Getting the most out of Dreamforce (or any networking event)

Most of you who follow me know that Salesforce.com is my largest clients and the majority of my clients are in the SaaS industry. With that, Dreamforce is obviously the biggest event of the year for me and where I can connect with a ton of my prospects and clients face to face. In order for me to get the most out of my time there I need to have a solid game plan for before, during and after the event. I’ve gone before without a plan and come home feeling like I could have gotten a lot more out of it than I did and I hate that feeling of wasted opportunity. Since a lot of this is transferable to getting the most out of any event I thought I would share a few ideas.

Develop your hit list:

I keep a spreadsheet open on my desktop as I go through my daily activities and every time I come across a client or prospect I think would be valuable for me to meet up with I put them on the list and include the following info: Company, Full Name, E-mail Address, Cell Phone, Notes/Talking points, and Rating. In the ‘Rating’ column I rank them 1 (must meet), 2 (should meet) or 3 (be nice to meet).   For the one’s I have rated as a 1, I also go on their Linkedin profile and take their profile picture and put it next to their name on the spreadsheet. I have this all logged in Salesforce and use the Salesforce1 mobile platform along with the Linkedin App but the reason I also do this on a spreadsheet and print it out is because I’ve always had issues with internet access during Dremaforce and many times can’t access the info fast enough for it to matter. By printing out the spreadsheet and having it in my back pocket for reference I can react faster when needed.

Map out the conference room floor

If you go to the https://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF15/ you’ll find a list of all the vendors who will be on the Expo floor. Go through and highlight all the ones you want to meet with and then when you get to Dreamforce get the map of the expo floor and find out where all the clients you want to meet are and circle them. Without mapping this out ahead of time you end up wandering aimlessly through the maze of booths and tend to waste a lot of time. You can use the same 1, 2, 3 rating system for the booths you want to visit. Make sure you do your homework on the priority ones and know what you want to accomplish or who you want to meet at each booth.

Segment your week

Dreamforce is a 4 day event. I recommend segmenting each day and focusing on one type of activity for each day as much as possible. For example, try to book all client meetings one day, work the expo floor and booths on another, focus on networking and finding new business on another, etc. Always allow for flexibility but try to stay focused as much as possible.

Set goals

Why are you going? What are you looking to get accomplished? Make sure you sit down and set SMART goals for the conference as a whole and for each day. How many people do you want to meet at the event? How many meetings do you want to set up for afterwards? What do you want to learn? Without goals we can easily fool ourselves thinking we had a great day of activity but nothing really gets accomplished.

Know what you can/can’t accomplish at an event like this

There will be over 150,000 people at Dreamforce this year. It’s complete mayhem for the most part. The likelihood of you getting any more than a few minutes of someone’s attention is slim and the likelihood of them remembering you is even slimmer. With this, realize you’re not going to be able to sell them anything other than a potential next step. My recommendation is to follow the fundamental process of Sales AIDA (Theories of Selling ) and realize all you should do is focus on getting someone’s Attention and earning their Interest and then try to schedule a follow up call next week. I make sure I have my “pitch” down so when someone asks me what I do I can quickly qualify them, say something that is relevant and focuses on getting their attention, engage in a conversation and then close them on meeting with me after Dreamforce. I keep my smartphone handy and bring it out after I can tell someone is interested and ask them to take out theirs so I can send them an invite for next week.   Here’s the way it works:

Them: What do you do?

Me: Happy to tell you, let me ask a few quick questions before I do so I can make it relevant to you. What kind of company do you work for, how many employees/sales reps and what’s your role?

Them: VP of Sales, SaaS company, 100 Sales reps

Me: For VPs of Sales in the SaaS industry I work with them and their teams on building a prospecting engine with techniques that drive a 20% response rate executives in their target accounts.

Them: How do you do that?

Me: We focus on always having a reason to reach out to someone through simple research and persona based messaging while developing a structure that allows for split testing of different approaches to see what works and what doesn’t.

Them: Interesting, tell me more.

Me: Actually, now that I got your Attention and know you’re Interested, why don’t we take a step back and schedule some time next week to talk in more detail since it’s tough to focus here with everything going on. Do you have your smartphone on you? What’s your schedule look like next week?

There is a lot more you can do to prepare for an event like Dreamforce but I don’t want to write a book so I’m going to stop there. If you see me on the floor feel free to grab me but make sure you know why you want to talk, what you want to accomplish by connecting and what the next steps are because I’ll be moving fast and won’t have time to touch base or check in.

Make it happen!