right now and audiences can see through it if the speaker just kind of walks in and delivers a really canned over-prepared program. I don’t think today people want to see a presentation. They want a speaker who’s talking to them about their needs, their desires, their stresses, their problems and what solutions they can implement to get to where they want to go.
So that means for you, you got to make sure you hire a speaker that can connect with that audience and delivering a non-customized speech does not connect to your audience. And of course that connection is crucial. That’s why you’ve hired your speaker to come in.
You can just hand them a photocopied packet of information if you just want to deliver “Here’s the information we want you to have.” But that’s not what you want. You want someone to come in and create an experience that’s meaningful and valuable and has impact and is fun and will turn them into a team, right? I think you do. So if you’re going to do that, I think with today’s media savvy audiences, you need to make sure you get somebody to connect and that’s going to mean customize.
So a bigger speaker who’s going to customize, it makes a huge, huge difference. It’s worth it to you to make sure that happens.
How do you make sure you’re hiring a motivational speaker that will customize and not just tailor? Ask them.
Your motivational speaker should customize his program to YOUR group’s specific needs
It’s a great question when you’re thinking about hiring a speaker or you’ve just hired a speaker, “What are you going to do to customize your program to my audience and their problems? What are you going to do to help me deliver the message I have for my people? If you’re talking to somebody and, after you ask that question, if they start to squirm and wiggle and hem and haw, you got the wrong person.
All right, my name is Brad Montgomery. I’d love to be part of your team. I’d love to help you take your meeting or your conference and make it a rocking success. So give us a call, we’ll talk about how we can do just that. One of the things we’ll talk about of course is a custom keynote presentation.
Talk to you soon. See you at bradmontgomery.com. Have a great day.
We now present the seventh in a series of video articles about:
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.
Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Breakout Session Aficionado
Related Articles:
Wyoming Speaker Has Them Lined Up At The Door
More Ideas from Brad to make your event a success
How to get more from Brad
For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery. Today we’re going to talk about getting the most from your motivational speaker, tips about how to work with a motivational keynote speaker. We’re going to talk about getting the most value from your speaker by asking them what else can they do.
So here’s the deal. I get calls all the time saying, “Tell me about your services as a motivational speaker.” I love that. Give us a call. But then when I ask, “Well what else can I do while I’m there to help you achieve the goals of your organization and your convention or meeting,” often on the other side of the phone all I hear is this, “Uh, I don’t know,” ‘cause they’ve never thought about it.
So here’s my tip: think about it. If you’re bringing in a professional speaker that you think is good enough to bring all the way across the country and put them in front of your audience, what else could they do to add value for your and your meeting? It’s a great question. I’d love for you to ask your speaker about that, but since you get me I’ll tell you a little bit about some of the stuff that I do.
Yes, I love doing motivational or keynote speeches; but then in addition, I love following up with a breakout session or seminar. ‘Cause the speech is great for winding them up and making them feel great and giving them some of the stuff that you do to create change in their life, but then often what’s missing is the details about how do they do that. So following up with a breakout session with more details and more about how to implement the steps is a really cool idea.
Another thing I do for a lot of my clients is I MC and I like to the be the Master of Ceremonies, and they like it because it keeps the energy and humor on high throughout the entire convention, which keeps the learning on high throughout the entire meeting.
Get the most out of your motivational speaker with additional sessions
What else can we do? Some of you know that my background is in comedy and in magic, so some of my clients say, “You know what, we’re having Brad in to do keynote. We’re having a different timeslot where we’re bringing in some sort of entertainer,” – maybe for example after the banquet – “I wonder if Brad could do both.” Yeah, love doing that.
And the cool thing, there’s two really cool things. First of all, it saves a lot of money ‘cause we’re already there, it’s just a small incrementable – I don’t think that’s the word. It’s a small increase in fee to get both for one, right, and the advantage is two-fold.
Well my name’s Brad Montgomery. I would love to be your speaker. I know just how to make your conference investment one that will provide maximum value. Give us a call. You can find us at funnymotivationalspeakers.com or bradmontgomery.com. Thanks so much. Lets talk.
We now present the sixth in a series of video articles about:
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.
Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Loves Planning Ahead
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For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from bradmontgomery.com and funnymotivationalspeakers.com with another video on maximizing your return on investment with your motivational speaker, your keynote speaker, inspirational speaker, whatever.
Here’s one of the things you want to do: you want to have a plan about how you’re going to use your speaker. And don’t worry, it’s not hard because your speaker should be doing most of the work.
But the question should be led by you, and the first question is really, “What should I have you talk about and what should we do?” And really the conversation I think should go around this, what are the problems your organization is going through, what are the stresses, what are the difficulties? What are the joys? What are the successes? And then based on that how can your speaker help tailor and customize a message that’s just for them?
That’s a really important deal, right? Because you don’t want your speaker just to come in and shoot from the hip; you want them to be providing a motivational speech that’s the kind of speech you’re paying for, that you want, right?
What I like to tell my clients is that if I were hiring a motivational speaker and I was sitting in the back room, I would much rather say instead of, “Oh wow, how lucky that my speaker touched on that, ‘cause that’s really important to my organization,” no. Instead I would prefer to be thinking, “Well of course my speaker just said that because that was part of our plan that we talked about ahead of time.” Get it?
Work with your motivational speaker to provide a relevant message
All right, so here’s the deal, you really need to have a plan with your speaker.
Sometimes it can be a very complex or sometimes it can be a pretty short game plan, but you want to talk ahead of time about, “How can you, Mr. Prospective Motivational Speaker, help me with my specific needs and my goals and the changes I’m trying to create within my organization? How can you help me get there? What’s your plan?” And then you’ll work on the plan together, deliver a speech and you’ll rock. All right, hope that’s helpful.
My name’s Brad Montgomery, and I’d love to be part of your team and I’d love to make a plan for how we can make your conference or your meeting or your whatever a big rocking success.
So give us a call. Reach us at bradmontgomery.com or funnymotivationalspeakers.com. Thanks so much for your time. Give us a call, we’ll talk. We’ll make it good. We’ll make it funny. We’ll make it relevant. We’ll make it funny. Did I mention funny? I think I did. We’ll make it funny.
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.
==
For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from funnymotivationalspeakers.com, and bradmontgomery.com, here with another idea on working with top motivational keynote speakers.
All right, here’s the advice of the day: the advice is be very, very picky when choosing or selecting your keynote speaker, but then once you hire them I want you to trust them implicitly to do their job.
So what do I mean? What I mean is that so often I see this mistake: meeting planners or the CEO or whomever is worried about the motivational speaker hires them, which is good, and runs them through a complete gauntlet of a litmus test to make sure that they have the right person. That’s really good.
But then once they hire them, they continue the micro managing. That’s not really good. Hire a really good speaker and then once you hire them ask them what they need to deliver the best program for you. Get them what they need, and then – this is the point – let them do it. Let them do it. So let me give you a story, this really happened to me. I was working for a huge corporation in California. Not telling you who ‘cause I really like my job, and they really ran me through the gauntlet to make sure I was the right guy. I was very flattered to be chosen.
They spent a lot of time on conference calls with me. That was really great. They did more conference calls with me; that was great too. Whatever it takes.
And then once I got there I thought we were ready to go. We were literally ten minutes from the time that they were about to say, “And now please welcome our motivational speaker Brad Montgomery,” when the CEO, the very person who had spent all this time on the phone with me, came to me and said, “so you’re talking about this, that and this? Uh, I don’t, I don’t think so.” What? You’re kidding me.
So it did a couple of things. First it shook me up. I admit it, it shook me up. I’m thinking, “Wait, this is my client. He knows what I’m talking about, and before there’s time to make a lot of significant changes he’s telling me he thinks this is a bad idea.” This is not the way to get the most out of your keynote speaker.
Hire your speaker, then trust them to do their job
This is not a good idea. The way I handled it happily worked out. I just said, “Well here’s what I’m prepared to offer. You know, I’m going to do this and this. These are the things we talked about. I’m prepared to do it right now. You have a choice; you can either send me out in front of your audience and I will deliver that as we had planned, or if you like you can not send me out. But that’s what I’m prepared to deliver today, and you hired me either way so you can choose.”
You know, I sounded pretty confident when I said that, but I don’t mind telling you, I wasn’t that confident. I was really shaken up, and then when I went out on stage I was connecting with the audience, but in my mind I’m still thinking about the CEO, my client, wondering, you know… It was just not a good idea. So it works out fine in the end, but not as good as it could have if he would’ve sent me out there ready to rock.
That’s my question for you, what are you doing to let your speaker know that you trust them, and they’re ready to go, and you want them to deliver their very best. Are you micro managing them? Are you talking a lot about what they’re wearing to the keynote speech? Yes, I’ve had that question. Are you asking them for a script about what they’re going to say? Yes, I’ve had that happen. Are you trying to approve the music that they’re going to use or whatever? Yes, I’ve had that happen. Don’t do that.
Of course I want to work for you. I hope you know that. I want you to pick me. I’d love it if you picked me. But once you go through the rigorous process of deciding who to choose, what I really would ask you to do is say, “What do you need to succeed with this?” help them get those things, and then sit back and let them do it. They’ll make you look good, I promise.
Love to be your guy. It’s Brad Montgomery, bradmontgomery.com or funnymotivationalspeakers.com. Make it a great day. Hope I get to talk to you soon. Call me. We’ll talk about it.
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.
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Loves to Multi-Task
Related Articles and Videos:
Getting more bang for your buck with Motivational Speaker Brad
Hear what happened when keynote speaker Brad Montgomery multi-tasked in Wyoming
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For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from bradmontgomery.com with another tip or suggestion on getting the most return on an investment from your motivational or inspirational speaker. Well today the plan is find a speaker who can do more than one thing for you. So that means can your speaker do multiple things for you at your single event?
So why is this important? Well I think it’s important for two reasons. One, I think it’s an easy way to get a huge increase in value with only a minimal increase in investment. So what do I mean? I’m talking about if you hire a speaker to do a keynote speech, what else can they do? Are they an MC? Can they be a Master of Ceremonies? Can they do entertainment after dinner?
One of the things I do is a little energy boost, game show segments to help boost the energy throughout the day. I’ve got a whole bunch of ideas about team building, doing lunches and dinners. I’ve got a million ideas because I’ve been at this so long, just kind of whole big back of tricks. So some of my favorite clients are the ones that say, “Brad, we’ve got you here; how can we get more out of you?” And the result is really fun.
So the first benefit is you save a lot of money ‘cause you’ve already got your speaker there, you’ve paid for the travel and the increase really is not that much. So in other words, if you have one speaker do two things you’re not paying twice as much. It’s like Costco.
All right, but the other reason why this is such a great idea is once your motivational speaker or keynote speaker has connected with your audience and your audience has connected with them, it’s really cool to follow up with that connection and get the most out of that connection.
So what do I mean? Let me give you an example. If, for example, I work in the morning as your keynote speaker. Then we laugh and we’re going to make that audience just crack up and they’re going to start to know me and they’ll know how I think and how I feel and they’ll start to understand my sense of humor. Which means that if I come back an hour and a half later to introduce the next speaker or to head up some sort of team building experience or to even just do the like housekeeping notes, just deliver those boring items but in a really fun and upbeat way, what the audience thinks to themselves is, “Oh goodie, he’s back. This guy’s funny,” and it raises the energy in the room. And the reason the energy increase is important is ‘cause it makes sure that your people are ready to learn and ready to receive value from your meeting or your conference not just during the keynote speech, but all the way through. Pretty cool idea, huh?
The other advantage to using one speaker for multiple events is it saves time and it’s sort of a complex thought, so stick with me. As a motivational speaker one of the most important parts of my job is the first few minutes of any speech because that’s when the audience is sizing me up. That’s when I really need to make sure that they understand me and get me. And only after they understand me and trust me can I start to teach them. And if you think about it, that appeals to your common sense. It’s always that way no matter who you’re learning from. First you have to trust your teacher, and only then do you start to learn.
Brad entertaining an audience in Las Vegas
Well once we have invested that time and energy to get your audience to know me and trust me and like me, that means each additional time I’m in front of that audience we get to start way ahead. We don’t have to start back at the beginning; we can just start at the point after they already know me and trust me and they’re ready to laugh and learn. So it’s a really cool way to get a little bit of extra time. You get it?
So here’s a very specific example. If I give a keynote speech, the first 10 or 15 minutes really is getting them to know me and like me and trust me. But then if we follow it with a breakout session, we can start out the breakout session on minute one for some hard hitting, you know, techniques and ideas that they can implement right away ‘cause we don’t have to do that warm up. We can just say, “Hey, it’s good to have you here. I’m flattered that the room is full. Lets start.” And you can. You don’t have to do the blah, blah, blah. All right, I like the blah, blah, blah. Because that’s where the jokes are usually. But I know that you want return on your investment when you’re hiring a motivational speaker, and that’s why you’re looking at this video.
All right, I hope that was helpful. My name is Brad Montgomery, and I’d love to be part of your team and I’d love to be helping you to get a huge return on your speaker investment. So give us a call. You can find us at bradmontgomery.com. Or funnymotivationalspeakers.com. You can click the links down there. I don’t know where they are. You’ll find them. Have a great day.
We now present the third in a series of articles about:
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.
Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, I Guarantee You’ll Be Satisfied
Related Articles and Videos:
A good guarantee is about more than just the money
Brad’s actual 100% money back guarantee policy
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For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery with another tip for working with motivational speakers and keynote speakers. So one of the questions I’d like to have you ask your potential motivational speaker is this: “What’s your guarantee policy?” And then listen, and if the person you’re talking to starts to squirm and “Mm hmm” and “Well…” and “Uh…” well then you got the wrong guy. So let me tell you about my guarantee policy is, you know, I’m like Walmart: you’re not happy you get your money back.
But let me tell you how I came up with that policy. I really was by accident. I never really thought **** and I never publicized it; it just came through two facts. One, I’ve been doing this for 25 years and no one’s been unhappy. No one has ever said, “That was a nightmare. Can I have my money back?” That’s nice. But the second thing is I’d be horrified if they did, and of course they wouldn’t even ask me to give their money back, I’d be throwing money at them because I’d be so horrified if it went badly. So, you know, that kind of fact turned into a publicized policy, which is “Of course I guarantee it.”
So here’s what I know though. I know that the investment in your speaker is one of the smallest investments you’re making for your meeting or your convention. I know that when you add up all the food costs and the venue costs and the travel costs and the insurance costs and the production costs, I know when you add up all these things really paying for the speaker, it’s not like it’s free – I know it’s a line item for you – but it’s really not the most expensive thing. So you want to guarantee not just that your speaker will pay you back if it was a disaster – which again, of course I would and anybody, if you’re hiring a pro they would – but you really want to make sure that someone can guarantee success, period.
Brad offers a 100 percent money back guarantee on all his programs
So I think that there’s a kind of a question behind the question, and it really is, “Speaker” or “Brad, can you guarantee success?” And I really think fees are often an indicator of the level of guarantee of success you can expect from your motivational speaker. So a very low fee means you might a very good speaker, but maybe not ‘cause the level of guarantee isn’t that high. And then as peoples experience grows and their credentials grow and their number of raving clients grow and their calendar becomes more busy, you as a buyer have a much greater level of guarantee of success, don’t you? Sure.
So next time you’re talking to a potential keynote speaker, motivational speaker, ask, “What’s your policy about guarantees?” And I want you to think though about not just the financial return of monies if you get a lousy speaker, but also, you know, what’s it going to be like for you if your speaker bombs? So what, you get your money back. You’ve jeopardized an incredibly important meeting and I know that you don’t want to do that.
Well my name’s Brad Montgomery. I would love to be your speaker. I offer a very high level of guaranteed success, both financially and in every other way, and I’d love to be part of your team. Give us a call. You can find us at funnymotivationalspeakers.com or bradmontgomery.com. Thanks so much. Lets talk.
We now present the second in a series of articles about:
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.
Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Would Love To Be Introduced to YOUR Audience
Related Articles and Videos:
See some examples of Brad’s keynote introductions
Maximize your conference investment by treating your speaker right
For those folks who would rather read than watch, here’s the transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery, funnymotivationalspeakers.com, with another idea how to deal with, how to work with motivational speakers. Today’s video is about introductions. It’s your job to introduce your speaker, and I want you to take that job seriously.
All right, so what do I mean? Introductions are crucial for a motivational speaker, and the reason why is because that’s the chance the audience has to size up the speaker before your speaker comes on the stage. And as you know, the first 30, 60, 90 seconds that your speaker is onstage are crucial. That’s when your audience is judging and really evaluating your speaker. And if you can give them sort of a head start, which you can with a good introduction, you’re really making a great choice. You’re really doing the right thing.
So how do you do this? It’s easy. All you have to do is ask your speaker, “What do I need to do for your introduction?” And by the way, if your speaker doesn’t have a clue about that, you’ve chosen the wrong speaker. I’m a speaker. I want to be your guy.
Let me tell you about my introduction. I’ve got an introduction that’s been honed, you know, over a thousand presentations. It’s funny, it’s concise, it’s relevant, it gets the audience excited. It’s easy to read for my clients or the CEO, whoever’s reading it. It’s a great introduction. All you have to do is ask me for the introduction, to ask me a couple questions about “How do you want me to deliver this,” and I’ll make it easy for you to do a great job. So if your speaker doesn’t have that stuff, you know you’ve chosen the wrong speaker.
As a little appendix, a little addendum, one more idea, do the stuff your speaker asks. So let me give you an example. I’ve got this introduction that, again, it just works. I’ve done it so much it works. I know it works because I’ve done it so much. You want me to do something that’s good, so I’ll give you the thing.
But then many times my clients will end up adding a little quip, add a little aside, add a little joke, they’ll interrupt, they’ll comment upon the introduction, you know. They’ll comment upon the phrase they just read. It doesn’t work. What it does is it takes a completely honed tight piece – and that’s really what it is. My introduction, it’s shtick. It’s funny, it gets the audience ready. They take this piece of shtick and they completely trash it. So don’t do that.
Ask your speaker what they want. If they give you something, read it, do whatever else they ask and get off stage. And enjoy what you’ve bought. Watch your audience be transformed.
All right, you know, I hope you know that I would love to be your guy. I would love to be your motivational speaker.
Give us a call. You can reach us through bradmontgomery.com or funnymotivationalspeakers.com.
We’ll send you the introduction. We’ll tell you all you want to know about introductions, and we’ll make sure that your experience is fun, meaningful, valuable and fun. Did I mention fun? I think it ought to be fun. Thanks for your time. Make it a great day.
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,
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.
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.
