Interested in Becoming a Speaker?
The professional speaking industry in South Africa is an extremely competitive one - definitely not for the faint-hearted!
Speaker agencies are inundated on a daily basis with people who fancy themselves as the next Big Thing, so how do you differentiate yourself from the three othe identical phone calls we've recieved today?
Well, before you approach an agent, you need to do some research into the industry. As mentioned, it is exceedingly competitive. Each month we get about 30 inquiries from speakers we have never heard of before. Within 15 seconds we can usually tell if the speaker is a beginner or not, and whether or not we want to work with them, so we came up with this list of questions.
You must be able to have the appropriate answers to the following questions before approaching any agent:
 
What is your main topic?
Title?
What is your major market?
Do you have a fee schedule and a menu of services prepared?
What else do you offer: seminars, panels, consulting, products?
Are you a member of a speaker group that shares leads?
Which other speakers' agents are booking you now?
What is the average number of leads you give to your present agent (if you have one) after each performance?
Do you have presentation kits prepared: demo tapes (of a live speech, not a press interview) and one-sheet for each topic?
When will you be speaking in Johannesburg so that we can catch your presentation?
Can you supply references from at least 6 paid speaking engagements?
 
Becoming the kind of presenter that can answer these questions in the way agents need will take you a great way on the road to becoming a highly paid professional speaker.
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Speakers Inc has recently launched Speaker Academy South Africa, and we will be running short courses and workshops to help new speakers figure out if this is something they really want to do and which they will succeed at and then show them the basics of how to get into this industry.
We will also be running workshops for established speakers who feel they need to brush up on one or two particular skills.
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