6 Ways to Make Talent Booking Easy
- By Declan McManus
- Jan 09, 2020
6 Ways Engage Makes Talent Booking Easy
Telephone tag, inefficient email exchanges, and a reliance on the obsolete fax machine.
These were the inherent obstacles in the talent booking process - before Engage. Engage provides a seamless, digitally integrated way to book anything from a formal speech to a unique pop-up event. Here are 6 ways that Engage makes talent booking easy:
1. Seamless Connection with Location and Audience
Finding the right talent is hard. Finding talent that suits your audience near your geographic location is even harder. With Engage, our streamlined platform allows you to filter your search by location, price, topic category, and experience. While all of this information used to be inaccessible through Google searches and online research, Engage allows you to easily find talent that will connect with your audience and won’t break your travel budget.
Engage also lays out all of the important information for talent in a detailed request, so talent can immediately decide if the location and audience are right for them.
2. Access to a Wide Range of Talent
Google searches for keynote speakers commonly turn up high net-worth, inaccessible talent that aren’t appropriate for most events. This current system makes it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to find the right caliber of talent for small-to-medium events. Engage alleviates this issue by providing access to a diverse range of talent across a variety of industries and backgrounds. If you need athletes, businesspeople, chefs, motivators, or really anything you can think of, Engage has you covered. From former White House Chef Andre Rush to former NFL wide receiver Chad ‘Ochocinco’ Johnson, Engage offers easy access to a range of talent that is not accessible through Google search. Everyone listed on Engage is someone that our team has a personal relationship with and chooses to be on our platform and has a desire to do events.
3. Online Payment Processing
The current talent booking ecosystem relies on mailed checks, money wiring, and risky exchanges of financial information. In today’s era of cybercrime and data theft, Engage’s encrypted payment system is a safer and more efficient way to pay talent for their time. Rather than wiring money or waiting for a check to come in the mail, Engage’s payment feature allows payments to be made directly through the online platform. Once talent accepts the payment terms that you, the consumer, designates in your request, you will pay your balance on Engage’s platform by credit card or by ACH transfer. It is quick, easy, efficient, and safe for all parties involved. The talent knows they are paid on time, and you don’t have to worry about your check getting lost in the mail.
4. Direct Communication between Talent and Consumer
While necessary, email chains are often long, confusing and inefficient. To mitigate this issue and to protect Engage talent's privacy, Engage’s communication feature allows talent and consumer to communicate directly on the platform. The Engage chat is incredibly easy to use, and allows you to do everything normal email does including attaching files. Every time a party sends a chat, the other party is notified via email, so no need to worry that the talent isn’t seeing your chat. Rather than performing cold calls and sending emails that may not receive a response, Engage is built on mutual trust as we do not list any talent on the site unless they or their agent personally sign up. This communication feature allows the consumer and talent to coordinate details and solve any logistical issues efficiently.
5. Personalized Search Feature
Your needs are unique and specific, so why isn’t your talent search?
Every event is different, and so are the needs for specialized talent. At Engage, we understand that the search for talent must be intuitive and personal. This is why we created Engage’s personalized search feature. Our platform incorporates multiple filters, including Location, Distance, Price, Category, and Experience. Rather than fruitless Google searches and blind inquiries, Engage allows you to find exactly the type of talent you want for your event, no matter how specific your requirements. All of our talent profiles come with icons that indicate whether or not the talent is willing to travel, take photos, sign autographs, or do Q and A.
6. Detailed Talent Requests
The current talent booking system is characterized by a lack of trust and transparency. Traditionally, booking a talent is a slow process, bogged down by repetitive questions answered via email chains and phone calls. Rather than an initial contact followed by a string of negotiations over email, Engage’s booking system allows talent to decide right away whether or not they want to do an event. Consumers submit a request that lays out the entirety of their plan and budget by answering the Engage one-sheeter that details all of those repetitive questions. There is no need for a long chain of emails or phone calls. Talent will know right away what the budget is, how long they are needed, where the event is, and a host of other key details. These detailed requests save time for both the consumer and talent as all of the required information is laid out from the beginning.
