What Happens When Experts Come Together?

There are many ways for a speaker to speak. You can deliver a keynote, provide a breakout, lead a meeting discussion, be interviewed on a podcast, and go live on Facebook—to name a few. These are all great ways to share your content too. The one opportunity most speakers forget about (or haven’t ever considered) is a speaker panel.

Panels can build relationships, and when two, three, or four experts join forces on a panel, the potential of win-win benefits increase for both the speakers and the audience.

Speaker panels bring together complimentary subject-matter experts to speak to a shared audience. From a speaker’s perspective, being part of a panel discussion is a great way to meet, network, and interact on three win-win levels.

The first win-win level is with your fellow panelists. One thing I encourage speakers to consider is how and where their problem-solving solutions compliment the services and products offered by others.

For example, if you’re a real estate agent who’s signature talk explains the process of buying a house to first-time homebuyers, those buyers now have a basic understanding of how a mortgage broker, an attorney, and a bank come into play. So, in addition to solving the buyer’s problem of not knowing the process, you’ve also prepared the buyers to look for a mortgage broker, an attorney, etc.

Now, introduce the panel perspective! There’s zero conflict of interest between you, a mortgage broker, and an attorney. Each one of you offers something different, but complimentary. In terms of networking, you’d then be in a great position to refer each other. Win-win.

The second win-win is the result of the number of people you’ll be sharing your expertise with. Each panelist brings their “list” to the table with them. This doesn’t mean you’ll automatically have access to their email list, but you’ll still be in front of an audience you wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. It’s true that not all of them will be in need of your solution too, but that’s fine. As you’ve heard me say time and again, you never know who’s sitting in your audience!

The third and best is the win-win for your audience. They’ll be able to gather more information in one sitting than if they attended three different meetings. It’s like the reverse of the one-to-many advantage speakers have. With a panel, the people in your audience get to hear from additional complimentary experts who might also have solutions for their current, or future, problems.

A bonus win-win: Think of the possibilities of a panel now as compared to a year ago. Last year at this time you’d probably be shaking your head no at the panel idea simply because of all the physical logistics involved. Now that Zoom is becoming the new norm, you can do a panel online—which means you can join with experts from virtually anywhere!

You know, the more I work with speakers, the more aware I am of how much value they add to our world. Their problem-solving solutions save us so much time! It just seems like a panel would be one more great way to share our expertise with a wider audience that saves them even more time.

So, now that you’re wondering if a panel might work for you and the service/product you offer, how to organize one, etc, here’s a link for you to book a call with me so we can talk it through. This could be another win-win for you!

‘Til we speak again,
~Beth