Episode 291
Why You're Not Getting Booked To Speak
You’ve prepared a talk and told people you’re available. Why is the diary still quiet?
In this solo episode of Professional Speaking: Known. Booked. Paid., John Ball walks through the questions that help you identify where your speaking business needs attention before investing in another fix.
Follow an organiser trying to work out whether your talk fits their event. Then examine the enquiry that goes quiet and the session that earns applause without leading to more work. Along the way, John looks at buyer demand, bureau expectations and what makes a recommendation feel safe.
If enquiries arrive but bookings stall, there’s a brief check on fit, budget, timing and the next step.
Choose the question that reveals your biggest gap, then commit to one useful action this week.
In this episode
• Checking whether the market wants your talk.
• Waiting for work and relying on a bureau.
• Unclear profiles, missing speaker pages and too many offers.
• Outdated websites, weak demos and evidence buyers can assess.
• Enquiries that stall.
• Overloaded talks, lecture-style delivery and referrals.
• Budget fit and choosing your next action.
Resources and invitations
Podcast guesting live event: https://present-influence.kit.com/products/get-heard-get-known-podcast-guesting
Monday Prospecting Power Hour: work on finding opportunities and following up alongside other speakers. Cameras on, microphones muted; a prospecting tool is available on the call. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86172745844
Find Your Booking Bottleneck quiz: presentinfluence.com/quiz
CHAPTERS
00:00 Why aren’t you getting booked?
01:15 Can organisers tell what to book you for?
02:15 Does the market want your talk?
03:15 Reaching suitable buyers
03:55 Working with speaker bureaus
04:30 Monday Prospecting Power Hour
05:40 Why speaking enquiries go quiet
06:40 Why applause doesn’t lead to referrals
08:40 Making recommendations easy
09:15 Building relationships with bookers and event crews
10:40 Staying after your talk
11:00 Choosing your next useful action
12:15 Booking Bottleneck quiz and closing
FAQs
Why am I not getting booked as a speaker?
Start by identifying where progress stops. Suitable buyers may be missing your offer, struggling to understand its relevance or finding too little evidence to assess your delivery. If enquiries arrive, examine fit, budget, timing and the next step. If you already speak at events, review whether the talk fulfils the brief and earns recommendations.
Will joining a speaker bureau get me speaking bookings?
Clarify what the bureau will do, how it handles enquiries and what it needs from you. Make a clear offer and provide strong evidence of your delivery. Keep developing your own buyer relationships and opportunities alongside the bureau relationship.
What should a speaker website include?
Provide a dedicated speaker page that explains your intended audience, main talks and relevant outcomes. Include current speaking footage, specific testimonials and an obvious way to enquire. Check that links work and that the number of options helps a buyer choose.
What should a speaker demo show?
A demo should let an organiser hear you speak and assess your delivery. Use clear audio and footage relevant to the kind of engagement you want. Music, graphics and stage entrances alone give limited evidence of how you deliver a talk.
Why do speaking enquiries go quiet?
Review what you established about the event, available budget, decision-maker and selection date. Check whether you agreed a next step after sending information or a proposal. Silence alone does not identify the cause; use follow-up to clarify the opportunity.
Why am I not getting referrals after a talk?
Review whether your talk fulfilled the organiser’s brief and gave the audience an experience someone would confidently recommend. Look for overloaded material, unclear structure or a mismatch in format. Ask for specific feedback, then make a relevant introduction easy by supplying a short paragraph the organiser can forward.
How can I find my speaking booking bottleneck?
Review recent approaches, replies, enquiries and completed engagements to locate where progress stalls. Consider how much activity you have done and when organisers choose speakers. John Ball’s Booking Bottleneck quiz can help you decide where to focus; use the quiz link in the resources below.
Connect with John:
- Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
- Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
- Find me on Insta
- Find me on TikTok
- Find me on Threads
Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz
For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedIn
You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel
If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.
Mentioned in this episode:
Get Heard, Get Known. Podcast Guesting For Professional Speakers
Join us for a live workshop where you'll learn why most podcast guesting doesn't do much except take up your time. You'll also learn how to fix it, find podcasts that will move the needle for you professionally and we'll even look at whether starting a show is a good idea. All your podcasting questions will be answered in this intensive event with podcasting veteran John Ball.
Transcript
Someone tells you that your talk was great, you go home and you wait for
John:the next booking and you hear nothing.
John:How much did great tell you today?
John:We'll find out where your bookings are, maybe getting
John:stuck, including the talk itself.
John:By the end of this episode, you'll have somewhere useful to
John:focus some attention this week.
John:When things are slow, most of us start fixing whatever happens
John:to be nearest or easiest.
John:You change the photo on your speaker page.
John:Again, you look at improving your performance skills.
John:Your diary remains unimpressed.
John:Welcome to the Professional Speaking Show.
John:My name's John Ball, and right when bookings are slow, there's always
John:another course you could take and someone will happily sell you a new show reel.
John:Any of these things might help, but it's hard to know which until you've
John:found where the process stops for you.
John:We'll look at how easy you are to book, whether suitable buyers see your work and
John:what happens when they make an inquiry.
John:Find the situation or situations that you recognise and leave
John:the rest for another day.
John:Picture this, an organiser putting an event together.
John:Someone mentions your name so they look you up.
John:Your profile says that you are a speaker, author, coach, consultant,
John:passionate advocate for human potential.
John:Lovely.
John:What do they actually then book you for?
John:They'll have to explain you to whoever holds the budget usually in one sentence.
John:And at the moment you haven't given them that sentence.
John:So they click through to your website and there are 12 talks listed on it, and your
John:speaker page is hiding under services.
John:And the demo video takes a while to load.
John:You know exactly which talk would suit their event.
John:They're still trying to work out which one you'd suggest.
John:Then there's the demo itself, if it's mostly rousing or mood
John:music and slow motion footage of you walking towards a stage.
John:What they've learned that you can find a stage but not much else.
John:what they really want is to hear you speak.
John:So the question for this one is how much you are asking a buyer
John:to figure out for themselves?
John:Because every element of friction that they encounter pushes them
John:towards moving on to another speaker.
John:There's an earlier question sitting underneath that,
John:does anyone want this talk?
John:You might care deeply about a particular subject and have something very worthwhile
John:to say about it, and an organiser may still struggle to see a need or a
John:reason to put it in their programme.
John:Take a topic like overcoming adversity, which audience is dealing with
John:something that your story helps with, and would their organiser agree?
John:A few buyer conversations will tell you that faster than another month of
John:polishing your marketing and messaging.
John:Now, suppose the offer is clear, are suitable buyers coming across
John:it If they rarely see it, better wording's only going to get you so far.
John:I've had prospective Clarence who found me through my podcast, which tells
John:me that it's a route worth building.
John:I certainly had people find me through podcast guest appearances
John:on other shows as well.
John:I also put prospecting into my working day because I want to start conversations
John:deliberately, not just hope that they appear in my inbox or my phone.
John:So start with the people who already know your work.
John:That could be previous organisers and clients, people
John:you've already worked with.
John:It can be very easy to neglect those sorts of relationships or people who are already
John:in your network while you chase new names.
John:If you are with a bureau, ask them specifically what you can expect
John:and help them to understand where you fit, keep building your own
John:opportunities alongside them.
John:And if you want the rundown on the best ways to do that, check out my episode
John:with Dominic Eldred-Earl from London Speaker Bureau, who gives you all the
John:tips and tricks that you need to be able to work effectively with a speaker.
John:And it goes way beyond just getting yourself listed with them.
John:I'll put a link for that in the show notes for you.
John:But checking your inbox is very manageable workload for most people.
John:It turns into a problem when that's the whole plan, So quick aside, if prospecting
John:keeps sliding down your to-do list, come and join my Monday Prospecting Power Hour.
John:It's an hour at the start of the week where a group of speakers will sit down
John:together on Zoom and do the work of finding opportunities and following up.
John:So there's no coaching, there's no workshop and no networking here either.
John:This is just, you bring your prospecting tasks, encourage you to keep your
John:camera on for it, but you don't have to.
John:And your microphone will stay muted for the call.
John:And we just get on with the work that if you'd like something to organise it
John:with, I will give you access to my free prospecting tool on the call as well.
John:You'll type in at the start of the call, what you plan to do in the hour that
John:we work together, and at the end you'll type in, yes, no, partly whatever, as to
John:how you got on with doing that as well.
John:So it's completely free the link is in the show notes.
John:We hope you'll come and join us for that.
John:So back to the show,
John:Someone gets in touch about a talk, you reply, you send them some
John:information and start picturing the event in your diary and a week
John:passes, you check your inbox Again.
John:At this point, the useful thing is knowing what was going on in that conversation.
John:Were they exploring ideas or choosing a speaker?
John:Have they seen your feed?
John:Do you know who makes the decision?
John:And when?
John:A few friendly questions early on will tell you enough to
John:understand the opportunity, and nobody needs to feel interrogated.
John:so if they're choosing speakers in a few months, agree that when you get back in
John:touch, if there's no realistic budget that tells you something about the fit,
John:it's cheaper to learn that early on.
John:And if you sent a proposal, what did you agree would happen next?
John:Signing off with, let me know what you think leaves a bit too much open.
John:So go back through your last few inquiries and find the point where you
John:stopped knowing what would happen next.
John:That's where this one needs work.
John:This last one asks a bit more of us.
John:You delivered the talk, people clapped and somebody came up to you afterwards and
John:told you it was amazing, and then nothing.
John:So Appals gives you very limited information about whether
John:someone would recommend you.
John:When an organiser puts your name forward, their reputation travels with it, and
John:they need to feel comfortable about that.
John:watch the recording back and keep the brief beside you and think
John:about what that audience needed and maybe even expected from you.
John:A talk can be full of good ideas and still be hard work to follow.
John:You've lived with your subject and your ideas for a long time.
John:They've had 20, 30, 40 minutes and some of them were thinking about the next meal.
John:If you try to give them everything you know, they have to try and decide what
John:matters whilst you're still talking.
John:And that's a job that you should have done for them while you are writing your talk.
John:So then check whether you delivered what the organiser thought that
John:they were buying, because if they booked a keynote and they got a dense
John:lecture, they may have liked plenty of the content in it and still would
John:feel a bit uneasy about recommending you to friends and colleagues.
John:For my own keynotes, I want to give people something worth thinking about and
John:keep them with me throughout the talk.
John:And that means being willing to cut out any material that I'm fond of
John:that just doesn't need to be there.
John:After the event, ask for feedback that you can really use, ask for honest feedback.
John:Sometimes you need to ask a few more times, is there anything else, or what
John:more can you tell me or be specific about the kind of feedback you want?
John:Ask where the audience seemed to struggle and whether the organiser
John:would recommend you specifically, and if they would, what sort of
John:bookings would they recommend you for?
John:That answer can tell you a lot about how they'd describe you to somebody else.
John:So then make the recommendation easy for them.
John:Stay in touch.
John:Ask whether they have any other events coming up that you could be a
John:fit for, or whether they know anyone else running similar events that they
John:could put you forward to and give them a couple of sentences that they
John:could forward on without having to come up with something themselves.
John:the speaking industry is very much a relationship based business, and
John:that means you need to stick around.
John:So arrive early, keep your bookers informed, have connection and
John:contact with all of the crew that are involved in putting on the event.
John:That's even the tech crew, the AV crew.
John:You want them to look after you specifically make sure
John:they feel looked after as well.
John:if you have the budget to do them, don't be afraid to buy them thank you gifts and
John:go and thank each person individually.
John:At the very least, you can go and shake a hand and thank them personally for
John:everything they've done for your event.
John:And that alone will probably be more than many other speakers do.
John:With the bookers though do make sure that you keep them as informed as possible
John:and hang around afterwards because you rushing off to your next event or
John:just thinking, I've done my talk now.
John:That's all I was really here for.
John:Is missing something very important from the whole business and also potentially
John:causing you to miss out on referrals from other people who may be at the
John:event and might be open to referring you.
John:You might miss out on some valuable feedback because
John:you don't wanna stick around.
John:You'd rather just like you've done what you were paid for, get
John:out of there, but you haven't.
John:You haven't really, because really what you want to be there for is
John:to develop the relationships and to serve your audience if you have to go.
John:If you just can't wait, your flight has been booked too tight, you have to
John:get to the airport, you're gonna miss it, or there's an emergency that's
John:come up or you are really unwell and you have to get out of there, make
John:your excuses and go by all means.
John:But most of the time, hopefully that won't be the case
John:Let your audience know that you're gonna be around for questions,
John:connection, conversation, feedback after the talk as well.
John:and tell them where they can come and find you.
John:Encourage them to do that as well.
John:Now, treating speaking like a business means doing this kind of diagnosis that
John:we've done here today, every now and then.
John:And looking at what's happened before.
John:Deciding where your next effort should be going and be fair to
John:yourself about the evidence.
John:A quiet diary after a handful of approaches doesn't really tell you that
John:much yet, especially when plenty of organisers will be choosing their speakers
John:months before an event actually happens.
John:For the week ahead, pick the place where things seem to stop or where
John:you may be a bit bottlenecked and give yourself one task that helps you to
John:understand it and to maybe even change it.
John:And that might be having a conversation with a buyer or asking someone who
John:doesn't really know you to take a look at your speaking page and to tell
John:you what they think you talk about.
John:What they think you do.
John:And these are difficult conversations sometimes 'cause you might not get
John:the answers that you're hoping for.
John:Then again, you just might, but they can be uncomfortable conversations.
John:But growth doesn't happen when we keep ourselves comfortable.
John:We have to be willing to move outta that comfort zone and into willingly
John:into discomfort of getting feedback and development and, and anything
John:that's gonna help us to grow and develop and be better in the future.
John:If you'd like help deciding where to focus, you can take
John:my booking bottleneck quiz.
John:It only takes a few minutes.
John:And the link is in the show notes along with a link to this week's
John:series about speaking article.
John:You'll also find links to all the events I've talked about in this episode.
John:So do check out the show notes and until next time, go and do
John:something worth speaking about.
John:See you soon.
