Speaker - May 2009

A snapshot into the lives of the people who hire us

tions from other association executive directors, and we work with speakers’ bureaus. I also am fortunate to see some speakers present live. When none of these avenues yield the right speaker for a topic, we turn to the Internet.

the dirt on
Selecting Speakers

do you like working with bureaus? I enjoy working with bureaus when they provide good service. We ask a little bit more of our speakers than many other organizations do. We request three articles and a half-hour video session outside the meeting room. The bureau folks who help us facilitate that really provide great service.

When it comes to hiring professional speakers, you get what you pay for, according to Anthony Trombetta, director of sales for ISSA, The Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association. He came clean with Ed Rigsbee, CSP, on his decision-making process for selecting speakers and the corresponding fee ranges for speakers of all levels.

selling author Jim Collins, and Rudy Giuliani, New York’s famous lawyer, businessman and politician.

What is the fee range for your keynoters? The keynoter fees start around $50,000 and climb to $100,000.

Ed Rigsbee: How long have you been hiring speakers for the international Sanitary Supply Association (iSSA)? Anthony Trombetta: I started about nine years ago when I became ISSA’s director of education. I was promoted to director of sales two years ago, and the education department remained under my umbrella. Currently, I work on speaker selection with my director of education.

tell me about your own professional
speaker searches.

We will use the typical search engines,
visit bureau sites and the like. When
we visit a speaker’s Web site, we want
video immediately available, and we are
looking for content such as program
titles and descriptions. We also look
for recommendations from past clients.
I’ll overlook an ordinary Web site if
the speaker has a great video, and I can
see that he or she really knows how to
engage an audience.

How many general sessions do you offer,
and what is the fee range?

We put on about 20 to 25 general session programs each year, using 15 to 20 speakers. The fees for professional

I hire professional

speakers range from
speakers because
$2,500 to $7,000. For
a non-professional
of the quality of their
speaker, we offer a sti-
programs. You get
pend of about $500.
what you pay for.

Most speakers only present one session, but about 20 percent present twice at our meeting.

does iSSA hire only one keynoter for its annual educational meeting? Yes, we generally want our keynoter to be a household name, so we select celebrities and political figures. We also hope that a highly recognizable keynoter will help draw attendance to our meeting. Recent keynoters were best-

How do you select your general session speakers? I belong to several industry groups, such as the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW). At meetings, the topic of speakers is always on the agenda. I get recommenda-

What kinds of general session presentations wow your attendees? When ISSA moved from being a distributor to an industry organization, our meeting stake-

holders became much more diverse. Our attendees are distributors, manufacturers, contractors, agents/reps and end users. So, now we offer a mix of motivational, inspirational, interactive and high-content general sessions.