Working with a speaker agency: the first 90 days

In the first 90 days with a speaker agency, you get an approved talk with abstracts and the first submissions to around twenty conferences. No agency can guarantee an acceptance, because the programme committee decides, but the conference calendar favours an early start: according to our analysis of 2,415 conferences that publicly advertise speaking slots for 2026, the median time between the submission deadline and the start of the conference is only 50 days. This article describes how onboarding works, what work falls into the three months, when the first answers arrive and what you contribute yourself during that time.

What happens in the first 90 days with a speaker agency?

In the first 90 days the agency develops the talk and abstracts with you, researches suitable conferences, submits in your name and follows up. A speaker agency for experts works on behalf of the expert who wants to win B2B clients through talks at professional conferences. An abstract is the short description of a planned talk that a programme committee reads, meaning the group that decides on the programme at a conference. It is submitted through the call for papers, the public announcement with which a conference collects talk proposals.

The order follows from the work itself: without an approved talk nothing can be submitted, and nobody can follow up on what has not been submitted. How these 90 days fit into the whole collaboration with its services and prices is described in the speaker agency guide.

How does onboarding with a speaker agency work?

Onboarding runs through one or two conversations in which the agency takes in your expertise, and it ends with your approval of the talk and the abstracts. The knowledge and the stance come from you, and so do the examples from your practice, and the agency shapes them into a talk topic in which a programme committee sees value for its audience. A bio belongs to it alongside the title and abstracts, because every conference asks for these building blocks in a slightly different form.

You approve the talk and abstracts once before the start, and after that the agency submits in your name without every form landing back on your desk. How quickly this stage runs is set by two things on your side: how fast dates for the conversations can be found and how promptly the approval comes. The agency can only submit what you have approved, and every week that passes here is missing later in the conference calendar.

Stage Starter does this work for you: we find the right calls, write the submission and submit it, then we follow up and accompany you all the way to the stage.

Researching conferences: why the deadline counts early

The conference list is built alongside the abstracts, and here the clock has a say. Our database holds around 22,700 conferences, and around 1,500 of them have an open call for papers. Each of these calls has a deadline, and what has not been submitted by then only comes into question again at the conference's next edition, usually a year later. New calls are added all the time, which is why an agency keeps working through the list.

An agency that watches calls continuously checks before submitting whether the topic fits an audience in which your future clients sit. Where an organiser does not publish a call, we approach them directly and choose the moment when places in the programme are still open. For industry and classic consulting, for the Mittelstand and the world of associations, part of the operation runs through such direct approaches anyway, ten to fifteen a week once the conference list is in place. In which months most conferences take place is shown in When is conference season in Germany.

How long does it take for a speaker agency to deliver the first talk?

The first talk usually comes two to six months after the start, because the median time between the submission deadline and the start of the conference is 50 days and submissions begin after onboarding. We analysed the gap between deadline and conference for 2,415 conferences that publicly advertise speaking slots for 2026. The average is 65 days, the median 50 days, and the shortest lead time is zero days, when a conference accepts proposals until just before it starts.

The median is more reliable than the average, because some conferences open their calls well over a year in advance and pull the average up. For half of the conferences, fewer than 50 days lie between the deadline and the first conference day. On top of that, the programme committee's answer often arrives weeks after the call has closed, and an agency submits before the deadline.

A talk within the first 90 days comes about when a conference with a short lead time and a still-open deadline fits your topic and the talk and abstracts were approved in the first weeks. The stations of a single submission are shown in How long does it take from call for papers to stage.

Follow-up and first answers: what is in place after three months

After submission comes a phase in which you have little to do yourself. The agency follows up with conferences whose decision is delayed and keeps track of the status of every submission. Why this follow-up is part of the work and how it runs is described in Following up after the call for papers.

Our own submissions for clients help set expectations for the first 90 days. Of 2,189 abstracts, 1,374 have been decided: 94 were accepted and 1,280 rejected, which is about 7 per cent acceptance per abstract. The rate per conference is higher, because we often submit several abstracts and one acceptance is enough, and so we reach up to 19 per cent per conference, whereas 5 per cent at most is typical in the market at this volume of submissions. A further 815 of the 2,189 abstracts are still awaiting a decision, because many conferences answer long after the call.

The chance adds up through volume. At 19 per cent per conference, twenty conferences give an arithmetic chance of 1 − 0.81^20, or about 98 per cent, of at least one acceptance, and at the typical 5 per cent it is 1 − 0.95^20, or about 64 per cent. This is arithmetic and not a promise, and some of the answers fall into the months after the first quarter.

What lies on your side during this time

From you we need your expertise, time for the conversations at the start and the approval of the talk and abstracts. After that, the collaboration mainly takes up the talks themselves, with two to three travel days per talk in another city, preparation counted separately. After an acceptance you agree the date and travel with us, while we settle the technology and the slot with the organiser. You hold the conversations after the talk yourself, because that is where the business with your clients arises.

You receive reports continuously: a good agency shows to which conferences it has submitted, which decisions are pending and when the next ones are expected. An agency that runs its work transparently answers this with conference names and dates.

What the first 90 days cost: time and money compared

At Stage Starter the collaboration starts from €990 net per month for the whole operation. If you want a written plan first, you begin with the Speaker Audit from €2,000 net, which is credited when you book the agency. If you take on the same work yourself, you tie up days in your diary over three months that you would need for clients, and a detailed comparison is in Submit yourself or hire a speaker agency.

This start pays off most for experts with a high order value and a full diary whose clients attend professional conferences. For them a single won client exceeds a year of monthly fees.