For Meeting Planners
You’ve already got a hundred things to hold together. The speaker shouldn’t be one of them. Here’s the whole process, start to finish, so you know exactly what I do, exactly what I need from you, and exactly when I need it.
I’ve talked to enough meeting planners to know the fear.
You sign the agreement and the speaker goes quiet. You send three emails asking for a headshot. You find out the morning of that he needs something your AV team doesn’t have, and now you’re the one standing in a hallway solving it while two hundred people find their seats.
That’s not how this works.
This is what I know: your event is not my event. Your name is the one on it. Booking a keynote speaker ought to be the easy part of your week, and my job is to make you look good and then get out of your way.
So here it is. Every step, in order, with the timing.
From the day you say yes to the week after your people go home.
Right away
You get an agreement. Plain English, the kind you can read once and understand. It covers the date, the session, the fee, and the travel. Nothing buried.
You sign it. I sign it. That date comes off my available list and it belongs to you. I’m not going to call you in six months because something bigger came along. That’s not a thing I do.
Four to six weeks out
Thirty minutes on the phone. This is the most important thing we do together, and it’s the part most speakers skip.
Here’s what I want to know. Who’s in the room? What kind of year have they had? Did you come through a merger, a layoff, a record quarter, a loss? What’s your theme? Who speaks before me, and who has to follow me?
And then the big one. What do you want your people saying to each other in the parking lot?
Whatever you tell me on that call is what shapes the message. You are not getting a canned talk with your logo dropped on the first slide.
Whenever you need it
Bio, stage introduction, headshots, keynote descriptions. All of it is already published and waiting on the planner resources page. You don’t have to email me and wait two days for a reply.
It’s there, it’s copy and paste, and you can grab it at eleven at night if eleven at night is when you build the program. Because I know that’s sometimes when you build the program.
Two weeks out
I present with slides and I run them from your house computer. I don’t travel with a laptop that has to make friends with your system in the ten minutes before doors open.
The file goes to your AV team ahead of time, in whatever format they want it. I ask them for their deadline instead of making them chase mine.
The rest of my list is short. A lavalier mic. A podium if you’ve got one. A confidence monitor. No riser required, no special lighting, nothing that costs you a line item.
The day before
I’m in Mayfield, Kentucky. If your event is inside about a five hour drive, I drive it. Inside three hours I drive in that morning and home that night. Past three hours I come in the night before if you have me on a stage before lunch. Anything past five hours, I fly in the night before.
I don’t build a travel plan that depends on a connecting flight landing on time the morning of your keynote. Too many things can go sideways at thirty thousand feet, and not one of them would be your fault.
The morning of
I’d rather be there an hour before than ten minutes before. I meet your AV team, I run the mic, I click through every slide, and I find the door I’m walking through so I’m not hunting for it while you’re reading my introduction.
Then I come find you and ask the only question that matters that morning. What changed? Because something always changes.
Your session
Up to ninety minutes for a keynote. Half day through multi day for a workshop. I start when your program says I start, and I finish when your program says I finish.
If the morning runs long and you need me to give ten minutes back, walk up and tell me. I’ll give them back and nobody in that room will be able to tell where they came from.
Right after
I stay as long as your people want to talk. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had happened in a hotel ballroom while the staff was stacking chairs around us.
If you want a meet and greet or a resource table, say the word and we’ll set it up.
The week after
I check back with you. Not to ask for a referral. To ask how it landed and what you’d change.
If there’s something your attendees can hold onto, a handout, a summary, something for your internal newsletter, I’ll send it.
And if it went the way I hope it went, you’ll hear from me again the next time I’m headed your direction.
There’s no office between us. When you email, I’m the one who reads it. When you call, I’m the one who answers.
The real ones, answered straight.
Most events book me three to nine months out, and dates go in the order they’re asked for.
That said, I’ve taken a call in March for an event in April more than once. If your date is close, ask anyway. The worst thing that happens is I tell you I’m already committed and point you toward somebody good.
Every time. That’s what the prep call is for.
The framework stays the same because the framework works. The stories, the language, and where it lands change based on who’s sitting in your room.
Depends on the room, and you’re the one who decides which room it is.
I speak to corporate audiences, associations, and churches. In a corporate setting the message stands on its own without a Bible reference, and it’s still honest, because who you are and what you were made for is not only a religious idea. In a faith-based setting I open the Book.
You tell me which room I’m walking into and I will not surprise you.
It depends on the date, the travel, and how much of me you need. A ninety minute keynote three hours from my house and a two day workshop across the country are not the same number.
Tell me about your event and I’ll give you a straight number. Not a range that quietly turns into a bigger number later.
Nationwide. I drive to anything inside about five hours of Mayfield, Kentucky, which covers Nashville, Louisville, Paducah, St. Louis, Evansville, Memphis, and a good bit of the middle of the country.
Past that, I fly, and I fly in the night before.
Yes. A keynote in the morning and a breakout in the afternoon is a normal day for me, and Ziglar Legacy workshops run half day through multi day.
It usually costs your budget less to keep me for a second session than to bring in a second speaker.
Tell me as soon as you know. If I’ve got the new date open, we move it and I don’t make it complicated.
Events change. I’ve been on the other side of enough of them to know it’s rarely anybody’s fault.
I will not pitch anything from your stage.
If you want a resource table in the back of the room, I’m glad to set one up. That’s your call and I’m not going to make it for you.
Me. There’s no office between us and no assistant screening your email.
You call 270.705.7978 and I answer, or I call you back.
Bio, stage introduction, downloadable headshots, keynote descriptions for your program, and the technical list for your AV team. All of it is sitting on the planner resources page right now, ready to copy.
Meeting Planner ResourcesPaul Chappell
Call instead of filling out a form if you’d rather. I’d rather talk to you anyway.
Tell me about your event. I read every one of these myself and I’ll get back to you personally.
