Turning Your Summit Speakers Into Long-Term Referral Partners

Your summit speakers can become long-term referral partners if you treat the last day of the event as the first day of the relationship. Within a week or two, thank each speaker personally, show them what their promotion produced, ask what they're working on next and offer one specific way to help. After that, keep a record of every relationship so none of them go cold.

I'm writing this for coaches, therapists, healing practitioners and other expert-led service businesses who have run a summit, or are planning one, and who are tired of clients arriving in bursts. You've already done the hard part. You invited people, interviewed them and gave them a stage in front of your audience.

Once the replays close, it's easy to let those speakers drift back into their own calendars. That would waste the most useful thing the summit gave you. A speaker who has watched you run a good event trusts you more than any cold contact ever will, but that trust fades unless you do something with it.

Key Takeaways

• Send every speaker a personal thank-you with their recording and their promotion numbers within days of the event closing.
• Ask each speaker what they have planned for the coming year, and offer one specific way to support it before you ask for anything back.
• Choose a handful of speakers whose audience overlaps yours and suggest one concrete next step, such as a joint webinar or a guest spot.
• Keep every speaker in your CRM, tagged by topic, promotion result and agreed next step, so check-ins happen on a schedule and don't rely on memory.
• If you hold a professional license, check your board's rules before you set up any paid referral or commission arrangement.

Why Speakers Make Better Referral Partners Than Cold Contacts

Think about what a speaker knows about you by the end of a summit. They've seen how you communicate, how organized your event was and how you treated their audience. They've watched you interview, and they know who shows up when you invite people. That's months of relationship-building packed into a few weeks.

Jennie and I see the payoff in our own numbers. More than 5,000 people on the EventRaptor list came from other speakers promoting our summits. When I ran my second summit in January 2021, more than half of the 37 speakers approached me. People notice when you give others a stage.

Jay Fiset, who teaches joint ventures, described two kinds of partner on the podcast. Upstream partners send you ideal leads and clients, the start of a partner-powered client pipeline. Downstream partners are the people you send great clients to. Most of your speakers will fit one of those roles, and a few will fit both. Once you see your speaker list that way, it's clear the follow-up matters as much as the event.

If you're still deciding whether a summit is worth it for you, why virtual summits build authority and leads faster than random content covers that question. This article assumes you've got speakers and want to keep them.

Which Partnership Step Fits Which Speaker

Every speaker doesn't need the same follow-up. Some are natural collaborators, some promoted hard and deserve a bigger stage next time, and some are better as quiet referral contacts. Match the next step to the person.

Natalie Luneva described on the podcast how this played out after one of her events. Some speakers invited her to teach their teams in the weekly training sessions they ran. With others she co-hosted webinars, each promoting to their own audience and each making an offer. None of that happened during the summit itself. It came from the follow-up.

Your First Two Weeks After the Event

The goodwill is highest while the event is still fresh in everyone's mind. Here's a simple order to work through.

1. Send a personal thank-you. Write it to them, not to "all speakers". Mention something specific from their session, and include their recording if your speaker agreement allows them to share it.
2. Show them their numbers. Tell them how many people registered through their promoter link. Speakers rarely get this from hosts, and it shows you were paying attention.
3. Ask to explore working together. Natalie Luneva's thank-you email simply said she'd love to explore ways to collaborate, because they seemed to serve the same audience. She said about 9 out of 10 speakers agreed to a call.
4. Lay out the options. Erin Loman Jeck, a speaking coach, suggested putting all your cards on the table in that first conversation: here are the ways we could work together, which ones appeal to you? People often answer with their own ideas, like an invitation to their podcast or a slot at their event.
5. Ask what's coming up for them. Their launch, book, retreat or program dates tell you exactly how to help.
6. Agree on one next step and put a date on it. "Let's do something together sometime" rarely happens. "Let's co-host a webinar in March" usually does.

A small physical touch helps too. A handwritten card or a modest gift for the speakers who went out of their way stands out, because very few hosts send one.

Giving First Without Keeping Score

The summit itself is you going first. Jay Fiset put it this way on the podcast: a summit is one of the easiest ways to say, "Let me invest in you and share you with the world." The relationship lasts when you keep giving after the event.

He was clear that reciprocity doesn't mean tit for tat. You email for me, I email for you, is a trade. A partnership starts when you find out what would genuinely matter to the other person. For one speaker that's an introduction to someone you know. For another it's a mention in your newsletter during their launch week.

Jon Schumacher, who has built his summits mainly on joint venture partners, mails his list for partners a couple of times a month. He told the podcast that he worried at first about bothering his audience, and found most people were fine with it. He also spends time at the end of each year asking his partners what they have on the calendar for the next one, so their promotions are already on his marketing calendar.

Here's a tip. Send your own promotion calendar for the year to your best speakers and ask them where they'd like a slot. It turns a vague "I'd love to support you" into a date they can plan around.

Keeping the Relationship Warm Through the Year

This is the part that slips. You have good calls in the two weeks after the event, then client work takes over, and six months later you can't remember who you promised to introduce to whom.

Jon Schumacher keeps a spreadsheet of his partners and checks in with each one about how they can support each other. He also suggested that a dozen to 20 really good partners is enough to get new people seeing your work every year, because those partners' audiences keep growing. You don't need every speaker. You need the right ones, looked after properly.

A simple rhythm works for most coaches and practitioners:

• A personal check-in with your closest partners every quarter, asking what they're working on.
• A note when you see them speak somewhere or publish something.
• An early invitation to your next event before the public hears about it.
• A thank-you whenever a referral comes from them, sent the same week.

For example, a business coach might find that three speakers from her summit serve accountants who are going out on their own. She could tag them as one group, co-host a webinar with one of them in the spring and invite the other two to speak at her next summit. That's a hypothetical, but it shows how one event can give you a year of planned collaboration.

Where EventRaptor Takes the Admin Off Your Plate

Most of the follow-up above depends on knowing who did what, and that information usually ends up spread across inboxes and spreadsheets. On EventRaptor it's already recorded during the summit, using built-in speaker and promoter tracking features.

Every speaker gets a unique promoter link, and the promoter performance report shows who brought in registrations. The leaderboard is visible to speakers during the event, so by the time you send your thank-you, both of you already know the numbers. You can export the report and personalize each email in minutes.

Speaker records sync to GHL/CRMRaptor with tags. So your speakers land in the same CRM as your leads, ready for a check-in workflow, a calendar reminder or a quarterly email. Speaker agreements are signed inside the platform, so you can see at a glance whether a speaker can share or reuse their recording. That matters when you want to send it as a thank-you. What to do with your summit recordings after the live event ends covers the agreement side.

If you'd rather not run the summit yourself, our done-for-you team can handle production and speaker coordination, so your job is to teach, host and build those relationships. We've hosted 13 summits of our own and over 40 summits for clients, so we know where speaker follow-up tends to slip.

Looking for new partners as well as keeping the ones you have? Speaker Connections, the free Zoom networking event Jennie started in February 2022, meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Usually 70 to 110 speakers and hosts attend, and the EventRaptor speaker directory lists more than 3,800 speakers who want to be invited to events.

A Note for Therapists and Healing Practitioners

Most of this applies directly if you're a therapist, counselor or healing practitioner hosting a virtual summit for your practice. Your summit speakers are often peers in neighboring specialties, which makes them natural sources of professional referrals. For example, a couples therapist might stay in touch with a speaker who works with new parents, because their clients often need each other's help at different stages.

Keep the follow-up focused on education and professional relationships. Never share stories about clients when you're building these partnerships. Before you agree to any referral fee, commission or paid promotion, check what your licensing board allows, because rules on referral payments and advertising differ by profession and location. If you'd like more on building a reputation this way, read becoming known in your specialty without daily posts or social media.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Soon After a Summit Should I Follow Up With Speakers?

Send a personal thank-you within a few days of the event closing, while everyone still remembers it. Include their recording if your agreement allows it, and their promoter numbers. Suggest a call or next step in that same email or soon after, before both of you get busy again.

What If a Speaker Didn't Promote the Summit at All?

Thank them anyway, and don't hold it against them. People miss promotion for all sorts of reasons, and a speaker who didn't email their list might still refer clients or invite you onto their podcast later. Just give your biggest opportunities, like a return slot at your next summit, to the speakers who showed up for you, and next time recruit speakers who agree to promote up front.

Should I Pay Speakers Commissions for Referrals?

Some hosts pay affiliate commissions on summit sales, and some pay speakers for the leads they send. Either can work when it's clearly agreed and tracked with promoter links. Most lasting partnerships run on goodwill and mutual support, though, and licensed therapists and practitioners should check their board's rules before offering or accepting any referral payment.

How Many Referral Partners Do I Actually Need?

Fewer than you'd think. Jon Schumacher suggested on the podcast that a dozen to 20 really good partners is enough to keep new people finding your work every year. Looking after a small group well usually beats staying loosely in touch with everyone.

Does This Work for Podcast Guests and Workshop Collaborators Too?

Yes. Anyone you've given a stage to, or shared one with, has had the same close look at how you work. Thank them personally, ask what they're working on and suggest one specific next step, just as you would with a summit speaker.

Your Next Step This Week

Open your last speaker list, or the list you're building now, and pick five people whose audience overlaps yours. Write each of them a short personal note that mentions something from their session and asks what they've got coming up. That alone will put you ahead of most hosts. If you're planning your first lineup, building a summit one sheet that makes the right speakers say yes will help you start those relationships on the right footing.

If you'd like help planning a summit with speaker partnerships designed in from the start, so the follow-up is in place before the event even opens, Book your Client Attraction Planning Call. We'll look at who you serve, who your best partners might be and what kind of event fits your business.