How to evaluate keynotes
Back to blog2020-05-26
You booked a speaker and hopefully both you and your colleagues benefitted from the experience in terms of new information, new inspiration, new motivation so that you can face new challenges in the best possible way. But how do you measure the value of a speaker’s presentation? How do you evaluate the experience of your colleagues as well as the keynote itself?
At A-Speakers, we always evaluate our speakers and their keynotes because we know how important feedback is. Through feedback we, as a speaker bureau, as well as our speakers, learn how to improve and to adapt to the needs and wishes of clients, making sure they always get the best possible results.
You can find a number of online tools to help you evaluate keynotes and events. Here is our guide though of course you can also evaluate among your colleagues the old-fashioned way through mail or evaluation forms. We do, however, recommend the online tools if you are looking for specific numbers and statistics for management.
Template for traditional evaluation form
- What speaker did you book?
- On a scale from 1-10 with 10 being the best, how happy were you with the contents of the keynote?
- On a scale from 1-10 with 10 being the best, how happy were you with the actual speaker?
- Did you feel the keynote provided you with useful tools, methods and techniques to use in everyday work? Yes or no?
- On a scale from 1-10 with 10 being the best, how happy were you with the location and organisation of the event; the room, chairs, duration, breaks?
- Any comments?
Good online tools for evaluating events
Crowdsignal is an online tool for making fast and easy polls and questionnaires. They present a simple tool where you can create polls and evaluation through drag and drop and then mail this to colleagues. Furthermore, Crodsignal lets you design your own evaluation forms with company logo, colours and much more or you can use standard default themes. You can share your polls and evaluations easily and everywhere and afterwards you can analyse and export your results to Google Sheets and Excel. Crowdsignal offers a free version, a trial version with a few more functions and a corporate version with full functionality; everything your company will ever need.
SurveyMonkey is another online tool that lets you create tools and questionnaires. You can design, mail and analyse results – also with SurveyMonkey’s mobile app, you can filter and sort data and export everything to SPSS or download data to represent visually as graphs. In addition, SurveyMonkey also offers questionnaire logics, advanced branching, conditioned questions, site branching logics, AB-tests, advanced piping and much more. You can sign up to use SurveyMonkey for free but we recommend you sign up for the PRO solution if you aim to evaluate with more people and more than once.
Net Promoter Score is a method that helps you measure client satisfaction and it is very popular these days. Net Promoter Score (NPS®) is also known as ’The Ultimate Question’ because here, unlike many other questionnaire and evaluation tools, you only ask one question: ‘What is the chance of you recommending our company/product to a friend or colleague?’ The answer is given on a scale from 1-10 and sorted into 3 groups:
Promotors (scores 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who repeatedly use and recommend your company or your product. These customers help promote the company image through positive word of mouth enthusiasm and benefit profitable growth.
Passives (scores 7-8) are content but without special preferences for the company and so they will also potentially be interested in offers from your competitors.
Detractors (scores 0-6) are unhappy clients who can harm the company brand and growth through negative word of mouth.
To calculate the NPS of the company or product you need to subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters which will leave you with the score of overall client satisfaction on a scale from -100 and 100.’ Source.
REMEMBER when evaluating:
- To mail your evaluation form almost right after your event to ensure your colleagues will still remember everything clearly
- Make sure your questions are as simple and clear as possible but be careful with the yes/no questions
- Give your colleagues the chance to answer anonymously, especially if there is negative criticism so that they do not have to defend their feelings about the benefits of a keynote or event
- It can be a good idea to reward your colleagues for taking time to answer; maybe something like a competition with a nice prize
- And finally: evaluate right after an event if you want to evaluate feelings and wait a little if you want to evaluate value
