Speaker feedback: what the BigSpeak review says about rebooking

Speaker feedback shows you whether an organiser will invite you again. How much rebooking matters in the speaking business is shown by the review "2025 in Review" from the speakers bureau BigSpeak, published on 7 January 2026: according to BigSpeak, 78 per cent of its clients booked again. For 2025 BigSpeak reports bookings of more than 48 million US dollars, 88 per cent of which were for in-person events. The review contains no analysis of ratings for individual appearances. Experts who speak at industry conferences therefore collect this feedback themselves, with one question to the organiser before the appearance and three short questions to the audience afterwards.

The BigSpeak review for 2025 in figures: rebooking as the yardstick

BigSpeak describes itself as a speakers bureau, that is, a booking agency that places speakers with companies and organisers. In its review of 7 January 2026 the company writes that it booked more than 48 million US dollars in speaker engagements in 2025, served more than 70 per cent of the Fortune 1000 companies and supported events reaching 9.2 million audience members worldwide. Demand came from 34 countries on five continents, 88 per cent of all bookings were for in-person events, and BigSpeak describes virtual and hybrid formats as a strategic addition.

One sentence of the review is decisive for the subject of feedback: "78% of our clients booked again." BigSpeak adds that trust, results and execution still matter. The figure measures clients who booked again with the bureau. Whether they booked the same speaker again cannot be read from the review, nor can the grounds on which clients decided. For speakers it is still a useful marker, because it shows that clients book again when a collaboration has produced a result.

As its most requested topic BigSpeak names artificial intelligence, as a practical question of how it changes leadership, company culture and decisions. Whether your topic meets such a problem shows in the responses you carry from every appearance into your next submission, and how many submissions it takes to win a slot is worked out in How many submissions does it take to get a conference slot.

What speaker feedback is and where it comes from

Speaker feedback is the response of the organiser, the moderator and the audience to your appearance, from which you can read what worked and what did not. It comes from four sources that differ in weight and effort. The first is rebooking or a renewed invitation, the strongest sign, but one that reaches you months later. The second is the organiser's evaluation, if the conference has sessions rated, which you can ask about before the appearance. The third is the response of the moderator or the organisers who experienced the room. The fourth is the conversations with listeners afterwards, in which you hear what stayed with them.

Every source has a weakness. An organiser who is pleased with your appearance rarely says what bothered them, the listeners in the corridor are more generous than exact out of politeness, and even a survey by QR code mostly reaches people who liked the talk a great deal or were particularly annoyed by something. It is therefore worth combining several sources and asking about specifics rather than about an overall impression. How an audience listens and what reactions in the room mean is described in Who sits in the audience at an industry conference.

Collecting speaker feedback: a calculation with assumptions

The following calculation is an example with assumptions and not an evaluation. Assume your talk has 150 listeners and you show a QR code with three questions on the last slide. If one in ten answers, that is 15 responses per appearance. Across six appearances a year you collect 90 responses, enough to recognise patterns that a single room does not show. That is enough for first conclusions. If you allow five minutes for the QR code and the question page and a quarter of an hour for the analysis per appearance, the effort stays manageable.

Five steps to collect speaker feedback after your appearance

A process that suits most conferences has five steps:

1. Ask the organiser in advance whether sessions are rated and whether you will receive the results: the question belongs in the preparation before the appearance, together with technology and recording.
2. Set three questions for the audience: for example "What are you taking away from the talk?", "Which question remains open?" and "What would you cut?". Open questions deliver more than a mark from one to five.
3. Show the questions on the last slide or keep them ready in one short sentence at the end of the Q&A: the less effort an answer takes, the more people respond.
4. Speak to the moderator or the organisers within 48 hours: ask for one concrete observation, such as the point at which the room was most attentive.
5. Write down after four weeks what recurs: if three people name the same passage, change that passage in the talk and in the next abstract.

Anyone who collects feedback this way also has a reason to write to the organiser again. A message saying "Here is what listeners took away, and I would like to return for the next edition" is easier to answer than a general enquiry. How appearances at industry conferences lead to client conversations is covered in Why the industry conference works so well as a sales channel.

Speakers bureau or speaker agency: who receives the feedback

A speakers bureau such as BigSpeak stands between speaker and client and receives responses about its clients, because it handles the booking. When you submit through a call for papers, the relationship runs directly between you and the organiser. The difference between the two routes is described in Speaker agency or speaker directory.

Stage Starter is an agency for experts who want to take the stage themselves: it submits in your name and follows up with the organisers. The appearance belongs to you, and the response to it is material for your next abstract and for the conversation with the organiser after the conference.