The Top 9 Ways Meeting Planners Find Speakers

[They’re Not as Digital as You Might Think]

Meeting planners take great pride in the quality and selection of the speakers they hire for their events. It’s a mark of professionalism. A coup d’état over industry rivals. The pièce de résistance to set the tone and kick things off on the right note.

Every planner has their own system; their preferred way of scouting and sourcing the best talent for the audience they are dazzling.

Locating the best talent for the job is mission critical to a successful event.

Connecting with their ideal speaker is a priority for meeting planners, and we wanted to understand how they do it.

We found the responses to, “What Are All The Ways You Find Speakers?” interesting:

Another surprising finding was the power of YouTube and speaker demo videos among planners with tremendous experience. 42% of planners with 21+ years of experience say they sometimes rely on those videos to find speakers, compared to 23% of planners with 11–20 years of experience and 28% of planners with zero to 10 years of experience.

The key theme of the data underscores that despite the fact that we are in 2020 with numerous channels of online resources, less than half of meeting planners said they used Google, videos, podcasts and social channels to find speakers. Non-digital methods, such as seeing the speaker in person, or getting a recommendation from bureaus, other speakers or others, is the #1 way meeting planners find speakers in 2020.

Download our full report for the results and analysis of 150 professional meeting planners surveyed to get a better understanding of how they are sourcing keynote speakers in 2020.