Meeting & Event Planners - The Worst That Could Happen and How to Avoid It

There is a simple trick that every meeting or event planner can use to avoid their worst nightmare. Imagine your conference, meeting or event begins tomorrow with a tremendous kick-off breakfast. You have brought in a well-known speaker whose book is climbing up the best-seller lists and whose presentation is guaranteed to motivate and inspire the attendees. Their profile and presentation synopsis in the program has everyone at the event buzzing! Your group cannot wait to hear this incredible speaker who is flying in from the east coast for your event.

Around 6PM you get a call from the speaker. He is snowed in, sick or otherwise unable to make it to the host city in time for the morning event. You call the bureau that booked your speaker only to get their office voice mail. They are closed for the evening! You are stuck with several hundred (or thousand!) attendees and no speaker. Not much you can do about it at this point, since it is probably too late to find another speaker and you would not even know where to begin. Even if you had more time, hours on the internet may not net you a qualified, appropriate speaker for tomorrow's kick-off breakfast. Your morning's event starts with apologies and ends under a cloud of disappointment; attendees are even talking about refunds and rebates!

The fabulous start to your amazing event has, in one phone call, been reduced to nothing more than an ordinary breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. Without a speaker you have no show...no information, no excitement...possibly a disaster that could be remembered for years to come. Okay, it's not YOUR fault that your speaker got snowed in! But you will be at the center of this disappointing event. Your clients will look to you for an explanation of how their event, several months in the making, has somehow come to a screeching halt. It happens all the time. But there is a simple way to avoid ever having to deal with this scenario.

The trick to avoiding MegaDisasters is to use a speakers bureau that is in the same time zone as your host city. This will allow you to avoid any such disaster. Even if your star speaker is unable to get to your event in time, a good bureau will be able to find a comparable speaker and have them arrive at your event with time to spare. Most bureaus have rosters full of speakers and contacts and will know exactly who could get there and how fast. They know which speaker would most likely be able to fill the shoes of the original speaker you had booked. And, while there may be some initial disappointment among attendees upon learning that they won't get to hear the featured speaker, the replacement speaker will more than likely rock the house and satisfy the audience completely.

Having a great speaker is critical to the success of any event. Most bureaus know alternative speakers who live nearby or who can at least get to the event within a few hours notice.

The best part of using a speakers bureau in the same time zone as the event's host city is that you'll avoid the frustration of not being able to get in touch with your bureau in the event of an emergency.