Providing Value To Your Clients: How Francisco Rodriguez Built The Largest Speaking Bureau In Latin America
Posted by John Livesay in podcast0 comments
Providing the best value for your business clients starts with knowing what they need. If you are like Francisco Rodriguez, who made it his mission to build the largest speaking bureau in Latin America, then it means being ready to communicate with your customer and fill their specific need. In this episode, John Livesay interviews Francisco on how he built one of the most successful businesses in South America. Learn how Francisco pivoted his old company to form Smart Speakers, and what he’s learned that helped him grow and scale his company. Tune in for more great business stories as John Livesay hears more success stories.
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Providing Value To Your Clients: How Francisco Rodriguez Built The Largest Speaking Bureau In Latin America
My guest is Francisco Rodriguez Aguirre who is the President of the largest speaking bureau in all of Latin America. He shares with us his secrets to his success starting the bureau Smart Speakers and says that when you provide expertise, you give your clients the best outcome. His whole focus is on being the best partner that he can be to his clients and finding innovative ways to bring in new content to events to make them a huge success. He said it’s not enough to have the right expertise as a speaker, you must also have the right attitude and be easy to work with. Enjoy the episode.
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I’m honored to have Francisco Rodriguez Aguirre who is the Founder of Smart Speakers, the largest and biggest speaking bureau in all of Latin America. They’re in countries like Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the US and Mexico. We had the pleasure of meeting at an event that our mutual friend, Josh Linkner, produced. We instantly clicked. He is someone who leads from the heart and speaks like a poet. Francisco, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, John. I’m honored to be here with you.
The honor is all ours. There are so many impressive things about your background from you winning an award at MPI to going to school at UCLA and getting your MBA. I’m going to let you take us back to your own story of origin. You can go back to childhood. You could start at UCLA, wherever you want to start your story on how you started to discover your passion for communication and how you got into the speaking bureau business.
I first started in a family business that was radio. We were such a big family so it was difficult over there to cover an important part. I took my MBA and when I finished the MBA, I love all training, knowledge and after reading such big names, I’m getting so much knowledge. I said, “I love this.” I started a company that used to make events for selling them. We used to do the Sales Summit or Marketing Summit, events where we used to bring great speakers from Mexico and Latin America with great minds from all over the world. Over there, we have Philip Kotler, who was the great Father of Marketing. We have Seth Godin and Al Ries. We have these big names.
When we’re doing these events, we used to produce everything. We used to hire the place where it was going to be. We used to do the marketing to know which best subjects that the business people would like to have and who are the biggest names that would be in these events. We were very successful but a lot of competition started to come when we did this in Mexico. The business started to be not as good and it started to be more risky. Some of our clients that come to our events because there were corporate events for business people started to tell us, “Are you able to make an event for my company like this? This speaker is great. Can you book this speaker for us?”
[bctt tweet=”Always try to get the most value for your clients. If the client is happy and sees that their objective was accomplished, you’re going to have a happy client.” username=”John_Livesay”]
In the beginning, we said, “No because we are doing this,” but afterward, when we started to see that the business was not going that good, we said, “Let’s try it.” We started two lines of business. One line as a speaker’s bureau but we weren’t speakers bureau yet. We started hiring speakers. Another is as a meeting planner. Being a meeting planner specializing in conferences doing like these kinds of events. We were growing but my passion was not in producing the whole event. I was always with my team.
We were great at getting good content and researching who has the newest option and curating that great content. With my team, I was like, “Let’s do this speaker’s bureau.” We saw it in other countries. We set our webpage and we started to create the speaker’s bureau a 100% professional one. We did this in 2010. We did our first event in 1999. We started selling speakers in 2006 and making private events as a meeting planner in 2006. We stopped in 2007 doing our events.
What I love about that story is you have incredible insight and empathy for the stresses and needs that an event planner has. You aren’t just trying to figure out what they need or what pressure they’re under. You were in their shoes, which allows you a competitive advantage for someone who doesn’t understand it from the inside out.
That ability to say, “I know what you need. If that speaker’s plane is delayed and they don’t notify you when they land, you’re worried about that. We make sure that we have our speakers tell you when they get into the country so you don’t have to worry about it.” You’re anticipating problems that other people wouldn’t even think would be a problem but you’ve done it so that makes you a great partner for the event planners.
I was in the shoes of the meeting planner but before, as an end client.
You know both sides.
Speaking Bureau: Big differences are not that big and something that is great is that we can bring the best speakers from one place to another place.
In the beginning, we used to be a client of speaker’s bureaus and buy it for us. We used to be meeting planners but my passion was with the speakers. I used to study so much about speakers and looking for new content. I started looking more for that so that our business grew so much bigger from speakers and as a meeting planner. What started to happen was something that I didn’t like. We used to go to events and we met some meeting planners that used to be our clients or speaker’s bureau. I said, “I don’t like this. I have to choose one of both. I’m not able to play in both.”
We stopped being a meeting planner. We have everything. Our speaker’s bureau business and the meeting planner. The two things are focus and being a partner because in their part when I was a meeting planner, we have that competitive advantage and understanding because we were one of them. Sometimes, I could compete with them. That’s why we stopped being meeting planner. When we did that is because we have a good business from being a meeting planner. That’s when we said, “Let’s go international.” We started in Mexico City, Columbia, Chile, the US and Costa Rica.
Are there differences between the audiences in those different countries? Do you find that maybe Costa Rica prefers a different audience than people in Chile?
There are some differences but something great is the same language and culture because many of these countries are Latin America. Those big differences are not that big and something that is great is that we can bring the best speakers from one place to the other place.
If one of your clients has multiple offices in these countries, they might hire you to find one great speaker to speak multiple times to their different countries.
We can bring the best of Chile to Mexico and Mexico to Virginia or the US to Mexico. Many clients tell you, “What new do you have? What innovations in the speakers do you have?”
[bctt tweet=”Focus on being the best partner to your clients and they are loyal to you.” username=”John_Livesay”]
When someone comes from the US to speak at Mexico or any of these other countries that you’re in and the speaker is not fluent in Spanish, people might be curious about how does that work? Do you use a translator there? Do they have to pause? Are people listening to something like at the United Nations? What is the typical setup for language translation?
We use simultaneous translation. We have some good translators. They almost do it at the same time. If you’re a speaker, you shouldn’t speak very fast.
You got to pause a little bit. You can still keep your pace going. If you’re telling a joke, you can still keep all of that going. The audience is listening to something while it’s being translated. They provided a device.
They have their headphones. In many events, half of the people have headphones and of all the people speaking.
The speaking business was heavily impacted by the pandemic shutting down live events. I’m imagining that many of your clients said, “We’re going to have a virtual event. We still need to meet. Can your speakers give us virtual presentations?” Tell me about that transition. Were you able to keep some live events and convert them to virtual? People are doing hybrid events. What are you seeing?
Most people have something awful. I guess that it happened the same to you because we were going great with a lot of bookings and suddenly, everything came down when it was declared that this was a pandemic. I remember they stopped the flights to Europe and the US. Everybody canceled everything. In the beginning, we were trying to negotiate some of them, we used to say, “For May or June.”
Speaking Bureau: We were blessed that our industry was able to transform this way.
It was very difficult because of lots of agreements and things. It was awful. We started doing a webinar once a week. We bring speakers to these webinars and we made alliances with MPI and the Human Resources Association of Mexico. We did four alliances so that we had our own clients as well as the clients or the members of the other associations. We were reaching that it was able to do it in a virtual way in the speaking business. We did with some meeting planners and some events inviting their clients and our clients to show a way to do it.
We even had a webinar where we discovered a speaker that was training in how to do a virtual event. We even teach the meeting planners with this speaker how you could make your live event and how you can convert it into a webinar. We did this event. We spread the word. The clients started coming to us and the meeting planners telling us, “Let’s have a webinar. What options do we have? I still have to connect with my clients, with my people.” We were blessed that our industry was able to transform this way. We were with the speakers and say, “You should watch our video on how you can make it entertaining.”
You can’t just speak. You need some special effects, some music and all kinds of other things to keep people engaged in breakout rooms and polls to take so that the audience is entertained and not just watching a Zoom call. If you have a lot of major clients on your website, what is your strategy on how you keep these big clients happy? Do you have something as a part of your culture when you train people and hire new people around customer service to let them know we have to do not the minimum but go beyond what’s expected?
In Latin America, in general, we are very customer-oriented. We always try to get the most value for our clients and speakers because we like long-term relationships. If the client gets happy and he sees that his objective was accomplished, we’re going to have a good client both the speaker and us. We are always trying to get more value in the pre-event. The first thing is how we are going to meet the goals of the client in the best way.
We always have these pre-event calls but sometimes, it could be 1 or 2 pre-events calls. In the event, depending on what is the objective of the client, we are going to get this value and after the event. That is not just something that good speech that was great but everyone can forget afterwards. We are looking for ways to engage more with the client.
Having some ongoing follow-up, I know when I get engaged for a speaking event many times, I’ll say, “Let’s package in a 30-day and 90-day follow-up.” A lot of clients love that because it reinforces what they heard. It’s a check-in to see if they are, in my case, starting to tell better stories, are winning more business so that the objectives are measurable of what it was like before the talk and workshop and what’s happening afterward. I’ve had a lot of clients say to me, “We picked you because of that ongoing connection beyond the talk. We know it’s going to be reinforced.”
[bctt tweet=”Having the right attitude is just as important as your expertise.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s the real result that they looking for that they are going to make difference.
Do you have a favorite story of a speaker that you like to use and it has gotten great results that made you and the client happy?
Following calls with videos that reinforce the main idea or topic is something that is not that difficult. It could be videos of 1 or 2 minutes. The best customer service is not but you want to reinforce. If you do it that once a month, you keep the idea coming in.
Short little videos that recap the message make the client feel like it’s customized to them.
Before, we were not used to seeing that many videos live. We were not used to Zoom and all of these things. This is a new era and these things are great.
What is one thing that you’re excited about coming up in 2022 in the speaking business?
Something great is the Harvard events and how we are having new tools and more benefits from the speaking industry. In the beginning, as we were talking about it was awful but at the end, it’s a barrier. For example, we hired twice Pep Guardiola who is the soccer trainer of Manchester City. He was in the champions in number two but he was the trainer of Barcelona. With Barcelona, they won so many titles. He is the best soccer trainer of all time.
Speaking Bureau: The first thing is how we are going to meet the goals of the client in the best way. So we always have these pre-event calls.
He is a trainer and the champion of England and being the second in Europe. With this virtual thing, we are able to get personalities like him while he is playing with other teams. Usually, if we wanted to bring him to the US, Chile or Mexico, he would have to spend at least three days coming from Europe. Now you have a mixture of virtual and personal. This is something great that you can take the best of both worlds.
Is there a favorite quote that you would like to leave us with, Francisco?
Always deal with the experts. That’s the best thing that you can do. We’re looking for the best speakers that our clients need according to their objectives. We are the experts in hiring speakers and matching the needs of the client with the right speaker. That’s why we are able to get the right speaker but all this great content and the speakers that are easy to work with. There are some great speakers. You have great lawyers and some doctors. It’s everywhere. We have some other speakers that sometimes could be a little bit difficult to work with. Some others that they like to get value to the client. We can get the right speaker with the right content and with the right attitude to get their objective.
It’s not just the right speaker at the time and content, the magic secret ingredient is your expertise in making sure that that speaker has the right attitude. I can’t thank you enough. If people want to find out more about your bureau, they can go to SmartSpeakersWeb.com. Thank you so much for giving us such a global perspective and congratulations on all of your success.
Thank you very much, John. It’s a pleasure to be with you.
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Tags: Business Pivot, content, customer service, Speakers Bureau, Value, Webinars