Without a doubt, the single biggest lesson we’ve learned is that most clients contact us (the first time) with a speaker in mind. Often, this is the result of a lot of internal discussion, brainstorming, and googling.

At Expert Impact, while we could respond with, “give us a few hours to check availability and price,” we really try not to. Why? If your perfect guest isn’t available, you’ve painted yourself into a corner and have a lot of stakeholder management to untangle. More importantly our clients over the last year have had the best outcomes when they haven’t booked the name they thought they wanted.

At EI, we know it’s all about working with you to really understand the outcomes you are trying to create through booking external talent. Really getting into the details and sometimes even building or changing it is the key to making the right call on who you need and whether you need a speaker at all. A panel, workshop, or fireside chat may deliver a much better outcome.

In summary, what we’ve learned is to focus on outcomes first, not names. The more energy you (and we) invest in this discussion, the better chance of a ‘best ever’ result or feedback from your event or session.

By all means, pull together a few names, thoughts, or ideas that might help us understand the vibe or tone you prefer or what might cause excitement in your audiences. (It also helps us help you manage the expectations of other stakeholders that might be driving the ideas.) But what we really want you to know is that we are here to support you in developing the ideas and solutions. It all falls into place beautifully when there is real clarity on the outcome.

If you would like to try working a little differently and would like to know that every booking you make is having a social and/or environmental impact, drop us a line at karen@expertimpact.com. We would love to hear from you.