Client meetings, webinars, conferences, trade shows, and more are all valuable ways to connect with clients, potential customers, and others in your industry. However, they must be well-thought-out to be successful.
In a recent discussion with Andy McNeill, Founder and CEO of American Meetings, Inc., Adi Klevit and Andy discussed how business owners can ensure the success of meetings of any size. Read on to find five elements that they shared in their discussion.
Five Elements You Can Implement Before Your Next Meeting or Conference to Make It a Success
1. Set a goal
Increasing brand awareness may be the goal if you’re going to a trade show. If you’re hosting a conference, it could be that you want to increase your sales or bridge into an upsell for existing clients. If it’s a strategic marketing meeting, the goal may be to develop five potential strategies and tasks assigned to narrow them down into one cohesive plan.
Determine your goal for your meeting, event, webinar, or conference, and keep it in mind as you strategize and plan the meeting.
2. Determine the KPIs showing whether or not you accomplished that goal.
What performance indicators will show that your meeting/conference achieved your goal? Determine the KPIs along with a way to measure them.
For example, if you are putting on a webinar or educational convention, you may want to create a simple test or a few questions for all attendees to answer. If it’s a sales-type conference or meeting, you may want to create a very easy portal to buy the product/service specific to that conference or meeting so that you know how many attendees purchased it, and you can compare that to your sales baseline.
3. Build a strategy around accomplishing your goal
In a business meeting, this may be as simple as creating and sticking to an agenda. However, you may be planning something more complicated, like a conference. In that case, you must build a strategy covering all facets, including where people will stay, how they will access the conference online, how you plan to invite and host speakers, where the conference will be held, and so on.
No matter what type of meeting you will create, the basic strategy is to ensure those you want to attend will attend, those you wish to present will present, and the goal you set in step 1 is accomplished.
Conditional: Create a budget.
Most everyday meetings do not need a budget. However, a client meeting may need to be catered, or a convention will need space rented out, speakers paid, food provided, travel covered, and more.
4. Set up your process.
A standardized process can benefit even everyday meetings. If you are doing something bigger, like a webinar, educational conference, or trade show, you will need to create a process that everyone involved can follow to support a successful experience.
Once this process is created, you and your team should do a dry run to make sure no steps are missing. Doing a run-through beforehand often catches many holes and makes the process run smoothly when put in place.
5. Create a follow-up plan.
Develop your follow-up methodology before the meeting, convention, webinar, or trade show takes place. This is vital for several reasons:
a. You can create any necessary websites, sign-up pages, and automated “thank you” emails beforehand, reducing any scrambling at the back end and ensuring your team’s polished, professional look.
b. Follow-up can happen immediately after the meeting rather than several days later.
c. Your follow-up will be more consistent if you plan it beforehand.
d. Your team will have the mental energy to follow up with anyone who needs direct discussion – like a hot lead – because so much of the process has already been automated.
Building a goal, strategy, and process around setting up a large meeting or conference and then handling all of the automation in advance will help you and your team have a successful experience. The same goes for documenting processes and procedures in other aspects of your business.
If you want to build greater consistency, automate as much of your company as possible, and retain institutional knowledge, contact the experts at Business Success Consulting Group. We will work with you to document your business processes and procedures so you can support exponential growth this year and beyond.
