How to conference
Trade shows (a.k.a. conferences, expos, biggest-rooms-you’ve-ever-seen-packed-wall-to-wall-with-way-too-many-people-selling-things) can be fruitful for search fund entrepreneurs. They bring together a huge number of people who are all there for the same reason - to meet others and generate business. If we forget the epidemiological implications of such events (pack the sanitizer), such events present the opportunity to have a number of memorable face-to-face meetings over the span of a few days.
At a time when most face-to-face meetings are almost necessarily preceded by several emails and phone calls, such open access to actual people can be refreshing and, if done right, highly productive. Rather than working through gatekeepers and traveling to meet with someone, the searcher need only stroll to the next booth for another in-person meeting.
However, “done right” requires some preparation. Casually showing up at a trade show without a game plan is likely to produce suboptimal results. To maximize the productivity of your trade show time, do the following:
Raise the bar. Don’t attend any conference with a hope that something will happen. Diligence each conference, pre-qualifying at multiple steps. Leverage the research skills of your interns or analysts to do this. How many attendees are expected? How many attended last year? Hundreds is generally not enough; look for thousands. What is the format of the conference? How much time for networking will be available? (You’re going first to meet people. The talks/presentations/speakers are secondary.) You are likely the most effective guardian of your time, and frankly, most conferences out there are not worth attending. Find the ones that will help you achieve your unique objectives.
Build a hit list. Figure out who is likely to attend, and create a prioritized list of people you’d like to meet. Ask the event organizers for a list of exhibitors, speakers, and, if possible, registrants. Some of the more tech-enabled events have this available through an app.
Invite people. Dig through your industry/company lists and find people who might like to attend and that you’d like to meet. Let them know you’re attending and offer to buy them lunch or coffee. If one of these meetings saves you a flight to visit the company itself, your planning time will be a great investment.
Make appointments. The other attendees are filling their schedules as well, so if you want a chance to sit down with somebody, get in their calendar before the conference. At the very least, use your first few hours there to make appointments for later in the conference. Consider making appointments before and after the event as well - people are often happy to come a bit early or stay a bit later to take a high-value meeting. And meetings over food are usually preferable to an awkward couple of chairs in a lobby.
Skip the calls and emails. It’s very difficult to put your daily tasks and phone calls on hold while you’re at a conference, but whenever possible, avoid scheduling calls during the conference. You can have those calls any other day, but the trade show is a rare opportunity to get face time with people. Maximize that opportunity. Likewise, as tempting as it may be to retreat into your emails for a break, resist the temptation. Your emails can wait, at least until the day’s activities are over, and probably until after the event is finished. Instead, remind yourself why you came to that conference in the first place, and get that face time.
Harvest your data. Before going into the event, it is vital that you have your data organized, typically in both a CRM and a task/project management solution. Over the course of the event, you will collect names, business cards, marketing material, and action items, and all of it should go immediately into your systems to avoid letting valuable leads fall through the cracks. Set action items in whatever system you use to manage your to-dos. Then, post-conference, add to your arsenal by researching the leads you developed, figuring out who else you can speak to, who your new contacts can introduce you to, and how you can further engage these people. Ask the organizers for a list of attendees, and then harvest that. Here again you can leverage the skills of your team.
Some of the greatest advice I’ve read on this is in Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone. You can find a decent summary of his advice here.
I have been a piss-poor conference participant in the past. I took a high-volume, low-quality approach, measuring my success by the number of business cards distributed. This approach is likely to yield little. Take the time - before, during, and after - to squeeze the most out of your conference experience. Make the most of every minute at the conference, but in general, quality usually trumps quantity.
