Selecting Safety Motivational Speakers
Safety Speakers and Selecting Safety Motivational Speakers
Save your-self significant dollars contact all safety motivational speakers directly!
If you do a Google search for the speaker you are looking for by their name you are likely to find their own website. This will save you money. If you are doing a general search for “safety speaker” for example make sure you click on a site that is their personal site as opposed to an agency or bureau.
There has been a trend recently that has changed the results you get when you are searching for safety motivational speakers. It can actually cost you money! The field of safety is unique because the top safety speakers speak at all the major safety conferences each and every year. Because of this companies have historically contacted safety speakers directly in order to book a presentation. The absolute best way to hire any safety motivational speaker is to contact them directly. The reason is that you avoid any speaker’s bureau or agency which is going to be charging a fee for their services.
Recently agencies called speakers bureaus have swooped into the safety market. Speaker agencies or bureaus will tell you that they do not charge you any fee but the reality is that you are likely to pay more. Why is that? Simple, if you call an agency or bureau the first thing they are going to ask you is, “what is your budget?” This is a perfectly appropriate question for them to ask as they don’t want to suggest safety speakers who are not in your budget. The industry secret they don’t want you to know is that once they are armed with that information they will suggest speakers that charge that budgeted amount even if a less expensive speaker would meet your needs. Even if the safety speaker they suggest does not increase their price to cover the commission the bureau charges them you will end up spending all your budgeted money.
Another way it can cost you money is that when you contact a speaker through an a bureau or agency they often will add enough to their fee to cover the up to 30% commission the agency is charging them. Therefore a speaker you could have hired at $8000 would possibly cost you $11,500. The bureaus will tell you that they do not allow this practice and they are sincere in this statement. However, every year I have interviewed other safety motivational speakers and confirmed that they typically quote an increased fee to bureaus who are inquiring on your behalf. After all why would they want to travel cross-country for 30% less than they normally earn.
It is important you contact the individual speaker’s office first as it is unethical for a speaker to quote you a price or schedule a booking if your name was given to them by a bureau. No speaker I know will go around a bureau that has brought them a client.
If you need help finding safety speakers I would suggest you call Diane Weiss at my office first (Phone: 209.745.9419) She can arrange to have me come to speak to your employees at our regular rate and if I am unavailable she will refer you to a speaker who will meet your needs. When she refers you to another speaker there is typically no commission to us as we do it to help you and quite frankly we want you to call us first when you are looking for a safety motivational speaker.
Yours in service,
John Drebinger
