Event planning
How to brief a speaker so they actually land
The difference between a good talk and a great one is usually the brief, not the fee. What to send, and what to leave out.
By the SummonSpeakers team · May 2026 · 7 min read
Most briefs describe the event. The useful ones describe the room. A speaker can find out the date and the venue from the confirmation email; what they cannot guess is what your audience is quietly worried about.
Lead with the outcome
Say what you want to be different afterwards. Not the theme, the outcome. "We want managers to stop escalating decisions they are allowed to make" is a brief. "Leadership and resilience" is a category.
Describe the room honestly
- Who is in it, and what they do all day.
- What they have already been told this year, so the speaker does not repeat it.
- What time of day the session runs, and what comes immediately before it.
- Anything that would land badly — a restructure, a bad quarter, a departure.
That last point matters more than any of the others. A speaker who walks into an unannounced redundancy round and opens with a joke about job security will be remembered for years, and not for the reason you hoped.
A speaker can find out the date from the confirmation email. What they cannot guess is what your audience is quietly worried about.
What to leave out
Do not send the deck you want them to give. Do not prescribe the stories. You are hiring judgement built over a decade on stage, and the fastest way to get a mediocre talk is to constrain it into something safe.
Give the outcome, the room and the constraints, then get out of the way.