Ready to Practice Your Skills Working with Speakers?
You’ll boost your confidence by using the tools in this course and other typical speaker materials to work practice the actual work you will be doing for speakers.
These exercises are optional, but it is highly recommended that you take the time to do them. If you do, we are happy to look at what you’ve done, answer any questions that came up and give you feedback. Please send completed exercises to InstructionSmith at:
Support@InstructionSmith.com
You will need the source documents below the exercises and don’t forget to use the Toolbox (the tab on the right navigation bar above) for any downloadable spreadsheets and other VSA tools you might need. And you may need to use your imagination where not everything is provided!
Challenge Exercise – Intellectual Property
1. One of your speaker clients left this message on your voice mail: “Hey, it’s me, Susan. I just finished the interview on CNN and I need your help in getting permission to use the interview on the website and in my presentations. Do you know how to do that? The producer is Molly Cooper.”
2. Your speaker client has asked you to do some competitive research on new possible topics for speaking based on what other hot speakers are doing in the area of team building. List 5 of the popular speakers you find with their names and URLs.
Challenge Exercise – Marketing and Sales
3. Evaluate this speaker media kit. Is anything missing you could help this speaker with?
Challenge Exercise – Office
4. One of your speakers has office procedures that include how she wants her VSA to talk with speakers bureaus. You can download those office procedures here. If your contact at the speakers bureau leaves you this voice mail, what are the steps you will take to handle the situation?
“Hello. This is Katie from the Major Speakers Bureau. We have a great speaking engagement for Susan coming up in about three months, but need an answer over the next hour or so because they are actively marketing the event. Could you just let us know if she is available so we can tentatively put her bio up on the event site?
Email Katie back your response.
Challenge Exercise – Logistics
5. Using the Speaker’s Travel Preference Checklist and Event Detail form) (download at the bottom of the page), send the speaker client an email itinerary, assuming she is traveling the day before the event from her home in Chicago and returning home at the end of the 2nd day of the event..
Challenge Exercise – Products
6. Using the Back of the Room Sales Checklist (downloadable below), create a label in Word to get a box of books to the speaker for selling at the event.
Challenge Exercise – Marketing to Speakers
7. Using the marketing worksheet and other information in Section 6, create your own marketing plan to attract speaker clients.