When you consider the value of your time, registration fees and the travel expenses, attending a multi-day conference costs a bundle.  You will get a better return on your investment, if you prepare for it well in advance.  Here are some things you should do to get ready:

1>     Review the agenda:  Figure out in advance what is happening when.  There will be some sessions that offer better opportunities for you than others, such as a breakout session dealing with your specialty.  At some conferences you must sign up for sessions in advance and seats are limited, so it pays to sign up early.

If some items in the agenda are unclear to you, you have a chance to find out what they mean in advance.

2>     Review who is likely to attend:  Ask the organizers for a list of attendees, so that you can see who will be there that you know already and whom you want to meet.  This can help you target your efforts.  It can also save you from attending a conference with too few of the right people.  Make a list of those you want to meet or catch up with and don’t forget to consider the speakers and association staff members when you do.

Use your review of the agenda and attendees to help formulate questions (What does “mixer night” mean?  How is transportation to the local site visits handled?)

3>     Ask for a briefing:  Every association has its own subculture with its own customs and behaviors.  Calling someone who has attended the conference in previous years can help you prepare for the one coming up.  For example, one association held a reception the opening night of every three-day annual conference, but let members arrange for their own dinners afterwards.  If you didn’t know this in advance, you were likely to end up eating alone, while those who had planned ahead ate with prospective clients they had invited weeks before.  Some hospitality suites are traditionally the most popular at an annual conference.  Knowing that can save you time. 

4>     Arrange meetings in advance:  Among the biggest advantages of conferences is the opportunity to meet many new people in a field quickly.  You will increase the probability of meeting a person if she agrees to see you in advance at a specific time and place during the conference.  

A second big advantage of attending a conference is the chance to get face to face with a lot of people you know already, but haven’t seen for a while.  This is especially valuable with people hard to see either because they live far away from you or because they are too busy to meet at other times.  Could we meet at the buffet line and grab a quick breakfast together Tuesday morning?  How about meeting for a drink after the educational sessions end on Monday?  I’m getting in early on Sunday, too, so maybe we could . . .  Plan meetings in advance.

5>     Sign up early:  There are several reasons to sign up early.  First, that gets you priority listing to stay at the main hotel—you don’t want to stay any place else, if you can avoid it—and for breakout sessions or other limited seating activities.  All of these are usually (and largely) assigned on a first-come-first-served basis.  You can also block the days in your calendar, increasing the likelihood that you can fend off other claims for those days.  Those who sign up early usually get a discount on the registration fee.
 
6>     Ask a client to show you the ropes:  A client who is happy with the work you are doing is usually glad to do you a favor.  If one attends a conference regularly, ask her if she would let you tag along with her for half a day, so that she can introduce you to people whom she knows and get her insights into the association and conference. That will shorten your learning curve and help you reduce the time needed to enter the organization’s miniature society.   She is also likely to introduce you with words that it would be immodest for you to use when talking about yourself.

7>     Schedule visits in town immediately before or after the conference:  If you are going to incur the cost of an airline ticket and hotel stay, get more for your money by arranging to see clients and other key contacts in the destination city.  These can be set up for either before or after the conference.

8>     Rehearse your elevator speech:  Prepare your elevator speech or a couple of versions of it, so that it comes out comfortably when required.  See my blog postings on how to construct an elevator speech.

9>     Research primary targets:  After identifying people you hope to meet at the conference, research the most important ones.  That will help you prepare for conversations with them.  Find out if anyone in your firm already knows them and so can tell you about them. Do a quick Google search.  If you know someone working in the same company as a person you want to meet, maybe she would be able to provide you with some background on the target.

10>       Prepare some conversation starters:  Conversation starters are questions or short statements followed by questions that engage a contact in a conversation and get her talking.  They can be about anything; flight delays coming into the conference, outcomes of recent sporting events, that day’s headlines; so they aren’t hard to come up with.  Still, all else being equal, you would rather have a contact talk about an issue related to the type of service you offer than not.  It can be useful to plan a few conversations starters in advance, so that they come to you naturally at the conference (While I’m here I would like to do a quick survey of how firms are reacting to the new regulation.  Is it affecting you much? or I’d like to get your opinion on . . . )
Of course, you need to take plenty of business cards and a small notebook to jot down information you learn about conference attendees and commitments you have made to follow up.

Finally, don’t let your planning become so rigid that if prevents you from taking advantages of serendipitous opportunities as they occur.  Conferences tend to be full of them (see Rainmaker Story # 7-  David’s Breakfast or Get it While You Can)

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 8:22 am and is filed under Rain making, Networking, Working a Room. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.