One of the most overlooked goldmines in B2B prospecting is hiding in plain sight: speaker lists from industry events. Finding leads from speaker lists has become my secret weapon for connecting with decision-makers who are actively thought leaders in their field.
Table of Contents
- Why Speaker Lists Are Goldmines for B2B Leads
- Identifying High-Potential Speaking Events
- Extracting and Vetting Speaker Information
- Crafting the Perfect Outreach for Event Speakers
- Scaling Your Speaker List Prospecting
Growth Hack: Speaker lists contain pre-vetted industry influencers who've already invested hundreds of hours building their expertise. Many are decision-makers or direct influencers at their companies, making them 3-5x more likely to respond to relevant outreach compared to cold leads from generic databases.
Why Speaker Lists Are Goldmines for B2B Leads
Most sales teams are fighting over the same tired databases and purchased lists while speaker lists remain virtually untapped territory.
These lists contain industry experts who voluntarily put themselves in front of audiences as thought leaders and authorities. They're demonstrably invested in their fields and often have decision-making power within their organizations.
In my experience working with B2B tech companies, leads sourced from speaking events convert at 2-3x higher rates than typical inbound leads.
Why? Because these individuals have already publicly positioned themselves as knowledgeable, forward-thinking professionals who actively engage with industry trends.
They're essentially pre-qualified as thought leaders before you even make first contact.
The beauty of finding leads from speaker lists is that you're targeting people who are literally broadcasting their expertise and interests to the market.
Unlike traditional prospecting where you guess pain points, speakers have already told you what they care about through their presentation topics.
Sales teams that implement speaker list prospecting often discover that these leads respond more warmly to outreach because you can reference their specific expertise.
It's the perfect foot-in-the-door that generic campaigns simply cannot replicate.
Even better, speakers often have elevated networks within their organizations, giving you indirect access toolumultiple stakeholders.
Identifying High-Potential Speaking Events
Not all speaker lists are created equal. I've seen teams waste weeks pursuing events with irrelevant attendees or speakers who aren't decision-makers.
The key is to target events aligned with your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Start by reverse-engineering your customer journey: what conferences do your best customers typically attend or speak at?
For B2B software, this might include industry-specific trade shows, technology summits, or professional association conferences.
Look for events that attract senior leadership rather than mid-level practitioners unless those are your target buyers.
Conference websites typically archive speaker lists from previous years – a goldmine of historical data for trends and recurring speakers.
Industry publications often compile yearly “must-attend” conference lists which provide excellent starting points for your research.
LinkedIn Events surfaces industry gatherings that might not have massive marketing budgets but bring together highly targeted audiences.
Don't underestimate local meetup series either – regional speakers often have deep local networks and may be more accessible than international thought leaders.
Professional associations (think American Marketing Association, Project Management Institute) regularly host chapter events with speaker lineups posted on their public websites.
In my campaigns targeting healthcare technology buyers, regional HIMSS chapter meetings produced some of our highest-converting speaker leads despite having lower profiles than the national conference.
Outreach Pro Tip: Create a spreadsheet tracking events, dates, speakers, topics, and your outreach status. Set reminders to check speaker lineups as they're announced (typically 3-6 months before events) to get ahead of your competition.
Extracting and Vetting Speaker Information
Once you've identified promising speaker lists, the real work begins. Raw speaker information is usually scattered across bios, session descriptions, and company websites.
Start building a comprehensive profile for each speaker: name, title, company, session topic, and contact information.
Most speaker bios include their current professional details, which gives you immediate insight into whether they match your ICP.
I've noticed that effective prospecting teams don't just collect names – they create a rating system for speakers based on seniority, company relevance, and session topic alignment.
This helps prioritize outreach efforts when you're dealing with hundreds of potential leads from major conferences.
Contact information is rarely provided directly on speaker lists, requiring some investigative work to locate professional email addresses.
Company websites, LinkedIn profiles, and professional bios often contain contact details or at least enough information to construct professional email addresses.
When manually researching becomes too time-consuming, you can leverage specialized tools to systematically find verified contact information for speakers.
Our instant B2B email scraper processes speaker information through AI-powered verification, turning raw names into deliverable contact details in minutes rather than hours.
The key is to verify each email address before importing to your CRM to maintain deliverability standards.
Nothing kills a campaign faster than reputation damage from bounced emails, so proper verification is non-negotiable.
Once you have clean contact data, enrich your spreadsheet with relevant conversation hooks drawn from their session topics.
A CTO speaking about microservices implementation will respond very differently than a CFO discussing digital transformation ROI – even at the same conference.
Data Hygiene Check: Speaker titles can be misleading. Always cross-reference their listed role against their LinkedIn profile. Some speakers use aspirational titles or present outdated credentials. Taking 30 seconds to verify prevents embarrassing outreach mistakes.
I once watched a sales team accidentally email a company's former “Chief Technology Officer” who had been promoted to Chief Product Officer months before speaking at a conference.
The message referenced his “technical leadership” despite his new role being entirely product-focused.
Six months of carefully planned speaker prospecting was wasted due to this simple verification misstep.
Below is an example of how we at EfficientPIM organize speaker data for effective outreach:
Speaker Data Structure Example:
{
“name”: “Sarah Chen”,
“title”: “VP of Product”,
“company”: “TechCorp Solutions”,
“email”: “[email protected]”,
“event”: “DigitalFuture 2023”,
“session”: “Building Scalable Data Architecture”,
“icp_match_score”: 85,
“outreach_status”: “Not contacted”,
“conversation_hooks”: [“data architecture challenges”, “team scaling”, “cross-functional collaboration”]
}
Crafting the Perfect Outreach for Event Speakers
Generic outreach templates fail spectacularly when connecting with speakers. These are people who receive dozens of connection requests weekly and have built careers on effective communication.
Your approach needs to be exceptional to stand out. The good news: you already have powerful conversation starters that most cold outreach efforts lack.
Start by demonstrating genuine interest in their expertise. Mention their session specifically, not just the conference itself.
Reference a key point from their session abstract that connects to your solution without immediately pitching.
For example, “Your approach to microservices architecture at EventName caught my attention, especially how you addressed scaling challenges while maintaining data integrity.”
This shows you've done your research and aren't just another spray-and-pray sales attempt.
Timing is crucial in speaker outreach. I've found the optimal window is 2-3 weeks before the event, when preparations are in full swing but their calendar isn't completely packed yet.
Alternatively, the week immediately following the event can also be effective when their presentation is still fresh in their mind.
Your value proposition should connect directly to their demonstrated interests and expertise.
If they spoke about team productivity challenges, highlight how your solution addresses that specific concern.
Proxyle, an AI visuals company, mastered this approach when launching their photorealistic image generator.
They targeted design conference speakers with personalized outreach referencing specific presentation topics about creative workflow challenges.
Instead of generic pitches, they sent custom-generated sample images that demonstrated solutions to problems each speaker had discussed in their sessions.
The result? A 42% response rate from speakers who typically ignored cold outreach entirely.
These connections became powerful advocates when Proxyle later launched their beta program.
When mentioning your solution, focus on the outcome rather than features. Speakers are busy people who need immediate value comprehension.
Instead of technical specifications, connect your solution to a business outcome they care about based on their presentation content.
Your call-to-action should respect their time while creating clear next steps. Offering a 15-minute “expert perspective” call rather than a “product demo” often yields higher acceptance rates.
Position yourself as a resource offering additional insight into their areas of interest, with potential collaboration as a natural outcome.
LuxiSoft, a web development agency, implemented this approach when targeting technology conference speakers.
They offered complimentary website architecture reviews based on speakers' expressed technical interests.
This non-threatening value offer led to 127 booked meetings with senior technology leaders in just one quarter.
$127,000+ in new development contracts followed within two months, far exceeding typical campaign performance.
Scaling Your Speaker List Prospecting
Effective speaker prospecting isn't a one-off tactic—it's a repeatable system that should be integrated into your broader lead generation strategy.
As your speaker prospecting matures, you'll develop patterns for which events and topics produce your highest-converting leads.
Document these systematically to create a predictable pipeline of high-quality prospects.
I recommend designating team members to monitor specific industries or event types, allowing them to develop specialized knowledge about speaker networks and recurring participation patterns.
This specialization enables more personalized outreach and helps build relationships with recurring speakers across multiple events.
Automation becomes essential as you scale past manual processing of speaker lists.
Tools that can extract, verify, and organize speaker information dramatically reduce the time investment required.
When Glowitone, a health and beauty affiliate platform, needed to scale their prospecting to match their commission-based revenue model, they implemented systematic speaker list mining.
By targeting wellness conference speakers and beauty industry thought leaders, they built a database of 258,000+ verified contacts.
This massive but precisely targeted list allowed for sophisticated segmentation and resulted in a 400% increase in affiliate link clicks.
The scale was only possible through automation that maintained personalization in outreach despite the volume.
Measuring speaker list performance requires different metrics than typical lead generation campaigns.
Track conversion rates from initial outreach to meetings, influence on secondary contacts within their organizations, and long-term relationship value beyond immediate sales opportunities.
Many sales teams discover that speaker leads have higher lifetime values due to their industry influence and tendency to make referrals.
Quick Win: Create a “Speaker Spotlight” series on your company blog featuring interviews with speakers from events you prospect. This provides natural outreach reasons and positions your brand as an industry resource rather than just another vendor.
When implementing speaker prospecting at scale, consider the seasonal nature of conference schedules.
Many industries have predictable event cycles—Q1 and Q4 are typically conference-heavy for technology sectors, while professional associations often hold their largest meetings in specific months.
Align your prospecting efforts with these cycles to maintain consistent pipeline flow.
Consider how you can repurpose speaker connections beyond direct sales opportunities.
Many become excellent source material for case studies, product testimonials, or even advisory board members.
Glowitone's speaker network eventually became a powerful distribution channel for new product launches, extending the value far beyond initial affiliate relationships.
The most effective speaker prospecting programs evolve into reciprocal relationships where you provide value to speakers as well.
Whether through exposure to your audience, access to industry research, or connections to complementary service providers, creating mutual benefit strengthens long-term partnerships.
By finding leads from speaker lists, you're not just building a sales pipeline—you're developing a network of industry influencers who can amplify your market presence.
Ready to Scale?
Sustainable growth in B2B requires looking beyond conventional lead sources where competition is fiercest. Speaker lists represent an underutilized channel connecting you directly with industry influencers and decision-makers who are actively signaling their expertise and interests.
When was the last time you evaluated prospecting channels based on lead influence rather than just volume?
The companies we've seen succeed with speaker prospecting share one characteristic: they recognize these conversations are the beginning of relationships, not just transactions.
Effective speaker prospecting requires both strategic thinking and efficient execution at scale. With our verify contact data instantly service, we help sales teams transform raw speaker lists into verified, high-priority prospects.
This enables you to focus on crafting personalized outreach that resonates with each speaker's demonstrated expertise rather than getting bogged down in manual research.
When your prospecting targets people who have already invested hundreds of hours building expertise in areas relevant to your solution, the entire sales conversation begins from a position of mutual respect and understanding.
That's not just a better way to generate leads—it's the foundation for meaningful business relationships that drive sustained growth.
