How much should you charge to give a speech? The question is complicated by a number of factors including perception, the market, your expertise, the audience, and your celebrity appeal. I’m going to approach the subject from the point of view of a speaker trying to gauge the marketplace and price to get bookings. Be advised from the start that the market is highly fractured and variable and your experience may vary.
The first question to get over is, are you worth it? If you approach this issue from the point of view of an audience member, you can’t possibly think about it clearly. The man or woman sitting half way back on the left hand side in an audience of 500 sees bright lights, someone he or she has probably never heard of until this moment, and a comparison with his or her own paycheck.
How could you possibly deserve an hourly rate of $5,000 USD to $100,000? You can’t, so don’t think about it that way. Instead, think about the expertise, branding, and hard work required to get you on the stage. That’s what the organizers are paying for – a lifetime of preparation, not an hour’s work. And, in any case, there’s the prep time, the negotiations, the two days it takes you to get to the conference and back, the follow up – it’s not an hour no matter what the audience may think.
So instead think about the issue of pricing first from the point of value. What value are you adding to the conference – what are you offering that no one else can offer? If that’s significant, and if it has the real prospect of changing the lives of the people in front of you (in the auditorium), then it’s worth both time and money. So the first question is better asked, how valuable to that audience are you?
I worked with an executive who wanted to limit the number of speeches he gave each year. So over a delightful dinner a number of years ago, I argued that he should charge $50,000 (USD) per speech. I proposed that this number would get him the right number of speeches. He argued that he was only worth $25,000. It took a lot of wine and argument to make him accept the higher amount.
Recently, I had dinner with him again. He had a new speech and a new book, and he was facing the pricing dilemma again. At $50,000 he was now getting too many speeches. So once again I plied him with drink and argument in an effort to get him to raise his fees to $100,000. Even after a bottle of very nice cabernet he was unprepared to claim that much value. We compromised on $75,000, and I hear that it’s working quite well.
Part of the argument centered on the second way to think about pricing: a way to established a claim for quality in the marketplace. From time to time, I see pricing surveys published, with speakers like former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton typically at the top of the list, along with former Prime Minister Tony Blair and others of similar stature. Next down come speaking stars like Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Pink. The former often are in the $250,000 and up range, and the latter usually show up at $100,000 or so.
So in arguing with my dinner companion that he should charge $100,000, I was arguing that he needed to establish a quality claim that he was in the same league as Godin, Gladwell and Pink. (Sounds like a highly suspect legal firm, doesn’t it?)
I heard recently from a friend that a speaking acquaintance had been offered $1500 to speak at a conference that she didn’t really want to attend. So she responded with a counter offer of $50,000, figuring that would simply scare the organizers away. Instead, they counter-offered with $25,000. She happily took the fee, and squelched her objections to attending the conference.
My reaction was first to congratulate the lucky bargainer, and then to realize that she had made a quality claim that she had to follow through on in order for the speech to be a success.
Free speeches and paid speeches are received very differently. Similarly, $1500 speeches and $25,000 speeches are received very differently. Where do you put yourself on that continuum?
A third way to think about the pricing of your speech is to gauge the market. This is tougher to do accurately because information on speech market trends is spotty and hard to come by. Here are a couple of benchmarks to get you started. If you have additional information, please share it. All prices are in USD.
The first tier is the $5,000 and under group. These are speakers new to the market, comedians who aren’t celebrities, niche speakers, many academics, and so on.
Then, there’s the $10,000 and under crowd. This fee range is low enough that you’re not really worth the bother for a speakers’ bureau, since their customary 25% is not enough to keep the lights on at the bureau office. So, if you’re going to price yourself here, then you should be prepared do all your own marketing and selling.
The good news is that this fee range puts you within reach of just about any real conference. Don’t believe it when the organizers tell you they only have $5,000 to pay the speaker. What they mean is that they have only allocated that much in a budget that is probably somewhere between $1.0 and $1.5 Million. The rest is going to the venue, the tech, the food, and the marketing. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get more of a piece of that action. So hang tough and don’t accept that initial $1500 offer.
I made this mistake a few years ago. I had a call from a university department at a local school of international repute, let’s say. I was mentally discounting from my usual fee because it was local, it was an educational institution, it was a class in the middle of term, I was free that day – and so on.
When I finished my self-defeating mental math and quoted a fee under $10,000 there was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then the organizer said something surprising: “Nick, you’re not charging enough.” I said, after I stopped cursing myself to myself, “What do you mean?” “We just got off the phone with Malcolm Gladwell and he quoted $86,000.” Plainly, Malcolm’s idea of a discount and mine were very different things. After I hung up, I took a moment to admire both the chutzpah and the specificity of his number.
Between $10,000 and $20,000 puts you in bureau range and serious keynote contention. You need to be a pro, you need to have a book (or strong demand without one based on some other aspect of your positioning) and you need to show up strong. You may charge extra for travel, but I recommend charging a set fee rather than trying to collect on travel refunds for specific flights and so on – waiting for the paperwork even in this instant digital age may mean a long gap between the time you charged the flight on the company Visa card and collecting the refund.
Between $20,000 and $50,000 puts you in very good company: professional speakers with New York Times bestselling books or national/international reputations. At this range, you’re a star and you know it. Make sure you deliver on the value, the quality, and the professionalism that the fee implies.
Over $50,000? I would love to have dinner with you.
Some other things to think about when pricing yourself. Who asked for you to speak, and what group are you speaking to? If you’re training lower level employees, there are limits to the budget. If you’ve been asked in by the CEO, or you’re speaking to the executive team, money is much less an issue. So bargain harder.
Look at your specific competition. How do you show up on line compared to other speakers in your niche? I’m often astonished at how weak the marketing and positioning is of speakers who consider themselves pros. The first thing that’s going to happen when you are considered for a speaking engagement is that the conference organizers or meeting planners are going to Google you. What shows up? Do you have a professional speaking page with all the bells and whistles, or do you look like the local barbershop online? Your online presence is the first touch in your marketing, so make sure it stands up to scrutiny. Astonishingly few speakers’ websites do.
Finally, consider your own financial planning and be professional about it. How many speeches do you want to give? How much of a revenue stream do you want it to represent in your overall business? If you don’t think about these questions, you’re simply going to let chance rule.
Take charge of your pricing as a speaker; it’s at once the measure of and one of the first lines of marketing for your business.
The real challenge for being a “pro” is doing it all–a polished spiffy website (that’s also sincere) with current video, the work you need to do to stay current and expand your knowledge, the travel, the books to write, the blogging, the services to offer for people who want something from you after the speech (classes, consulting, coaching), the marketing marketing marketing that never stops and never stops driving you mad because it’s such a distraction and such a delusion … yeow. And all that–plus experience, knowledge, history, etc.,–goes into calculating the fee.
Not that you pushed one of my buttons or anything….
Thanks for the candid discussion about price.
Thanks, Susan — I know the feeling!
Very helpful post, Nick. Thank you.
Thanks, Andy!
You make some good points, Nick. Audiences, though, don’t know or care whether the speech is free or $100,000. If it’s a bomb, it’s a bomb – no matter what the cost. And sometimes the words are totally irrelevant – they just want to be in the same room with the figure because of the experience – though that does not give the speaker the latitude to deliver a horrible talk.
Over the years the conversation I’ve had with people I’ve represented has always been the same about fee. It’s more along the line of your executive friend: How many talks do you want to do? Are you getting more offers than you want? If so – it’s time to raise the fee and watch what happens to the level of bookings. On the other hand, if demand is lacking – you may want to revise fee downward, though that’s tricky because lowering a fee in itself tells the marketplace that the speaker is not trending up. Still – that can be managed well with the proper framing. in the end speaking is a HIGHLY price sensitive endeavor and the prudent speaking talent will understand that just because one or two buyers might pay big money for your presentation, that doesn’t mean it’s the benchmark for you. As they say — it’s complicated.
Thanks, Tony, for your comment. I of course didn’t mean to imply that the audience typically has a view of the cost of the speech, just that audience members frequently react with disbelief when they do learn of the fees a speaker can make. As I point out, and you endorse, that’s not the right calculation.
Great article. As I am amping up my speaking career and putting the finishes touches on my book, this is extremely helpful.
Glad it’s helpful, Wendy! Good luck!
Excellent points. Thanks so much for sharing them (I have shared with others I know who are in the midst of writing books to launch speaking careers).
:)
Thank you so much for this article. As a brand new speaker, having only done one public speech this information has me thinking about many things.
A Big Thank you. It’s great to see the layers of pricing clearly defined. Big question is: Where do you want to position yourself.
Thanks Nick – how refreshing to read an open and transparent comment amount what is ‘normally’ only spoken about in hush-hush tones.
Over my past 15 years’ experience in conference speaking (in Australia where I live), I noticed an increasingly greater divide between the ‘celebrity speakers’ (the ones with name recognition who can get bottoms on seats) and the category I am in – highly experienced, professional, knowledgeable and qualified speaker who can engage a group quickly and tangibly impact change.
The first group get the big bucks – my group have to negotiate, add bonuses, include our book etc. The pay gap is huge.
So … I’d love your thoughts on …
1. Your understanding of the speaker market place in Oz and how rates compare to the USA
2. How speakers in my category can attract a higher fee
and … feel free to simply tell my I’m crap at selling!
Many thanks
Hi, Sandi —
A full answer would require more space than is reasonable here, but a quick answer would note the following:
My knowledge of the Australian market is limited but a number of clients and friends have done very well there, at similar fee rates — plus biz class airfare, which is considerable. The other thing the Aussies seem to be good at from my experience is lining up a number of events to help spread the costs around so that a visitor from far away can spend, say, 10 days in your beautiful land and pack a half dozen or more events in. Not sure how that compares to local speakers’ experience.
How can speakers in your category attract a higher fee? Partly, it’s a matter of testing the (relatively inelastic) supply and demand. What we usually do is launch a re-branding program at a higher level, with some reason to justify it — a new book, typically. So I would say, make all your materials reflect you at that fee range you want, and then go for it. A complication is that “a prophet is ever without honor in his own country.” An Australian is going to seem less exotic than someone from somewhere else.