Conference Success Part 1: 6 Pre-Conference Tips You Should Follow for Maximum Results

Welcome to The Contractor's Daughter, your go-to podcast for eliminating random acts of strategy and marketing in your highway construction business. Hello, friends. I'm your host, Jeani Ringkob. I'm a third-generation asphalt contractor and an absolute brand strategy and marketing geek.

Today we're going to talk about something that comes up a lot. As we're still trying to wrap our seasons up, we're also heading into conference season. I know my calendar is full of speaking engagements. I'm really excited to get back to the conferences where I get to interact with everybody. Pretty soon, you guys, if you haven't already started are going to be deciding which conferences you want to invest in, which ones you want to go to, send your teams to, and which ones you don't, and where are you going?

I have a lot of people always say to me, “But I'm just not sure if it's worth it. We do this one but I don't know if we should do this one. It's hard to know what the value is there.” I have business owners who say, “I feel like my teams just go on there to have a good time.” Or, “Yeah, we get there, we do stuff but it's really hard to know what we get out of it and if what we do there is actually resulting in what's happening in our business or if it has any actual impact at all.”

That's what I want to talk about. This is going to be a three-part series. We're going to first talk about what can we do in this episode prior to the conference starting, how do we really make sure that we're making the right choices or preparing right to get the most out of it?

The next two episodes, we're going to talk about what we can do at the conference to make sure that we're getting the most out of the time and the investment that was there. Lastly, what do we do after that conference when we come home and we're tired and we have a big stack of emails and things waiting for us. In a month or so, we're just thinking, “I didn't really follow up and do all the things I thought I would do. I'm not even sure what those things were now or where are my notes from that.”

What I want to do is give you a really, really proven, concise, simple-to-follow system and actual resources to help you decide what's worth it for you, what are you trying to get out of it, how are you going to measure those results, and we're just going to make it super simple.

At every single phase, you're going to know that it's worth it. I believe that this system can actually 10x your investment for going to any conference in terms of getting you results and ROI. I love to measure results. We're going to talk about, at the different points in this, what are some things that we can measure and track along the way?

If you're a business owner, you're a sales manager, or you're the head of marketing, you want to know, “How does this impact the bottom line?” Let's dive right in. Also, just so you know, I'm going to be providing a link in the show notes and giving you a link here at the end because we're actually going to do a workshop where we walk through all three of these together.

If you want to come, if you have key members of your team that you think need to be sitting on this, they can actually come and workshop out what their conference plan should be. We're going to be giving checklists for every single phase and we're actually going to be giving a list of my favorite resources, things that you can use to delegate, automate, streamline, and make the process easier than ever to ensure that you can 10x those results and measure those results.

Let's dive right in today. We're going to talk about what do we do before we get there? How much intention are we putting into getting the most out of our conferences? How do we know if it's worth our time, if it's worth our sales team's time, if there are other operation managers or crew personnel that we should be sending there? How are we going to measure results and know?

Well, why do we go? Well, I believe, like I said, we can 10x our return on this on this experience by applying some thoughtful strategy to the next conference. Strategy really means that there are tactics on one side, which is great. We all have to do tactics. We do tactics every single day.

But the tactics that we deploy should be dictated by a strategy we have in place. I'm going to give you a process talking today about the front side pre-conference to help you decide how do you prepare for that and which tactics on the pre-side of a conference do you need to deploy.

Let's break this into this first phase. We're going to set some goals and we're going to talk about metrics that we can measure along the way. Here's the first tip that I want to give you today, and I have six tips today based on pre-conference. Set goals. When you're looking at those conferences that you're going to go to, you may have slightly different goals for different types of conferences, you may have different people that you need to send to different types of conferences based on the education that's available to potential partners or prospects that are going to be there, so make sure you review that stuff and you've set some goals. One of those things needs to be “Who do I need to send to this particular conference?”

Here are some examples and some ideas about goals. It could be capturing X number of leads, it could be moving X number of prospects one further step or even two further steps down the prospect pipeline, and shortening that sales cycle, because you're actually in person at an event together, which can't always be accomplished every day.

Sometimes we're just phone calls, text messages, emails, this is face-to-face time and it can move a prospect down that pipeline. Also uncovering new opportunities, new leads, but not just for leads, also for partners, affiliates, suppliers. I think that conferences in the asphalt industry, heavy highway industry, our conferences are great for finding opportunities and uncovering conversations that we didn't even know were opportunities with partners and associates.

Also, when we think about the education side, maybe it's learning about a specific topic. Maybe you have some supervisors that you think need to sharpen up their supervisory or management skills. Maybe there's something that HR can work on in terms of workforce development or retention in your business. Maybe there's something for your sales force or your marketing team that they can get educated on.

Always plan those speakers and maybe incorporate that into “Is that part of your goals?” What education do you want them to consume while they’re there, not just who are they going to connect with.

When you're thinking about these goals, that's going to move us on to our next point, number two, and that's identify and target who: prospects, partners, and affiliates. Here's what I want you to do, and we're going to actually work on this in the workshop and we're going to give you some tools and templates that you can use to go really deep into this part.

I'm going to tell you a little bit of a story first. For a while for about 10 years, I took a hiatus from the industry. While I was on this hiatus, I was working with my husband in our commodities business, which is an agricultural business. We did fertilizer, industrial ingredients, DEF, stuff like that, but it was similar. We have some of the same suppliers and partners in the industry.

I've worked for Koch Industries, they were a partner and a customer of ours in that business. It's a small world. But their approach to conferences in the industry was really eye-opening for me. At first, I thought it was crazy but the more I watched it happen, I was like, “This is brilliant.”

They don't have as many booths set up as a lot of their conferences, but what they do is they book suites and they have somebody that was in charge of for months leading up to the conference building out their entire sales and marketing teams schedule at that conference, and about every 40 to 50 minutes, they were in a new meeting with a partner, a prospect, a potential affiliate, maybe somebody that they never did anything with in the industry, but they wanted to just meet with them and learn about their business.

For three days straight, they would have like 70 meetings in three days and they would have a folder, a binder, and a digital schedule. They would go and they would have like 10 minutes in between all of these and they're either going to somebody's suite or they're coming into somebody's suite.

They have like an agenda for their meeting, at least, at our company we did, and they unearth so many opportunities. Then after, they could really come back and they had it all documented because they had a binder that every single rep that was there for the company carried with them and made all of their notes in it so that they could be transcribed by somebody else for themselves later and they could really follow up on that.

But that starts with, if we think about that story, and what I learned from that, when we're looking at that pre-conference stage, you need to start a couple of months before that conference. You can delegate this to somebody on your team, finding people in your industry through LinkedIn or Facebook that are going to be there or if they're in your contact database already, reaching out to those people that you think might be interesting to meet with, making sure you're connected with them, and actually asking for specific meeting times and letting them know even if you know in advance what it is you want to talk about.

It's more intentional. It makes the time that we spend there more intentional. I don't know that you need to go as far as they went in the example that I shared but I think in terms of leveraging your time, it's incredibly important and to be very intentional about those high-priority contacts.

If you think about the strategy of a Dream 100 prospect list, for every single conference, depending on how many people you're going to be sending, how many resources you have there, how long the conference is, I think that each one of the people that you're sending there should probably have at least a dream 10 list, who are the top dream 10 people they know that they would love to meet with, whether it's a prospect that they want to get closer to closing or increasing that customer lifetime value by doing more work with them, educating them about different product, a potential affiliate or partner, setting a meeting in advance, and having that in your calendar, having notes about what your intentions are because when we get there we, can get overwhelmed, we can get confused, and we can forget, “What did I want to meet with this person about?”

Do that homework in advance. A lot of times, we can outsource this to some folks inside of our office or even get a part-time virtual assistant to help your team prepare for this stuff, set up the meetings, get them in their calendars, and find a location.

Let's talk about point number three. That is prepare a great piece of core content to take with you. If you're having a booth or not, you're probably thinking about preparing marketing material. It’s handouts, it’s promotional products, it's a video that's on the TV, whatever it is.

But even if you don't have a booth, you should really make a core piece of content. When I say core piece of content, this is something that we use with my clients all the time and it's either produced on a weekly basis or monthly basis based on the strategy that they're implementing in their sales and their marketing and it's something that they can create blog posts out of, they can increase their SEO with, they can create tons of social media content out of.

It's actually really relevant and stuff that their audience wants to consume before they actually make decisions. It's also stuff that the sales team can take with them and implement on their side of stuff. Everything that we create in marketing should also have a purpose that can be leveraged over on the sales side.

This is a really great example. Some examples of this are case studies, infographics, videos. You can even share videos via your phone super easy with QR codes these days. When you're having a conversation, you could say, “Hey, let me just share this piece of information with you. You mentioned that you are interested in comparing X to Y, you're trying to make a decision about this or this, and I have some information that I think would be really helpful. I have a video, I have a case study,” whatever it is that you have.

You might even have a few of these, a quick infographic it's a really great resource because people are so bombarded, and sometimes they don't have the time to read something completely so what you can do is you can have an infographic that really lets them visually see something that's super helpful and clarifying and comes from the messaging you know you need to be moving on with them.

An example even deeper on this is recently, we created an infographic for a client that was going to a specific industry event. We tailored it for the audience. We actually customized it for that, but it was something that we could actually slightly customize because when they go to different conferences, they might be in the airport industry, they might be in the highway industry, they might be in a more private sector industry, and rail industry, all of the commercial industries so we can actually tailor it just to give it a little bit of a personal touch.

But it really was a core piece, the overall thing was very simple. It was the process of what is it to work with this company. When we talk about messaging, when I do strategy work with people, one of the things we talk about is they want it to be easy. They want to know “How do I work with you?”

Sometimes that can be a barrier for people moving across the sales cycle as quick as we want them to is we don't stop and tell them how to get started. It was a really great simple infographic. Not too much reading, but it answered one of those primary pain points of “You’re very interesting but what would this look like if we took another step?”

That's a really great idea. If you have a trademark process or something that's complicated, simplify it with an infographic. That can be a great thing. But prepare that in advance before your conference.

Another thing that you might want to do as you're preparing for the conference, and we're talking about it from that content angle, is you might want to think about is there something I want to invite people to or a core piece of content, an event, or an educational opportunity, or maybe you're going to say, “Come in,” and give them a briefing educating them about something that they are very concerned about or interested in, in their industry, something you know you're going to get lots of questions on, you could actually prepare that in advance.

While you're at the event, you can be inviting them to that, which automatically puts you into taking them quicker down that pipeline. If that's something you want to explore, you would want to also prepare that in advance.

Another thing you can do is you can wait to the conference and see what kind of questions you're getting and use that as a follow-up tactic. We'll talk a little bit more about that when we talk about what to do at the conference as a tactic.

Let's talk about point number four. Most of the time, they have an app that you can download. Always download the app and don't wait until you get there. A lot of times, when we download this app, there are tons of valuable information that is underutilized in there.

Usually, you have all the attendees in there. There is no other place. I actually give access to this to my assistant most of the time and they start working on making sure that on LinkedIn, I'm in contact with everybody that's at the event or it might give them some criteria as to what types of contact are in there I want to make sure that I'm contacted with, if I'm not.

That's where you can also figure out if there's something that you're not aware of that you may find that you would like to meet with, and it's a great way to reach out with them. At least, you have that common ground, “Hey, we're both on the app. We're both attending the event. I found your profile. Interesting. I saw that you do X, Y, and Z. I'd love to talk to you more about that.”

Download the app. There are tons of great information on there. If there are vendors that you want to target or make sure that you see, also when we go back to figuring out what education do you want your team to be getting, that's a really quick way. A lot of times, for big conferences like CONEXPO, World of Asphalt, some of those, you have to sign up in advance for some of the popular topics. You just can't get into if you just show up at the door. Make sure that you're downloading that. It's a great resource that's really underutilized.

Here is tip number five. This is a potential, you don't have to do this, but I find that if you really want to level up your game, and a lot of us are doing this stuff anyway, we're planning dinners and events outside there, but really if you're not already doing that, or if you are, think about how you're doing, but plan events outside of the conference ahead of time.

It's a really great way to really solidify relationships with your prospects and your partners ahead of time. It's a great way to also give extra value to those same people by introducing them to other people in your network. That's something that we often underrate is how much people want to be connected and introduced to other people.

Definitely think about that. It doesn't always have to be at dinner. It could be breakfast, it could be lunch, it could be dinners. It could be actual workshops if you have something really valuable information to educate people. I definitely have lots of opinions about the type of education you should be offering people but that's something for another day.

But if you want to think about that, that can be really powerful. It can also create a lot of authority, it can create a lot of buzz around your brand because you can do things like offer limited access, and you can reach out, it gives you an excuse to reach out to some of your people in advance and say, “Hey, we're doing this event. It's limited access, but we wanted to offer it to you first,” or something like that. That's something that you can do to really create some buzz around it as well.

Also, some people say, “Hey, you have to come over to our booth to get your pass to this event that we're having this night.” All kinds of ways that you leverage that to really solidify and move relationships beyond just that quick, loud, overwhelming floor time at the conference and into a more personal intimate setting.

Last but not least, of course, a housekeeping thing I would say is do your out-of-office reply. It's a great way to, first off, make sure when you get back, you're not overwhelmed by everything. A lot of times, people see that and they realize they can defer a topic, or if they're at the conference, you may have people actually reaching out to you, and I get this a lot saying, “Hey, your out-of-office reply said that you are here and I'm here too, let's just connect there,” make sure that you get that done in place.

In terms of communication, because our out-of-office reply is one of those direct communication pieces and just a housekeeping thing we need to tick off, the last part of number six is to make sure that you decide how you're going to share contact information.

This is something that people are always surprised by. We're also worried about having our business cards and passing our business cards. I actually try not to pass out business cards. I do have a couple of cool things. I use the Dot app. I have a device on my phone where somebody can tap my phone and it will send them all of my contact information and your whole profile, all my social media platforms, link to the podcast, or free resource access, all the things.

But what I love to do and it's super old school, I like to ask for their cards because I want to have their contact information. I want to make a quick note on it. I will make notes about, “Hey, they went to such and such school. They were into this. They mentioned they were having this problem,” whatever that is.

Think about what your strategy is going to be, and we're going to go into this in a little bit more detail in the next episode, but in advance, if you do want to set up something that has a technology piece to it like Dot or some other way that you're going to send or collect information from people, there are lots of apps that you can scan people's cards and it will actually put into your contacts there, plan that and have it set in advance.

If you want to use a tool like that, you don't want to be messing with it at the show. You don't want to not be familiar with how it works, but you might decide in advance you want to go the old-school car route, I always recommend collecting more than you're giving out.

Those are some things to think about when you think about pre-conference strategy. All that will dictate what you do and how you measure it. How many people do you want to meet with? How many meetings do you want to have the setup post-event based on the activity that you're doing there? All of those kinds of things are things you need to be thinking about early and upfront.

As mentioned and promised, we are going to do a workshop where we go into this in much more detail. We’re going to provide you checklists for pre-conference, conference, and post-conference that owners can use, sales managers, salespeople, marketing people, anybody that you're sending to these conferences.

Also, we're going to be providing a list of some of my favorite resources and tools that can help make your life easier at these conferences as well. If you want access to that workshop, we're going to be doing it right after we complete this series later in September. Then you can get access at storybuilt.marketing/conference. Make sure you go over there and you get your spot for that.

It's going to be workshop-style so we're going to actually be working on stuff going back and forth, hot sitting, answering questions, and actually developing some of your plans on the actual workshop together, and you're going to get all these resources as well. It's going to be a great way to help your team get ready for conference season. Make sure that you get that spot at storybuilt.marketing/conference.

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Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Contractor's Daughter. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and review. But most of all, share this with all of your friends, partners, and customers in the highway construction business. Thank you for building the infrastructure that we all rely on.