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Book Keynote & Motivational Speakers

Picking a keynote is one of those decisions that seems simple until the planning committee starts arguing about it, since some people want a big name to fill seats, others want someone who’ll actually say something useful, and the person signing off on the budget mostly wants to know it was worth the money. MCP Talent Agency helps you hire a keynote speaker for conferences, annual meetings, sales kickoffs, leadership retreats and association events. The roster has business speakers, Olympians and pro athletes, astronauts, former tech executives, authors, futurists and people with some pretty incredible personal stories. If you send one of the advisors a note about your event and what you’re hoping to spend, they’ll put a few names together for you.

Types of Keynote Speakers You Can Hire

There are business and leadership speakers, motivational and inspirational speakers, sports and Olympic speakers, AI and technology speakers, health and safety speakers, and bilingual French and Spanish speakers.

Explore Our List of Corporate Keynote Speakers

The list below has corporate keynote speakers from across Canada and the United States, sorted by topic, location and price range. Clicking on a name brings up their bio and a clip from one of their talks, and there’s a little button to save them to My List, which is handy if you’re comparing a handful of people and want to ask about all of them at once.

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Why MCP Talent Agency for a Corporate Keynote Speaker

Two speakers can have almost the same topic on paper and still go over completely differently with your group, depending on whether they've worked with rooms like yours before and how much effort they put into learning about your company. The advisors at MCP Talent Agency spend a fair amount of time on that part of the job, asking about your audience, your theme and what happened with last year's speaker. If you're trying to book top corporate motivational speakers or a specialist for a particular industry, they can usually point you to a few people who've done that kind of event many times. Here is what booking through the agency covers:

A shortlist put together around your audience, whether that's a sales team, a room of nurses, a construction safety day or a board retreat.
Talk clips on the site that you can send around the office, since somebody on the committee always wants to see the speaker in action first.
One proposal with the fees, topics and links for each person on your shortlist, so nobody has to dig through a pile of separate emails.
A phone call between you and the speaker a few weeks out, which is when you'd mention the merger, the new CEO or whatever else is on people's minds.
Price ranges that go from under $3,500 for some speakers all the way up past $50,000 for a few of the well-known ones.
Talks done over video for teams that are spread out or working from home.
Help with the offer and the contract, and a logistics manager who goes over the AV setup, the schedule and the travel with you before the event.

The phone number for the office is 1-800-693-6665, or there's a form on the website if writing it all out is easier for you, and after that an advisor gets back in touch with some speaker ideas.

Explore Speakers by Canadian Province & US State

Keynote Speakers by Expertise & Topic

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WHAT OUR CLIENTS ARE SAYING

"Alison has been a fantastic addition to the Allianz Active & Aware programme. Her enthusiasm and passion for Health and Wellbeing were palpable from the moment she arrived. Her honesty about her journey was refreshing and ensured that her presentation was incredibly interesting and, most importantly, enabled her to connect with the groups she was addressing. Her presentation style is effortlessly engaging, exuberant and infectious, and most importantly inspirational as she demonstrates how everyone can take control of our wellbeing destiny."
Allianz Ireland

"Alison joined us for the final day of our annual three day off site meeting to help us focus on personal development. Alison’s session was at once practical in terms of steps we can take to balance home life and work life, but in truth it delivered much more...introspection, self-reflection, emotion and motivation. It was real, tapped into our investment in our people in a genuine way and allowed us to look at our development as people rather than employees. It hit exactly the right note and at the right time. I would highly recommend Alison if you are open to honesty, sincerity and looking after your team beyond what the “job” provides them."
KYNE

“CWB Financial Group was blown away by Alvin's presentation. Not only did he exceed our expectations but he gave us many powerful messages that we will remember for years to come. When we met with Alvin he was very professional and listened to what we wanted to present to our audience. Our audience was so captivated by his presentation that we wished we booked him for 2 hours! Thank you for making our experience so enjoyable.”
Lisa Poitras, Creative Services Advisor, Canadian Western Bank

"He was phenomenal and I have received so much feedback from guests who all agree. I would absolutely have him out again, and would recommend him to others (actually, I already have!)." The Edmonton Eskimos

Seamless Speaker Booking Process

Contact us for speaker recommendations or to request a speaker’s availability. We’ll package up info for you in a shareable proposal format.
You’ve found your perfect speaker! Now, we’ll help you invite the speaker to your event
Your dedicated logistics manager will guide you throughout the planning process, schedule a call for you and the speaker, and help ensure your speaker is prepped and ready to exceed expectations!

FAQs About Booking a Keynote Speaker

What does a keynote speaker cost?

The fees across the roster cover a very wide range. A well-known athlete or celebrity can cost many times what a working business speaker charges, and travel gets added on top if the speaker is flying in. Speakers with a strong regional following can be a great fit for a smaller budget, and some of the most requested speakers aren’t household names at all. The price filter on the site is a decent place to start, though fees do shift, so the advisor will check the current number for anyone on your list.

Is a keynote speaker the same as a motivational speaker?

Not quite. The keynote people tend to be the ones who know a subject inside and out, say sales or AI or how to run a team through a tough year, and they’ll give your group some ideas to try at work. The motivational ones are usually telling their own story, which might be about a crash, an illness, a comeback in sports or something else they had to get through, and people leave feeling a bit more fired up. Plenty of conferences book one of each, often with the business talk in the morning and the motivational one to close the day.

How do we decide which speaker is right?

Honestly, a lot of planners start by thinking about what went wrong with the last speaker they had. Maybe the talk was too long, too general or just didn’t fit the crowd, and that tells you a fair bit about what to look for this time. A board retreat with twelve people around a table is a very different booking from a staff day with six hundred employees in a hotel ballroom. Watching a whole talk, not only the two-minute promo video, helps a lot, and the advisors can tell you what other clients said after booking a particular speaker.

Can the speaker customize the talk for our company?

Most of them will, and the better ones won’t really go ahead without it. Usually the speaker wants to hear what kind of year your company has had, who’s in the audience, and whether there’s anything touchy going on, like layoffs or a recent merger. Then they’ll swap in stories and examples that fit, so a talk to a credit union sounds different from the same talk at a trucking association. How much a talk gets customized varies by speaker and fee, so it’s worth confirming what’s included before the contract is signed.

When should we book?

Somewhere around three to six months before the event works for most companies. If you have your heart set on a famous name, though, you might be looking at a year or more, and April, May, September and October are when a lot of conferences happen, so those weeks get taken early. A talk done over video can often be squeezed in with less notice, and now and then a speaker has a date free up, so a short timeline isn’t necessarily a problem.