Tips on Setting Your Franchise Convention Speakers Up for Success – Part 1

In this three part video series, Troy Hazard and I chat about some simple things franchisors can do to set their professional speakers up for success. We split some great ideas up into three key areas covering:

1. The pre-program preparation that best enables your speaker to fully customize their session and meet your desired learning outcomes
2. How to create and maintain a fabulously high, very fun and full-on engaged energy for the conference overall and for you keynote investment specifically.

“Penny wise, pound foolish” – often times, when looking at each line-item of a franchise convention, franchisors will see stage-set, AV, and lighting as an unnecessary expense. Au contraire we say! Why invest $15,000 or more in professional outside talent to WOW! your franchisees and not invest in the right stage set, microphone, sound or stage lighting to really show off their presentation for maximum impact. It’s a common mistake we often see. And sadly, it often drastically affects the overall results that the speaker can deliver – through no fault of the speakers!

Here’s the first video in our three-part series…

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Step #1 – Help Your Presenters Prepare

How can a franchisor help maximize their investment in a professional presenter? First, help your presenter dive in and get to know all about your franchise system. The right pre-program preparation will enable your speaker fully customize their session and meet your desired learning outcomes. Here are three tips to get the customized content off on the right track.

1. Be Willing to Be Vulnerable! Help your speaker to understand what is really going on in your system. If the speaker understands your current challenges, the things they are facing, what the future looks like. The more vulnerable the better the outcome on the day.
2. Your Pre-program Questionnaire Gives Your Presenter a Head Start! The more information the speaker has going into the pre-program calls, the deeper they can go on the call with your leadership team and the more customized and connected the speaker can make their presentation when it’s time to engage your franchisees. Pre-program questionnaires help the speaker understand things like your culture, key terminology, sensitive issues, and system history. This helps your speaker understand the evolution of your business.
3. Connect Your Speaker to Your Franchisees in Advance! Give your speaker an opportunity to connect with a selection of your franchisees as one of their pre-program research resources. When putting this list together, Troy suggests a three-tier selection of a top performer, a mid-level performer, and a low-level performer. He calls this list “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”. This enables him to craft his session to hit the middle and ensures that it’s relevant to everyone in the room.  

Tune-in to Part Two, “Maximize the Energy In the Room”, of our three-part series next week on Setting Your Speaker Up for Success. 

And as always, if you have additional ideas to share, we’d love to hear from you! We’ll add them to our Convention Tips list and recirculate back to the franchise community.

More soon…

Katrina