Events
What If Your Competitor Hired a Business Keynote Speaker Before You Did?
Guest Blog
Imagine that you have a corporate event coming up in the next fiscal year. You have your eye on a couple of different keynote speakers, and one in particular stands out as having outcomes that you are really excited about.
You are almost ready to pull the trigger and engage this speaker for your event, when you happen to see an announcement from a direct competitor, touting their own corporate event…
And to your dismay, you see that they have booked the exact same speaker.
Now what? If you go ahead with your original plan, your competitor will find out and will think you are imitating them. Your other competitors and partners may also notice the relationship and comment.
This complication may seem insurmountable, making the keynote speaker who initially seemed so promising amount to more trouble than he is worth.
Fortunately, there is little evidence that anyone actually loses their good opinion of a business partner (or a competitor) over a keynote speaker. A good speaker who has good impacts will benefit your company just as much as your competitor, and your competitor may even feel discouraged that the secrets of motivation and growth that the speaker gave their employees will now also be unlocked for you and your corporation.
A good business keynote speaker inspires better performance and greater motivation in all levels of a company. This impact will not be changed by a competitor having heard the same speech.
To step up the speaker’s influence even more, here are a few tips to make your event stand out from those that were put on by others in the same industry. Even if there is overlap in attendance between your event and your competitors’, there are many ways to ensure that your event–and keynote address–will stand out as unique.
Collaboration: Work With Your Speaker
How would you describe your company’s culture and engagement? How are your employees unique–in both strengths and weaknesses? Does your company have a personalized approach to concepts that are universally problematic within your industry?
Discussing these unique aspects of your company with your keynote speaker can be the key to taking your corporate event to the next level.
A good keynote speaker can tailor his address based on contextual information. So don’t feel that you have to just hire him and let him do his thing; if he has natural scientific curiosity and enjoys a challenge he will be happy to customize and tailor his address to the audience.
Broaden Your Focus: Your Event Is More than an Address
The keynote speech is an integral part of the corporate event experience, but it is far from the only valuable context by which valuable information can be conveyed.
If your keynote speaker was at a competitor’s event recently, don’t feel that you can’t still create a totally unique experience. In addition to their excellent address, your attendees will be looking forward to guest speakers, workshops and networking.
Focus your efforts on ensuring that these aspects of your itinerary are top notch, and on integrating the topic of the keynote address into the other educational and social opportunities that your conference provides.
A truly great keynote address will benefit the listeners even if they have heard it before, and altering your other plans for your event to meet specific needs will ensure that your corporate event will only be helped by your choice for the keynote address.
