All of us in support of building profitable businesses must get in front of a larger number and a higher quality group of buyers of our products, services and relationships. Whether those are internal or external “clients” I don’t care. “How” we do that and “what” results are critical.
By and large it requires some form of travel. We need to get in a car, board a train, ride the subway or jump on a plane. Unless of course, you are Barclays, who in an act of desperation this week announced a global employee ban on travel to all internal and most client-facing meetings (is this decade’s Wolf of Wall Street a “virtual” reality?).
Outstanding industry meetings, conferences, trade shows and events serves a vital purpose. Demonstrating credibility (track record of success, your value and potential results), building effective relationships (trust, shared values, intellect, personal chemistry) and converting those relationships into closed business and referral opportunities. It is that simple.
Yet so often I see event organisers and hosts, indeed the whole MICE industry as they are often termed, in a fog (“we need to find out what our sponsors, speakers, exhibitors and attendees want”, “we need to do something different this year”, “we want to attract a more impressive crowd”). Yet year after year they repeat the same tired format with a “new” tweak. When the answer is very simple.
I coined a term the “RICH” experience, here is what you must provide if you want to stand apart from the crowd:
1. Remarkable content (tell me something I have never considered, challenge myths, help me improve my focus and discipline on profitable growth and the valuable use of my time)
2. Impressive peers (give me opportunities to interact with a diverse and stellar groups of peers, people at the top of their game, cross-industries and geographies, people who aren’t afraid to speak openly, share insights etc.)
3. Compelling value (give me high impact, immediate opportunities for personal and professional growth, new ways to compete, new potential customers, new ways to reach them and they to reach my organisation etc.)
4. Huge excitement (let me leave buzzing with ideas, recounting impressive success stories, shared experiences, fun relationships, “one moment in time” images that immediately make me an object of interest to others).
The finance, asset management, private banking, art, private aviation, leisure, real estate, hospitality, re(insurance), luxury, franchise, auto and other sectors have created a huge global calendar of events that resembles the Formula 1 circus. Some are profitable, some scratch a living off the benevolence of loyal sponsors and exhibitors.
In many sectors, “event fatigue” has set in, there is only so many white table-clothed InterContinental Hotel ballrooms with drab flower arrangements that you can sit down to another three course lunch surrounded by a random group of faces. Spot “Kevin” the impressively coiffeured American CEO of a small Middle Eastern business, backed by new Arabian Gulf riches, espousing how his business will be a Top 10 player in five years. Religously, his name appears as a guest speaker at the next month’s industry event, “didn’t I see you in Singapore or was it San Diego or Dubai?”, out comes the “same old-same old” soundbites in the industry roundtable, headlines appear dutifiably in the local and industry media regurgitating his grand vision and so it goes on. These people are bores, they don’t bring anything meaningful to the party, please their “generous” (heavily discounted) gold sponsorship doesn’t make them an opinion-maker.
I neither want to be part of a group of herding cats ushered from the plenary session to a breakout session or chasing mice around the conference event. I want a RICH experience, are you prepared to give me that in return for my registration fee, three night hotel stay and the business class air fare? Make that clear now.
© James Berkeley 2014. All rights reserved.
