The former best rugby player in the world Jonny Wilkinson, world champion footballer Marcel Desailly, Olympic Games judoka David Douillet, Canadian sprinter Bruny Surin... Scrolling through the online catalogue of Sportsvision speakers is like turning the pages of an album that brings together, from one discipline to another, some of the greatest sporting successes of the last 10, 15 or 30 years. Nostalgia...
In operation since last year in Luxembourg, but also in France and Belgium, this company organises conferences and in-company training courses (no fewer than 25 modules on the programme) and relies on some forty ex-champions trained, it is promised, to perform the same feats, microphone in hand, in front of a professional audience, as they once did in the stadiums, to rapturous applause.
At the head of the structure is a 48-year-old Belgian-Tunisian, Lotfi Khalfat. Affable and passionate, Khalfat knows top-level sportsmen and women all the better as he has coached some of them. His passion is tennis. Schooled in Belgium and France, he spent a year coaching in the United States. A thick address book (he has also worked for Adidas in the past) and a few clear ideas about what the business world could learn from the world of sport led him to take the plunge.
Pierre Théobald: Let's clarify straight away: how is a sportsman who has never been a manager, or even set foot in a company, really qualified to speak to an audience of managers and entrepreneurs?
Lotfi Khalfat: In fact, your starting point is not the right one. Because top sportsmen and women manage their careers as if they were their own business. A lot of things are outsourced, and they have to manage a large number of people. Physiotherapists, osteopaths, mental trainers... for the medical aspect. Not to mention all the financial aspects. In the same way that a business owner works with his accountant, lawyer and subcontractors, they need to surround themselves with the best people to perform at their best. In this sense, there is a parallel between sport and business.
In practical terms, what does the champion bring to the table?
In business, there can be pressure to meet targets. In top-level sport, all that is experienced tenfold and in a much, much more intense way. A sprinter has 10 seconds to achieve the performance he has been preparing for four years. You can't go wrong. The level of stress is incomparable with that in the world of work. Sportspeople have stress management and visualisation strategies. They're very versatile, without necessarily having realised it. It's entirely transferable.
But to share this experience, you need to know how to express yourself in public, construct a discourse and arguments... And let's go for the cliché, sportsmen and women are not always known for being great communicators.
I'll give you this figure: to have 40 athletes in my catalogue, I auditioned 200! With some, in fact, the step was too high. But those with eloquence have a real ability to get their message across. And to take you along with them in a way that has nothing to do with a ‘basic’ trainer. Preconceived ideas are quickly swept under the carpet.
The need to pass on information is very strong among sportspeople.
Apart from the financial aspect, which we'll come back to, what are the interests of those who join you?
For sportspeople, whose careers are very short, it's a way of retraining while staying in their chosen field. Sport is about passing on knowledge. And they themselves have ‘received’. This is their chance to pass on what they've learned. Talk to them about it. The need to pass on is very strong in them.
Who are your services aimed at?
I've referred them to companies, for special events such as company anniversaries or product launches. It wasn't planned, but I've also been approached by sports clubs and federations. A Luxembourg first division football club contacted me to invite Ruud Gullit as part of a team building programme.
Some of my speakers are ‘specialists’: a world karate champion who has worked extensively in the hospital sector, a rugby player with a master's degree in aeronautics who has worked as a manager in a company active in this field, to name but a few.
How do you go about choosing a speaker for your customers?
My company has 40 speakers, but some agencies in France have 200, 300... When you make a request, we give you a list of three, four or five names. And you may be given a sixth name! With me, you ask for a name, and you get it. But my role is not to sell from a catalogue. I know the sportsmen and women, I've had a lot of discussions with them, and I know which speakers will be more appropriate than others depending on the theme chosen. There are also some very versatile speakers. David Douillet is one of them. A very interesting profile because he was a top-level sportsman, but also a politician [minister of sport in France in 2011-2012]. The choice can also be made on the basis of the speaker's more or less divisive personality. You can play on that.
The more impressive their record, the more a champion will show an appetite for fees?
Very often, in fact, prices are indexed to a sportsperson's track record. But they are also based on their experience as speakers and on the way they see themselves, even if this point is not always very objective.
What is the price range?
To give you an idea, we can go from €3,000 for the less ‘known’ or younger sportsmen and women to €30,000 for others. It could be more expensive, but I'm not proposing anything like that, because too few companies are involved. The former tennis player Martina Navratilova, for example, costs over €100,000 for one day.
My real difficulty is not recruiting footballers, but female athletes.
Who are your most sought-after athletes?
Here in Luxembourg, it's... the French. I'd love to be able to 'place' a local tennis player like Gilles Muller. But there are a lot of French people in companies. David Douillet is very much in demand, and we've also had requests for Marcel Desailly.
You mentioned the former Les Bleus defender Desailly. There aren't that many footballers in your catalogue. Is there anything to deduce from this?
One of them will be joining us shortly: Paul-José M'Poku, a Congolese international striker who played for Standard Liege and Tottenham. Not the best known. But very interesting in many areas. If your question is whether footballers are less good speakers than others, the answer is no. That may have been true in the past. That may have been true in the past. But nowadays, they are much better supervised during their careers. Many even have communication coaches.
In fact, my real difficulty is not recruiting footballers, but recruiting female athletes. The will exists. But few of them put themselves forward... Perhaps that's because they have a more discreet profile. I don't know about that. There are exceptions, like the former Belgian tennis player Dominique Monami. She's excellent. You bring her to a presentation, and it's smiles and happiness for two hours.
How do you approach these sportsmen and women? The English rugby player Jonny Wilkinson, for example. He's a world champion and a huge star on the rugby planet!
It's nothing complicated. In my career as a coach, I've had a lot of contact with other coaches in the past. And with top-level physical trainers. They're jacks-of-all-trades, covering a wide range of disciplines. These people put me in touch very easily with sportspeople that they themselves knew. When I launched the company, I 'got' around twenty athletes through this channel. Then there's word of mouth. By certain athletes, by certain managers. If you have the gateway, it's not that difficult.
Finally, which champion would you like to have the direct line to convince to join you?
There's a sportsman who was perhaps unloved in his day, but who would be very interesting to hear: Ivan Lendl. For me, he revolutionised top-level tennis at the modern level. When it came to physical preparation, nobody was doing anything before him. The same goes for nutrition. He was the first player to have a dietician at his side. He had his rackets delivered to him, prepared by his own stringer... When it came to introducing elements of professionalism, he was in the vanguard. I met him once, when I was younger. He blew me away.
Read the original French version of this interview here
