Stop hating conferences: how to sell at conferences as a startup
Part 3/3 of the Demand Gen for your First Customers mini-series
Booths full of over-eager SDRs wearing matching team polos jockeying to scan your badge; happy hours cornered by the annoying sales rep you don’t want to buy from who’s had a few too many; informational sessions where you don’t learn anything new in an hour - we’ve all had bad experiences at conferences.
These experiences unfairly convince some people that conferences are a waste of time. I believe that if planned and executed correctly, conferences give startups an opportunity to engage with buyers they’d never be able to otherwise reach.
I think every startup should have a conference strategy as part of their go-to-market motion, and here in my third and final article of my demand gen mini-series I’m going to walk through a startup seller’s playbook on how to make the most of conferences.
Why go to conferences
In my last article on Outbound, I outlined that the most common outbound channels startups use for demand gen are email, calling, LinkedIn, and physical mail. These all can work at scale, but they’re time intensive to do correctly. As a founder, you may not have enough time every day to prioritize prospecting, so conferences can be a good way to meet many buyers all in one place.
There are two reasons why you’d want to go to a conference from a sales perspective: (1) to generate new deals, and (2) to meet with contacts already in your sales funnel to accelerate open deals. Some founders choose to attend conferences for brand purposes, to meet investors, or to evaluate new vendors. I’m going to focus on workflows if your intention is specifically to sell.
Planning
The first exercise when incorporating conferences into your go-to-market strategy is to find a list of all possible conferences your prospective customers attend.
You need to really focus on conferences where key personas involved in the buying process of your product will be in attendance. Just because a company in your ICP is attending a conference (per the conference website) doesn’t mean that your specific buyer persona will be there. I’ve seen startups spend tens of thousands of dollars getting booths and flying across the country to attend conferences full of the right companies but wrong personas. These are typically a waste of time and money.
It can be unclear from the conference websites who the attendees really are and how many people attend. In my experience, conference organizers are open to sharing either the list of attendees, a list of attendees from previous years, or at a minimum a list of attendee job titles and company profiles of attendees if you ask them for this directly. I’d also recommend chatting with fellow founders in your industry to get a perspective on attendees at conferences you’re evaluating.
From a perspective of attending conferences to initiate in-person interactions, there are a few different levels of investment you can choose:
Purchase a ticket to attend
Purchase a booth in the exhibit area
Speak or lead a session
Host an event outside of the conference
From the list of conferences that you’re exploring, choose how you want to show up to each conference and make sure you plan ahead of time.
Booths can be expensive (many start at >$2,000 depending on the conference), but can be a good investment if a conference is flooded with personas who are both the user of your product and the person to make a buying decision. Some conferences run out of booth space, so make sure you sign up at least a few months in advance.
Most conferences actively look for industry experts to be speakers because they attract attendees with the hook of being the central meeting place to showcase latest trends and technology. Unless you already have a strong brand, you’ll need to actively apply to be a speaker. This can be a great way to generate awareness if you’re selected because you have a captive audience of potential buyers listening to you as an expert in your field. Applications to speak often close 6-9 months in advance of the conference, so make sure you plan accordingly. As an added benefit, if you’re chosen to speak you’ll likely get free extra tickets or a discounted booth space.
Another great option is to host an event such as a happy hour or dinner just outside the conference one evening. This is a great way to have better one on one conversations in a more relaxed setting than the conference itself. Make sure you set up the event well in advance and actively drive people to attend. To reduce the cost, it’s common to partner with another company on this who has the same ICP as you.
If you know a conference will be full of buyers and you have the money to invest, an ideal 1-2-3 punch would be to (1) have a speaker spot early on in the conference where you make a comment to the audience to stop by your booth, (2) speak to people who come by the booth, and (3) invite qualified buyers from the booth to attend the “invite-only” event you’re hosting outside the conference.
If you don’t have the budget to spend on a booth or event, you can still get value out of conferences by buying a ticket to attend. If you go this route, prep is even more important because you need to be proactive to generate any new business. I’ve even shown up to some conferences without a ticket and have been able to meet with prospects outside of the main event hall at local coffee shops or open happy hour events.
Prep before the conference
The worst thing you can do after you’ve paid thousands of dollars to attend a conference is show up without a plan and without any meetings already scheduled. There are three main areas to plan around:
1. For contacts in your sales funnel
Reach out in advance to set up a meeting at the conference so you can have an in-person touch point. This gives you an opportunity to further build the relationship, do deeper discovery and qualification than what you can do over a 45 minute video call, and find ways to accelerate the deal.
2. For prospects in your ICP you haven’t ever met
Launch an outreach campaign a couple weeks ahead of the conference to ask if they want to meet while at the event. If you’re attending a key industry conference, the messaging I use in my outreach assumes that my prospects are also attending. Any prospect who’s a key player in their industry will be aware of the conference, and sometimes this outreach can generate meetings even if they aren’t attending.
Like any outreach campaign, it will take a bit of work. However, your time at the conference is short and valuable, so it’s worth the upfront effort so you can maximize your productivity while at the conference.
One sales leader I know won’t pay for his reps to attend conferences unless they show that they’ve booked meetings with at least 10 prospects ahead of time. Though this may be a bit extreme, it goes to show that disciplined sellers take conference preparation seriously.
3. Sessions, happy hours, dinners, and other events
Plan ahead of time which ones are most relevant for you and your team to attend. It can be helpful to divide and conquer among the team you have going to the conference to ensure you cover a broad base. If your CEO is speaking, have the rest of your team sitting throughout the room to follow up with any intrigued attendees.
At the conference
The two biggest mistakes I see from sellers at conferences are (1) trying to pitch everyone, and (2) spending too much time with the wrong people (unqualified prospects, non-buyers, or their own team). I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t spend time expanding your network beyond just your ICP or have any fun at conferences, but time at the conference will fly by so make sure you’re focused on your goals.
Unless you’ve set up a specific meeting with a prospect, most don’t want to be pitched at the conference because they’re overwhelmed and have their own priorities to accomplish. Instead, they’d prefer meeting after the conference if it sounds like you could be a good fit to help.
Rather than pitching everyone, I like to go into every conference with a prioritized list of “ideal next steps” if I talk with a prospective buyer who I want to continue the conversation with. This might look like:
Ideal next step 1: Have them open up their calendar on their phone and schedule a meeting for the following week
Ideal next step 2 (if they won’t agree to step 1): Ask for their phone number, text them, and get verbal confirmation that they’ll talk to you when you call them next week
Ideal next step 3 (if they won’t agree to 1 or 2): Get their email address so you can email them next week
Ideal next step 4 (if they won’t agree to 1-3): Give them your contact information and any one-pagers.
Too many founders and sellers at conferences jump straight to steps 3 or 4, but the likelihood of creating a deal is much higher if you can accomplish 1 or 2.
Scrappy ways to find prospects
Having a booth or hosting an event provides a natural way to engage with prospects, but even on top of this you can still network your way into new deals.
Conferences generally have specific time blocks for meals, sessions, breaks, and exhibition hall hours. If you make sure you’re at the right places at the right times here, you can generally meet a few new people during each time block. If it looks like a lot of buyers are sitting down for breakfast at a breadth of tables across the dining area, I’ll sometimes sit down at one table, chat for a bit before excusing myself and then sitting at another table across the room to increase the number of prospects I meet during that given time block.
Many people are afraid to introduce themselves to strangers, but want to meet people at conferences and are happy to continue a conversation that’s been started. If going to conferences to sell makes you nervous, keeping this in mind can help lower the stakes to initiate a conversation.
Post conference follow up
This is one of the most important parts of the conference. Even if a prospect tells you they’ll follow up with you next week, many won’t because they have other competing priorities and are still in the “awareness” or “interest” stage of their buyer’s journey. This means you need to be proactive to drive the conversation forward so you can either disqualify them or move them from “interest” to “desire”.
If you have a list of attendees who seemed like they’re in your ICP but you didn’t get the chance to meet at the conference, run an outreach campaign to these folks too. I’ve generated a number of deals with prospects who I never met while at the conference but was able to connect with this way.
Final thoughts
Every startup seller should have a conference strategy as part of their go-to-market motion. Even if you don’t plan on attending any this year, you should at least know which ones your buyers are going to.
Especially as digital demand gen channels become more saturated with the proliferation of automation and AI into outreach tools, conferences remain a great channel to meet prospects and accelerate deals.
Visit yourstartupsales.com if you’d like to learn more about how I help startups scale beyond founder-led sales