In this blog post, Brad Montgomery explains the difference between Customization and Tailoring in a keynote speech – and why that is very important to you as a meeting planner.

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.

Yours,
Brad Montgomery
Motivational Speaker, Humorist, Seminar Leader

Related Posts:
Why Book Brad?

What does it mean to customize a Keynote Speech?

Lots of motivational speakers say that they customize their speech, but in my experience, very few actually do. Instead, what they do is tailor a speech. So what’s the difference between tailoring a keynote speech and customizing a motivational speech? Well, for me, the difference is huge.

Tailoring means often the speakers will drop in a catch phrase, or a brand name, or a company name, or an association name into some sort of pre-prepared story or sentence and then repeat that technique three times in a one-hour keynote and then claim that that program has been customized. Well, pish! Customization is genuine changing of the program to meet the client’s needs.

Audiences need to know that their speaker understands them, gets them, and is fully connected with their needs, their pains, their desires, their joys and their jobs. So, tailoring just isn’t sufficient for today’s audience.

A Motivational Speaker That Can Customize A Keynote Speech

Because I’m a comedian motivational speaker, tailoring for me means more than just making sure the message is relevant and on track. For me, customizing is more than having a five quick minute conversation with a client to find out what their concerns are. For me, customization is much more than helping a specific organization get from point A to point B in concert with the top decision-maker’s desires. For me, what customization means is to make the program all of those things and in addition, make it really funny by putting in specific, relevant jokes just for that group, those people and that event.

So, before my programs I always interview the top decision-makers for the organization and besides looking for all of their desires for change and for what their people need to hear, what I do in addition is look for places where I can write specific jokes and comedy bits for that group. So it’s not uncommon for me to create full sections of my program specifically for that event and that organization.

If you are considering hiring a motivational keynote speaker, I encourage you to check their references, to have a lengthy conversation with them, and to find out what they can deliver is consistent with what you need.

But, in addition to that, I ask you to consider what it would mean to you if your motivational speaker came with a truly extraordinary customized motivational speech for your organization. And if you feel that customization would help your audience connect to your speaker and therefore, improve the return on investment for that speaker, make sure your speaker customizes; not tailors.

Brad Montgomery
Motivational Speaker
Keynote Speaker
Master of Customization

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Thanks so much.

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.

Yours,
Brad Montgomery
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Business Speaker

Business Speaker Brad Montgomery

Hey, welcome back to my blog. It’s Brad Montgomery from bradmontgomery.com and funnymotivationalspeakers.com here with the series:

Top Mistakes People Make When Hiring a Motivational or Keynote Speaker.

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here

Yours,

Brad Montgomery

Motivational Speaker, Humorist, Seminar Leader, Would Love To Be On Your Team!

Related Posts:
It’s Not Just About The Money – It’s About Lasting Change!

For you folks who prefer to read, here’s the transcript to the video:

One of the problems I see happening a lot is really a mis-allocation of your convention or meeting budget. And I’d like you to consider spending a little bit more on your speaker than you thought. The big mistake I see is that people will invest a huge amount of money on things that have no lasting value or impact on their attendees and then spend very little on their professional, and the overall return on the investment for the meeting stinks.

What Your People Will Remember About the Motivational Speaker After the Convention Is Over

So here’s the question I want you to ask yourself as you’re deciding what to buy: what are your people going to remember after the convention is over? Are they more apt to remember the slightly better chicken that you upgraded to? Are they more apt to remember that you’ve got brownies instead of cookies? Are they more apt to remember that you got the really cool ice cream or whatever? I mean are they going to remember the fact that you upgraded even your hotel or venue a slight bit? Or are they going to remember the speaker that came, shook them until it hurt, dumped them out of their chairs because they were laughing so hard, and six months later, a year later they’re still echoing and repeating what that speaker taught them? They’re still adapting techniques they’ve learned from that speaker. Are they going to remember that or what they had for their final dessert?

Of course, you know, I’m biased. I’m a speaker. I’d like you to invest in me, I don’t mind telling you. But no matter who you hire I want you to consider what is going to make the most difference for the longest amount of time to your people. My guess is that you want them to have a good time. That’s a great idea. My guess is you want to treat them really well and feed them really well. That’s a great idea. But I know also that at the very basic level, you’re trying to create lasting behavior change. And my suggestion to you would be to take some of that budget and reallocate it and get a top professional motivational speaker and pass on a few little extras that they will not remember.

Well I’d love to be your guy. If you’d like to talk to me about my fees and what we offer for it and why we think my investment is worth it, I hope you’ll give us a call, funnymotivationalspeakers.com. My name is Brad Montgomery. Make it a great day.

Thanks for tuning in. We now present the thirteenth video blog in a series about how to get the most out of your motivational speaker.

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here

Yours,

Brad Montgomery

Motivational Speaker, Speaker Who Customizes YOUR Message

Related Posts:
No Matter What the Topic, Brad will customize his message to YOUR group!

For you folks who prefer to read, here’s the transcript to the video:

Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from bradmontgomery.com with a continuing video series on top mistakes people make when choosing or hiring a motivational speaker or a keynote speaker. All right, one of the mistakes I see a lot is people selecting a motivational speaker who will not or cannot customize their message for you and your organization.

First of all, what is customize? Customize means…. By the way, it’s not tailor. Customize means creating an event, an experience for you and your team, for your organization. What customizing is not is just dropping a few little keywords, dropping in your message, dropping in your product name, dropping in your company name. No, no, no, no, no. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking creating an experience so that when your audience is sitting there in their seats watching the motivational speaker you chose for your convention, your audience knows that this speaker is there for them.

Now why is that so important? Because of the fact that our audiences are very sophisticated right now, it’s really important to put a speaker in front of them that they know is meaningful and relevant for them. That means if you’re able to put up a motivational speaker or keynote speaker on video and just like play their DVD, and it’s the same exact program you would have got had you brought that speaker in from the outside, I think you’re making a huge mistake. Your audience will know that it’s just, “Oh, like I’m watching the show,” and they’re not going to go for it.

Your audience doesn’t want to see a one-man show. They don’t want to see a presentation. What they want to see is a speaker who has relevant and meaningful ideas that are prepared and delivered to them, to their needs, to their problems, to their stresses, to their desires. And if you’re funny – I happen to be a funny motivational speaker – if you’re using humor, not only does that customized humor make sure that there is a deeper connection between your speaker and your audience, but it also, customized teamwork is funny. It’s just really, really funny. There’s nothing funnier than making jokes about your people, your acronyms, your buildings, your products, whatever.

Determining Whether The Motivational Speaker Can Customize His Program To Your Organization

All right, so here’s the favor I’m asking you. When you’re hiring that motivational speaker, when you’re talking to them on the phone, I want you to ask them this question: “What do you do to customize your program? How are you going to make it special for us?” And then listen. And if they’re good, if they’re top, if they’re pro, they’re going to have a lot of things to say about this.

I could talk about this topic for hours. If they say, “Well you know, what I do is I send out a little questionnaire and I ask you for your product names and I ask you for your company name and I ask you for the name of your top sales person ‘cause I’m going to put that person’s name in a little joke I’ve prepared,” no. That’s the wrong person. Find out what customizing means to your speaker and, you know, hold their feet to the fire. Grill them. See what they think.

I’d love to be your professional speaker. I’d love to be your keynote speaker if you’re looking for somebody who will customize and will talk to you until your done listening about what that means for you and your organization and what my speech or program would look like for your organization, give us a call. You can reach us through funnymotivationalspeakers.com or bradmontgomery.com.

So glad you’re here. Look for more videos at the links below on top mistakes people make when hiring a speaker. Really glad to have you.

Professional motivational speaker Brad Montgomery now presents the twelfth in a series of his video articles about:

How To Hire a Motivational Speaker

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here

Yours,

Brad Montgomery

Motivational Speaker, Humorist, Not a Celebrity (but a really, really good speaker)

Related Posts:

Why Book Brad?

For you folks who prefer to read, here’s the transcript to the video:

Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery with a tip about how to get the most return on your professional speaker or motivational speaker investment. Here’s the tip: consider experience over celebrity. So here’s, the deal, there’s two types of speakers. Okay, there’s more than two types of speakers, but if you kind of blur your eyes there’s two types of speakers. One of them are professional speakers, people who do this all the time. And the other one are celebrity speakers, people who have done something that’s amazing and now are talking about it. Well I’m going to confess to you there is one huge advantage to celebrity speakers. If you’re trying to build your audience, celebrity can help.

So for example, if you’re an association and you’re not sure about how many people you can get to your event, sometimes hiring a celebrity will be enough of an add to get people to come to your event. So that’s a good point, I can’t say anything about that. But I’d really like you to think long-term. Don’t think about this years conference; I want you to think about next years conference and the year after that. One of the best ways to get people to next years conference is to make sure that this years conference rocks.

And my suggestion to you is a killer speaker, period, is going to be better than a mediocre speaker, and generally speaking I think we can agree that experienced speakers are better than inexperienced speakers. So I want you to consider that. Listen to this quote of a real good pal of mine, another professional speaker told me that he was having a chat with the meeting planner, and the meeting planner told him, “Well you know what, we use the celebrities to bring the audience in, but we use people like you to make sure that the conference is good.” That’s a pretty good thought, isn’t it? I mean that’s a pretty deep thought, the meeting planner is confessing that in their experience celebrity speakers generally are not as good as full-time professional speakers, you know.

Look For Experience When Hiring Motivational Speaker

So look for experience. How are you going to know about experience? Ask. When you’re considering hiring a motivational speaker I want you to ask this question, “Tell me about your experience.” And if they say, “Well, you know what, I’ve done some really, really amazing things in my lifetime up to this point. Now, you know, I’ve done it four times,” that’s a hint. I want you to ask another follow up question, “And what experience do you have in my niche, in my industry for audiences like mine?” And if they say, “None, I’ve never done it,” I want you to follow up with that, because your audience not only deserves, but really as time goes on and our audiences become more media savvy, they require a professional speaker who completely gets them and they will see a fraud, somebody who doesn’t understand them or their audience, them or their distresses, their problems, their joys, their job. They will understand, they hate that and they’ll turn on you. Trust me, I’ve seen it.

So I’d love to be your guy. I’m not a celebrity. I’m not famous. But I’m good, and I’d love to be part of your team. Give us a call and we’ll talk about how we can help you and your association, your meeting, your conference get to where you want them to be. Bradmontgomery.com or you can find us at funnymotivationalspeakers.com. Have a great day.

We now present the eleventh in a series of video articles about:

How to Work With Your Motivational Keynote Speaker to get the Most From Your Conference Investment

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here

Yours,
Brad Montgomery
Motivational Speaker, Humorist, Team Player for YOU

Related Articles and/or Videos:
Brad’s actual coaching tool – the Pre-Engagement Questionnaire

For you folks who prefer to read, here’s the transcript to the video:

Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from funnymotivationalspeakers.com, and bradmontgomery.com, with a continuing series of videos about how to hire a motivational speaker. What do you need to know to choose your motivational speaker? Well one of the mistakes I see people making when hiring a motivational speaker is not coaching your speaker with enough information to really deliver the presentation that you paid for.

So what do I mean by that? A few times, not many, but a few times I’ve had clients who’ve gone through the trouble to choose me partly because I customize my programs. And then what they do is because they’re busy, because they have a life and because organizing this meeting is one of the many things in their life on their list and organizing their keynote speaker is one of the many things on that list, they never get around to really coaching. Don’t let that happen.

Make Sure You Coach Your Motivational Speaker for Great Results

The reason why coaching your speaker about what you need, what you want, what you don’t want, what you don’t need, and a little bit about what your people are going through, what they’re stressing about, what they love, what they hate, some of the inside jokes, the reason some of those things are important because they really help me, or whoever your speaker is, to prepare a customized program that’s meaningful and relevant. And I know that’s what you want.

You don’t want just a presentation, kind of a cardboard cutout of the speaker talking to you and your audience. No. You want somebody who can really reach through and grab them and let them know that he’s speaking to them, about them and for them, and that way they’ll really internalize and be prepared to accept and make lasting behavioral change based on that event.

So that’s pretty good, right? But all of it really in the end comes down to you. Yes, you’re going to hire the right speaker, yes you’re going to hire a speaker who can customize, but then don’t forget you need to go through and help your speaker know. You got to do a little bit of coaching, a little bit of talking.

Now in my case my job is to make it easier for you to do that. We don’t want to make it like a homework project where it’s just a horrible to-do to get me ready to go. We’ve got a really streamlined process, it’s very easy and it’s surprisingly quick, like shockingly quick. But at the same time it’s important.

So next time you’re hiring a motivational speaker or a keynote speaker, I want you to ask: What are you going to do to customize, and then I want you to follow up and say, What do I need to do to make sure you get all the information you need about us. My needs, my desires, my wants, my team, my organization, whatever.

All right, that’s easy, right? You can do that. I’d love to be your guy. I’d love to be the one answering that question. You can reach us at bradmontgomery.com or funnymotivationalspeakers.com. Make it a rock on day. Thanks.

We now present the tenth in a series of video articles about:

How to work with your motivational keynote speaker to get the most from your conference investment

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.

Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Follow-Up Fanatic

Related Articles:
Brad’s books and other products for creating change

For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:

Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery. I’ve got another idea for you, another tip on how to work with your motivational speaker. One of the mistakes I see a lot of clients do is they don’t really fully invest in their speaker and in lasting change, and by that I mean they fail to invest in resources or some type of follow up from their motivational speech.

So here’s the deal; I’m a motivational speaker. I love it when clients come in and say, “You got 45 minutes or 75 minutes or 90 minutes with my hour, go nuts.” I love it. And we can whip them up into a frenzy, we can give them specific ideas for creating change in their lives, and we can send them home with a ton of energy.

But having said that, I’ve never been to a course or any type of learning event where there was lasting change without some sort of follow up resource, without a book, without a packet, with some sort of accountability. Have you? I’m guessing you haven’t.

So what does that mean? I’m thinking it means you ought to be thinking about what can we do to follow up.

So here’s your homework: when you’re talking to your potential keynote speaker, motivational speaker, I want you to ask this question, “What could we do for follow up to make sure that your message, the one that we’re investing heavily in for you to come in and deliver to my audience, what can we do to make sure that there’s some follow up and stickiness with your message?”

Give your conference attendees something they can bring with them to re-inforce the motivational message

That’s a great question, isn’t it? What are you going to do to follow up? What can your people leave with or what can you reach back and touch them with that message? I get a lot of ideas for all my clients, and we’ve had some really cool success with lots of different types of follow up. Not just product, but call us and we’ll tell you.

So I think follow up is important and I think additional resources are important, and I think to really get the most out of your speaker is up to you to say, “You’re the motivational speaker. You’ve done this before. What can we do to make sure this is not just a flash in the pan? What can we do to work as a team to create lasting change?”

All right, I’d love to be your guy. Give us a call. You can find us at funnymotivationalspeakers.com>/a> or bradmontgomery.com. Hope to see you soon. Give us a call. Lets make them laugh, lets make it meaningful, lets make it last.

We now present the ninth in a series of video articles about:

How to work with your motivational keynote speaker to get the most from your conference investment

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.

Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Fan of production details

Related Articles:
See for yourself – Brad Montgomery interacting with his audience

For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:

Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery with another video, a short video in getting the maximum return on investment for your motivational speaker or professional speaker. Here’s a tip of the day: produce the speaker. And by production we mean setting up all the little details to make sure that the speaker’s able to deliver up to the speakers potential.

Make Sure All the Little Details Are Taken Care Of

So this means that the little stuff like the microphones and the audio visual stuff like the computer or whatever your speaker needs, but also the set up the of the room, the lights in the room, the temperature of the room. These are very easy to forget. But yet those are the kinds of things that completely will sabotage a speaker and sabotage your event. And they’re so cheap, aren’t they? It’s so easy to make sure that those things are right.

corporate event success depends on attention to detail

So work ahead with your speaker and say, “What do you need from me as far as production goes,” and generally speaking, in my case I’ll send you a list via email. It’s a one page list of very simple audio visual things and room set up things. So it’s a snap. It’s easy.

But then also work with your venue, work with your hotel or convention center to say, “Here’s what my speaker needs. I can see here that nothing is crazy, nothing is expensive. Make sure that this happens.” If you take the time and this very small marginal investment to produce your speaker correctly, you’ll get way bigger bang for your buck than if you just hope that all of those things work out.

My name’s Brad Montgomery. I’d love to be a part of your team. I’d love to be produced and to help you make sure that that production goes smoothly and easily. Give us a call. You could reach us through funnymotivationalspeakers.com  and bradmontgomery.com.

Give us a call, we’ll talk to you about anything you want to talk about. Love to be helpful. Thanks.

We now present the eighth in a series of video articles about:

How to work with your motivational keynote speaker to get the most from your conference investment

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.

Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Customized Presentation Expert

Related Articles:
More from Brad about the art of Customizing and Tailoring a Keynote Presentation
Laugh-out-loud funny video of Brad interacting with his audience

For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:

Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from bradmontgomery.com with another idea on maximizing your return on investment with your motivational or inspirational speaker.

So this tip is easy.  Pick somebody who customizes their program for you.  So why?  Well audiences are hip right now and audiences can see through it if the speaker just kind of walks in and delivers a really canned over-prepared program.  I don’t think today people want to see a presentation.  They want a speaker who’s talking to them about their needs, their desires, their stresses, their problems and what solutions they can implement to get to where they want to go.

So that means for you, you got to make sure you hire a speaker that can connect with that audience and delivering a non-customized speech does not connect to your audience.  And of course that connection is crucial.  That’s why you’ve hired your speaker to come in.

A customized keynote presentation is more valuable to your group

You can just hand them a photocopied packet of information if you just want to deliver “Here’s the information we want you to have.”  But that’s not what you want.  You want someone to come in and create an experience that’s meaningful and valuable and has impact and is fun and will turn them into a team, right?  I think you do.  So if you’re going to do that, I think with today’s media savvy audiences, you need to make sure you get somebody to connect and that’s going to mean customize.

So a bigger speaker who’s going to customize, it makes a huge, huge difference.  It’s worth it to you to make sure that happens.

How do you make sure you’re hiring a motivational speaker that will customize and not just tailor?  Ask them.

Your motivational speaker should customize his program to YOUR group's specific needs

It’s a great question when you’re thinking about hiring a speaker or you’ve just hired a speaker, “What are you going to do to customize your program to my audience and their problems?  What are you going to do to help me deliver the message I have for my people?  If you’re talking to somebody and, after you ask that question, if they start to squirm and wiggle and hem and haw, you got the wrong person.

All right, my name is Brad Montgomery.  I’d love to be part of your team.  I’d love to help you take your meeting or your conference and make it a rocking success.  So give us a call, we’ll talk about how we can do just that.  One of the things we’ll talk about of course is customization.

Talk to you soon.  See you at bradmontgomery.com.  Have a great day.