How to Lose a Gig: A Story in 5 Parts From an Anonymous Event Organizer

“She might as well be speaking Russian and I’m speaking Ubbi-Dubbi.”

(Holy smokes!)

You know, we talk a lot about WINNING gigs…

But rarely touch on the down-and-dirty side of what it takes to LOSE a gig.

Recently, one of our readers sent in the following story of their encounter with a would-be speaker for their upcoming event.

🤫

Now, I can’t share the identity of our contributor, but I will say that this is a real deal event organizer who has a budget of low to mid six-figures. They have a proven track record of hiring lots of professional speakers for more than a decade. (Oh yes, we have event organizers who read this, too.)

Also, this story isn’t that unique. Event organizers encounter this type of situation all the time.

Hopefully, it will help us reveal some things you should and definitely should NOT do when you first speak with your potential clients.

Okay. Buckle up my friends. Here’s the story…

How to Lose a Gig: A Story in 5 Parts

As Told to Us By: An Anonymous Event Organizer

The story begins five days before what would become our first call…

[Part 1] The Plan.

The speaker, their assistant (let’s call her “Ursula*”), and I were set to meet for a 30-minute zoom call on Friday afternoon.

*Which might be a cloaked reference to the sabotaging Disney villain from A Little Mermaid. You can decide.

The objective of this call was two-fold: It’s a Discovery call from the event organizer point of view (“I’m intrigued… but is this speaker the best fit?”) and a Sales call from the speaker’s point of view (“Yes! I am the perfect fit!”).

I say that the 3 of us were going to meet because Ursula was communicating on behalf of the speaker. I thought that meant the speaker would be there, too, because nothing was communicated otherwise.

This is important information to have for later.