How to Hire a Motivational Speaker to Boost Your Team’s Leadership Skills

Aha moments:

If You want ROI on your next event, hire a speaker that keeps them awake.

If they don’t stay awake, they don’t get a takeaway – engagement is everything!

Hikers have Mount Everest. Archeologists have the Holy Grail.

For corporate marketers and meeting planners, it’s the elusive dream.

Knowing how to hire a motivational speaker that will fulfill your every wish to engage employees, entertain the audience and deliver meaty, worthwhile leadership content.

In fact, it’s probably at the top of your list of most-difficult-things to do.

But if you can pull it off, your organization will take off.

If you know what you’re looking for in a motivational speaker, you’ll be able to identify the individuals that best fit your needs and then make the right selection. Here’s how to start.

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Go for the entertainment factor

The first, and perhaps most important factor to consider – at least from the audience’s perspective – is the entertainment value.

Here’s why: Think about it. You have a passive audience, a few of them are probably pumped up for the conference, but the majority are probably not terribly excited about attending.

Your speaker needs to pull both groups into the session, making it fun, interesting and lively.

To accomplish this goal, you can’t get away with a dry, monotone speaker.

No, your conference needs a high-energy, pull-out-all-the-stops, interesting presenter. Maybe one who plays an instrument. Or someone who’s funny. Or a speaker who can do magic.

You get the picture.

Lots of speakers market themselves as entertaining, but this is what truly separates the great speakers from the rest.

Don’t just take what’s written about the speaker on his website at verbatim.

Check out the speaker’s video clips and ask for references to ensure that your next conference will have the audience rocking a true smile.

Make sure to engage

Having a laugh or two is great. In fact, it will set the stage so that your motivational speaker can move the audience into the next most-important phrase: engaging them.

You see, without engagement, the conference will flop.

You won’t get any ROI from it. It’s your worst nightmare.

Employees won’t be paying attention. They’ll probably be scrolling through Facebook instead of realizing any lasting change.

So just how do you get attendees to toss their phones in favor of learning about leadership? It all depends on the speaker you select.

Here’s why: Once the speaker lightens the atmosphere and grabs the audience’s attention with entertainment or humor, she can pull the group towards commitment.

By engaging the audience and helping them invest in the process, they’ll be positioned to truly take in the leadership information that comes in the final stage.

Drive home the point

Meaty content. It’s the hallmark of any good event or conference. In fact, it could be argued that this final factor is THE most important one. But that’s a discussion for another day.

However, when you hire a motivational speaker, this factor should be top-of-mind.

As an organization, you need to set aside times like this to develop your people’s leadership skills and help them advance the business – in addition to their own careers.

At this stage, with the audience primed and ready to go, your speaker can really drive home the point with a valuable leadership message that drives lasting change.

With a speaker that entertains, engages and delivers great content, you can position your organization for growth, increase employee productivity,propel their skillset and advance your leadership team. But first, you need to know how to hire a motivational speaker that has all of these qualities, and more.