Written by Jonathan Dunnett
5 minute read
In brief: Most speakers optimize for the wrong person. Here’s what event planners look for in keynote speakers – and why the answer depends entirely on who in the room is actually making the decision.
I wanted to understand what event planners look for in keynote speakers, so I went directly to my network. I reached out publicly and privately – event planners, organizers, and people who have been responsible for selecting keynote speakers – and asked them a simple set of questions. What do you look for? What turns you away? What do most speakers get wrong?
What came back wasn’t a tidy consensus, but a useful map of how speaker selection actually works from five different vantage points in the process.
First, a reality check: there is no single gatekeeper
Before we get into what each person looks for, it’s worth calling out something that almost never gets said directly in speaker marketing advice.
The person you think is making the booking decision often isn’t.
Amy Flores-Young is a meetings and event professional who manages multi-day events for clients. She hears from speakers constantly. Her perspective was direct:
As a planner I get SO MANY speakers who want to connect with me. But in my experience it is NOT typically the planner selecting speakers. Usually my clients come to me with industry speakers or others in mind. It is ultimately the leadership and not the planner making the final call.
This context is important: if you’ve been spending your energy building relationships with event planners and wondering why it isn’t converting, this might be part of the answer. The planner executes the event but the decisions about speakers? It might be the client making that decision: you have to understand the process.
That doesn’t mean planners are irrelevant – far from it. You need to understand how much influence people have – this is critical. In those cases where the event planner can influence but doesn’t make the decision? It does mean your visibility strategy needs to reach further than simply the person coordinating the logistics.
What the experienced planner is filtering for
I reached out to a contact to ask her what do event planners look for in keynote speakers and she was happy to share her 30 years of experience. She didn’t spend much time on what she wants to see. She led with what she doesn’t.
It’s more about what I don’t want to see – the social media profile hyperbole. When you look at a profile and see a listing of the latest buzzwords and labels instead of a sentence, maybe two, succinctly telling me what they do. Impact and intent is what I want to see.”
This is an important thing to consider: what do your buyers and prospects care about? How can you understand them better?
On what most speaker websites get wrong:
Too often websites showcase a profile rather than a promotion of what the speaker has to offer. There can be a ‘look at me and who I’ve been with and where.’”
Her advice to speakers:
Don’t treat your website as an extension of your social media platforms. Take a business approach and, for goodness sake, keep it simple.”
A planner evaluating you for a real event, with a real audience and real professional stakes, needs to answer one question quickly: can this person deliver what we need? Everything on your website either answers that question or gets in the way of it.
What happens when the planner starts with how you perform, not your website
Stephine Ricker has worked in global event operations across 35 countries and 4,000+ attendees. Her starting point is different from most.
I rarely start by looking at a speaker’s website. I start by watching the speaker. Can they command a room? Can they hold attention? Can they move an audience emotionally, intellectually, or professionally? Can they create an experience rather than simply deliver information?
She’s clear on the hierarchy:
A website may get the meeting. A great stage presence gets the invitation back.
When asked how she evaluates someone she hasn’t seen in person, the context shifted. In her government event work, the process started with published research, policy papers, and subject matter expertise – content quality and relevance came before stage presence. In private sector work, performance on stage carried more weight.
The implication: the same speaker, evaluated differently depending on who is doing the evaluating and for what kind of event. There is no single formula. Which is exactly why your visibility needs to work across multiple dimensions – what you say, how you say it, and proof that you can deliver it on a stage.
What the Internal Decision-Maker Looks for in Keynote Speakers
Dr. Keith Keating spent years as Chief Learning Officer at BDO, responsible for selecting speakers for internal events. His lens is different from the professional planner’s – he’s the client Amy was describing (he’s also a speaker himself).
What he looks for:
Clear messaging. Different high quality videos of them speaking on big stages. Personal information about them – why them.
His advice: invest in a high quality speaker reel.
What turns Keith away is equally specific:
Bad reels or videos showing they are not engaging. I don’t want my audience to be ‘talked’ at. We could just play a podcast. Engage them. Tell a story. Make them laugh. I want to see people enjoying themselves while also being moved.
And on positioning:
Websites that list 100 topics is a turnoff. It’s like the Cheesecake Factory – 87 pages of menu items. No way you can do all of them well.
The instinct to list every topic you can speak on feels like maximizing your chances, but it does the opposite. It signals that you haven’t made the hard decisions about what you actually stand for. A planner or internal buyer trying to get internal approval for you needs to be able to explain you in one sentence. If they can’t do that, they won’t try. You’ll confuse AI platforms in the process, too.
Keith’s point is well taken: I had a speaker reach out to me a while ago: a big online following, and they were struggling, still. My guess? The Cheesecake Factory menu wasn’t helping them, either.
What the enterprise conference buyer is actually vetting
One of the most instructive perspectives came from a senior events professional responsible for speaker selection at one of the world’s largest technology conferences — someone who, by her own description, is chronically immersed in the discourse her audience lives in.
Her starting point cuts through most of what speakers think the process is about.
I don’t take speaker pitches. I’m chronically online — in every pocket and corner of the internet — so by the time someone pitches me, I’ve already been living adjacent to the conversation they want to have.
What she’s looking for isn’t someone who can teach her audience something. It’s someone already in a compelling discourse who can bring the audience into it. Teaching implies a transfer. Bringing in implies participation. At the scale and sophistication of a major enterprise technology conference, the audience has heard the polished version of most topics. What they haven’t heard is a perspective that’s genuinely earned.
Her evaluation framework breaks down into three filters:
If you’re pitching me on something everywhere in the discourse right now and I don’t know your name — you need to lead with the angle. What’s the take that’s yours and only yours? Because the topic isn’t enough.
If you’re on the circuit, I need to know what you’re bringing to this stage. I’ve seen the polished version. What are you gonna say here that you haven’t said everywhere else?
And I wanna see how you think when it’s not controlled. Not your website. Not your speaker reel. Are you on podcasts? Do you have a Substack? Are you in the discourse in any real way? That’s how I vet. I want to see how you hold up in the public square — because that’s where my audience lives too.
That third filter is the one most speakers aren’t prepared for. A polished website and a strong reel answer the question of whether you can perform. They don’t answer the question of whether you’re actually thinking — whether you have a live, evolving point of view that holds up outside of a controlled presentation environment.
Podcasts, newsletters, LinkedIn threads, public conversations where you’re not reading from a script — these aren’t content marketing. For a buyer at this level, they’re the vetting mechanism.
What this means for how you show up
So what do event planners look for in keynote speakers when they’re under real pressure to get the booking right? A few things came through consistently.
Clarity over comprehensiveness. Whether it’s a 30-year planner, a global event director, or an internal CLO – nobody wants to dig. Impact and intent, fast. What you do, who it’s for, proof that you can deliver it.
Video is non-negotiable. Stephine wants to see a performance (either video or in-person). Keith evaluates and eliminates based on it. Your reel isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the closest thing to a universal filter across every buyer type.
The website is a business tool, not a portfolio. It needs to reduce friction and answer the questions a buyer has to answer before they can get internal approval. Not impress. Not catalogue. Answer.
The points of divergence are equally important:
Who is actually deciding varies by context. Professional planners execute. Some organizers shape but don’t own the final call. Internal clients pull the trigger. Developing the intelligence and insights of how the target organization operates is pivotal. Understanding which type of buyer you’re in front of – and adjusting accordingly – is a skill most speakers never develop.
What gets evaluated first depends on the environment. In some contexts, stage presence leads. In others, published expertise and content credibility come first. Your visibility strategy needs to work for both and this is rooted is understand your prospective client and their context.
The practical implication
Most speaker marketing advice tells you to build your brand, post consistently, optimize your bio, and get testimonials. All of that is true, but none of it is sufficient if you don’t know who you’re actually marketing to and what role they play in the decision.
The speakers who get booked consistently aren’t necessarily the most talented or the most prolific content creators. They’re the ones who understand the buying process well enough to show up in the right way, for the right person, at the right moment.
That’s not serendipity, that’s strategy.
For a deeper look at how to build the proof stack that makes you the obvious, low-risk choice across all buyer types – including how AI is changing how speakers get discovered before they ever reach a human – this post covers the full picture.
Frequently asked questions
What do event planners look for in keynote speakers?
Experienced event planners prioritize clarity and evidence of delivery. They want a focused message, a clean professional website, and proof – real video from real stages – that you can perform. They are not looking for a credentials list or a catalogue of topics. They need to be able to explain you quickly to whoever has final approval.
Who actually makes the final speaker selection decision?
It depends on the context. In many cases, the event planner coordinates but the internal client – leadership, a committee, a Chief Learning Officer – makes the final call. Independent event organizers may shape the shortlist but still defer to their clients. Understanding which type of buyer you’re dealing with matters as much as having the right credentials.
Why does listing too many speaking topics hurt your chances?
When a speaker lists 20 or 30 topics, it signals a lack of focus and makes it harder for a buyer to justify the choice internally. Buyers need to be able to explain the selection in one sentence. Specialists get booked. Generalists get passed over.
How important is a speaker reel?
It is the single most important asset in the evaluation process for many buyers. It answers the core question – can this person actually perform? – faster than anything else. A poor reel or no reel is an elimination criterion for serious buyers. A strong reel from recognizable stages accelerates every other part of the evaluation.
Does a speaker’s website matter if they have strong referrals?
Yes, because the website is where a referred speaker gets validated. Even a warm referral triggers a website visit. If the site doesn’t confirm what the referrer said – if it’s cluttered, unfocused, or hard to navigate – it can undercut a strong referral in the time it takes someone to scroll.
Jonathan Dunnett helps keynote speakers get booked on purpose. He is a Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellow and brings systematic, intelligence-driven frameworks to speaker business development. Serendipity isn’t a strategy.
