Wrap-up: Our first Convo Summit!
What if you could join a virtual event that was small, intimate, LIVE, exciting, and anchored in conversation with the intent to solve problems and find solutions? That's what our first quarterly Convo Summit was designed to do. Did we succeed? We'll have to hear from our participants on that, but we certainly learned some incredible insights that I'm excited to share here.
On February 23rd, we brought together almost 80 sales and marketing executives from across all industries (tech, healthcare, CPG, medium businesses, finance, and more!) to talk about sales and marketing data and analytics and share a virtual adventure onboard the Sharkwater research vessel in the Pacific Ocean on the hunt for sharks and other sea creatures to tag for migration tracking and research. Here's a sneak peek at the adventure:
Now, let's talk about the meat of the experience: the insights and conversations.
First, we crowdsourced. We invited our participants to join us on a Mural board and answer a few key questions. Admittedly, we've never had 72 active people on the Mural board at the same time before, this was a little overwhelming, but once we got used to the chaos, it was pure magic.
Question #1: What are your top KPIs to measure results?
Nothing earth-shattering here. Pipeline, ROI, Leads, renewals, engagement, impressions, lead source, NPS, C-Sat, new logo acquisition. But a few glimpses into organizational management with metrics like average revenue per salesperson, time spent on content, reply rate, and conversion rate by lead source.
Question #2: What story are you trying to tell with that data?
Storytelling and proof point objectives include identifying what's working and not working for budget allocation and program management, evangelizing marketing's influence on pipeline and revenue, the ROI of channel, specific reasons we may not be winning in the market, that we are effectively increasing market share, and that we need to grow our team.
Question #3: What do you wish you were measuring that you are not today?
The biggest holes in our data story seem to be multi-touch attribution, the value of event marketing, pipeline progression, brand perception, close ratio, employee engagement (especially in a remote environment), and revenue contribution by channel partner.
Question #4: What is your biggest challenge that you are still trying to figure out?
Determining how to move forward with in-person/hybrid programs, increased complexity in selling motions, getting conversations with the right people, figuring out what is driving conversion, ensuring consistency of assets, finding great sales people, using and integrating CRM systems, and data integrity.
From this crowdsourcing, we created peer-led conversations and round 1 covered these topics:
- Digital customer engagement
- Running a very small marketing team
- Salesperson development
- Managing channel partner programs
- Customer engagement outside of active buying cycles
Round 2 peer-led conversations were:
- Measuring the value of PR
- Sales funnel optimization
- Account Based Marketing
- CMO dashboard
These quarterly Convo Summits are part of our year-long research study to understand how we connect emotions evoked during shared experiences to the generation of pipeline and deal acceleration.
Feedback we received live at the event included these great quotes:
“What a great adventure to have on a Tuesday morning. Thank you for the experience and opportunity to get “out of the office and meet some amazing people.”
“Excellent session. Enjoyed interaction and the experience.”
“Energy was terrific and escape to the ocean floor was memorable with tie-in to data”
“Learning from each other has been great.”
“Yes, community! sharing what the future is going to be like is key and THIS is exactly a move towards that”
Join the Convo
Haute Dokimazo is embarking on a year-long research study to connect emotions evoked during a shared experience and their impact on pipeline and revenue generation. If you are a leader of a sales or marketing organization at a commercial or enterprise company, apply to be part of the program. Applications are being accepted for one more week.
If you are interested in being a program partner and gaining access to the research results, strategy sessions, and program insights, reach out to me at [email protected]
If you are a leader of a sales or marketing organization, apply to be part of the program! Our next summit is April 27 where our conversation topic will be Account Based Marketing and our virtual adventure will be live from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey!
Interested in helping with the research study, but not able to commit to the quarterly summits? You can register and watch the February shark adventure/experience on demand at https://convo.splashthat.com and take the post-watch survey to contribute to our research study!
In 2022, we hope to share our findings of 1) how much shared experiences impact pipeline and revenue generation, 2) which emotions need to be ignited/evoked to drive those results, and, 3) that profitable relationships are sparked by genuine connection created in this type of environment.
Liz Lathan, CMP is co-founder and CEO of Haute Dokimazo, sparking profitable relationships anchored in genuine connection through rousing shared experiences and conversations. Explore the #HugLife community for event professionals and Convo, a new year-long program for marketing and sales executives. Subscribe to our Journal of Human-Centric Marketing to get weekly content.
Haute Dokimazo is part of Haute Companies, a family of companies that believe in human connection, from events to media (podcasts, videos, and more) to direct mail to swag to entertainment talent management to strategy session facilitation. Contact Liz at [email protected]