The Attributes of a Truly Successful Speaker

By Stefanie Warner | 8 June 2015 |

Selecting a speaker for your event is crucial. The speaker you choose can spell the difference between a successful event and a disastrous one. It is essential that you pick the best keynote speakers, whether these are male or female guest speakers, for your business or organisation’s celebrations and special occasions.

But how can you do this? First, you need to know what to look for when choosing a speaker. Your guest speaker should be one who embodies the attributes of a truly successful speaker, and these are:

1. Entertaining and Engaging

No one listens to boring speakers. Entertaining speakers on the other hand have the audience’s full attention. This is important as the essence of hiring speakers is for people to listen to them speak at your event. If they don’t have the audience’s attention, then they have failed in being an effective speaker. Successful speakers, on the other hand, know how to engage the audience all throughout their time onstage.

2. Highly Experienced and Successful

Authority commands attention. For an audience to listen to and believe in speakers, they need to be highly experienced in their chosen field. It is also important for speakers to talk about a topic that they have first-hand experience on, something they have personally triumphed over. This makes them an authority on the subject and because of this, the audience will look up to them and see them as someone they can emulate or learn important things from.

3. Well-respected in their field

There is a big difference between a person who’s in authority or who’s successful, and a person who is well-respected. Having the first doesn’t always result to having the second. Truly successful speakers though, have both. Aside from having extensive experience and success in their chosen field, they are also well-respected for what they have achieved and for what they have become.

4. Inspiring and Persuasive

Truly successful speakers know how to use their personal struggles, their endeavours, as well as their triumphs to inspire the audience. Most importantly, they know how to influence a crowd to take action. They are more than just talk. They go beyond just imparting a sense of positivity and actually persuades the audience to move.

Whether you are looking for guest speakers for schools, small organisations or big corporations, these attributes should be present in the speaker who graces your event. For the keynote speech to truly make a difference, you need a truly successful speaker who can entertain, move, inspire and persuade your audience.