Working with a speakers bureau gets you access to the world’s most exclusive and effective keynote speakers and ensures professional expertise to match the best speaker to your event. Speakers bureaus also provide guidance with logistics and contracts, providing peace of mind and the luxury of being able to focus time and energy on the event itself.

Hiring a professional keynote speaker to motivate and inspire an audience can be a daunting and logistically confusing process. As event organizers know well, finding the right person for a keynote address often becomes more involved than it initially seemed, and planners usually spend undue amounts of time wrestling with details, when they should be focusing on the event.

Of course, there’s a sense of satisfaction that comes with a “Do it Yourself” project, but none more so than painlessly executing a blowout event and hearing glowing feedback from enthusiastic attendees. For many event planners, it’s simply easier and more effective to partner with a speakers bureau, confident in the knowledge that they will always deliver the best speaker possible.

Here are five reasons to work with a speakers bureau for your next event.

1. Expertise

Bureaus have extensive experience pairing the needs of an event with a speaker, ensuring that the keynote always resonates with your audience. There are many talented keynote speakers in the world (you probably know a few), but each speaker excels in different settings. Just getting a famous speaker for an event doesn’t mean they can tap into the expectations and feelings of the audience. However, speakers bureaus know exactly how each business, motivational, and celebrity speaker works with any type of crowd.

For example, Diana Nyad is perfect for motivational speeches about overcoming obstacles and Tan Le is wonderful for putting a similar spin on tech and entrepreneurship topics. But when picking who to hire for a keynote speech, it sometimes can be a difficult choice. Working with a speakers bureau will help to make the choice easier.

2. Extensive Networks

The high caliber speakers you really want tend to be difficult to contact . Celebrity speakers, motivational speakers, speakers like Magic Johnson (NBA Hall-of-Famer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist), all have jam-packed schedules and multiple gatekeepers. But the network at a speakers bureau enables you to get timely responses and exact quotes on their fees.

Regardless of price range, a bureau provides access to a wide array of speaking contacts; you may even find an ideal keynote speaker within their ranks you had not considered.

3. Logistical Know-How

Preparing for a keynote address is surprisingly complicated. Aside from the proper audio equipment, planners need to coordinate travel, hotel, per diems, contract logistics, and more. Letting a bureau cover these details creates a hands-free experience for you, and ensures that no box will be left unchecked.

4. Quality

No one likes to admit it, but not all speeches are created equal. The demonstrated quality that bureaus provide is often the most valuable thing when finding a speaker for your event. Professional assurances count — there’s no sense in risking it. Knowing a speaker is fully vetted and guaranteed to deliver a powerful keynote makes all the difference in the days leading to your event.

5. Peace of Mind

Just like hiring a professional photographer for a wedding, working with a speakers bureau lends you peace of mind that the results will be top notch, and that the event will go off without a hitch. There are hundreds of details that coordinators need to consider for an event, and the last thing you should have to worry about is the quality of your keynote speaker.

When you’re confident that your speaker is going to blow it out of the water, everything else tends to flow more smoothly. The most important part of the event is already taken care of.

Ken Sterling is the Chief Marketing Officer at BigSpeak Speakers’ bureau – the leading keynote and business speakers bureau in the world. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California and an MBA from Babson College. Ken teaches Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Strategy at UC Santa Barbara. He is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, business consultant and sales & marketing expert. For press interviews, contactmarketing@bigspeak.com.

(Main image credit: Alex Indigo/flickr)