Making the most of conferences

Conferences are hard work and can be sometimes a little soul destroying. Get the delegate list, identify your targets, book meetings, prepare for 2 days of squalid drudgery that comes to nought when you walk into the conference centre and decide that anything would be better than this and book into the spa for 2 days of colonic irrigation. But you're a professional so you carry on as you'd planned and practice your coffee break patter and your teasing ‘glimpses of value’.

You do your duty to the boss and the bank, and during the course of the conference take every opportunity to reinforce the shallow and meaningless friendships you've made during greasy breakfasts, luke warm lunches and distinctly dodgy dinners.

Obviously it's very different if you're paying for your people to go. Then it's all about structure and discipline. Get them to commit to getting clients there, set targets for handshakes, kisses, business cards and follow-up and measure the ROI for their damaged liver. I'm told that poachers often make the best gamekeepers.

Speaking at a conference

As a professional, perhaps with a valuable technical expertise, the chances are that you are going to use conferences as a marketing tool to convey to the market that you are innovative, approachable and available for hire.

If you are going to a conference then, get a speaking slot. You won’t get one if you don’t ask – then invite your clients and do a lot of self-publicity.

My experience tells me that there is not much point going to a conference unless you can address everyone in the room. If you do get a slot, push to get on during the first day or even the first morning – it makes a difference as drink-sodden conference audiences tire quite quickly on the second day.

Conference papers are normally so dull and badly expressed in speech that it is not difficult to stand out from the crowd. This is why you want to get to talk early on in the proceedings, provide the audience with opportunities to approach you…. Ah!! That is selling heaven. A person coming up to you in the bar or foyer and saying 'I really liked your speech….!

Your presentation has to be good though. And most aren't even competently done. There are plenty of books, courses, experts on how to do exceptional presentations and in fact, my co-author on this blog/book is a bit of a presentation aficionado so I’m not going to go much beyond the Golden rules: As a minimum standard

• Aim for no text except titles, not always possible but a target!
• If you read slides you should, in my opinion, be shot
• 15-20 slide max (ALWAYS)
• Tell them your message at the start, tell them again in the middle and remind them at the end

It is UNBELIEVABLE how bad conference presentations usually are. Tell a story – show some passion and emotion and WOW! What a difference that makes.

Conferences are hard work and can sometimes be a little soul destroying if your expectations are too high. You probably won't make a sale, but you can make 3-5 good drinking buddies who might, over the next year, turn into fee paying clients. So if it still seems like a worthwhile investment-

Get the delegate list, identify targets, invite clients or lapsed clients and book meetings, breakfasts, golf, lunches for while you're there. Practice your coffee break patter; your ‘glimpses of value’ and during the course of the conference take every opportunity to reinforce the contacts you make. This is particularly useful at smaller conferences where you can quickly get with the in crowd…

Conferences for professionals are a bit like weddings for single people, you might not get a snog from the bridesmaid, but she'll happily dance with you all night. What happens when the confetti's swept away rather depends on your sincerity.

The Trust Ladder

(Updated 17 October 2009)

Selling anything requires trust, you need to trust the brand, the salesman or (preferably) both.
Why do you buy stuff? This is a digression from the focus of selling professional service but bear with me, when did you last buy a car? Who did you trust, the brand or the car dealer? Probably the brand (Q for JH: is there an interesting (i.e. boring) fact about why people buy cars?). Yes, but trust and relationship makes a difference; I bought a new car recently and although I liked my german brand, I really detested the dealer – he was arrogant and did not provide me with any kind of service. I moved to another brand where, frankly, the salesman didn’t really matter for the first sale but again, will probably influence my subsequent purchase..

With Professional Services; it is probably the other way around. Unless you work for the big brand consultants (you know who I mean) your brand may mean little and it is probably up to you to close the deal; and deliver; and do some more work.

In the current environment, selling consultancy services is a tough, tough game; you are a discretionary spend and it is times like this that the relationships developed during happier times need to be leveraged. Those of you with no regard for the success or well being of your clients; you will be the first ones to suffer.

Talking to clients about why they choose consultants is very enlightening and its easy, builds trust and reduces your selling costs.... Those clients that have talked about why they choose consultants, it often comes down to relationship; knowing the consultant ("i don't care who they work for") and believing that the person they choose will simply deliver.....

OK, so what is the trust ladder?

The trust ladder is something you climb with everyone you meet and there are milestones that enable you to progress from level 0 - the 'who the hell are you?' level to level 5 - the 'will you be my best man?' level...

Lets try and label the levels:

0 - cold call

1 - you meet someone for the first time through a common 3rd party, your conversation with a stranger moves onto common territory

2 - the idea of potential work is openly discussed

3 - work is done and completed ok

4 - work is done and completed very well

5 - valued client who can openly criticise but will probably still give you work

Labels are difficult and can mean different things to different people....

Concrete is always good- or how to avoid boring your friends and clients when talking about what you do

When you're trying to explain what you do to other people whether in conversation, through the written word or as part of a proposal, remember that 'concrete is always good'.

I'm not talking about the noxious mix of cement, sand and lime used in building, obviously, but it's a useful metaphor as it's an almost ubiquitous building material that causes real damage to the environment if it's used unthinkingly. In speech, the opposite of concrete, abstraction, is a noxious mix of jargon, generalisation and the 'passive voice' that causes real damage to interest and understanding, when used unthinkingly. We hear it so much.

There's always a moment when someone asks a person, out of politeness, what they do. For many professionals it's a terrifying moment. There's often a pause to think and then the following occurs...

"We're a multi-faceted, global consulting business, working in the sales consulting and general marketing space, helping blue-chips and other expert service firms to regularise the quality of their inputs vis-a-vis human resource skills sets in business development and sales ...."

It's the kind of complex answer to a simple question that's, 'abstract' in the extreme. The kind of answer that leaves the audience asking themselves three questions-

• Who is this loony?
• What does it mean?
• Why did I bother, I was only being polite?

You hear it all of the time and you read it even more frequently in job advertisements, marketing materials and conversation, and very seldom does the audience really understand what it is that the other party is trying to say.

Abstraction is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "The act of considering something as a general quality or characteristic, apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances..." And the abstract doesn't help to show what you actually do because it's too general, devoid of examples or 'actual instances' of the effects that your product or services has on your customers' lives.

So if we look at the previous example it can be transformed, very easily into a concrete and simple sentence thus-

"Mine is a business that helps people to sell their products and services more effectively..."

Concrete, specific and short.