Ep#110 5 Tips on How to Conference like a Champion

February 14, 2023

Episode Summary

Welcome to the Jon Myer Podcast, where we bring you tips and strategies to help you up your game in the world of business and beyond. Today, we're talking about how to conference like a champ. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, taking part in conferences and events can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. Here are the 5 essential Tips to help you make the most of your conference experience and shine as a true champion

Adam Headshot

About the Guest

Adam Kranitz

I propel SaaS adoption and growth through digital-first marketing and differentiated messaging.

#aws #awscloud #finops #cloudcomputing #costoptimization

Episode Show Notes & Transcript

Host: Jon

Today we're talking about how we can conference like a champ, and I'm bringing on a special guest to give us some tips and tricks on insights on how we can be conference champions and really what does that mean? While he's got five tips before, during, and after to get the most out of your conference so that you don't feel drained at the end of it, let's bring on Adam Kranitz, a SaaS marketing leader. Adam, thank you so much for joining me.

Guest: Adam

Jon, thanks for having me. I appreciate you making time and having me on the show. I'm pretty excited to be here.

Host: Jon

Adam, I got to give everybody a little backstory. You and I have been friends and colleagues for a while now when we both worked at separate companies and now that you're out there in the world, you wanted to provide some value and insights on how to conference like a champion. And before we do that, how about you give everybody a little backstory on yourself?

Guest: Adam

Yeah, so look, Jon, I've been producing, attending running corporate events going back to 1997. My very first industry trade show is NAB 1997. It's more than 20 years and a w s events, Microsoft events, you name it, I've been to it, I've produced it, set up a booth, and over those years there have been some consistent gotchas and dos and don'ts that I've seen people do by attending. So I'm going to give you the perspective of a corporate marketing guy who's run trade shows and been on the booth and see the interaction between when people walk up and what they could be doing better to leverage their experience there, get the most out of that experience and represent their brand, their company, and the best way possible. And so I'm pretty excited to kind of share with you the top five. There's a lot more. I'm want to give you some of my five things I see happen most often that are easy low hanging fruit to kind of do today or at your next event. We've got a big event, we've got NAB coming up in a couple of months, which is a big industry trade show for media entertainment, and we've got some a w s events coming up as well. So now is the timer going into conference season to put these into play? So let's hit into it

Host: Jon

Adam real quick. So is this really to help me from a booth person perspective or an attendee perspective

Guest: Adam

Attendee perspective? Great question, Jon. So I'm going to give you my perspective as somebody who's run booths and what I see from the attendees coming up to the booth. So I want you to look at each of these five tips on the perspective of, hey, my company has paid for me to be here in the case of an a w s reinvent. That's a significant investment for a group of people. So how can I make the best use out of my time there? My company's investment in me being there in advancing my career by leveraging this opportunity, so attendee perspective.

Host: Jon

So as most you are familiar and if you haven't attended but you've seen 'em online, even an AWS reinvent, which is a week long thing, which there's so much happening, so much going on, you don't know where to go, what to do, what boot the head up and you can't see everything and anything in there. But Adam's going to give us some tips not only on that and getting the most out of it, but Adam, I'm going to assume you're going to give us some tips that we can really feel energized afterwards and that we don't feel like we just totally drain and we just want to crash the week afterwards, right?

Guest: Adam

Well, you're going to still crash. You're going to get that post-event like flu or lagging cough for sure. You're going to get all that, but part of what this is is you have to charge your battery to a hundred percent when you go to a trade show and at the end of that event when you get home, man, that battery's at like 5% and you got to definitely plug yourself back in and recharge you because it takes a lot of emotional, a lot of mental stamina and a lot of physical stamina to push through a week long event and talk to people all day long and interact and think on your feet and run from one place to another and eat bad food and stay in a bed that's super uncomfortable and the pillow's hurting my neck and I got to get from my hotel is 10 miles away from the conference floor and I got to run there. It's a crazy, it should be a reality show on a network of running the American Conference Challenge or something like that. So that's the idea there is to really how do I run this gauntlet successfully and stay energized and productive along the way.

Host: Jon

All right, Adam, I'm ready to take some notes because there are a number of events happening this year we're going to be at whether it's going to be one day, actually there's a good question. Does this apply for single day, multi-day or week long events?

Guest: Adam

I would say if a company's making an investment in you attending an event for the benefit of your department, your team, this is probably going to be a minimum of two-day event. So most of this is going to be prep. We're going to spend three tips three tips on pre-show prep and any conference, any champion prize fighter all the work goes into prep and being ready for the main event. And so we're going to talk a lot about prep, but generally speaking, you could use for these tips for one day in and out session or a week long event like reinvent.

Host: Jon

All right, Adam, I got my pen ready. Let's start with some of these in. I'm going to take some notes along the way. I'm

Guest: Adam

Going to roll up my sleeve here this

Host: Jon

Time. Oh, he's getting ready for it.

Guest: Adam

All right, let's jump in. All right, how to get the most out of a 10 year next trade show. Let's jump into one. I'm not going to do a whole presentation here. I'm just going to share a couple of screens really quick. So tip number one, Jon, this drives me nuts. We're going to start with the basics for all that you can do the best that make sure you have business cards. Jon, I can't tell you how many times I've stood on a booth and had an amazing conversation with somebody and I said, let me get your information. I don't can, here's my card. Oh, I don't have any cards, or I ran out of cards, or the company doesn't give me cards. All right, so you got to do the dance. Let me find a pen. Let me write your information. Okay, we got to have business cards folks, and here's a couple things you need to do right now.

Guest: Adam

I'm talking here, Jon, about paper business cards. Now I get it. Totally get it. You've got the R F I D things and you got the digital business cards and you got the things that you tap and your phone. Forget. How about all that? In an industry conference where you're bumping elbows and it's loud and it's going on, you only get 30 seconds. Talk to somebody. You don't want to be fumbling around with your phone or pulling up that app, or they don't have the right app or they don't have the right model phone, yada, yada, yada. Nothing beats a paper card to exchange information. Even in 2023. I'm not being,

Host: Jon

Actually, I was about to ask that because you still believe in this paper or physical card, yes, in this digital age that a business card still provides the same value that it did for 50 years ago.

Guest: Adam

Listen, I'm not a Lud eight. All I'm saying is if you want to do the digital thing and the tap the phone and the RFID card, do it. By all means, bring it along. If somebody wants to do that engagement with you, r knock yourself out. But in addition, not in place of have the paper cards too. You got to have the paper cards. So if you work in a large business and you want to do this about two weeks minimum, two weeks before you get on your plane, before you travel, you're going to want to go to your marketing department or whoever, the office manager or whoever, and say, I typically don't get cards in my role, but I'm attending this event. Can I get a stack? If the marketing department or the office manager can't do that for you, that you got to think about that, but you got to go first to go to your team and say, I need business cards for this event.

Guest: Adam

Now, if you're in a situation where you're an independent freelancer or contractor, you're not, can't go to a company. Here's what I need you to do, and by the way, Jon, this is an affiliate marketing. This isn't like, I'm not getting paid for this, but I got to say, if you need to get your own cards, here's what you got to do. You're going to go to moo.com, m moo.com, you're going to go to business cards right here. You're going to go original business cards. You're going to go standard. Don't go. Don't give me those weird shape business cards because they're going to get lost. The thin ones are the square ones. Give me the standard business cards. Then the most important thing, here's a tip, is get the matte finish. Why the matte finish? Jon is thinking, I'll tell you why, because somebody during the course of an interview is going to grab a pen and write on your business card what they were talking to you about before they put it in their pocket.

Guest: Adam

And if you get these glossy ones that doesn't work it, it's going to get all smeared. So get the Matt card so I can write a little note. So leave some white space on the back of your card or wherever somebody can write a note about that interaction with you. Okay, so get about a hundred. It's less than with shipping. It's about 50 bucks, 50 bucks. Get it reimbursed if you can, but 50 bucks hits yourself a pack of a hundred cards. Matt, finish your basic information on there. mo.com. They have templates. You can design it up line. It's all wizzywig. It's great. All right, so got to get your cards before the show because I'm telling you when this is going to roll into a later tip, when you're having that interaction on the booth, you've got to be able to exchange out information and make sure that that person knows, because when that person gets back to their desk, they're going to go through that stack of business cards. They're going to find you on LinkedIn, they're going to connect, they're going to make a mental note. They're going to put you in Salesforce. They're going to make a note of what you were all about. And if you stand there and say, I don't have business cards, man, you're moving right to the bottom of the pile.

Host: Jon

So okay, I can see the value of this. You want to know why, and I'm going to give you an example. I was at one of the AWS summits and a lot of the times, and I do actually collect other business cards, but I don't have any of my own, which now I have a note to go get some based off your recommendation, but here's how I do. And I would go back through it of all the people that I connected to on LinkedIn during that time, and then I would write some physical notes and write some notes down, put 'em into my C R M and be like, okay, I need to contact this person, this person, this. What did we talk about here? Oh yeah, that's right. I, I'll give you this a little bit deeper. I was at the Chicago Summit. I had 11 people that I hooked up to and talk to. I had to take a quick break, go to a table and write down all these quick notes, be like, okay we talked this and remember who I needed to reach out to. Now I can see why still business cards and the value of them.

Guest: Adam

And I would say even if you have a colleague like the head of sales in your department who's not going to the event, say, Hey, can you give me a 10 or 20 year cards? I'm going to take 'em with me as well, and I'm going to give 'em to a few people as well in case I have that interaction. Hey, you really need to talk to my head of sales. You'd be a great doctor connector with here's his contact information. So bring a stack of bring stack of some of your colleagues who might not be attending but would be useful for somebody to know their information. Bring those cards. Folks. I don't want to have another conversation on my next booth that, Hey, I, and I'm terrible with names. This is why I can remember faces and I can remember why I remember you from, but I cannot connect the name, so I got to have that card. So please, next time you see me, Jon, or anybody else who's watching this, you come up to my booth and you have a conversation with me. The first thing is, Hey, Adam, I saw your podcast. Here's my card. All right,

Host: Jon

So Emma, we're still talking pret tips for this. I can't wait till we get to the actual show tips.

Guest: Adam

Remember, give yourself enough time, like two weeks minimum to order those cards, get 'em shipped to you before you head out the door. And by the way, put 'em in your suitcase. Stick 'em in your shoe, in your suitcase so you don't forget about 'em. Put 'em in your backpack. Put 'em in a couple different places. And my last tip is always stick about four or five of 'em in your wallet, in your bill fold, right? So if you forget your backpack, you set it down or you set your coat down or whatever, you at least have a couple spares in your wallet ready to go. All right?

Host: Jon

Gotcha. Makes sense.

Guest: Adam

Cool. All right, let's get into tip number two right here. Okay.

Host: Jon

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Guest: Adam

Let's get into tip number two right here. Okay, let's set the agenda. Jon. We got to set the agenda, all right? Pre-show, it's very important that you map out a battle plan for what you want to see, and all major conferences are going to have an online portal, some more sophisticated than others. Some will have an online portal where it's just basically a calendar, right? A day-to-day, and some will have opportunities for you to select and register for each one and build yourself a calendar. The most important thing here you can do when you're attending a trade show is have a battle plan for what you want to do before your feet hit the expo floor or before it hit the sessions floor. So again, as soon as you register and as soon as the sessions go live, build that battle plan because a lot of these events as have limited seating capacity for the most important or the more exciting or the most talked about sessions.

Guest: Adam

So you want to get in early, right? You want to get into those sessions. Just remember when we used to register for classes in college, the most popular ones filled up quickly. Same concept here. Don't wait till the day before you leave to set your agenda. As soon as you pay for your tickets, as soon as that portal opens, as soon as the calendar is available, go in and start building it. You can always update it later. And here's a couple of tips for you. Talk to your manager. Send them a link to the agenda. What things do you think I should see? What for my personal development or professional development, what sessions do you think I should see to bring back insights for the team where it's not for me as an individual contributor, but could benefit the team as I come back? And we're talking about that as a later tip for follow up post show.

Guest: Adam

So build out that agenda. And you know what? I hate to say it. I already know I went there with the paper card business cards, but print it out as well. Stick it in your wall, stick it in your pocket. So where I'm going to again, that going back to the first day on campus at college, you had that agenda of where was my class and what hall was it in and how long is it going to take me to get there? Look at the floor plan for the trade show, Jon. Sometimes they stick session one over here and session two south hall at the Sands or in a whole different venue, so it's not walking across the expo hall. You got to get to two different buildings. Give yourself enough time to make that track. So build out that plan. What am I doing first thing in the morning?

Guest: Adam

Give yourself some time for lunch. Give yourself some time for a break to grab some water. Stay hydrated, but build out that agenda that's based on input from your manager, your team, what's the most impactful thing that I can do, and then kind of stack rank the ones that you really want to hit, and then print that out, put it on a note card, whatever. Put it on the back of a business card of all the things I want to go to so that you have a battle plan on day one, you're walking in at 8:00 AM I have to be here at 12:00 PM I have to be here, and I'm going to wrap up the day here.

Host: Jon

Set you agenda, Adam. I, yeah, I agree with you, because what I do is, so when the agenda is there and ready to go, so sometimes when you register for an event, what happens is the agenda's not ready, but they do tell you a date that it's going to be ready. I throw that date into my calendar as a reminder and I say, okay, it's going to be available here. I want to be the first come first serve. I want to get, these are the sessions that I definitely want to get into, and some will have reserve seating, some will have wishlists, and you can actually put some of them on there. The more advanced portals allow you to put certain sessions in there and you can't double stack some or you can't, but you can put them on your wishlist. I agree. What I like to do is that I go through I like it that it's available on my mobile phone too.

Host: Jon

That way I can see it immediately. I do see the value of you actually printing it out, because a lot of the apps might not work when they're onsite because they're so D, so everybody's automatically on this application and is so bogged down. Everybody. Real quick, we're talking about Adam Kretz around conferencing, like a champion and how to get the most out of any conference this works, whether it's one day, two day, or a week long conference, and we just wrapped up tip number two, I believe, and we're going to be moving on to tip number three, unless Adam has more to add to tip number two,

Guest: Adam

I'll give you a tip to tip number two. We'll wrap it up with this idea. Once you have that agenda set, share that right, share it on social media. If you're a social media, you're of LinkedIn or Twitter, whatever or share it with your partners or your customers, and that gives you an opportunity to meet up together. Hey, we can grab a seat together at this session at this time and then grab coffee afterwards. We can take notes together or we can compare notes from that session. So by sharing that agenda with your colleagues who are also attending or your partners who might be attending, you have an opportunity to meet up and kind of interact in that space, right? All right, so that's setting the

Host: Jon

Agenda to tip number two. Tip 2.2. We have Sub Tips.

Guest: Adam

<laugh>. All right, so what do we got? Next up is click

Host: Jon

Three,

Guest: Adam

Number three, and let's share that.

Host: Jon

Now, are we still in the pre, we're not even in the show, or we're

Guest: Adam

Not even in the show yet, Jon, what's, what's taking so long here?

Host: Jon

No, so I like that we have a lot of pre-show, kind of prepare yourself for the actual live event itself.

Guest: Adam

It's all on the prep, man. It's all in the prep. All right. Tip number three, pre-show, ask for an invite. All right, so what does that mean? All right. In your role in the organization, it's very likely that you're working with customer success managers, account managers partners, partner marketing managers, partner alliance managers. You're probably working with a lot of vendors in the industry who will also have a presence at that industry event. So what I would recommend is, again, probably two to three weeks before the show reach out, and I'm not saying spam everybody, but reach out to the people you have relationships in the industry. Probably email, say, planning to be at show X. Is anybody from your team going to be there? I'd love to meet up for a brief session. And by the way, is there any after-shows events that I should think about attending?

Guest: Adam

Right? Because sometimes it's hard. A big part of these shows as you know, Jon, is why do you go to a show? It's the build relationships in the industry and to reconnect with people, especially in this world of remote first, right? Work where we want to build those relationships in the real world, i r l. And so by asking for an invite, you gained entry to these post-conferences sessions and happy hours and parties and get-togethers and cocktail hours. And so just reach out, say, Hey, vendor, is there anything that you know guys are hosting that I should consider attending? And if you've been a good customer for them, they, I'm sure they'd be delighted to have you, but you got to make the ask because they may not have your email address and they may not be thinking about inviting us. Make the ask. The worst they can say is, no, there's nothing. But I almost guarantee you there's going to be something that they recommend.

Host: Jon

I like how you worded it. Is there any after events that I should be attending? And I'll tell you what, the after events, the networking, the in-person stuff is crucial and key to any relationship out there. When you are building it within your vendors, within your customers, within your partners, those are where a lot of stuff gets done and the conversations, that's where you start to humanize the people behind the brand and you start to understand the value of them. I'll tell you, I try to attend as many as possible when I'm out at an event, and it can be daunting and it can be challenging to move for me which ones, but you got to pick and choose. I like how it's the ask of, is there any you think I should be attending? It's not like, Hey, are you hosting anything? Exactly. Send me an invite.

Guest: Adam

Yeah, exactly, exactly. You don't want to be a hang around or something, but you want to add value. And I love that you said that about the relationship because it's so funny. Listen, you go on and we're going to talk about on booth activity, but you do a demo, you talk to a people on the booth, and it's typically a little bit formal. It's a little bit scripted. And so to get the real answers or the real skin or the real information, that informal Octa reception where people loosen up a little bit more tends to, you tend to get to know people a little bit more. You build that relationship and you might get a little bit more information that way that you typically get by just having that interaction on the show floor. So the doors open a little bit wider in terms of the information sharing, and as you said, it's a great way to build the relationships, but you can't do that without asking for the invite to get in the door and attend it all right.

Host: Jon

Now, Adam, the tech onto that, would you recommend, obviously following, and not only the events on social media, but the companies and vendors that you are already part of interacting. So if they do post something about it, you can be on top of that and be proactive and say, you know what? I'm going to register for that because this is a great opportunity.

Guest: Adam

Absolutely. So I would have probably a hit list or a target account of vendors that you want to, vendors that you're doing business with and vendors that you are potentially thinking about doing business with. Make that hit list, right? Go to their websites, look at their events pages. If the vendor's worth their salt, they're going to have some kind of event listing on their corporate events page that, Hey, we're attending and they're going to have information about booking a meeting or an after hour party that they're hosting. So go and see what they've got going on, see what demos that they're offering if they're doing, a lot of companies as well are having exclusive speakers on their booth at the show. So this is separate and distinct from the actual learning sessions that the event puts on. So that's part of building your, going back to build your agenda item, look at the different vendor pages and see what activities that they're hosting on their booth and work that into your calendar as well. Say, Hey, I've got X, Y, z luminary speaking on the whatever vendor booth right now, and I really want to catch that. And that'll be actually probably a little bit more intimate opportunity because obviously the booth is smaller, there's going to be fewer people there and can probably walk up and talk to that person at the conclusion of their presentation on the stage, the vendor stage.

Host: Jon

Everybody, we're talking with Adam Krantz, a SaaS marketing leader around conferencing, like a champion. And we've kind of went through just the pre-show already. First one is the business cards, and while at first I didn't agree, I do agree now giving that my past experience of having business cards, that paper thing, when I come home, I have a full stack that I need to go through. I do it for them. Well, they do it for me, I should do it for them. Then we talked about the agenda, which is pret. Tip number two is build your agenda, know where you need to go when you want to go, and the rest can be built in as wishlist. And the third one, which I would've thought that it would be number three, but those after party, those events that you're looking for are very key to the relationship building. So have an idea in mind on when they are and when you'd like to attend and ask if there's anything worthwhile that you think you should attend. Adam, this is great so far. Let's talk about tip number four if we're there.

Guest: Adam

Okay, are you ready to actually attend the show now?

Host: Jon

I don't know. I'm already incite the pre-prep to go. All right, do the demo

Guest: Adam

Prep. Okay, so let's review. You got your business cards, you've set the agenda, you've been invited to after our part. Now let's actually attend the event. Now, I'm not going to give you tips about Wear comfy shoes. You should or bring a bottle of water. You should or bring a,

Host: Jon

Actually, I thought when we talked about this title, you were going to give everybody the traditional tips of, hey, shoes water, yeah, take a break,

Guest: Adam

Backpack, food,

Host: Jon

Backpack, all the stuff that you should naturally be doing that people kind of get, but you're really diving into the in-depth stuff that should be done. And we're, right now, we're talking about tip number four. Do the demo.

Guest: Adam

Talk about what does that mean? Okay, so listen, you're as a software engineer or an engineering manager or whatever your title, you are probably working with a technology stack that has DevOps tools or sales and marketing technology or CRM systems, et cetera, et cetera, and you are, it's very likely that you'll have those vendors in your technology stack presenting as a vendor at this trade show in the expo hall. So again, two different things. There's the learning sessions over there, and then there's the expo hall. And people typically think of the expo hall as, let me just walk by the booth, grab some swag, and then keep going, right? No, man, you've got to get that target list of vendors, walk up to them. And I know kind of, it's tough, but I, trust me, even if you're not, and listen, I'm kind of an kind of introvert generally and don't always like to approach people, but when I've stood on a booth it's important to me to draw people in and have a conversation, and we're there on that booth as vendors because we're friendly people and we know how to gauge and we know how to make you feel comfortable, and we know how to have a conversation about the product.

Guest: Adam

That's not a sales pitch. It's telling you, well, you know what you need to know. So I encourage you not to think of people on the booth as like, oh, let me just, they don't have time for me, or I'm not important. It's

Host: Jon

Like, let me sneak in here, grab this swag and grab their white paper and I'm out.

Guest: Adam

Yeah, exactly. It's like talk to them. They're there to talk to you. And I love, the best part of what I do is I just love having conversations with people who are passionate about what they do and then can connect that to how we solve a problem that they're facing or potentially facing or the organization is facing. So we're there for the conversations on booth. So first thing first is walk up and ask for a demo and don't just say, give me the demo or say, oh, I use the product. Here's a couple things you could say as a conversation starts, I've been using X, Y, Z software for two years and we love it. Can you tell me what's new? Because oftentimes in our daily life using the software, we don't get the emails or we don't subscribe to the blog or whatever from the vendor, and we don't kind of know SAS software.

Guest: Adam

There's new stuff being released all the time. We kind of forget about it or don't hear it for whatever reason. So, hey, what's new in the last six months? Is there anything new that you're showing at the show? And what should I be looking for on the horizon with the product? And then they're not going to be able to give you a full roadmap. Nobody will, but you could, if you talk to 'em enough, they'll intimate some of the things that they're thinking about and working on. So that's the first thing is ask for the demo. Ask for what's new, ask for what's been released at the show. Here's the second thing.

Guest: Adam

The person that you're talking to, generally speaking, is going to be highly knowledgeable about the product. They're going to be either kind of the UX guy or the product manager, or the product marketing manager, or the engineer who developed it, the sales engineer, the solutions engineer that's doing the demo of the product. So they're deeply knowledgeable about it. So talk to them about, Hey, and then by the way, go to your team first and say, who do you want me to talk to? And what questions do you have for those vendors? Because, generally speaking out, everybody's going to have access to the C S M for that vendor. So this is an opportunity for you to get some real skinny on what's going on with the product. So, hey, my team has had this challenge with the product. Either it's not scaling for our data sizes or we need help supporting large groups of users, whatever.

Guest: Adam

Go talk to them and say, Hey, some of the changes we've been having, who should I talk to about this? Have you been addressing this in the roadmap? Have you made any changes recently? And get that information about that product feedback, and then ask if you're so inclined. Are there any product advisory committees that I could join? Do you have any customer association teams that I could join? Are there any forums where I can contribute product feedback to? And they're going to love that. That's why these people go to the shows because they're looking for real user feedback and customer experience on how to improve the product. So they're going to say, yeah, sometimes that product manager, that director of product management say, here's my personal email address. I want you to email me whenever something comes up. So build that connection, ask. And by the way, Jon, please don't do this. Please do not use those people on the booth for customer support.

Host: Jon

Oh, <laugh>

Guest: Adam

Do

Host: Jon

Not. Not say, Hey, I got this problem. How do you fix this?

Guest: Adam

Even worse, and I've seen this so many times, even worse, you already have a ticket in with the company <laugh> that they've been working on for six months or whatever. There's a bug. If the ticket is in, the company knows about the problem, all right? Don't spend 30 minutes of that person's time on the booth telling them about that ticket.

Host: Jon

Hey, can you go look up this ticket number for me? Where is it at?

Guest: Adam

<laugh>? Oh, it's been a bug for six months and we can't get anything done. I'm like, that's what customer support is for to help you with that issue. The booth is not customer success, cus is not customer support. It's not the help desk. They're there to help you understand how to make the best use out of the product. So don't get them

Host: Jon

Bogged down. Seen. I

Guest: Adam

Know. Don't get 'em bogged down in the bugs, man. I listen. All software are going to is going to have a glitch. All software is going to have a bug. All software is not going to act as we expect to do all the time. That's just part of what we do in this world. And software development, no software is perfect, so just accept that. But have an honest conversation with people about saying, Hey, listen, we've had product quality issues for a year now. What's been the roadmap? What is the roadmap to address that? I mean, that's certainly a fine question to ask, but don't get into the weeds about a specific ticket that you have open and the customer support guys aren't getting back to me and all that sort of stuff.

Host: Jon

<laugh>, Adam, I was at the

Guest: Adam

Forum for it.

Host: Jon

I was at NAB in New York. They had the Da Vinci resolve section there. Really cool. They had very technical folks that you can talk about. I think though this was allowed by the way, but I do feel seen a little bit every time I'm rendering after using Fusion, it was starting to lag or I couldn't see it completely. And I was just asking the guy was there some pre-render in or proxy or stuff that I could do. And the guy was very intrigued by my question and he was a technical person who was showing people how to resolve certain issues. I didn't have a ticket or anything. It was just a generic question that I couldn't figure out on my own. My only way to work around it was to render it and then pull it back in that it was complete render. So it wasn't trying to render, but long story short, I did it.

Guest: Adam

Yeah, and that's the thing too, right? If you were doing stuff online and you figure, think an edge case that nobody else is talking about, be between the interaction between a third party plugin or a round tripping a project from one application to another. You think you found an education, nobody else had that conversation. Hey, have you looked at the interplay between these two products and this hiccup that I've experienced documented? Do some screen grabs say, follow up with that person, give 'em your business card, take their business card follow up after the show.

Host: Jon

Oh, that goes back to, I'm sure they're going to

Guest: Adam

Business card goes back to the business card. They're going to want to follow up on that. They're not going to be able to solve it on the booth. Or maybe this, you know what? I've heard a couple people mention that we need to think about addressing that. All right. This is more than an edge case. It's actually maybe court of product. So that that's certainly applicable, but you get my point about not bogging down in the help desk ticket. All right. So Adam, the demo, yes,

Host: Jon

No, I wanted to jump on. And so with this tip number four of doing the demo in tip number two, you said have an agenda. Now, this agenda was geared towards the sessions that are happening. Do you feel the value of having an agenda for the expo hall based off the vendor list that's there and available to you for most summits or events on who you want to go and see?

Guest: Adam

That's a great point. Thank you for bringing it up, Jon. So absolutely, when you build your calendar, make sure to provide yourself expo hall time. You don't need to be there all day. You're not going to be able to see everything. It's just not possible for the larger shows. That's why it's a multi-day show. So give yourself two or three hours on the show floor typically, if you can do it, do it early morning when doors open, if there's no sessions that you're going to because it's at, the traffic is just going to be lighter and you're going to have a better opportunity to engage with the booth staff, and they're going to be a little fresher in the morning too, by the way. Try not to do it. Please, for the love of everything, don't walk up to them at a minute to doors close with an expectation of having, because they're probably needing to get somewhere, right?

Guest: Adam

They're not going to have a drink, but they need to get to the next event, the next post event. So try to get there at least 30 minutes before doors close or early in the morning. But yes, build that time into your schedule for the expo hall and then have that hit list, stack rank it, prioritize who are the five most important vendors that I need to engage with at this show. And so here's the next thing. You do the demo, you ask 'em those questions. You talk about roadmap, you talk about issues you talk about and also say, Hey, listen, in some cases you're having a great experience with the product. You say, listen, if you have the authority to do this, or talk to the marketing department, say, I would love to give her a review for the software on G2 or Capra or something like that. Can I do that for you? What would you like me to like me to express about the product? Or say, Hey, you might think about us for a customer taste study. Let me give you the information of our marketing person who can connect us and maybe we can work that out. So give them a little bit something back in return because they're constantly looking for that sort of feedback from the customer community as well. All right, so do the demo. And then the last thing I have about doing the demo,

Host: Jon

Oh, wait, wait, wait a second. This is still, wait, is this a sub tip to tip number, sub

Guest: Adam

Tip, this

Host: Jon

Tip for demo? Okay. Okay. I wanted to stop you before you hit tip number five. Okay, let's talk about the sub to tip four, tip

Guest: Adam

4.4 A, wherever we're at at this point. So this is the most powerful thing. You've got this pen. When you're doing these demos, take great notes, right about your conversation, who you talked to get their information, what their role is, what you discussed, right? Because we're going to talk about this in the next tip. So make sure you're taking, we're going to roll this into the next tip, but make sure you're taking good notes. I don't care if you do it on your iPad, your Kindle, your whatever device. Take great notes during that conversation. Don't just, if you've got a perfect memory, great, more power to you. I don't. So I take great notes, stick it back in your backpack and carry it with you, but hit all those points that you discussed so that you have clarity about what was said because there's a lot to remember. So take great notes is the last tip I have for that demo experience. Even take some, if they'll allow it, take your phone out and take some pictures, screenshots what they're doing, or take a short video of them doing it. Whatever you need to recall the conversation, make sure you do that. And don't just leave it up to memory a week later when you're back in the office.

Host: Jon

All right? I think taking the great notes leads back to also knowing who you're talking to, documenting and getting their information, get their business card exchanges. And in fact, let's recap what we're talking about. We're talking about conferencing like a champion with Adam Kranitz, who's a SaaS marketing leader. We've talked about tip number one, which this is a pre one is get those business cards. You got to check out the beginning of this podcast on the value of those. I'll tell you what I, I'm ordering mine probably after the show. Number two, the agenda. Make sure you map out where you want to go. And we just talked about doing the demo in tip four. You can also map out your agenda for your expo hall on who you'd like to see based off of your sessions. Number three, which I would've never guessed is in there, but asked if there's any important events that you should be attending afterwards.

Host: Jon

There's nothing wrong with it. There's great customer in real life interaction networking that happens after the event or summit that you're at where you can get a lot of conversations and get a lot of things done. And then tip number four, we just recap is do the demo. Actually walk up there and talk to them. They want to show you, they want to interact with you, they want to answer your questions. Before we get to tip number five, Adam, I got to tell you, when I was at Summit of Summits, I would go up and I know some are always that little, you're in the booth and you just don't want to approach that person that's walking by be like, I'm tired of people saying, no, just give me the swag. I actually would walk up and be like, give me your 62nd elevator pitch, and that allows it to break the ice.

Host: Jon

He's like, I, I've never heard that before. So they start to get in it, and then all of a sudden you can start to feel them warm up into their thing. And then the questions happen. Why? What does this do? What is the value? I've never heard of this company, but tell me about it. And that's usually where I'll go up to people that I don't, I've never heard of their product or service, and we're like, just give it to me. And it allows them to warm up and interact. And I'm like, all right, let's see a demo of this.

Guest: Adam

Yeah, I, I'll add on to that. I think that's a great point, Jon. It, it's very easy to gravitate to the massive boost like the Datadog and the VM wears and the Dells and the Red Hats and the IBMs and all those guys. Great. You should spend some time there, see what's going on. Don't skip out the little 10 by 10 or the kiosk ones, right? Or the five by fives, whatever they are, because those are the next potential big product two years from now, right? Yep. This is maybe their first show and they've got something that's going to disrupt the industry. Marketing, who would've imagined that chat GPT would be as big as it is a year ago. So that's what happens. As we all know in this industry, change comes very, very quickly. So spend some time checking out the people you've never heard of before and look at their literature and if it peaks your curiosity, exactly, ask them for that 32nd pitch.

Guest: Adam

Do you have a freemium version? Do you have a trial I can check out? Where should I go for more information and put that in your back pocket as a potential resource a year from now? Because I can guarantee you two or three years from now if they've done their job, that vendor, they're the next 50 by 50 booth and they're the game changer. Datadog didn't come out of the womb as a massive trade show booth. They started as a little DevOps tool that nobody had ever heard of. So get in early on that as well. And don't ignore the guys on the back wall, the booth be by the commissary, right? Yep. They're the next big guy potentially.

Host: Jon

I agree with you. All right, Adam, let's go to tip number five.

Guest: Adam

Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, so let's talk about what happens after the show. Okay? So this is tip five post. Show your notes and follow up. Now, admittedly I was looking for a picture of me kind of typing on my laptop, but the best I could come up with was picture of my two daughters typing up notes on the typewriter. So again, getting back to

Host: Jon

This is what Adam uses every day for his notes. No, I'm just kidding

Guest: Adam

So paper, business cards and typewriters. So I'm really, really dating myself here. But the idea here is when you get back to your desk, don't delay. Take all those notes from the product sessions, from the demos, those business cards, and put them into a Google Doc or some other Jira or Confluence or whatever you use in your organization to collaborate and share information with. And start structuring it based on either vendors existing customers or vendors that you're using today and what's new and what we should be on the lookout for, and things learned. And then things that we should explore, we should look at that are opportunities for us in the future that may solve a problem in our technology stack. And then share that with the engineering team. Share it with the product manager. Share it with the CEO because the company is paying for you, not only for you to get smarter about what you do, but to bring that knowledge back into the organization.

Guest: Adam

What I've actually asked my direct reports to do in the past is if they want to do attend a trade show and the cost is within reason, my caveat is that's fine, but you have to come back and do a one hour presentation about key results, key observations, and what we could be doing as an organization to leverage what you learned at the show, all right? And give that to a group and then record it and make it available as on demand content. All right? So bring that and to be able to do that, you'll have to have taken really good notes, great conversations, take some photos, and we've all got powerful computational photography in our pockets with our iPhones. Take lots of pictures of the trade shows, by the way, secret tip, your competitor's booths might be there as well. Take pictures of the competitor's booth and the activity that's happening.

Guest: Adam

Maybe there's not a lot of activity at that customer booth, or maybe there's a ton happening or maybe there's certain something going on. So take some pictures of that as well and share that internally with the marketing team. Hey, I observed this right at competitor X, Y, Z. So take great notes, written notes, document it with photography, and share that with an organization written and with a presentation if you feel inclined to do that. And make sure that the people who invested in you are aware of the return on investment you're providing back into the organization, and that should be part of your professional development. Have that discussion with your one-on-ones and your OKRs. I want to attend this event for this professional development, and this is the key result that we're going to get out of it. So that should be part of what your job is to bringing that information back into the organization.

Guest: Adam

So review your notes, follow up, do the presentations, and then fire off those LinkedIn invites to all those business cards. You connected with a little note. Hey, remember me? We had a discussion about this topic on your booth. Thank you so much for the time you spent with me. I look forward to learning more about what's going on in your organization. Fire those LinkedIn notes off fire. If it's not LinkedIn, shoot a quick email note again. Hey, it was wonderful to meet you. So they've then captured in their inbox, now in their inbox, even if they archived it, that email, if they got to go back and remember, Hey, I had that great conversation with that guy, they're going to go to his Gmail search and look for you, and they're going to find that email that you sent six months ago. So that's in there with your contact information and what you talked about.

Guest: Adam

Summarize what you talked about and so they can reach out to you. So make sure that you contact everybody with a short note about what you talked about, thanking them for their time, and make sure your information is in there as well, and get that out the door. This is almost the second job, all this work, but if you commit to actually professionalizing and operationalizing your attendance of the trade show, it's going to power your career development in the organization. People are going to sit up and take notice, and you're going to be considered a subject matter expert in your field. And by the way, you're going to be continually asked to go back and do more of these things. So you're building that credibility in the organization to being somebody who's who can do knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer, which I think is incredibly exciting and important, especially the soft skill sides.

Guest: Adam

This is kind of getting off the topic a little bit, Jon, but as we all become more automated and more leveraging AI and machine learning to do our workforce, the soft skills are the skills that AI can't replicate. And so if we build our soft skills around relationship building, communication, presentation, influencing people in an organization by doing this sort of work, you're building your career. It's not just, Hey, I know how to do X as far as software development or DevOps or marketing or sales. It's about having those soft skills that make you more flexible and more desirable in an organization. Influencing communication presentation distilling complexity into clarity in an organization, what's happening in the industry, very, very important for our professional development in today's world where our hard skills are increasingly getting automated out of existence.

Host: Jon

So Adam, before we wrap things up, my question for step number five is, you said you review your notes and follow up. As an entrepreneur, I'm always there for an event for several things, and three main things: one, networking. I want to communicate, and reach out to anybody, and I want to learn. I'm learning about what are the services, products and things that are coming up not only from the company that's hosting the event, but also from the vendors. In other words, lead generation. I'm always reaching out, and I'm talking to those at the booth, what their product is, how it is, oh man, this really interests me. I'd like to represent you. And so now I've got their business card, I've got my notes. The event is over. Is there a certain timeline that I should be following up in? Because here's, here's me. I'm sitting at the airport waiting to get my plane to leave. I'm starting to follow up with everybody from the event. Is it too soon? Should I wait a couple of days? Should I wait a week to follow up? What's an optimal time to follow up, to reach out? I mean, we all connect on LinkedIn right away, and we drop that note. Don't get me wrong; I'll do it immediately while I'm there. We're connecting. But what about that email?

Guest: Adam

Yeah, I would probably, so from my experience seeing doing email marketing post event to your leads and prospects and your boost scans, I really feel it's better to give people at least 2, 3, or 4 business days after a show closes for people to get back home, get settled back in, and to get ramped up and kind of getting through things again to drop that first email. I would not wait longer than seven to eight business days because you're just kind of; by then, people moved on things, right? And they're getting ready for the next thing. So I would say three to four business days after the event to start getting those emails out; LinkedIn connections are kind of a different thing. Just do those immediately, and then don't wait longer than seven, or eight business days to get those email communications out and that connection and get that relationship building started.

Host: Jon

All right, awesome. So Adam, before we close things out, is there anything you'd like to leave with our audience?

Guest: Adam

So listen, the biggest thing is have fun, be engaging, and go talk to people. When you go to a trade show event, you're going to spend most of your time talking, talking, have your elevator pitched down. This is who I am, this is what I do, and this is why I'm here on behalf of our company, and this is what our company does. Talk to the marketing department, talk to whoever, ask 'em the pitch that I need to convey about what our company does and how I should communicate that value. What's the value prop? Also, one final tip. I can't believe I forgot to mention this. I'm a big swag guy. I love swag. When you ask those socks, sock, I got my socks, I got my sock, I got lots of socks, I got lots of difference. They tend to last. I like socks. That's my favorite thing. And tote bags. But ask your marketing department before you go to the show. Hey, do you have any spare branded t-shirts in my size that I can take with me to the show and wear around the expo floor or a hoodie or whatever backpack or whatever you got

Host: Jon

That's actually huge. You're branding them while you're walking, so,

Guest: Adam

Right? Why not show off your brand and representation of who you are? Because people might want to talk, walk up to you and have a conversation about it, or it's just great marketing. So ask the marketing team, Hey, can you give me anything that I can use to show off? And if I can't imagine a marketing team that wouldn't say, Hey, yeah, we can quickly print you out a long sleeve tea, or whatever it is that they can make it. It's not hard to do those things, and they should be able to turn that around seven days. So ask for that branded swag so you can represent the brand on site and have a good time. But most important thing is have fun talk to people. Everybody at that show is there to build relationships and engage and have a discussion. And it's in everybody's professional interests to be open, to be friendly, and to be engaging.

Guest: Adam

If you have the opposite of experience with any vendor or brand at one of these shows, you know, probably know you don't want to do business with 'em. So have fun, have a good time, be prepared, and then bring all that knowledge. Don't let that knowledge go into a black hole. Bring that knowledge back to the organization and publish it on the intranet, on the Confluence page, wherever you can in a Slack channel, right? Yep. Do maybe set up a Slack channel, by the way, I swear. Last one, set up a Slack channel or teams channel for updates from trade show X, Y, Z, and anybody who wants to join and can join it. And you can do post photos, you can post short video clips, you can post updates. Here's what I'm seeing, and get real-time feedback. People can say, oh, make sure to go over there and ask them about this and that. So you can have that communications with people and kind of have that live update as well. So final tip for you, but otherwise have fun. You're going on behalf of your employer. Make it a good event and have fun. And if you see me or you see Jon, make sure to say hi to us. We're friendly guys.

Host: Jon

<laugh>. Exactly. Adam, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. This has been awesome. Thank

Guest: Adam

You for having meet Jon. I can't wait to see you at the next event in the real world. In the meantime, have a wonderful end of your week and I'll see you soon.

Host: Jon

Yes, definitely. So, everybody, we've been talking with Adam Kranitz. It's a SaaS marketing leader for conferencing, like a champion. He's been giving us his five tips. Number one, business cards. The value of those. Also, set your agenda not only for the event itself in sessions but also the expo hall. Number three, events, post events, they're very key to anything. Number four, why you're there. Ask for the demo, do the demo, and find out the value. And number five, which is the most critical that I imagine it's going to be is review your notes and do your post follow up. These are the five tips that will make a successful conference champion, everybody. Adam Krantz joining us. Adam, once again, thank you so much.

Guest: Adam

Thank you, Jon.

Host: Jon

All right, everybody. My name's Jon Myer. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to hit that light, subscribe, and end notified, because guess what, we're out of here.