Industry Conferences - Focus on Actual ROI

I learned from Scott Shaul, CRO at Execvision, that for every hour you are working in Business Development - you need to assign a dollar value. With that dollar value, you need to then be honest about the activities you are performing.

How does that apply to Industry Conferences?

When planning your strategy for a conference there's two things to consider - What you CAN be doing at the conference vs. What you SHOULD be doing.

At the conference, you can walk in catch up with a couple points of contact within the government, find your "partners" or ones you've talked to before to see if they have any new opportunities that they will hand you and you can attend the information sessions to learn about "trends" so you can share it with your team when you return. Suddenly, it will be the end of the week, you will be exhausted from the event and you will head back.

What you SHOULD do is - prospect the event, meaning evaluate who is attending a month in advance and send introductory messages. Introductory messages can have a low response rate - but they will make a cold introduction warmer when you meet them at the conference.

Identify the key Decision Makers that you need to meet with regarding your capabilities and how it supports their overall program mission. Ensure those people are actually Decision Makers or End Users of what you are proposing, meeting just to meet is an empty activity.

Identify new partners that can complement what you are doing – hoping a company brings you work is the furthest thing from a successful strategy. Just like the government enjoys a deep network of suppliers, you should also work to deepen your partner network and enter them into an outreach cadence that gets you closer to winning work. When looking for partners, ask yourself “Are these people really going to get me closer to winning more work or are they just really nice and know the same people as I do?”. If they are in the second category – hit them up for dinner when they are in town, the conference time shouldn’t be used for them.

Treat the information sessions as a qualification/discovery meeting – identify your potential customer's challenges in the information they are sharing – work to map that back to your capabilities. If the information session doesn’t pertain to your offering or isn't relevant – re-purpose the time to meet with someone or start mapping the challenges you have identified into talk tracks and outreach campaigns.

Now isn't the time to attend a session that "sounds really interesting". Usually, slide decks or recaps are provided afterwards, read them on the trip home.

If this feels like a grind - it is. Your company is investing in you and this conference and expects an outcome. You should treat the investment as if you are investing the money yourself.

Attending an event to catch up with your buddies and coming out without a fuller pipeline is a sunken cost and will be harder to justify down the road.

Additionally - while prospecting the event, you may find that the people you want to meet with are not attending. Many times, just because the event has big companies attending and mentions your capabilities - it may not be worth your time. Save the cost and find an event that they will be attending. Your leadership will appreciate that you are maximizing your time and spending it in areas that will bring value to the business.

Your time is valuable, Industry conferences are valuable – but both lose value if you don’t maximize them and bring results to your team. 

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Josh Cramer is the Director of Business Development at Key Solutions, a Washington D.C. based consulting firm that helps companies better position their organization for success in the public sector by providing end to end opportunity life-cycle support.

For an in-depth guide on targeting the public sector and setting your team up for success, access the KSI Advantage Capture and Proposal guide here.

To learn more about how our team can help you win your next bid visit aockeysolutions.com or follow us on LinkedIn.