Questions to Ask Motivational Speakers
Questions for anyone booking a motivational speaker for a conference, assembly or company offsite, and for anyone interviewing one on a stage or a podcast, covering repertoire, fees, riders, references, and the parts of the story that never make it into the keynote.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What talk do you give most often, and who is usually sitting in the room?
Speaker websites list four or five titles, but almost every speaker has one talk they have given a hundred times and three they have given twice. The first one they name is the polished one. If your audience is not the audience they just described, you are buying the version they have to rebuild.
- 2
What were you doing before speaking became the job?
The answer tells you whether the credential is lived or borrowed. Listen for how long ago it was. Someone whose story ended fifteen years ago and who has spoken about it ever since tends to give a smoother talk with less to say about the present.
- 3
If this works, what are people doing differently on Monday morning?
This is the single most useful screening question. Weak answers stay at the level of feeling inspired or energised. Strong ones name a specific behaviour, and they usually come with an admission that a keynote alone rarely produces it.
- 4
Can I watch unedited video of a full talk rather than a highlight reel?
Sizzle reels are cut from the best ninety seconds of five years. A full recording shows you the middle twenty minutes, where you find out whether they can hold a room without a music cue. Reluctance to share one is itself an answer.
- 5
How would you tailor this for our audience, and what do you need from us to do it?
Real customisation has a process behind it: pre-calls with a few attendees, a look at last year's feedback, the language people here actually use. If they say they will just drop in your company name and industry, expect a generic talk with local nouns.
- 6
Which rooms are a bad fit for you?
Everyone who says they can work any room has either not worked many or is not paying attention. Useful answers get specific: mandatory attendance, a sales floor after a bad quarter, teenagers straight after lunch, a session that follows layoffs.
- 7
What is the fee, and what is included in it?
Ask whether the number covers preparation calls, a recording you can use internally, and travel, or whether those are line items. Speakers often have different rates for nonprofits, schools and virtual events, and they rarely volunteer that unless asked.
- 8
What are your travel, technical and hospitality requirements?
Get the rider in writing before you agree on a fee, because business class flights, a second hotel night and a specific microphone can add a large fraction to the total. Also ask what happens technically if the room has no confidence monitor or the clicker fails.
- 9
Will you sell anything from the stage?
Book tables, coaching offers and course sign-ups change how the last five minutes feel to your audience. Some organisers are happy with it. The problem is only ever discovering it during the talk, so settle it in the contract.
- 10
Who can I call from a booking in the last six months?
Testimonials on a website are chosen and edited. A recent organiser will tell you what you actually want to know: whether the speaker answered emails, arrived on time, stayed for the part they promised, and ran long.
- 11
What happens if you cannot make it?
Flights are cancelled and people get ill. Ask whether they carry a deposit refund policy, whether they will recommend and help brief a substitute, and whether they will do it remotely from a hotel room if travel collapses. Vague reassurance here is worth nothing at 7am on the day.
- 12
Are you doing anything besides the keynote while you are with us?
Speakers vary enormously on this. Some will run a workshop, sit on a panel, eat dinner with your team and stay for photos. Others arrive an hour early and leave from the stage. Neither is wrong, but the second one changes what your day looks like.
- 13
Do you take questions from the floor, and how do you want them run?
Some of the best speakers are poor at open Q and A and prefer a moderator with pre-collected questions. Knowing this in advance lets you staff it properly instead of discovering it when a microphone reaches the back row.
- 14
What do you do when a room is not with you?
Every experienced speaker has bombed and can describe the recovery in detail: dropping a section, walking closer, asking the room a direct question. Anyone who says it has never happened is either new or not watching the audience while they talk.
- 15
How has the story you tell changed since the first time you told it?
Stories get tighter with repetition, and they also drift. Asking about the change usually produces the most honest few minutes of the conversation, including what they cut because it did not land and what they now suspect they simplified too far.
- 16
What part of the story do you leave out on stage?
Almost every keynote is missing something: the money that made the risk survivable, the person who did the unglamorous work, the two years of nothing. A speaker who names their own omission is more trustworthy than one who insists there is none.
- 17
How do you know whether a talk worked?
Applause and room-temperature feedback forms measure the last two minutes. Speakers who care about effect will mention following up with organisers weeks later, or asking a client what changed. It also tells you what they will expect from you afterwards.
- 18
What has changed in your message in the last five years, and what changed it?
This distinguishes a person from a product. A real answer names something specific that forced a revision, such as an audience that pushed back or something that stopped being true. No change in five years usually means the talk is now a performance of an old belief.
- 19
Who is your advice wrong for?
Motivational advice is generalised from one life, and the honest speakers know where the generalisation breaks: people without a safety net, people in circumstances they did not choose, people whose problem is structural rather than personal. Defensiveness here is worth noticing.
- 20
What do you do on the days you do not believe your own talk?
Save this for last, and only if the conversation has earned it. It is the question that most often produces a real answer, because the gap between the stage self and the ordinary self is something almost every professional speaker thinks about privately and rarely gets asked about.
Booking and interviewing motivational speakers
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Before you book
Before you book
Decide what the talk is for
A keynote can open a conference, mark a hard year, or set up a change people are about to be asked to make. Write the purpose in one sentence before you contact anyone. Speakers respond very differently to a clear brief than to a request for something inspiring, and the sentence also gives you a way to judge the answers you get back.
Talk to the speaker, not only the bureau
Agencies are useful for contracts, travel and insurance, and they are paid on the booking. Insist on a call with the person who will be on stage before you sign. Ten minutes on the phone tells you more about fit than any showreel, and how they behave on that call is a preview of how they will behave with your attendees.
Match the fee to the room, not the reputation
Fees vary by an enormous multiple for talks that are, from the audience's seat, similar in quality. A well-prepared speaker at a mid-range fee who spent an hour learning about your organisation usually outperforms a famous one working from a standard set. If the budget is tight, say the number early rather than negotiating down from a headline rate.
If you are interviewing them
If you are interviewing them
Skip the origin story
It is on their website, in their book, and in every previous interview, and they can tell it on autopilot. Start somewhere the script does not cover: what they cut from the talk, what they get asked after events, what a bad audience taught them. You can always come back to the origin story once they are talking naturally.
Ask about the mechanics of the job
Professional speaking is an unusual working life, with airports, empty hotel evenings, and the same eighteen minutes delivered forty times a year. Questions about the craft and the logistics tend to be both fresher and more revealing than questions about mindset, and speakers usually enjoy them because nobody else asks.
Push once, then let it go
Questions about who the advice fails, or about days of doubt, work when they arrive late and calmly. Ask once, wait through the pause, and accept whatever comes. Repeating the challenge turns a conversation into an interrogation, and the audience will side with the speaker.
Warning signs
Warning signs
- Will not share full-length video of a recent talk.
- Cannot name a single audience they are wrong for.
- The fee is quoted without a rider, and the rider arrives after the contract.
- Speaks about your audience in categories rather than asking questions about them.
- Refuses to say whether they will pitch a product from the stage.
- Every reference is more than two years old.
- The whole talk depends on a story that no one else present can confirm, and the details shift between tellings.