How to evaluate a speaker: credentials tell you who someone worked with. Proof tells you what happened.
How to evaluate a speaker is a question every planner eventually has to answer, whether they realize it or not.
A keynote speaker named Peter Chatteris posted something worth reading this week. His own four-question test for evaluating a speaker before you book one. What’s the one idea? Is there a named framework? What’s the proof, not credentials? What do past organizers actually say about working with you?
Three of those four are exactly right, and worth holding every speaker, including me, to.
How to Evaluate a Speaker: Where Chatteris Gets It Right
The one-sentence test is real. If a speaker can’t compress the talk into a single idea, the audience won’t retain one either. A named framework matters for the same reason a book chapter title matters, it gives the audience something to carry out of the room and repeat to someone who wasn’t there. And what past organizers say about the whole engagement, not just the sixty minutes on stage, is exactly the right question. Preparation, communication, adaptability, that’s the part a highlight reel never shows.
Where I’d Push Back
“Proof, not credentials” treats a track record like it’s the opposite of evidence. It isn’t. A client list is a claim. A client list with a specific, measurable result attached is proof. When I say I’ve worked with 34 Fortune 50 companies, that’s a credential. When I say NetApp achieved 175% equity growth, or Intel moved a major decision cycle from weeks to days, during the specific engagement, that’s proof. They’re not competing categories. The second is what makes the first mean something.
The real test in how to evaluate a speaker isn’t credentials versus proof. It’s whether the credentials come with receipts attached, or just a logo wall.
How to Evaluate a Speaker: Run This Test Before You Book
Ask for the one sentence. Ask for the framework. Then don’t settle for a client list, ask what specifically happened at those clients, in numbers if possible. And ask the planners who’ve already gone through the process what it was actually like to work with this person before, during, and after the event.
The Bigger Question Behind How to Evaluate a Speaker
Everything above is really just one specific case of a much bigger problem. I’ve spent 27 years standing on stages watching organizations, and now individuals, run into the same question dressed up in different clothes, in a world where everyone can be good, how do you get chosen?
I call it the Sea of Sameness. Six auto insurance companies with nearly identical coverage, pricing, and claims processes. Two hundred job candidates with the same degree, the same years of experience, the same skills on paper. A room full of professional speakers with the same credentials and the same demo reel. When everyone can meet the standard, meeting the standard stops being the thing that gets you picked.
That’s the deeper issue underneath how to evaluate a speaker. Credentials, degrees, certifications, years of experience, these used to be differentiators. Now they’re table stakes. They get you into the room. They don’t get you chosen once you’re in it.
The Big 3 Questions Nobody Gets to Skip
Every professional, in every industry, at every level, has to be able to answer three questions, clearly, convincingly, and in under twenty seconds.
What is your Dramatic Difference? Not your minor variation. Not your slight improvement. The thing about you that makes someone think, I can’t get that anywhere else. “I’m good at my job” isn’t dramatic. Good is the price of admission. Everyone in the room is good.
What is your Overt Benefit? Overt means obvious, not subtle. It’s not enough to be different, the difference has to solve a problem someone actually has, in a way they can understand within ten seconds of meeting you. If it takes three sentences to explain your benefit, you don’t have one yet.
What is your Reason to Believe? Anyone can claim to be different. Anyone can describe a benefit. Can you prove it, with results, with people who will vouch for you, with work that speaks for itself? A claim without proof is just marketing. Proof is what turns a claim into a reason to say yes.
Notice where credentials actually fit. They show up inside that third question, not as a separate, competing category. A credential is a perfectly good reason to believe, as long as it has something specific attached to it. On its own, unattached to any outcome, it’s a claim like any other.
This Is Coming for Everyone, Not Just Speakers
I used a speaker-evaluation post as the hook for this piece, but the Big 3 don’t care what industry you’re in. A hiring manager staring at two hundred resumes with the same degree, the same experience, and the same skills is asking the exact same question a meeting planner asks when comparing a room full of credentialed keynote speakers. So is a company staring at five vendors with nearly identical proposals. So is a customer comparing six insurance quotes that all read the same.
Right now this mostly still feels optional. Good enough, plus a decent resume, plus showing up reliably, still gets plenty of people through the door. That’s changing faster than most people have priced in. AI is about to make comparison effortless, complete information, instantly, for every option, in every category. When the person or company evaluating you can get a perfect side-by-side comparison in seconds, the only things left to compete on are price or distinction. Price is a race nobody wins.
That means more of us, and soon nearly all of us, are going to be asked, explicitly or not, to answer those three questions. Not once, as a nice-to-have exercise. On an ongoing basis, as the actual basis for whether we get chosen. The professionals who are ready for that won’t be the ones who were the most credentialed. They’ll be the ones who could already answer all three questions before anyone thought to ask.
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