While some keynote speakers have lowered their fees (in some cases drastically, in others just a bit, or just enough to dip them into another category), others still offer the same value they always have and have kept their fees static over the past 12 months plus.

So what about negotiating fees? It never hurts to ask, and it’s one more reason to book a speaker with a bureau: as a planner, you get access to our knowledge of the speaker’s history on fee flexibility, and you can leverage our relationship with the speaker’s office, their other bookings with our clients, and their schedule.

By the way, this is a great time to discover new talent. There are a lot of great content speakers out there in various industries who’d love the opportunity to speak in front of a group (like yours!). We do keep an active list in our database of all kinds of up and coming talent. But you won’t always find them on our website (or frankly, we’d be completely overwhelmed adding dozens of fantastic speaker ideas every week), so do contact us and we’ll guide you through our suggestions.

But let’s be completely honest. Yes, there are a half dozen speakers we find ourselves recommending time and time again when a client tells us they just don’t have a lot to spend. We’ve booked them quite a bit, and that’s how we know that they’re more than just a great value, they’ll also deliver a great keynote and ensure positive audience feedback.

Number 1 on our list is almost always Dr. Lowell Catlett, just published today on a list of Planners’ Favorites on the Meetings and Conventions website. His topics, dynamic and entertaining style, and professionalism make him a guaranteed hit for every meeting we book, so we always love to suggest him (and it’s exactly why he’s our only exclusive speaker!).

Over the years we’ve also recommended a few others speakers time and time again- you can check them out on our site, including straight-up continuously updated lists by fee, including in the under $5000 category.

When I was growing up I was fascinated by the idea of the tradeshow. My dad, who worked in the defense industry, would go to conferences and come back with all kinds of bizarre defense industry schwag. Back in the day, it was things like pens, pencils, little fluffy guys you could stick onto your window sills- schwag in the truly random and meaningless vein. The funniest part is that it would be a little stuffed animal thing, but the slogan would be about some complicated technology, like, “We’re just WILD about the RX2247 Tomahawk Missile Processing Centers!” I’ll have to ask dad if he kept any of that stuff, a few photos and it would make for a great post on its own.

It always struck me that you can promote just about anything at a tradeshow- we do it now for keynote speakers, dad did it for defense products, well just about anything under the sun will show up on a tradeshow floor at some point, even if it never makes it in the long term. Though I think my favorites are the fancy food and gourmet items. Sample frenzy!!!

I have a friend who is launching her own line of bath and body products. She just bought her first tradeshow space. It’s interesting watching her go through the learning process of how to promote her business- she’s extremely talented, great business sense, and she’s an artist as well, so she’s got a great foundation. It helps that her products are beautiful and well-made. But I know she’d appreciate your tips, so I’d like to know, what do you wish you’d known before your first tradeshow appearance? If only I’d…

In other bureau news, I’ve been working on a couple of new sites for our exclusive speakers, please check them out and let me know your thoughts: the first is a stand-alone site for Dr. Lowell Catlett; the second is a site for the Beaulieus and Dietrich. We also just relaunched our primary site; we are now running on Joomla 1.5 and I have to say I’ve actually really enjoyed updating the basic look. We’ve added some cool tabs on the side for our Facebook, Youtube and Twitter pages. Seems that planners really enjoy using twitter- makes sense, they’re always on the go- and although the new users on twitter may be flattening out, I think the application is going to continue to be valid for events and conferences. The ability to use a hashtag to track a conversation over an event is a pretty powerful idea. By the way, if you’re a speaker and are looking for website or social media ideas, please contact me @speakersbureau or email me via Convention Connection.

Groups can book her presentations on Leadership Lessons in the Age of Obama to learn:

How to empower a team to take initiative with personal responsibility
How to gain credibility from your team by talking truth to difficult issues
How Obama’s leadership traits are playing in Washington

Betsy Myers also presents on The Growing Role of Women in Politics.

We’ve posted a video from the Center for Public Leadership here.