Are you attending an event to promote your consultancy this summer? Here’s what you need to know…

Now that things are finally returning to normal, it’s great to see that events and exhibitions are back in full swing.?

Attending an industry event is a good way to promote your HR consultancy - it’s essentially an ‘environment’ filled with potential clients. That said, it can also be a bit of a gamble because you never really know who is going to turn up.?

Before committing to attend or exhibit at an event, it’s important to weigh up whether it’s the right one for you. Especially if you have to pay to attend.?

And then you need to consider how you’re going to make it worth your time.?

Here are my tips on how to generate as many sales as possible from an event:

1. Decide whether it’s worth your time/money to attend

This boils down to what you want to achieve as a business - the type of client you’re aiming to attract, and the type of work you want.

Does this event and its attendees align with your business goals and target market? Or is it a distraction?

Have a critical look at the website for this event and ask yourself some questions:

• What kind of event is it?
• Who is likely to attend?
• Is it a local/county show? If you want to work with local businesses, that’s great. But if your target client is a national manufacturer, a local event is probably not the right place for you
• See if you can find out who else will be exhibiting, or speak to people who’ve exhibited in previous years
• If you decide to exhibit, get hold of a floor plan and try to figure out which areas will have the most footfall. For example, is there a lecture everyone is likely to attend or an area everyone will go to for lunch? These high traffic corridors are where you want to have your stand

2. What is your POA for the event?

Oh, I’ll just go along, drink the free coffee, hand out some freebies and chat to some people…

Sound familiar? It’s nice to chat to people and drink coffee, but that’s not going to be the best use of your time.?

This is why you need to have a long term approach to ensure you get the most possible bang for your buck.?

3. Think long term

Remember that only a small number of the attendees are likely to have an HR challenge they need help with, at that exact moment in time.?

If you go in thinking how many clients can I pick up at this event it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. In that room / field of hundreds of people, there may be only two or three who have a problem you can help with there and then.

Instead, go in with the attitude of how many people can I connect with, and market to in the future - the long term approach

4. Follow this 3-step strategy?

This is my three-step strategy for growing your consultancy. It works for many different situations, including events:

1. Grow your audience
2. Build a relationship
3. Commercialise the relationship

Essentially your next event should become a list building exercise for you. Ask yourself "how many people I can take home from that event?"

When you approach an event in this way, you’re less concerned with chatting and freebies, and more interested in ensuring you can add people to your list so that you can contact them in the future.

If you have a lead magnet, this will work brilliantly to help you get people onto your list.

Instead of the usual, boring "And where have you travelled from today?" or "What do you do?" You can begin your conversation with "Hey, would you like a free copy of my book/HR guide/other helpful thing?" or "Would you like to enter this competition?"

Your competition prize could be a free HR audit or free contract/policies. Remember that your lead magnet or competition prize should be relevant to the type of client you’re looking to attract, and to the event you’re both attending.

This way you can hand them a tablet with your landing page open on it, they can enter their details and get your lead magnet emailed directly to them - and you can both move on and enjoy the event rather than making painful small talk while other potential prospects keep walking by.

I’m not saying you should never enter into conversation with anyone whilst at an event - but don’t let that suck up all your time; that’s not what you’re there for.

A real-life example

I’ve been to so many events before where the exhibitors around us would spend up to ￡20k on their stands. They had amazing graphics and details; some of them looked more like small apartments.?

Then my team would be next to them, literally using only side panels to mark out the area of our stand.?

We would stand in the middle of our area and challenge ourselves to speak to as many people as possible as they passed by.??

We had one simple opening question that was relevant to the service we were offering. Something along the lines of "Hi, are you the owner of an XYZ business?" They would either answer yes or no - and we immediately knew whether they were our target clients or not.

If the answer was yes we would show them a copy of our book and say "I’d love to send you a free copy of our book about XYZ…". Then we’d get them to enter their details; the book would be emailed to them and we had another person on our mailing list.

No, our stand didn’t sing or dance; we didn’t give out free branded shopping bags or boiled sweets. But we left those events with up to 2000 new people on our mailing list.

What to do after the event?

Whatever you do, don’t collect all those details and then leave people hanging. Once someone has received your free download or entered your competition, you don’t want them to forget you exist!

You need to begin marketing to them on a regular basis, providing useful insights and information that’s relevant to their needs. This way, you’re the first person they think of when they do need some help with their HR.

Don’t think about the immediate work you can pick up at an event - instead, think about how much work you might get a year later, if you use it to build your list

Attend your event with the view that you’re there to build your list, not to find the two people in the room who need your help right now.?

You’re there to add new contacts to your list, bring them home with you and begin marketing to them in the near future.