Haven’t utilized a professional speakers bureau for your conference, convention or internal meeting programs yet? While it’s not necessary to do so – and you can even save money on your budget booking directly with keynote speaking professionals – talent agencies and agents often come in handy. Curious to learn more? It’s clear that many event planners use professional speakers bureaus for myriad purposes, which we outline below:
- Convenience – Top talent agency providers pre-screen, recruit and manage acclaimed expert speakers, saving event planners time. Instead of contacting speakers individually, planners can quickly access many options via a bureau.
- Expertise Matching – Professional speakers bureaus have connections to keynote experts across nearly any industry or topic area. Professional speaking agents’ expertise allows them to perfectly match presenters to event goals and audiences to create the right experience.
- Negotiation Assistance – Agents use their established relationships with speakers and experience within the industry to negotiate pricing and contracts on behalf of clients. Planners benefit from the bureaus’ ability to often secure lower fees. Although, as noted above, the lowest budgets and prices can often be secured by booking directly with public guest speaking presenters themselves.
- Logistics Handling – Talent agents provide end-to-end support when it comes to travel, accommodation, A/V needs, processing speaker payments and more. The logistical assistance reduces planner workloads.
- Marketing Support – Leading professional speakers bureaus have robust marketing departments that provide planners with speaker bios, demo reels, photos and other assets needed to promote events featuring their exclusive speakers.
By tapping into talent agencies’ connections, negotiating power and logistical support, meeting planners gain efficiency while still ensuring their speaker and content needs are met perfectly. Again – it’s not necessary to go through agents if you’d like to secure a keynote presenter’s services, and many prefer dealing with conference, convention and event planners directly. But a solid professional speakers bureau can be worth their weigh in gold as well.