Why Every Professional Speaker Needs A Speaker Sheet

What is a speaker one sheet? A speaker one sheet is a downloadable PDF that you can find on your website. It is a one page resume you can say or your calling card that represents you.

Let’s say that you meet someone who could hire you for your expertise and services. In the getting to know you experience that decision-maker asks,“What do you speak about?” or “How do you help organizations?” or “Which groups have you worked with?”

The purpose of the speaker sheet is for a event planner or a conference organizer to find you online and possibly hire you for speaking gigs. So when an event planner is looking for a speaker for their upcoming event, what they normally do is they will go on Google and they will search for what they’re looking for.

If an event planner is looking for a certain speaker for an event, what they will do is they will go on Google and they will search whatever event they’re having. And let’s say that your name came up for a particular event, that they’re looking for plus six other speakers names came up also. So what the event planner will do is go to your website and hopefully you have a speaker page on your website.

So they’ll go to your website to find out what you do, who you are, where you spoke at, what your speaking topic is  etc. Your one sheet should be there and it should let the event planner know that right away. For those of you who are new to speaking and don’t know what should go on your speaking page, I’m going to break it down for you.

These are the important items you should have on your speaker sheet:

• Your photo – a high-quality professional photo
• Contact information – your name, phone number, address
• Testimonals – if you don’t have any yet add them when you get them ASAP
• Social Media Links – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instgram, etc.
• 3 main Speaking Topics
• Short bio – no more than 1 paragraph
• Your Branding – it should match your website, business cards, etc.
• Logos/Book – if you have a book then the cover of your book should be included

Think of your speaker sheet as a living document. You don’t want to create it one time and be done with it. The more you speak, the more information you’re going to have to add on your speaker one sheet.So you want to update your speaker one sheet with fresh new content consistently.

You’re  probably wondering how much is it going to cost for this one sheet to be designed. Will it be expensive? If you’re just starting out, you can go to places like Fiverr.com or Upwork . You will be able to find graphic designers that will do an excellent job for you at a moderate cost. But if you want to take things up a notch, I would go to 99Designs.com and have them create my one sheet. It’s up to you. If you are good at graphics you can create your one sheet yourself in Canva. If not you can hire someone on that is the experienced in graphic design where it  can be done moderately inexpensively.

Remember you get what you pay for so choose wisely. Go ahead and find someone on Upwork or Fiverr or some other site like that and have them prepare your one sheet for you. Now there are two components that you want to make sure that your one sheet has; how it looks and what you’re saying. Make sure that whoever creates your one sheet that they create it in Word document format. And the reason why you want to create it in a Word document format is so when you do have changes for your one sheet, YOU can go ahead and make those changes yourself. You don’t have to send it back to the same person who created it for you on Fiverr, Upwork, or 99Designs.com.

Make sure that your speaker sheet is representing you! Use your brand colors, great graphics and fonts, and action photos of you speaking! Let the meeting planners know how you can help them and show that you are the expert they are looking for.