Business Speakers
A business audience is the hardest room to speak to. They've sat through the strategy deck already, they can tell when someone's recycling a keynote from another industry, and they'll spend the session on their phones if the speaker hasn't earned the room.
Ours have done the work they talk about. Gus Balbontin ran product and technology at Lonely Planet through the collapse of print. Michael McQueen studies why organisations miss disruption coming. Adam Ferrier applies behavioural science to why customers actually do things. Mark McCrindle has the data on how the workforce is changing. Stephen Koukoulas reads the economy for a living.
Browse below, or tell us your date, audience and what you need people thinking about afterwards — we'll shortlist three or four worth your time.
What a business keynote is for
Business speakers get booked for four fairly different reasons, and the brief matters more here than in any other category.
Framing a change. A restructure, a merger, a new strategy. An outside voice can say the thing leadership has said five times and have it land differently.
Explaining the environment. Where the economy, the market or the technology is heading, from someone who tracks it professionally rather than reads the same headlines your team does.
Shifting how people work. Culture, communication, sales, customer experience. Practical, and usually better as a keynote plus a workshop than a keynote alone.
Provoking. Sometimes you want the room unsettled. That's a real brief — just be sure the leadership in the room is ready for it.
Formats and fees
Most business keynotes run 45 to 60 minutes with Q&A. Many of our speakers also run workshops or facilitate sessions across a full day, which often does more for a strategy offsite than a keynote alone.
Fees vary by speaker, session length and location. Tell us your budget range and we'll be straight about who fits it, rather than sending a shortlist you can't book.
Lead time: eight to twelve weeks is comfortable for a specific speaker on a specific date. Shorter is often possible — ask.
Before the event
Every speaker is briefed properly: audience makeup, objectives, what's happened in the business recently, anything to avoid. For business audiences this matters more than anywhere else. A keynote that references the restructure everyone's living through is a different session from one delivered off the shelf.
We're a member bureau of the International Association of Speakers Bureaus, bound by its global code of ethics.