10 tips for successful IT partner events

In mid-September, we held the inaugural Paessler UK Partner Forum. Although we hold an annual partner conference at our HQ in Germany, to which all our international partners are invited and around 75 came this year, this was the first event of its kind in the UK.

I must admit, as a fast-growing but still relatively small IT vendor, I was nervous. Getting bums on seats is difficult – as anyone who has tried it will know. The thought of going through the organisational process and spending lots of money, only to have 3 people turn up on the day (as has happened to me before), did give me a couple of sleepless nights, I don’t mind admitting!

Anyway, as it turned out, we had a good audience who provided exclusively positive feedback, so I was delighted. Here are some things that we found worked well for us.

1)     Keep it short and sweet.

Less is more; I did a half day event only. People really don’t want to have to take a full day out of the office or stay the night for a vendor of our size. Doing an afternoon slot means they can get some stuff done in the morning or travel in peace – plus you can finish with drinks. Sessions should ideally be 30 mins, max. 45 mins, not forgetting to factor in time for questions and breaks.

2)     Choose an interesting location, with context if possible.

We went for Fulham Football Club, for several reasons. The location and staff were genuinely first class, I noticed lots of interesting parallels between our businesses and they happen to be a customer of ours, so it meant we could pay something back. Make sure you “recce” the locations in person beforehand too – unexpectedly, I had to discount what were originally the top two locations on my shortlist because, although beautiful, they weren’t suitable for what I needed on the day.

3)     Run two separate tracks, commercial and technical, to maximise attendance.

Techies don’t want to hear about sales figures and marketing collateral and sales guys won’t come to a technical event, so give both sides content that they actually want to hear. You can have everyone there for the start and the end, but make sure you split up for the main section. And remember you’ll need two separate rooms with accompanying technology!

4)     Give people a reason to get there on time.

I decided to offer lunch and do a stadium tour before the event. We started the tour at 1.15pm and were finished in perfect time to get the Forum started punctually at 2pm.

5)     Try and get a keynote speaker to maintain interest right to the end.

As they are a customer, we asked the Head of IT at Fulham FC to do a live interview/case study at the end of the afternoon, in front of our partners. I thought it would be beneficial, especially for new partners, to see how a real life customer benefitted from our software. It went down very well and people appreciated the fact we were doing the event at a customer site and using them as part of the day.

6)     Make sure your content hits the spot.

You need to be 100% sure the content you are delivering will be beneficial and relevant to your attendees’ roles, not just what you want to tell them. The commercial guys need to know how to make money from your product and they get that from real world war stories, info on what support you can give them, how to work together, what's been successful elsewhere, which industries need your product most and why, who they should target and how. Techies need in-depth information on the most important facets of the products, any "gotchas" you can warn them about, where they can get assistance etc.

7)     Use as little text in presentations as you can and tell stories.

Make use of full screen pictures or infographics, they have a major impact and enable you to speak while attendees listen. If they have to wade through a load of bullet points, they aren’t paying attention to you.

8)     Get the attendees involved, from start to finish.

As well as letting the technical track attendees vote in advance for their own content, we asked everyone, during the registration process, to tell us what they considered our main USPs to be, for example. We then published all their feedback on the day and compared this input with what we tell our customers. We also encouraged written interaction on the day. An involved audience is a more attentive audience - but don’t overdo it either.

9)     Ask for feedback – good and bad.

Ask people to answer no more than 10 questions covering location, catering, content, speakers, organisation, whether they'd come again etc. But don't do it on the day. Let them sleep on it and give their opinion online and anonymously afterwards, rather than having to hand over a piece of paper to the people they know organised it all anyway. Give them free text fields to tell you what they liked and didn't like. It is the only way to know whether your event went well and what you should change.

10) Think different.

Ask attendees, when they sign up, if anyone else at their company might like to come along, then send those people an invitation referring to the recommendation from the original attendee. Try and make even mundane things memorable, such as using something original and quirky on your registration/feedback forms. Intersperse useful information with funny stuff, such as why a Poundshop in Bournemouth was forced to close (a 99p shop opened up next door). Try and keep people amused, this generally means they stay awake.