The first time that I heard a professional speaker, I was a junior high school student attending Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in Southwest, Washington, D.C. The speaker was an African-American older woman, who literally came to talk to the students about: sex, and various methods of pregnancy and disease prevention. Let’s just say that her presentation caught my attention and impacted all of us in one way or another.

As an agency owner, what I’m looking for in the professional speakers and consultants that we choose to represent our brand includes some of the following:

a) Professional appearance and good hygiene: This matters, end of story. If I see things like dandruff on the shoulders of the speaker or other personal hygiene or appearance related issues that have the potential to distract the audience away from what the speaker is saying, that’s a red flag. There are a lot of non-verbal items that go into making a speaker or consultant exceptional at presenting.

b) Excellent pronunciation, enunciation, diction, volume, and speed: If no one can understand what a speaker or consultant is saying, is there really much else to talk about? I’ve listened to so many speakers who don’t realize that the way they pronounce words incorrectly, or the speed at which they speak (too fast or even too slow) impacts the quality of the information being delivered.

c) A Positive Attitude At The Minimum and An Attitude of Service At The Maximum: Attitude is everything! We REFUSE to work with ‘divas.’ The meeting planner is the star of the show, not the speaker or consultant. Why?

The meeting planner stands to lose the most based on how well the meeting or event goes, and based on how professional and great the professional speaker or consultant is, period. Meeting and event planners have executives, committees, and sponsors that they answer to. Meeting planners are often planning 40-100+ events per year. Can you imagine how utterly stressful that pressure is?

I once spoke to a meeting planner that I met in a class being given by MPI (Meeting Planners International) and she confided in me that she had in fact LOST HER JOB due to being the person responsible for hiring a speaker or entertainer who proceeded to exhibit some uncouth behavior at her company’s event.

I have also spoken to a speaker who voluntarily shared that she ignored a meeting planner’s request for her to show up much earlier than the time she was assigned to take the stage. Why? She was only looking at the request from her own vantage point. She quipped something along the lines of “Why do I need to get there that early, if I’m not going on stage until such and such a time?” (I was thinking, ‘um, because you’re getting paid thousands of dollars maybe?’) We aren’t having that sort of behavior, period. A part of the vetting process that we employ, is gauging the speakers attitude and professionalism, when they are relaxed- not when they are wearing a professional mask. When we see or hear fed flags, we run.

d) A message or presentation that is packed with qualitative, up to date, meeting objective and subject matter relevance and actionable content. One thing that we insist on, is being able to examine, and consult with a speaker re: the content of their presentation when applicable.

To find out more about  the extensive way in which The Intelligentsia Agency, Inc. goes about ensuring that the speakers and consultants we recommend are great, or more about how we vett them extensively,  feel free to email me at: candacec@theintelligentsia.co or give me a call at: 703. 661.9898 or Toll-Free at 1.833.777.7993