Written by Jonathan Dunnett
5 minute read
In brief: Most speakers describe their ideal client in terms that fit every company equally — “purpose-driven,” “people-focused,” “serious about change.” That’s not a target, it’s a wish. Customer criteria fixes that by replacing vague descriptors with observable signals: the specific, verifiable things that tell you whether an organization is worth your time before you spend any of it. This post covers how to build both your positive list (who to pursue) and your negative list (who to pass on quickly), the practical layer most speakers skip — budget signals, engagement model fit, change readiness — and how early-stage speakers can use criteria to shape their positioning through discovery conversations rather than guesswork.
Most speakers can tell you, in broad strokes, who they want to work with.
“Purpose-driven organizations.” “Companies that care about their people.” “Businesses that are serious about change.”
These aren’t wrong answers. They’re just not useful ones. And the gap between a useful answer and a vague one is the gap between a focused pipeline and a frustrating one.
Customer criteria is the tool that closes that gap. It’s a framework for defining — specifically and in writing — what a good-fit client actually looks like. Not the feeling of a good fit, but the signals. The observable, verifiable indicators that tell you whether an organization is worth your time before you spend a minute of it.
This matters at every stage of a speaking career. If you’re just starting out and still figuring out what you stand for, criteria helps you identify who to have discovery conversations with. If you’re established and fielding inbound inquiries, criteria helps you evaluate them quickly. If you’re doing proactive outreach, criteria helps you build a list worth building.
The framework is the same regardless of where you are. It’s just doing different jobs.
The problem with vague descriptors
Take “purpose-driven organizations” as an example. It’s a genuine aspiration and a reasonable instinct. But if you tried to build a target list from it, where would you start? Every company’s website claims to be purpose-led. Every annual report has a section on values. The language is everywhere, which means it tells you almost nothing.
What you actually need are signals. Observable things that suggest an organization is genuinely purpose-driven rather than just performing it.
Consider what “purpose-driven” would actually look like in practice. Do they have established Employee Resource Groups with real support behind them: dedicated budget, executive sponsorship, actual programming? Do they appear on a credible purpose or culture index — one that requires independent verification, not just a fee? What do employee reviews actually say, not the curated testimonials on the careers page but the unfiltered ones on Glassdoor or Indeed? Or, maybe even better: Reddit? When people describe why they stay, or why they left, does purpose show up in a specific and concrete way?
Are there signals of alignment between stated values and actual behavior — decisions that cost something, made under real pressure? Paul Polman scrapped quarterly earnings reporting in his first week as Unilever CEO and spent a decade absorbing shareholder hostility to hold a long-term sustainability position: that’s a signal. Patagonia has consistently made business decisions that sacrificed short-term revenue for values alignment: that’s a signal, too. What those two examples share is verifiability: the decisions are documented, the pressure they faced was public, and the outcomes are traceable. That kind of alignment is harder to fake and more meaningful than anything in an annual report.
On the flip side: are there signals that cut against the narrative? A company can claim purpose-driven status while quietly appearing on supply chain controversy lists, scoring poorly on independent sustainability measures, or cycling through DEI leadership every eighteen months. Greenwashing and astroturfing are real. Your criteria should include negative signals that help you filter those out, not just positive ones that point you toward who to pursue.
That last point matters more than most speakers realize. Positive criteria gets you a long list. Negative criteria makes the list actionable.
Beyond values: the practical layer
Organizational ethos matters, but there’s a more practical layer of criteria that sits underneath it, and skipping this layer creates problems later.
Resources and budget reality. Does this organization have the financial capacity to engage someone at your level? For an established speaker, this means looking for signals of a real L&D budget, a history of bringing in external speakers, or a dedicated events function. For a speaker who’s earlier in the journey, the threshold is lower, but the question is the same. You’re trying to avoid investing significant time in a relationship with an organization that was never going to be a buyer (or who wants to offer you more than a free lunch).
Openness to ongoing engagement. If you’re a speaker who also consults, coaches, or runs programs, a one-time keynote may not be the relationship you’re after. A useful check question — deployed strategically in conversation, not as an interrogation — is something like: “How do you tend to work with speakers? Is it typically a single engagement, or do you develop longer-term relationships with people whose work resonates?” You might not always get a direct answer, but the response tells you something. And if you happen to know someone who’s spoken there before, a general conversation about their experience (without pressing into anything NDA-adjacent) can surface useful context.
Change readiness. This one is underappreciated and occasionally critical. Depending on your topic, you need to understand whether the organization has the infrastructure and appetite to actually do something with what you bring. A 45-minute keynote on transformation is one thing. Being positioned as the linchpin of a significant change initiative — and then being handed 45 minutes — is something else entirely. If an engagement fails and your presence was used to frame why it would succeed, that association follows you. It’s not common, but it happens. Understanding what an organization actually expects of you, and whether those expectations map to what you’re delivering, belongs in your evaluation.
For the speaker who’s still figuring it out
If you’re early in your speaking career and haven’t yet committed to a specific positioning, criteria isn’t just about finding clients. It’s about finding the right conversations to have before you decide.
Most speakers at this stage have a general area of passion or expertise. What they don’t yet know is which specific problems, within that area, have genuine commercial value — meaning organizations will actually pay to address them. You don’t want to be in a position where you have something that no one wants.
The answer isn’t to guess and then package: It’s to go find out what people actually want and will pay for.
Build a hypothesis about who your ideal clients might be: a specific type of organization, a specific function, a specific industry. Use criteria to identify who’s worth talking to. Then go have discovery conversations with actual buyers: HR leaders, L&D professionals, event planners, whoever holds the budget and the brief.
These aren’t sales conversations. Be clear about that going in, because this changes the psychology. You’re trying to understand their world: what’s working, what’s failing, what keeps them up at night. If you speak about digital transformation, you might ask: “Tell me about the last three years. What have you tried? What went well? If you had to name the single most persistent point of failure in your transformation programs, what would it be?”
As you replicate these conversations across multiple organizations, patterns emerge. The overlaps between what you care about and what they’re actually struggling with start to become visible. That’s where your positioning lives — not in what you think you should say, but in what the market tells you it needs to hear.
There’s a quiet benefit to doing it this way, too. A good discovery conversation, approached with genuine curiosity and without a sales agenda, builds real rapport. You’re not coming in the door asking for something. You’re showing up interested in them. In many cases, that conversation becomes the first step in a relationship that eventually turns into business — not because you engineered it that way, but because trust built early compounds over time.
Your criteria will evolve. That’s the point.
You won’t have all the information you need before a first meeting. Often you won’t have it after one, either. Some criteria questions can only be answered over a series of conversations, through secondary research, or by talking to someone who’s been inside the organization before you.
That’s fine. The goal isn’t a perfect picture before every conversation. It’s a framework that gets sharper over time: as you learn what good clients actually look like in practice (and what bad ones look like, too), as you accumulate experiences, and as your positioning and fee level evolve.
Start with what you know. Build your yes list and your no list. Make them as specific as you can, then make them more specific. The more precisely you can define what you’re looking for, the faster you’ll recognize it when it shows up — and the faster you’ll recognize when it doesn’t. This should be clear enough that you can hand it to someone else, and they can action it for you. What does “purpose led” really mean, after all?
If you want a broader framework for how criteria fits into the rest of your pipeline work, The Approach is a good place to start. And if you’re ready to build a predictable speaking pipeline around it, that’s what we work on together.
Jonathan Dunnett is a Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellow and keynote speaker business development coach. He helps established speakers build strategic, relationship-driven pipelines using the same intelligence frameworks Fortune 500 companies use to win competitive deals.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do speakers define their ideal corporate client?
The most effective speakers define their ideal corporate client using observable signals rather than values-based descriptors. Instead of “purpose-driven organizations,” they look for specific indicators: dedicated L&D budget, a history of booking external speakers, established Employee Resource Groups, credible culture rankings, or employee reviews that reflect genuine organizational behavior. The goal is a description specific enough that someone else could build a list from it.
What are positive and negative criteria in speaker business development?
Positive criteria are the signals that make an organization worth pursuing: organizational fit, budget signals, event history, and alignment with your topic area. Negative criteria are the signals that make an organization a clear pass regardless of other factors — no external speaker budget, procurement complexity that outweighs the fee, reputational associations that don’t fit your positioning, or a change readiness mismatch. Together, positive criteria builds your long list and negative criteria makes it actionable.
How do I know if a company is worth pursuing as a speaker?
Start with organizational signals: do they have the infrastructure and budget to engage a speaker at your level? Then look at situational signals: is there something driving their need right now — a conference, a change initiative, a team challenge your topic addresses directly? Finally, consider relational signals: do you have a path in, or can you build one? If all three are present, the organization belongs on your list. If the negative criteria fire — no external speaker history, prohibitive procurement process, values misalignment — move on without second-guessing.
Can customer criteria help early-stage speakers?
Yes, and it’s one of the most underused tools at that stage. Early-stage speakers often don’t yet know which specific problems in their topic area have genuine commercial value. Customer criteria helps them identify who to have discovery conversations with — actual buyers like HR leaders, L&D professionals, and event planners — so their positioning is shaped by what the market actually needs rather than what they assume it needs.