It's Not You - It's Me!

Very early in my career I learned perhaps my most important lesson about the speaking business. I was covering an event at New York City’s Plaza Hotel for a big Wall Street firm. The speaker I booked for the event was an energy expert - someone the meeting planner asked for – not someone my company represented.

As I sat in the audience and listened, I became concerned. The audience was quiet and the content was, to me, dull as dishwater. I thought to myself, “This is a disaster! My customer is going to be so unhappy with me.” The speech was so dry and boring it had me counting holes in a single ceiling tile – and then counting the number of ceiling tiles – to see how many holes were in the room. It was that kind of awful!

When the speaker concluded, to my absolute surprise, he received an enthusiastic standing ovation. What!?!?! That was my “a-ha” moment. It wasn't the speaker that was the problem – it was me! And if I could understand why that audience and I reacted so differently, I could be a better resource to those I was trying to serve. This led me to focus my attention and learn everything I could about the subjects Wall Street audiences were interested in. I didn't need to be an expert, mind you, but I did need to understand the trends and be conversant in the language of my customers. The effort paid off in short order. My new-found understanding inspired confidence in buyers who saw me as an invaluable partner and rewarded me with extraordinary level of loyalty.

The speaking business is tricky. People are not products. Context is everything. The same person can deliver very different value to different audiences. Sometimes the differences are subtle. The best agents in the speaking business know how to interpret that value and explain to their customers how the speaker fits in context. That’s the challenge – and the fun – of a business that changes as fast as the world does and always keeps us on our toes.