Over the last few years, one event type has grown far more prevalent than others. That is the customer event or customer sales event. I have delivered keynotes at more than a dozen this year alone. I have come to see them as unique in terms of what they demand from me and how I can deliver on everyone's needs within one keynote.
Most keynote speakers will give their usual keynote, whether it's a conference, internal event, or sales event. But a customer sales or community event has specific characteristics that, if understood by the speaker, open up possibilities for outsized impact and client delight.
I believe that a customer event, whether for sales or after-sales, requires a significantly different approach by a keynote speaker if they want to nail it.
What Is A Customer Event or a Customer Sales Event?
Those I have headlined at are events that a company puts on—often software/tech companies or engineering/defence companies—to which they invite:
Their existing customers so they can take care of them, show them product updates, and forge a sense of a user community
Prospective customers who may need some convincing or understanding to become a fully-fledged customer
Sometimes, they invite both types of customers.
Why Are Customer Events and Customer Sales Events Different for Keynote Speakers?
With an internal top 100/200/300 leaders, all-company show, or brand/business unit gathering, the speaker is there to challenge, inspire, provoke, and even align the group toward a vision or ambition. The keynote speaker is briefed on the company context, strategy, and goal, and the job is to speak to that vision and attempt to amplify and accelerate progress toward it.
With an external conference, say, run by a trade association or conference brand, the greatest role of a mainstage headliner speaker is to create cognitive coherence amongst the members and delegates around the conference theme while helping to forge a sense of communitas amongst diverse participants who probably don't feel togetherness very often. This is in addition to the cost of entry for any professional speaker, which is to motivate, inspire, and provide delicious and sustainable food for thought.
A customer sales event or user community event is a hybrid blend of external and internal. There are usually sales, pre-sales, marketing, senior leadership, and business development executives from the host company, as well as external participants from the customer base, whether existing users or prospects.
What this means is that the keynote has to somehow bridge the gap between the host company and its people, ideas, products, and vision, as well as the diverse group of customers from all sorts of different businesses and functions who are attending.
How To Nail A Headline Keynote Speech At A Customer Event
The keynote speaker and thought leader must seek to gain a fairly comprehensive understanding of the host company, its products, its vision, its purpose, and its ambitions for the event.
This should require a connection and conversation with the CEO, CRO, CCO, or business unit leader, who is accountable for the success of the product/service and the positive impact on its customers. It is likely the speaker will be on stage before or after this person speaks, so joining the dots—emotional and rational—is a huge win for all.
It is vital that, at all times, the keynote speaker must remain an independent thought leader and never veer into a sales role on behalf of the host company. The audience will likely loathe this and find it manipulative.
The speaker and the client should work together to find a "highest common factor"—not lowest common denominator—connection between the speaker's ideas and ideals as a thought leader and the vision and purpose of the client company.
If you can't find one in the pre-booking call or briefing call, the speaker shouldn't be doing the gig, and the client shouldn't be booking that speaker.
The speaker should draft out a storyline, a plot for their keynote, that:
Creates an emotional connection between the speaker and the audience and the client company and its customers
Creates a rational connection between the thought leadership of the speaker and the USPs of the client technology, software, services, SaaS, or engineering products
During keynote delivery, the speaker should aim to create a "magic moment" of collective belonging as a community of users/customers that the client company has hosted, cultivated, and curated.
Their ideas and thinking should shine a light on the future of the space that the customer is in, showing subtly why the product/service is future-fitting or even future-forging.
I also like to bring the whole talk home by landing the ideas and thinking on the customer/user as a hero in their own hero's journey who is in the right time and place to step up and shape the future rather than fail it.
I also provide sticky memes and tools that the audience members can use and discuss together after the event to lead and unlock change, innovation, and transformation.
Ultimately, if the speaker has nailed it, the minds of the audience, especially the users/customers, should be thinking along the lines of:
"The product or technology these people make is timely, value-creating, and future-fitting. More than that, though, the people who make/sell it are authentic, passionate, and committed, and the community around it is a collection of like-minded people with whom I would enjoy staying connected in the future."
Yes, this is a big ask for a keynote speaker to deliver on. But it can be done.
Given the enormous investment in such an event—hosting so many customers free of charge, customers taking one or two days out of their busy schedules to attend, and all the other costs (swag bags, sponsor booths—surely the investment in the headline speaker should deliver an ROI that elevates the ambitions of the event in terms of customer engagement and brings it all together: company, customer, product, user, and the moment as one?
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