Conference season is upon us. Companies are spending thousands to sponsor, exhibit, or attend conferences this year across all industries.

If conferences are a part of your go-to-market, you need a plan.

Conferences are expensive. ROI is tough to calculate. Most companies do it wrong and lose money or at the very least have an undefined outcome from the time and money spent.

A list of leads to follow up with? That’s not a very good outcome from thousands of dollars spent.

So how  do you get more out of your conference attendance? 

I will show you how to get $10 for every $1 you spend on conferences this year. Approach this year’s conferences with a playbook that’s proven to deliver returns.

There are no growth hacks here. A great conference outcome is really just a great plan in action. 

‍Choosing the right conferences to attend

Every year there are an infinite number of conferences to attend, or so it seems. 

Your team can’t participate in every conference that’s relevant to your business. You are limited on resources. You are limited on time. You are limited in focus. 

So how do you pick the right conferences to attend? It’s important to distinguish between the different purposes for participating in conferences. ‍

1. Attend conferences to learn. 

Attending a conference is best for continuing education or learning more about your specific skillset. For example, a VP of Marketing will attend Hubspot’s Inbound conference to get better at being a marketing executive.

When you are attending a conference, you will be among other people who have similar function. This is a great opportunity to expand your professional network and make connections that can support your personal and professional growth.

Choose conferences where the audience is filled with people who you like and respect. I’ve found that smaller conferences (under 200 attendees) foster the best personal connections and relationships. The mega-conferences, like Dreamforce, are overrun with too many people across all levelset of executive function.

Be highly curated and specific about the conferences you attend.‍

2. Exhibit/Sponsor conferences to get customers.

Sponsoring or exhibiting at a conference is one of the most effective ways to create demand for your product or business. Picking the right conference and putting the work in to make it a great show elevates your brand and positions you as an established business in your market.

The purpose of exhibiting or sponsoring a conference is to generate demand or to further existing customer relationships. Those attending the conference need to be onboard that the conference is a marketing expense that must increase sales pipeline in a material way.

Choose conferences that are a clear fit with your Ideal Customer Profile. If you don’t know which conferences to attend, ask your customers which are their favorite conferences.

Similar to attending conferences, I recommend exhibiting at conferences with a small number of attendees (less than 500). The mega-conferences are expensive and overcrowded with tire kickers and “no influence, no authority” attendees. This is not where you are going to source real pipeline

‍Getting high return with limited budget‍

Early stage companies that don’t have the budget to spend $10,000 or $20,000 on conference sponsorship can still get big returns from conference attendance.

A ticket to attend a conference is usually under $1,500. You won’t have a booth, so your brand won’t be represented on the conference floor. That’s OK. Get a ticket and attend with the intention of networking harder than anyone else at the show. You can use the following playbook to get 10x the value of the ticket price.

Pro tip: book the nicest suite you can afford at the conference hotel. Use this suite to hold meetings with customers and prospects. People are usually looking for a place offsite to meet and converse without the distraction of a showroom floor. 

‍Choosing your conference team

Once you’ve decided which conferences to attend, then you must choose who gets to attend.

Is marketing or sales responsible for coordinating and running the conference?

The answer is a little bit of both. It takes a coordinated effort from sales, marketing, and customer success to make conferences successful.

Marketing is responsible for registering with the conference. They will select the copy that describes the company, they will make sure the right logo and supporting language is used on conference materials. Marketing will design a beautiful booth and coordinate most of the pre-conference marketing outreach to the company’s customers and email list.

When the company is small, the CEO and Head of Sales are the most appropriate to attend. As you scale, I recommend sending members of the sales team over members of the marketing team. They are much more likely to drum up leads and demand at the booth and elsewhere. 

The key is to bring the people from your team that are most likely to generate value by talking with customers face-to-face. These conversations turn into relationships, which in turn become customers or referrals or references.

Your enterprise sellers must attend the conference. These are your most expensive salespeople. Getting them in-person with prospective customers is expensive, conferences allow each salesperson to meet more people in only a few days. Further, they are going to be responsible for setting the meetings and converting the pipeline to revenue. 

The highest ROI dollars are spent on getting your enterprise sellers in meetings with their key target accounts.

You can get even more reach from conferences by including your rising stars in the conference team. For example, conferences are a great way to award high-performance SDRs with attendance. They will feel larger than life getting to travel for work. They are wonderful at manning the booth while Account Executives are meeting 1:1 with customers. They bring the energy and make the trip fun!

The founder or CEO of your company may have the opportunity to be a speaker at the conference. This is a HUGE win for generating demand, and having the CEO involved in conference attendance elevates the experience for everyone: the team, the customers, the prospects, etc.

One last note, when you have key strategic accounts attending the conference, it helps to include your Head of Customer Success or the Strategic Account Manager for those accounts. Any time you can get face-to-face with your key accounts is an opportunity to strengthen the relationship.

‍The work starts long before the conference starts

The heavy-lifting for the conference starts months before the conference starts.

You can pick the right conference, set the right budget, pick the right conference team, and still fail to get positive return from the time and money spent.

Here’s the pre-conference playbook to get max ROI:

1. Get the list of attendees in advance.
   Most conferences will provide the list of attendees. Sometimes you have to pay for the list. Sometimes they will send the list after the conference is complete.
   
   What to do if you can’t get the list of attendees? If you can’t get the list in advance, call around your network to find anyone that has attended in past years. Ask them if they will share the list of attendees with you.
   
   
2. Set up two prospecting cadences for customers attending the conference.
   One for customers and one for target accounts. Send a series of personal emails to each group attending the conference. Ask to book a 1:1 meeting with them during the conference. This is an email from each person that owns the account. It is not a marketing email or from the company’s general email delivery. Make it personal.
   
   You want to fill your team’s calendar with 1:1 meetings. Set as many meetings as you can outside the conference floor. This is where the deals get made.
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3. Promote the conference to your email list.
   Highlight that you are attending the conference and encourage your readers to reach out if they are planning to attend. Highlight your booth number at the exhibit if you have one, make sure people know where to find you.
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4. Plan an VIP / Client / Prospect Dinner
   Reach out to key customers and key prospects, put a dinner together with 10 people or fewer. Choose a nice restaurant, something that is better than whatever dinner the conference has planned. Get the customers talking with the prospects. This is a great way to nurture enterprise relationships.
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5. Make a schedule and stick to it.
   Scope out the conference schedule and figure out when the booth will need to be manned. Make a schedule and send it to the team. Each team member should know where other team members are during the conference.
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6. Make a VIP List.
   Create a list of key contacts and VIPs, put their picture and a short bio in a list on PDF. Print it out (yes, really) and distribute this to the team and make sure everyone studies it. Memorize the names.
   
   Imagine walking up to a booth and the salesperson says “Hey Joe! I’m so glad you came by. Sarah told me that the two of you will be meeting this afternoon. He asked that I show you our new product release if you made it by the booth”. This makes the customer feel special and will lead to the deals.
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7. Make your booth stand out.
   Build a beautiful booth, something that catches the customers’ attention. Have an attraction, give something away through a raffle. Something under $500 like a Yeti cooler or Airpods. Collect emails and business cards then raffle the item away.

The most important part of this playbook is booking the 1:1 meetings with prospects and customers. So many companies rely on their booth to drive customer engagement. Those customers are already meeting with other vendors and competitors while you are waiting at the booth! Don’t miss your opportunity to get on the customer or prospect's conference schedule.‍

It’s showtime! What to do at the conference

You’ve put in the work and prepared for the conference. Once you are on site, it’s all about executing the plan and having some fun!

Make sure everyone on the team knows what meetings are happening and where they are happening. The conference should feel like an orchestra where every person plays their part. Everyone has rehearsed and prepared to make the most out of their time at the conference. The team is at ease, poised, ready to engage with customers and prospects with confidence.

• Use guerilla marketing tactics to drive attention to your brand:
• Mobile Billboard - Rent a van, wrap it with your company logo, offer free rides around town. Pick people up from the airport. Play fun music. Offer snacks and refreshments. Make it exciting!
• Interactive Sidewalk ads - Use a pressure washer, washable chalk, or paint to create interactive, engaging ads on the sidewalks near the conference venue.
• Pop-Up Lounge - Host a “lounge” directly outside the conference from 3p - 7p where people can post up and work with free wifi, get coffe, cocktails, use as a meeting space, etc.
• Attending the conference is not about getting leads, it’s about getting meetings. You have to schedule followup meetings at the conference. When your team is engaging with the prospect, get them to pull up their calendar on their phone and schedule a followup meeting for the next week
• If there’s downtime, let the team explore the city. This might be your 100th conference, but others from your team don’t travel as often as you. Some may even be traveling for work for the first time in their life. Look up the best pizza in town. Go see the city. Go on a tour (e.g. if you are in Chicago, go on the architectural tour). Enjoy the trip!

Pro tip: limit you and your team’s alcohol consumption. This is a work event. The customers and prospects will live it up. This is the once a year event that they look forward to. Use this to your advantage. Show them a good time, but keep your discipline. You are there to build relationships and convert prospects to customers.

Work the meetings. Work the leads.

This is where the conference turns into revenue. Once the conference is over and you have made your way back home, the path forward is simple: 

• Run all the meetings that you set up at the conference. Some people will miss their meetings or reschedule, but you should have a full calendar for 2-3 weeks following the conference. Work the pipeline. Close the deals.
• Reach out to anyone that you weren’t able to meet at the conference. Keep the email short: “Hey ____, It looks like we missed each other at [Conference Name]. I wanted to meet you and learn more about [insert personal detail about their business or about the individual]. Are you available this Thursday to connect for a phone call?”
  

Pro tip: Be careful with how you distribute leads to the reps that didn’t attend the conference. The ones who didn’t join the conference team will be frustrated when all the “good leads” go to the reps that attended the conference. The best method is to use a targeted account approach whereby each rep attending the conference has designated accounts to pursue. Any unassigned accounts are distributed to the rest of the sales team.

Pulling it all together

Conferences are a big part of the enterprise sales process. They don’t have to be a wasted marketing expense. To get the most out of the conference, you have to do the hard work preparing for the trip. The more work you do in advance, the more successful the conference will be.

Once you are at the conference, execute the plan and enjoy the show. Make sure you are booking follow up meetings on the calendar with your prospects and work the pipeline through to close.

And most importantly, have fun!

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