Who Owns Your Conference Throughline?

Every year, we support conferences, sometimes helping with a few keynotes and sometimes supporting the entire three-day production. Regardless of our role, our first step is to ask for the messaging document. But we rarely get it when we ask for it.

Instead, we get the run of show from the production company with a well-mapped timeline. Or we get a framing document from the internal team that explains the conference theme and experience. And occasionally, we just get a list of speakers with their topics and what we need to improve.

What we’re asking for is a view of how messages align, overlap and lead to key takeaways for the listeners. That’s what we call the throughline.

And more than half of the time, no one really owns it.

If that’s hard to believe, consider the key players who are pulling conference details together:

• The production company is focused on the event…and they deliver on the look and feel in a ballroom.
• The marketing team is about the experience…and they deliver on the look and feel outside the ballroom.

And it continues across technology support, events teams etc. People deliver on what they’ve been asked to do. But the throughline isn’t embedded in the process.

In fact, if you walked into a rehearsal the day before the conference begins, you’d see that a lot of what the audience will experience works well without speakers at all! The energy in the room comes from music. The visual concepts within the room create an experience and illicit emotion without words. In many cases, the quality of the production is well ahead of the quality of the messaging.

And the obvious question is: Is that OK?

It depends on your expectations for the conference.

If the outcome you’ve agreed on is that clients and employees feel entertained and connected to each other, then your goal may be accomplished with energy and entertainment. You may not need to worry about aligning messaging at all. Speakers can bring individual thoughts and worry less about being part of a total picture. But if the outcome you want includes follow-up actions, peaked interest in a new product, buy-in to a new approach, or sales calls to accelerate deals, you’ll never get there if messaging is not aligned and repeated consistently in the midst of all the entertainment and energy.

And that’s what a throughline is designed to do.

By helping internal teams align to six key steps, we ensure that conferences are developed around best practices that set the bar higher than a fun experience and deliver on outcomes and momentum that continues well after the event itself has wrapped up.

Here are our best practices.

STEP ONE: Set the Content Team & Process
The sweat equity required to align messages to a theme should happen as a first step. Messaging should lead the production element, the entertainment element, and everything else that happens in the room. But often, a production company is engaged before the theme is ever considered. And when you do that, you lose the flexibility to imagine the experience that best supports the outcomes you’re trying to deliver. This is when the throughline is developed.

STEP TWO: Align the Communicators to Messaging
Your communicators need to be aligned to a full picture of what you are trying to accomplish rather than treated as a separate component. Do you get their buy-in right up front as the throughline takes shape? Or do you get their attention in the last mile when you’re trying to nail down key points you want them to cover?

They are integral pieces of the through line, and that’s where challenge comes in. When conferences are treated as productions and events, the good thinking and talent resource goes toward planning the event. But if the theme isn’t talked out with the key communicators, you don’t have buy-in to the concept. And you’ll hit misalignment when they come in later in the process. Before anything else moves ahead, agreement to the throughline helps everyone support the event based on messaging. The throughline creates a clean and clear blueprint that should drive all the other components.

STEP THREE: Build Content & Context
While the creative teams join the conversation in step one, they leverage the message document to bring an experience to life. Once the messaging and throughline is set, it’s much easier to allow creative teams to do what they do best – without input or friction from the content owners. We create a separation between the two elements for production which gives the creative side full ownership for context and keeps the content creators very much in the lane of messaging.

When the content side tries to leverage a creative document to drive their process, roles get blurred and inevitably the creative side gets too much input into their process.

STEP FOUR: Blend Content & Context
Midway through the development, the content and context sides come back together. This gives both distinctly different elements a chance to see the full picture framed up and to gauge and adjust how well each component delivers the desired outcomes. If done at a midpoint, it also gives the creative team time to enhance the experience with elements leading up to and following up after the event. This step evaluates and edits at the midpoint to support repeatability and extend the memorability of what’s said. It also identifies the transitions and simple add-ons that can help ensure takeaways.

STEP FIVE: Add Supporting Roles
For most big events, companies rely on an MC to make all the transitions.

It’s a hard role. MC’s may be hired talent or someone inside the company who’s got a good stage presence. When step four happens at the right time, the role of an MC is defined clearly and linked to the throughline and flow of messaging. When it doesn’t happen, the MC becomes more of a comedian or stand-alone element that keeps the audience engaged and gives out details of what happens next throughout the day.

When this is seen as an intentional step after the blend of content and context, the MC role is leveraged more effectively. And it can be a more focused guide through the content rather than just an entertainer transitioning from one speaker to another.

STEP SIX: Measure Outcomes
Before you wrap it up, ask for feedback. And if you’re driving toward outcomes, you need feedback on two components: content and context. Measure context first. This can be done on the final day as people head to the airport. They’re thinking about the event itself and what they experienced. It’s good measurement against what you wanted the experience to deliver.

But more important is measuring the content impact. And that’s the outcome you wanted to reach. One month after the conference, what do your attendees say? Have they booked a follow-up meeting or moved exploration of a product further? Measuring content and context separately helps you gauge whether you’re investing too heavily in one or the other. And if you’re really delivering against all expectations for the conference.

 

The steps above make a big difference in moving from high entertainment to high impact. And we can help you do it. Whether you leverage us for two steps or all six, we can help your conference gain repeatability and memorability that will deliver outcomes throughout the year.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

It’s All On You: Will Your Keynote Speech Be a Home Run?

TAKE US WITH YOU! Listen to this article on the go:

It’s all been leading up to your 20 minutes on a stage…

The events team has spent a small fortune planning it…

The marketing team has spent six months promoting it…

And the sales team is waiting in the wings, eager to capitalize on it…

And all you have to do as the keynote speaker—is hit it out of the park!

Easy enough, right? Actually no. Most leaders say it’s one of the hardest things they’re asked to do. Few leaders like doing it, and no leaders like hearing the expectations described above. So, they wait too late to begin planning for it – and they strike out.

It happens more often than you might think. About 60% of all the keynotes that will be delivered in this upcoming conference season will fail in their main objective: positioning new opportunities for the company.

How can that be? After all, most company keynote speakers are senior executives with an entire support staff. So how can more than half of their keynotes fail to leave an audience impressed?

The truth is that most keynotes follow the same formula: the usual cliches to shine light on the brand, mixed with this year’s fresh coat of paint and a presentation about what you’re doing and why your customers need it.

And while this formula is easy to pull together by an internal marketing team, it rarely meets the expectations of what an audience came to hear. The audience wants a broader view. They want to hear industry insights and comparisons, they want perspective that is relevant and useful to their companies and their plans, and they want to be entertained by how the keynote speaker weaves it all together.

We’ve witnessed countless keynotes over the years, and this disconnect replays itself time and time again. A keynote speaker takes the stage to great fanfare and spends the next 20 minutes talking about their own company. They don’t connect the dots to marketplace issues, industry opportunities or their customers’ priorities. And the audience is left to figure out: does this matter to me?

It takes alignment on three key elements to make a keynote memorable and repeatable. And it’s why we developed our formula for a winning keynote:

A Clear Storyline + Memorable Stories + A Compelling Storyteller

 

The Storyline:

Impactful communication leverages the power and clarity of a storyline to lead listeners to a clear takeaway. It’s the right structure that leads listeners on an incredible journey with a blend of insights, discovery and a little fun.

The journey looks different from one keynote to the next, but great keynote speeches lead to big Aha’s. If there’s nothing new, the keynote just diluted the value of the entire conference. These are the headlines; these are the proof points, and this is the foundation that supports all the other sessions.

 

Stories:

Audiences love stories because they’re repeatable when they’re told well. But only about 22% of stories that are told in business settings are memorable. And in our years of research on stories, there’s one pretty clear reason why: the story being told wasn’t aligned to the journey for the listener.

Successful storytelling ties together key points. We often say that a successful keynote can be measured by a listener who remembers your message and can validate it by repeating a story from your presentation.

Stories make a message real and bring complete ideas or data to life for an audience. But by themselves, their impact is limited. It’s the combination of stories within a storyline that gives a keynote its shelf life. Without a set storyline, stories entertain without leaving a lasting impact. And without stories, a storyline often struggles to bring points to life.

A keynote speaker needs both in order to make a message resonate until next year’s conference. And that leads to the differentiating element … the presenters themselves!

 

The Storyteller:

We tell many presenters that communication is a blend of head and heart. Good data points align with the brain and good stories align with the heart. Presenters who can engage both head and heart have a much better chance of connecting with an audience.

Great storytellers don’t just want you to hear their stories. They want you to feel the story and they inject emotion into stories in the way that they tell them. Think of a favorite speaker in business, comedy, politics, or religion. They all have a certain energy and conviction that seems to pull you in.

Most speakers aren’t willing to invest the time to learn how to do this well. They’re relying on the communication style they’ve had for more than a decade. And while it’s good enough for running a business meeting, it isn’t good enough to engage an audience from a stage. It takes coaching, it takes effort, and it takes the right blend of all three ingredients in our formula to bring it to life.

A Clear Storyline + Memorable Stories + A Compelling Storyteller

 

Conferences are back and bigger than ever. Your customers are giving you 2-4 full days of their time, and most companies are counting on only a few people to lead a journey that catapults everything else into place next year.

Are you one of the people they’re counting on?

It’s a lot of pressure, but we can ensure you’ll deliver on it. Invest the time and effort to improve your skills, and you’ll knock it out of the park.

If you’re the next speaker, commit to being the best one.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

Customer Conference Outcomes: It’s Harder Than You Think

TAKE US WITH YOU! Listen to this article on the go:

Customer conferences are back, and attendance is strong! The brief hiatus to virtual events didn’t hold up as a viable option. And the data proves it out. More than 70% of event planners say it’s too difficult to mimic a real-life experience virtually, and 67% say the brand narrative doesn’t come through. And that’s why 98% are back in convention centers, ballrooms and other venues to drive their marketing strategies.

But it’s a little different this time around.

Historically, the customer conferences belonged to the marketing team. They built the hype and positioned new products and ideas on a big budget with lots of bells and whistles to create a fun event. Sales jumped in post-conference and scheduled customer conversations and visits to generate an opportunity. The marketing investment was measured by attendance, customer fun and sales follow-up.

In the last year, sales leaders learned the hard way that conference expectations have to go up.

Here’s why:

In-person sales meetings have plummeted by 52% since the pandemic, and over 70% of buyers no longer want to invite a sales rep into an office. The “pitch” has been reduced to a virtual format and is easily delayed or stalled until a company is ready to buy something. That diminishes the sales team’s ability to pick up where the conference ideas wrap up, and in many cases, it eliminates an opportunity for a positioning conversation.

That may be why groups are disappointed in the gap between the event investment and the sales revenue. It doesn’t mean the events aren’t a good use of marketing dollars. But it does mean that focus and format may shift as expectations go up.

As your group begins to think about 2024 conferences, now is the time to add a new lens on your event and adjust expectations with your planning team. And that’s where we’ve jumped in to help sales and marketing teams rethink their conference to ensure outcomes are more than just fun and games.

From our perspective, there are three opportunities for connection: messaging, people and takeaways.

 

CONNECT THE MESSAGES:

All companies work on themes and topics. But only a few really connect the dots across all the storylines. In most companies, marketing sets a plan and then hands topics to presenters and gives them general direction to build their talk track. When communication teams get involved, the keynotes improve but the thread of ideas across breakouts, demo sessions and all presenters is rarely evident.

That used to just be a lofty ideal state. But now, it’s the only way to ensure that messages are memorable and repeatable. You’re arming the conference attendees with thoughts that they will need to recall months later to consider your salesperson.

It’s aligning all presenters to a narrow group of messages that support a theme. It means that each portion of the conference builds on what came before it rather than heading in a different direction. And it works. Companies that we’ve helped link all pieces together see better results in continuing conversations and generating sales.

 

CONNECT THE ATTENDEES:

This seems like an easy one, but your customers find it harder to walk into a setting where they don’t know people. And even when they’re on site, they make choices not to do it.

You can host a cocktail hour, but you won’t see the easy engagement from a few years ago. We’ve learned this the hard way as small group programs came back on our calendar. People are more reticent to jump in and network. It’s been an awkward reset that hasn’t happened easily.

You have to organize and plan connection. You have to impose opportunities on people. And you have to put small groups together with a purpose. Mini events inside planned events make it easier. Time and time again, we see that people like a plan for fitting in, and they respond well to an activity to do with a small group.

We’ve seen the “miss on connection” play out many times. Earlier this year, we were on-site for a conference that included evening events. In hindsight, the marketing team realized there was little communication about plans for the first night’s dinner. They invited people with a time and location, but they didn’t say anything about what would happen when you arrived. And that’s probably why 65% of their attendees didn’t show up. The marketing team was shocked, and the CEO was mad. I’d seen this hesitancy before and suggested a different approach for the second night. Through light-hearted comments from the CEO, we added details for the second night and shared plans for assigned seating, planned discussion and activity. 95% of their attendees showed up the second night.

Take the hesitancy and awkwardness out of joining in. Make it easy for people to lean in and feel included during the conference.

 

CONNECT THE TAKEAWAYS:

Once the conference begins and a group settles in, your on-site team needs to work much harder to frame the next steps while your customers are there. This can work in conjunction with a plan to impose engagement. But it often takes a structured plan and a little coaching to help your team execute this.

You need to take advantage of your customers’ willingness to spend 2.5 days with you. You won’t get it again any time soon. Create a 10:1 ratio between people attending and people you have on-site. Leverage every employee to run a playbook that helps you get two steps ahead with needs, ideas and timetables with customers.

Sales teams show up at conferences and see their lead role as entertaining. That’s too low of an expectation. You need to be able to forecast, prioritize and strategize based on the insights you get at the conference. Rotate your top people through these groups and find ways to gather good insight and timing on a customer’s plans in the months ahead.

All conferences use apps, but you may not be leveraging all the capabilities available. You can build small groups in apps; you can change small groups in apps. And you can send a personalized agenda to each attendee every night. It may seem overwhelming to manage hundreds or thousands of attendees. But your employees can easily manage a group of ten. Test different ways to engage and different times throughout the conference for 1:1 conversations.

 

Conferences are at an all-time high, and customers are showing up in record numbers. But your sales team needs more than just interest and entertainment as a takeaway. It’s a different playbook that drives the ultimate connection through messages, people and takeaways. And we can help you get there.

Let us be your sounding board as conference planning gets underway.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!