Are live events dead?

Some people say they are.

Here's the honest truth: Live events aren’t dead at all. In fact, face-to-face connection has never been more important for technology consultants.

It all comes down to one thing–the trust transfer.

The trust transfer is part of my methodology for building trust with real humans across all facets of brand and marketing–it’s basically this:

Trust is created between people – human to human, not business to business.

Live events can literally be an infusion of trust, straight to the main line of your potential biggest clients simply because you’re there, in the flesh, smiling, drinking–the best place to transfer a little trust.

But...

If you get live events wrong you’ll not only be wasting a big chunk of your marketing budget…you’ll be wasting the time of lots of people from your team and decent humans attending the event.

This happens more often than not, especially amongst technology consultants who over-think the whole strategy and aren't sure where to start with live events.

This leaves marketing, product, and sales teams with mixed feelings on live events. Money gets wasted, little value is seen, and all you end up with is a bag full of your competitor's SWAG and a mild hangover.

As one client put it, “They feel like a lose-lose. If you do them, you’re most likely wasting money…if you don’t do them, you look dumb.”

I’m here to make sure you never look dumb.

And to help me do that, I'm calling in a little help from our good friend,

Here are three Scott Stapps you can take to win at live events and not look dumb!

Enjoy.

Stapp 1

Focus on the right things

1. Don't focus on badge scans, focus on opportunities. Just because you get 25 people at the lunch tables to give you a badge scan doesn’t mean they are all leads or even ready to buy!
2. Know your ICP and target accounts before going. Make sure your team is all aligned around the role your business plays in the story of helping this ICP get what they want.
3. Don’t give away cool stuff to just anyone. Have a plan to give value to people you connect with who are either your best clients, or people you consider a great potential fit to work with. Invite them to collaborate on content, give them your best/personalized merch, etc. Be kind and engaging with everyone, but focus on making meaningful connections with the right people, not anyone with a heartbeat and a lanyard.

Stapp 2

Be Memorable?

1. Matching wardrobes or memorable color combos for your team could seem weird, but if you pull it off people will NOT forget you. Do something team wide that stands out but leaves a memorable impression when people see you together. Most consultants wear suits and ties and the whole showroom floor ends up looking like a see of black or blue blazers. Mix it up. Put your whole team in green hoodies or something coordinated with your brand's accent color.
2. Stick to one repeatable message! Depending on the event, this should be your core brand promise. Put it on your signage, banners, and booth display and equip your team to easily explain the value and meaning behind it. Don’t give people too many things about you to remember. Your brand promise or tagline should be amazing enough to do this on its own. You can get into the nuances of what you do and who you are in the 1:1 conversations or break out sessions you lead.
3. Break the rules. Get weird. We talk about this alot but the tech partners who do things outside the status quo end up making a bigger splash than those who play it safe. One of our clients gave away keys in a room drop that may or may not unlock a box at their booth with a huge prize inside. They had people lined up at their booth the next day to see if their key was a winner. They got tons of leads, made some friends, and people at the event came up to them in droves to tell them how cool their idea was.

Stapp 3

Merge humanity with technology for a winning follow up

(Remember, nobody leaves a live event hoping to be part of a funnel or sales sequence. They are humans with feelings and lives.)?

1. Don’t look for sales, look for problems.?

Make sure your team is ready to ask real questions and help uncover problems people are having. If you can get to a problem, you can help them fix it and when you help someone fix a problem immediate trust is created. These are the people you want to put into your CRM or follow up sequence.

2. Follow up like a human, not a sales robot.

• Send your emails from the person they interacted with at the event.
• Empower practice leads to not just send contact info they get into a database, but to reach out personally. Recall conversations and thank them for connecting.
• Build relationships, don’t ask for a follow up right away! Trust = Sales.

According to the American Marketing Association, “the sender name is another chance to be human,” and when emails are updated to be sent from a real-life human inside the company instead of the business name, they saw an “immediate?20% increase in open rates.”

3. Merge humanity with technology for a winning follow up

• Keep your follow up campaign value-led. Ideally you're putting people into a content engine that already exists. Have a built out content engine that’s super value focused and use tools like Outreach.io or Hubspot to automate and streamline this.
• Pre-plan follow up events that keep the conversation / education going. You can have this built into the campaign so it’s all part of the automation but still feels human.
• Use conversations you have with them to inform your content for all of the above.?

*Bonus Stapp: Have fun! If you're just trying to "sell" the whole time you're going to feel stressed.

You didn't sign up to be away from your family for days at a time just to be miserable. Make the most out of it. Help people. Say hi to the workers who bring out the food. Buy someone a drink or meal who might not be a warm lead. Hold the door for people. Work hard! Get the most out of the experience whether you're just attending or hosting. Be a good human and enjoy yourself!

Live events are alive and well (pun intended) and they don't have to feel like guess work.

There’s so much more you can do that will yield tons of trust and engagement. If you want to elevate your brand above others at these events and really amplify who you are to the buyers who need you, these three (Stapps) are a great place to start!

1. Focus on the right things
2. Be memorable
3. Merge humanity with technology for a winning follow up

And when in doubt... just ask yourself what Scott Stapp would do at a massive enterprise technology event . . .

Cool news

(My team and I are going to be at #knowledge23 for ServiceNow's biggest event of the year! Can't wait to see the cool things all the partners and sponsors come up with to make it a winning event for everyone! We're also doing our ServiceNow ecosystem-wide survey again to better equip partners, users, and reps and I'd love for you to participate in the survey here.)

Thanks guys!