Booking a speaker is not hard. Getting a straight answer out of the industry is hard. You send an inquiry, you get "fees on request," you take a 30-minute call to learn a number that could have been an email, and three weeks later you are still not sure whether the person you are about to pay $30,000 has given this talk to a room like yours.
Here is the whole process, in the order you should actually do it. It works whether you book through us, through a legacy bureau, or direct.
Answer four questions before you write to anyone
We built our entire intake around four questions, because four is what it takes to produce a useful shortlist and anything beyond that is a sales script. Answer them for yourself first, on one page:
1. What kind of speaker do you actually need? Not the topic. The job. Are you opening a conference and need energy, teaching a team a skill and need a workshop leader, marking a heritage month and need a voice with a story, or briefing a board and need someone who can survive hostile questions? These are four different people, and the most expensive mistake in this whole process is hiring a visionary when you needed an operator. If you are not sure which you need, the five AI speaker archetypes sort it out in about five minutes.
2. Who is in the room, and what do they already know? "500 people" tells a speaker nothing. "500 mid-career claims adjusters, most of whom have used ChatGPT once and think this is about their jobs" tells them everything. Write the second version.
3. What do you want different on Monday? "Leave inspired about AI" is not an outcome, it is a mood. "Understand where AI fits in their weekly workflow and feel safe running an experiment without asking permission" is an outcome. You can measure it, and a speaker can build toward it.
4. What are your real constraints? Date, city, in-person or virtual, budget ceiling, language, and anything that is off-limits internally. If there is a layoff round or a union negotiation in the background, say so. A speaker who does not know that will walk into it on stage.
That page is your brief. It is also your filter later, when a tempting name shows up who does not move your stated outcome forward. You can send exactly those four answers to us and get three to five verified speakers back within 24 hours, no account, no call.
What a good brief looks like next to a bad one
| Field | What organizers usually write | What gets you a useful shortlist |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | "Senior leaders" | "60 VPs and above, ops and finance, average tenure 12 years, mostly skeptical" |
| Topic | "AI" | "Where AI is actually changing underwriting, and what we should stop doing" |
| Outcome | "Inspire the team" | "Three decisions they can make in Q4 without a budget request" |
| Format | "Keynote" | "35 minutes plus 15 of live Q&A, opening slot, before the CEO" |
| Budget | "Competitive" | "$20K ceiling all-in, including travel" |
| Constraints | (blank) | "No vendor pitches. Restructuring announced in September. Avoid headcount jokes." |
The right-hand column takes about fifteen extra minutes and cuts a week off the process. Every honest person in this business will tell you the same thing.
What to ask for, and what a straight answer sounds like
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the step that separates a keynote people quote back to you from an expensive forty minutes. Anyone can claim to be an AI expert. Ask for proof, in this order.
Unedited recent footage. Not a sizzle reel. A full talk, or at least a continuous fifteen-minute block, from the last twelve to eighteen months. Sizzle reels are edited to hide the thing you most need to see: what happens in minute twenty-two when the energy dips. And in this field, an excellent 2023 talk can be genuinely out of date.
Evidence of recent work. A paper, a product, a deployment, a company they run, a team they lead. Something with a date on it. The gap between "speaks about AI" and "does AI" is where most of the disappointment in this market lives.
Two references from the last year. Ask for organizers of events roughly your size, and then actually call them. Ask one question: "Would you book them again, and what would you do differently?" The pause before the answer tells you more than the answer.
A specific failure. Ask what went wrong on a project they worked on. A practitioner who cannot name one either has not done the work or will not be honest on your stage. Both are disqualifying.
What they will change for you. Ask what they need from you to make the talk specific. A speaker who wants a pre-call, three internal terms, and the names of two live initiatives is going to earn the fee. A speaker who says "I'll tailor the intro" is selling you last week's deck.
We do this diligence before a speaker is bookable through us rather than after you ask, which is the whole point of how we work. But do your own pass anyway. It is your stage.
How fees actually get quoted
Speaker fees are not list prices. They are a starting number that moves with what you are asking for. A quote is built roughly like this:
- The base fee for the speaker's profile and demand right now, which in AI can shift within a quarter.
- Travel and time, which is the part people underestimate. A speaker flying across an ocean for a 45-minute keynote is selling two days, not one, and prices accordingly.
- Prep depth. A signature talk with a light tailor costs less than one built around your data and your case studies.
- Format load. A keynote plus a breakout plus a dinner is three engagements in one day.
- Rights. If you want to record it and put it on your intranet forever, that is a separate negotiation, not a favor.
- Exclusivity. Asking someone not to speak at a competitor's event in the same city that month has a price.
Our commission is 17.5%, printed on every quote you see. Not a range, not "market standard," not something you find out later. You see what the speaker gets and what we get on the same screen. The full breakdown is on our pricing page, and the bands by speaker profile are in the 2026 speaker fee guide.
Two things worth knowing before you negotiate. First, fees flex most on things that are not money: a date that fits a trip the speaker is already taking, a virtual slot instead of a flight, a multi-event commitment, a cause they care about. Second, ask what is included before you ask for a discount. Half the "expensive" quotes we see are just quotes that bundle travel while the cheap-looking one does not.
The contract, in six lines
Bookings do not fall apart on price. They fall apart on things nobody wrote down. Your agreement should be explicit about:
- Scope. Session length, format, whether Q&A is included, and anything else on the day.
- Fee and inclusions. The number, and a plain sentence about whether travel, hotel, and ground transport are inside it or outside it.
- Recording and reuse. Can you film it? Can you post it internally? Externally? For how long? Silence here means no.
- Cancellation and rescheduling. Both directions, with dates and percentages. If your speaker cancels on us, we replace them within 72 hours or you do not pay.
- Logistics and contacts. Arrival time, tech requirements, and a named human on each side who answers their phone.
- Payment structure. We hold payment until the talk is delivered, which is the structure you want regardless of who you book through. And if your audience rates the session below 8 out of 10, our commission comes back. Those terms are on the guarantee page in full.
Read clauses 3 and 4 twice. They are where the surprises live.
The two weeks before, and the day itself
The booking is not finished when the contract is signed. What happens in the last fortnight is most of the difference between a good talk and a generic one.
Two to three weeks out, send the speaker a short pack: the audience detail from your brief, the outcome restated, what else is on the agenda, the two or three internal initiatives the talk should acknowledge, and anything happening in the organization they should steer around. Offer a 20-minute call. A speaker who engages properly with that call is worth the fee. One who cannot find the time has told you something useful before they ever take the stage.
One week out, confirm the boring things in writing: arrival time, slide format and deadline, stage setup, mic preference, whether there is a lectern, run of show with exact minutes, and who meets them at the door.
The day of, get them in the room for the session before theirs if you can. Ten minutes of watching the audience changes a talk more than an hour of prep. Then protect the Q&A. It is the part attendees remember, and it is the first thing a running-late agenda eats.
The week after, collect ratings while the session is fresh and write down what you would do differently. If you book more than one speaker a year, that note is worth more than any bureau's recommendation, including ours. For running the full program around the speaker, the conference planning guide picks up where this leaves off.