Conference Chair Advice for Speakers. Turn Your Talk Into Business Opportunities!
- James Morgan
- Jul 8
- 3 min read
Your Talk Doesn't End When You Leave the Stage. Technology can help you create new business opportunities.
Conference Chair Advice: Speakers Don't Miss Out on New Business
As an event host and conference chair, I watch hundreds of keynote speakers every year. Most of the speakers put real work into their content and their delivery and aim to create new business opportunities. Very few put any thought into what happens in the ninety seconds after they say thank you to the audience.
That is a problem, because those ninety seconds are where the value of you speaking is won or lost. You have just spent thirty minutes earning the attention and trust of a room full of exactly the right people. Then the session ends, the room empties, and almost all that attention walks out the door.
The traditional endings do not work. “Connect with me on LinkedIn” fails because nobody remembers your name by the coffee break. “Here's my email” fails because nobody writes it down. “The slides will be shared after the event” fails because they are shared by the organiser, eventually, with no link back to you.
My advice: If you speak to grow your business, your reputation or your pipeline, you need a better final slide.
Conference Chair Advice: Give the Room a Reason to Raise Their Hands
The speakers who get real results from the stage all do a version of the same thing. They end with an offer of value, not a request for attention: “Scan this QR code if you want the slides, the checklist and the full case study.”
That one slide changes everything for the audience and the keynote speaker. Instead of hoping people find you afterwards, you let the most interested people in the room identify themselves in the moment, while your talk is still fresh. My advice as Conference Chair is:
1. Make the offer specific. “My slides plus the template I mentioned” beats “more information” every time.
2. Make the QR code big and high contrast. Put it on your final slide, leave it up during questions, and mention it out loud at least twice.
3. Deliver instantly. The content should arrive the moment someone shares their details, not days later.
4. Follow up personally within a week. A short note that references the event, sent while the memory is still warm.
Conference Chair Advice: Track The Business Opportunities
Question: What did your last talk actually produce?
Answer: Feedback score. Contacts and Business Opportunities. Additions to your sales pipeline. None of these answers really apply unless you have technology incorporated into your slides.
If you want a unique technology to do this, take a look at SpeakerStacks. It was created by event technology guru Adam Parry, co-founder of Event Tech Live and a working speaker himself. The toolkit It gives you a landing page and QR code for each session you are speaking on, captures the details of everyone who scans the QR code, delivers your bonus content instantly to the audience such as a slides download, and shows you exactly which talks have generated leads for your sales pipeline.
The data belongs to you, not the event, and you can export it straight to your CRM. There is a free plan, so you can test it at your very next talk. Whether you use a tool or build something yourself, the principle stands. You have already done the hard part by earning the room's attention. My advice as a conference chair is capture audience interest before it walks away.
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