How Do You Evaluate a Speaker Bureau Before You Sign?

How do you pick the best bureau for you as a speaker?

Check three things before signing with any speaker bureau: fit with your topic and fee range, actual booking activity for speakers like you in the last 12 months, and fee transparency between what the client pays and what you’re paid. Validate all three with speakers already on the bureau’s roster, not just the bureau’s own case studies. The clearest red flag is a bureau that won’t tell you plainly what it charges your client. Treat that one as a reason to slow down.

Written by Jonathan Dunnett, Speaker Growth Strategist

How Do You Evaluate a Speaker Bureau Before You Sign?

Most speakers pick a bureau the way they pick most vendors: someone recommended one, the pitch sounded fine, and they signed. Few speakers actually evaluate a bureau before handing them a piece of their business.

That’s a strategic mistake, because the bureau relationship can vary in quality. A good one becomes a real part of your speaking pipeline. A bad one costs you bookings, money, or your name being represented in ways you didn’t agree to, harming your reputation.

If you talk to enough speakers you’ll hear three very different stories: speakers who are indifferent to their bureau and barely notice it either way, a smaller group who are genuinely loyal because the bureau keeps sending them paid work, and a group who got burned badly enough that they stopped working with bureaus altogether and started booking direct only, or, they cringe when they see the number come up on the phone.

The difference can come down to whether the speaker evaluated the bureau up front, or if they just signed.

What a Good Speaker Bureau Actually Does

This is the baseline for how to evaluate a speaker bureau: what do you get for the cut they take?

If you strip away the pitch and a bureau’s job is simple: they have relationships with event planners and buyers you don’t have, and they put your name in front of opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise see. In exchange, they take a commission, typically 20-30% of the fee.

Now, is it worth it? There’s an opportunity cost: I know some speakers that are delighted to just have opportunities come to them: but some people? Do the math. Let’s say you get 50 bookings from a bureau (I know people who get more): 20-30% of whatever your fee, times 50. For most people, that’s in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you book direct? You keep that 20-30% (but you have to get those clients and those calls/emails through other avenues like search). One of those avenues is browsing open calls for speakers and RFPs directly.

That’s the whole value proposition. A good bureau is not a marketing department, a brand strategist, or a career coach. If a bureau is pitching you on everything they’ll do for you beyond that, read the fine print on what’s actually included versus what’s aspirational, and take note of what it will cost you, too.

Criteria for Evaluating a Speaker Bureau

Before you sign with any bureau, look at:

Fit with your topic and tier. A bureau that mostly books wellness and lifestyle keynotes isn’t going to generate much activity for a cybersecurity speaker. Ask directly who else they represent in your category and at your fee range.
Actual booking activity, not just roster size. A bureau can have hundreds of speakers listed and still send you nothing. Ask how many bookings they generated for speakers in your category in the last 12 months, and how many of those speakers were new to the roster versus already established with them.
How they represent you. Ask to see the materials they would use to pitch you, and listen to their understanding of who you are. Some bureaus may not truly understand you, even if your messaging is clear on your website and materials. Some may have newer staff who don’t understand how to talk to buyers effectively. Bureaus sometimes work from outdated materials or generic descriptions that don’t reflect your current positioning; a bureau-vs-website mismatch is one of the most common positioning mistakes I see. If what they’d send a planner today doesn’t sound like you, that’s a preview of how you’ll be represented going forward.
Fee transparency. Ask exactly what they charge the client versus what you’re paid, and get it in writing. This matters more than it sounds like it should, see red flags below.
Contract terms. Is the relationship exclusive or non-exclusive? Can you still book direct or work with other bureaus? What happens to leads you generate yourself? Get clear on what you’re actually agreeing to before you sign, not after.

How to validate a bureau through others

A bureau’s own case studies and testimonials will always look good. The better signal comes from people who don’t have a reason to spin it for you.

Talk to current speakers on their roster, ideally in your topic area or fee range, and ask directly: how many bookings has this bureau sent you in the last year, and were they well-matched to what you do? Ask former speakers who left the bureau why they left. Ask event planners who’ve booked through that bureau whether the process was smooth and whether the bureau was straight with them about pricing.

If a bureau is reluctant to connect you with current speakers on their roster, that’s worth noticing on its own.

Red flags

A few patterns are worth treating as serious warning signs rather than minor friction:

They ask you to pay upfront. Reputable bureaus are paid by commission on bookings they generate, not by charging speakers a fee to be listed or represented. If a bureau wants money from you before they’ve booked you anything, that’s not how the standard model works.
Lack of transparency on what the client is actually charged (or worse, double dipping). Bureaus quote your fee one of two ways: gross, where they take their commission out of the number you gave them (you quote $5,000, they take their cut, you net less), or net, where you give them your take-home number and they mark up whatever they want on top of it for the client. Both are normal and fine. The unethical version is doing both at once, taking a cut out of your gross fee and then marking up further to the client, so they’re getting paid from both sides of the same booking without either of you seeing the full number. You usually can’t spot this from your own invoice alone. Ask directly which model they use, and ask to see what the client was actually billed. A bureau running a normal commission structure will tell you without blinking. For more information, check out this video from Scott Stratten.
They profit from telling you to go get “ready” first. As Scott highlights in his video above, some bureaus and management companies will tell a speaker who isn’t quite there yet to build up their reel, join a training program, or join a paid community before they’ll consider representing you, without disclosing that they take a cut for the referral. The advice itself isn’t always wrong, sometimes you do need more reps. It’s the undisclosed money that’s the problem. If a bureau points you toward a specific paid training program, community, or video package, ask them plainly: are you compensated in any way for this recommendation? If they hedge or won’t answer directly, that’s your answer.
Vague or evasive answers about booking activity. If they can’t or won’t give you a straight answer on how many bookings they’ve generated for speakers like you recently, assume the honest answer is not many.

What to do if you spot a red flag

Be careful: it’s not necessarily definitive that you’ve got a bad actor in front of you, but watch out. Bureaus that are confident in their value have no reason to be vague about how they charge or how often they book. The bureau channel can be a legitimate and valuable part of how you get booked. It’s just not automatically a good deal the way the pitch makes it sound. Evaluate a speaker bureau the way you’d evaluate any partner who’s about to represent your name and set prices on your behalf, because that’s exactly what this is.

Is Your Bureau Listing Actually Working For You?

If you want more direct bookings, AI search is a great way to get them.

Learn More

Speaker Bureau Questions Speakers Often Ask

Do I need a speaker bureau to get booked?

No. A speaker bureau is one channel among several, alongside direct outbound and your own marketing. Some speakers build a full calendar without ever signing with one.

How much commission does a speaker bureau typically take?

20-30% of the fee is standard. Anything charged outside that range, or charged to you rather than the client, is worth questioning before you sign.

Can I work with more than one speaker bureau at once?

Often yes, if your contract is non-exclusive. Check the exclusivity terms on any speaker bureau agreement before you sign, since some require it.