Event Success Criteria

With Dreamforce right around the corner, you are probably thinking about how to best prepare yourself. Depending on your role, success criteria may take on different forms. For a salesperson, marketer, or bizdev professional at an early stage organization, you will likely be looking to qualify leads and also generate wider interest in your product.

Prep work! (3-5 weeks before the event date)

• Research and target highest quality prospects ahead of the event. You should look to uncover prospect attendee data through data vendors or and can often fiscraping event websites. These lists will not be all encompassing so you can and should target additional prospects you expect to attend based on their focus and location.
• Once you've amassed a prospect attendee list (including additional high quality prospects you think may attend who have not been confirmed on a list) come up with a messaging campaign to kick off. Think about combining sales automation tools (Outreach.io) with social (Inmail) and finally phone calls for your highest value prospects.
• Book as many high quality meetings in advance as possible! This can and should be supplemented with outbounding efforts at the show.

Starting the conversation.

• Come up with a game plan when canvassing a vendor floor show map. To make it easy on yourself for a larger show you should think about preparing a print out sorted by chronological booth order and one alpha numeric so that you can quickly reference booth location and key facts on the fly. (This will save you time in referencing basic facts, history, and talking points which can be tougher to navigate through on your mobile device if you're planning to hit a number of accounts.)
• Have context on accounts and prospects when you start conversations. Think about targeting speakers and other interesting show attendees who may not be at booths but know what you'd like to get across so that you can be impactful in your dialogue. Know the context!

Goals and follow up.

• Event ROI can be tied to pipeline closed, but start with something immediately measurable. Give yourself a goal, such as having substantial conversation with at least 5 high quality prospects. 
• Follow up!!!! Then follow up some more if you don't get a response.

Additional tips.

• Don't just speak at people. Have a conversation. Ask questions. Jot down takeaways so that you can reference the context later.
• Have a short, impactful value statement down. Keep it simple enough that people will understand what you're saying. Leave out acronyms and other terms only your employees know.
• Be prepared to answer questions around your organization, the product, competitor landscape, your customer's businesses and pain points, relevant logos and case studies. Make the conversation relevant to whomever you're speaking with!

Good luck!

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Natalie has attended numerous shows, expos, and networking events in her career across various industry verticals. She has created both a large network and qualified pipeline on the back of those efforts.

#businessdevelopment #conferences #tradeshows #salesoutbounding #outsidesales