5 Steps to Get a Speaker at Your Next Meeting

“The best a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.”-John C. Maxwell

One of the best ways to prepare your chapter for the future is to have mentors come in form your local community. They will be able to share professional insight and personal experiences to enrich your chapters understanding of the professional world. While this sounds great on paper, it may be difficult to begin inviting guests. Here is quick and easy guide on how you can build bridges for guest speakers to come to your chapter meetings:

  1. Set a date: Always know the dates where you have space and time available for guest speakers to come. A good idea is to have these dates coincide with meetings to get the largest attendance possible. Having a list of dates gives the speaker flexibility and increases the chances of a speaker accepting your invitation.
  2. Know the speaker: Before you invite a speaker, try to learn a little about them so that you know what topics may be best suited for them. In addition, knowing a little bit about them shows them that you have prepared and increases the chances of them coming over to speak at the meeting.
  3. Have a topic: While most speakers don’t want to be fed a word-for-word script, it is important to give them an outline of possible topics. Keeping in mind number 2, tailor the topic to an area that they know well and coincides with one of the goals of FBLA.
  4. Send the invitation: One of the easiest and also hardest parts of the process is to send the invitation. Taking initiative and sending the invites as early as possible is essential to guest speakers accepting the offer, so don’t procrastinate and send them now!
  5. Communication/Follow-up: After sending the invitation it is important to follow up with the speaker by communicating with them depending on their response. You want to be respectful and quick on your responses whether they accept or decline the offer to speak.

Hopefully, this 5-step process will get you some amazing mentors at your next meeting. Good Luck!

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