Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like IT Management, Innovation, and Leadership, with an Entrepreneurial mindset. My goal is to help you navigate the IT corporate landscape. Make better decisions, create awareness, and share real-world stories.
Once in a while, a big networking event comes up, and we are asked to travel for a business fair or conference. I’ve put together some quick tips to help you prepare before heading to a business conference and get the absolute most out of it.
Conferences are more than just checking out new stuff the industry has to offer. It is mostly a business networking event, and anyone in a leadership role needs to prepare beforehand to capitalize on it.
It’s also a great way to assess where the industry is headed and which players have new offers or solutions for different areas. The conferences is great to have glimpse of what is in the pipeline for certain products, or even try to influence some decisions.
Every conference tends to have a website (and sometimes an app) with information related to the participants and booth locations. This is key information to have while preparing yourself for the event. Keep this information in your favourites for quick reference.
Schedule Meetings With Existing Partners
The first thing is to check which of your business partners (be they current or previous vendors or clients) are attending the conference. If some are indeed present, the idea is to schedule a follow-up meeting with some of them on-site. Agree on the day and hour to meet (short meetings: 30 min).
Start by making a list of existing partners that will attend and prioritize them into groups, so you can plan which ones are mandatory or very useful to see, and which ones fall into the “nice to meet if available” category.
Start scheduling the meetings with the priority ones. Do this in advance, because a relatively large number of people plan these conferences well ahead of time.
The advantage of these conferences, is that you could reach out to key decision-making staff who also be attending. If you plan to negotiate better deals, or have some contract conditions reviewed, you can use these conferences to access higher-level decision-makers in one-to-one conversations.
If you need to prepare the layout of a new project and you need the buy-in of key external stakeholders, accessing these top decision-makers to understand their views and concerns could help you paint a clear picture of how to move forward with your initiatives.
For example, just before starting contract negotiations with a vendor, I got the CEO and the CTO of the company in a conference, to agree to add some extra services almost free of charge. Could this have been achieved with the sales rep? Maybe, but by accessing the CEO and the CTO directly, I got to share my views and arguments, and have my green light right away.
Bonus tip: While scheduling the meetings, depending on the size of the conference, especially the big ones, try to schedule meetings in the same hall close to each other.
For example, if you have two partners in hall A and one partner in hall C, try to schedule meetings in hall A within the same timeframe (let’s say in the same morning). This avoids having to do walk back and forth just to meet with people.
Schedule Meetings With Potential Future Partners
With existing partners listed and prioritized, have a look at which other companies will be present at the conference. Again, the conference website is a golden resource for this.
This part might need extra effort on your side to understand what each company does and whether it is relevant to your activity. The goal is to understand the company’s potential for existing and future projects.
Once you have a shortlist of potential companies, prioritize them as well.
Reach out to your potential vendors or clients by introducing yourself and saying that you would like to schedule a meeting at their booth. The better you present yourself with practical use cases, the bigger the chance of getting access to more senior staff.
The important part is that you come out of these sessions with a clear idea of the product, technical landscape, drawbacks, advantages, and possible paths to do business together.
This will leverage your solutions heavily. Especially if you do a lot of procurement projects. Conferences can be a great way to quickly assess a set of different vendors for a project the company might have in the pipeline.
Weeks of discovery could be done in a few days.
Bonus tip: You might have already booked some meetings in different halls earlier. Try to group meetings with future partners within the same timeframe and location as well.
For example, schedule as much as possible in Hall A for the morning, and Hall B in the afternoon. This is more important than it sounds, believe me.
Schedule Your Meetings Wisely
As you have noticed by now, a successful conference is one where you get to make a lot of touchpoints with different companies. Therefore, you need to be smart when scheduling these meetings.
For example, if you schedule a meeting right at opening hours, you are almost guaranteed to be late. You will lose time getting your bearings at the venue, figuring out the map, and learning how to move between halls.
If you are late to one meeting, that delay will likely cascade into every other meeting that follows.
Avoid scheduling meetings very early in the morning, especially right when the doors open. Create buffers between blocks of meetings to give yourself breathing room.
Once, for example, I lost an entire hour just trying to find a booth at a venue. Imagine if I had booked meetings back-to-back. It would have cascaded into being late for every single meeting that day.
Also, give yourself some downtime to rest and simply walk around the venue and ask around about the different products that might have flown under your radar.
If your networking is going well, you will probably have events in the evening too. So do yourself a favor: be realistic, and avoid putting critical meetings right at 9:00 AM.
Dress Code Is Somewhat Important
At international conferences, there is a mix of different cultures and etiquette rules. So, just play it safe when it comes to dress code. You don’t need a tie, but at least dress business casual. The T-shirt cool CTO is the wrong vibe here.
An important piece of advice: bring comfortable shoes.
If the conference is big, walking for multiple days will kill your feet. The last thing you want is an injury.
In your luggage, bring some emergency supplies in case you need to protect your feet for the days ahead. Once your feet start hurting, the rest of the conference can quickly turn into hell. Comfortable shoes are essential, so come prepared.
Put some effort into your appearance and dress code. Remember that this is an opportunity to meet people and create business connections. First impressions stick.
Act Like You’ve Known Them for Years
If you are not a salesperson, or you struggle to create rapport or a connection with little to no interaction, here is a piece of advice: just fake that you have known those people for years.
Be kind, try to crack a few jokes, and try to have a good time yourself as well.
Everyone is playing a game and, in some cases, also putting on a show and projecting an image of being easy-to-reach kind of people. Just do the same.
If you notice, many of those connections have barely (if ever) met before. In some cases, it’s all a show.
Don’t skip the after-hours.
Ask around if they know of any happy hour, or if someone has a company event somewhere in the city where clients or vendors are invited.
It is not uncommon to have get-togethers after hours. You might even get invited. These informal events are great to get insights, information, and views that would otherwise be difficult to get.
Getting the branded pens and business cards is simply the way to start. A seasoned leader uses the conference as a way to facilitate access to other networking channels. For example, a private dinner with senior management from vendors or clients.
There is a lot of effort in these conferences, and you might get home on the plane exhausted. Well, that means you achieved your goal. You know that you won the conference if you get away with tools, contacts, and information that you can actually use.
Bonus tip: Find good coffee places around and in the venue. After 2–3 days, you might need extra boosts to keep going.
It has been a wild ride since I published the first article on the SoW. Exchanging views with you and hearing feedback on how these articles have been useful is what drives my motivation to write. Leave a comment, subscribe to the SoW, and be part of the community.
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Cheers,
Artur