Customer Conference Outcomes: It’s Harder Than You Think

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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!

The Slippery Slope – Do I Have to Come In or Not?

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It was the business dilemma of 2022. Companies spent hours upon hours debating their strategy about hybrid work. Leadership teams went on retreats, read studies and employee surveys. And then they called the shot:

• Some said come in two days and stay home for three…
• Some said come in three days and stay home for two…
• Others said come in all days…
• And a few said remain virtual and remote.

The only thing that seemed consistent in policy setting was that every company set a policy.

But it didn’t bring immediate change.

Because while senior leaders set the policy, they relied on people leaders to enforce it. Teams were given leeway to build their own working model and set their own guidelines. Conceptually, a good idea. But actually, it’s been pretty confusing because nothing seemed consistent from one manager to the next, and it still isn’t consistent today.

In the same companies, some people leaders are following the strategy, and others are saying “we don’t need to come in.” Some are setting a few meetings as guardrails and then allowing employees to interpret the rest for themselves. And unintentionally, we’ve ended up in a tug of war between employees and managers which is why the most common sound bite from employees is: “Do I have to come in or not?”

The data shows that most employees need to.

Senior leaders will tell you that initial pandemic insights showed that people were working effectively and efficiently at home. Projects were able to stay on task, and employees actually worked more without distractions and commutes.

But leaders should have also considered that employees didn’t have much else to do. Now that everything is open, distractions are limitless. Those same employees have built new schedules and lifestyles that work best with a lot of flexibility. So, the tug of war continues.

Do people really need to return to offices? Most companies would say yes for reasons that benefit employees more than they’re willing to admit.

Culture, development, connection and trust aren’t happening easily without people being together. If you just cringed, consider this. You may be an outlier. You may be the person who has made all of the team elements work without sitting in a room together. But the data says something different. Overwhelmingly, most companies are seeing that they didn’t deliver on many of the ingredients that sustain a company culture and propel employee growth. And even if you are an exception, companies need to guide a work environment that promotes best practices for all.

Is there a chance that leaders will give in to the employee resistance? Will companies ease off their hybrid strategy and go back to “Just do what works for you.”

No.

Senior leaders can’t let that happen. At this point, it’s not a matter of whether companies are moving forward with a hybrid model. It’s a question of who’s going to buckle down and nudge employees to get there.

Once again, the expectation is on people leaders.

Not the senior leaders. They set the strategy and put the wheels in motion to adjust company norms, company space and everything needed to make a culture conducive to hybrid models. It’s the people leaders who will have to make it work now. We’re back where we were when the pandemic hit, and people leaders were asked to manage so much more than work results. They balanced mental health, personal fears, illness and lack of connection. They spent twice the amount of time on individuals as they had in the past, and they are the key reason we all got through rough waters.

And now, every people leader needs to shift from the needs of individuals to the priorities of teams. It’s a 180 from the direction they took before, and some people leaders are avoiding it. Others are struggling with it. It’s the crux of the problem with resetting. Companies won’t have a vibrant, hybrid culture until people leaders lean in and make it happen.

As we’ve coached individuals and small groups of people leaders to do this, we understand the resistance. We also understand that the success of moving ahead is counting on it.

So, whether you’ve already embraced the ideas below or feel your shoulders tense up as you read them, this is what we’ve coached people leaders to do to step up to the task at hand.

People leaders need to:

Know your own blind spot. The hybrid strategy is one company policy where some people leaders are letting their own desires get in the way. It’s OK to admit it. And it’s essential to recognize it. But it can’t be about you right now. It’s about a group of employees who need to feel like a team. Be careful that you aren’t assuming what worked during the pandemic is still relevant today. Those were different times, more restricted times, and your employees aren’t staying at home. They’re just not coming to the office.

Course correct by example. The analogy of giving 110% has never been more important. If you want people to show up more, you need to be there every day to greet them. If the guidance says to come in two days, you should be there for four days so that your team always sees you. It isn’t fair, and it may not even feel right. But it’s the number one excuse employees are giving for why they aren’t adopting the hybrid model. “My manager isn’t even there.” To change their behavior, you need to go well beyond it until the team hits the cadence you’ve prescribed. Then, you can settle into the same schedule.

Explain the why, not the what. Most messaging around the hybrid strategy wasn’t very good. It explained what companies were doing but didn’t prove out why they were doing it. And employees took away a mandate that felt restrictive, not beneficial. It wasn’t your message, but it’s your mess to clean up. You need to believe in and communicate the value of a hybrid strategy and make it real for your team.

Build a model for a new way of working. In our workshops, we’ve coached people leaders to be intentional about talking through how a team works. It is a reset and deserves discussion to get to an understanding. Every team has tasks that are independent, and tasks that are interdependent. Employees need some help remembering that.

Deliver on development. Many people leaders are leaning on external resources, like us, to develop programming that adds meaning to their monthly or quarterly meetings. That’s a good idea. It allows you to deliver employee development without shouldering all of it yourself.

Expand perspectives. Employees are stuck on proving that they work well remotely. Don’t fight their perspective. They may be right, and they aren’t feeling heard. Instead, expand their perspective to the team view which they can’t really see. That’s the unique view you have and the reason to bring people together.

 

All companies are dealing with resistance to the hybrid strategy. It’s a key ingredient in the evolving company culture, but it won’t take hold without the efforts of people leaders. It’s a tall ask, and companies need to find those who are willing to step up and make it happen.

A little support through coaching or a group workshop is proving to be a big help. If your people leaders could use a boost and some guidance on moving ahead, we’d welcome a chance to help you accelerate your efforts.

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!

Selling the Big Idea

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Imagine This:

You manage a product team for a consumer electronics company. Over the last few years, customer feedback and input suggest that there’s an opportunity to combine two of your products into one to improve customer satisfaction and usage. In fact, combined capabilities could simplify how customers use the product.

But it’s out of line with the timing of your go-to-market strategy and would require the executive team’s and the Board’s approval to disrupt the product roadmap and push this concept forward. A year ago, you presented the customer insights and got approval from both groups to explore a prototype.

And now you have it! It’s time to sell the big idea from market potential to production costs and forecasted revenue. And while the steps to this point have gone smoothly, there’s more than a 50% chance it won’t move toward production.

Why? Most leaders say they stall ideas at this point because the insights shared aren’t clear or compelling. And that’s a communication roadblock.

How can that be? After almost a year of effort by an innovative product team, the potential of a prototype stalls because of poor communication. And poor doesn’t mean the presenters weren’t confident about what they said. It means they approached the presentation the wrong way and missed the things the listeners needed.

They made one poor assumption as they built out the communication about HOW to get to product launch. They assumed the listeners could reengage with this concept from the discussion they had that launched the prototype. More than a year ago!

It’s the most common blind spot we see in high-stakes presentations: a presenter who communicates from their perspective instead of the listeners. And while that may seem like an obvious blunder as you read this…it’s not. Most communicators can’t recognize the difference between the two perspectives without some coaching to understand and adjust for what a listener values.

Take the example above. The product team has vested almost a year in getting to that prototype and working through details of market analysis, production and revenue forecasting. From their perspective, the point of a presentation at this point is to get approval on a plan and a budget to get this new concept into market. And they’ve worked hard on the HOW behind it. They’ll come in with details, charts and numbers to support the execution. And in under ten minutes, they will be at odds with the leaders.

The blind spot and gap in perspective is significant:

• The senior leaders and Board members haven’t thought about this concept for a moment beyond when they agreed to a prototype exploration.
• The product team has thought about it every moment for the last nine months.

It would be virtually impossible for these two groups to be on the same page, and yet, it’s how many organize presentations. They assume the listeners are where they are in understanding, interest and buy-in.

Starting with a listener’s perspective is one of the most critical skills of content development. It’s the component of a storyline that sets up more about WHAT and WHY in order to guide a listener to the HOW of the details.

And if you’ve taken a workshop with us, you know that good messaging drives clarity. The message for this presentation might be: When product X and Y are combined into a single product Z, we will see a 40% reduction in production costs and an additional $30 million in revenue.

At the start of the presentation, the listeners hear value and impact through messaging. Then, we leverage a concept we call “Funneling” to set a storyline that creates interest and validation for WHY it makes sense to disrupt the product schedule and push this new prototype to the front of the line.

Here are the elements of a compelling storyline that gain approval and buy-in from some of the toughest audiences:

Listeners start with External Perspective.

Leaders and board members think broadly, and they want to know that you’ve done the same. Before they’ll take your word for a big idea, they want to know that the concept began from someone else’s: ideally, your customer. In the scenario above, the product team has this, but they presented it a year ago and then left the ideas behind. The listeners have forgotten it and will need it to see value in the prototype. They need to remember that customers gave a lot of input on this combined product idea and in fact, it’s what drove the decision the leaders made a year ago.

 

Then, the listeners will want Internal Perspective.

This is contrasting what you currently have against the insights above. Why have you not combined the products before? What makes this a viable option today in a way it might not have been before?  Can you leverage change or interest called out in the External Perspective to pivot the listeners thinking on timing and positioning that helps them see a valid reason for considering this now?

 

And finally, listeners want you to dive a little further into Specifics.

This gives them a way to quantify the magnitude of disruption and interest. How do they think about this shift? What happens to the product timeline if they do it? What happens to the customer interests if they don’t?

 

These three elements set the compelling storyline that leads a listener to the HOW it could be done. And those are the insights that matter most to the product team at this point. So it isn’t that one perspective trumps another. It’s the skill of being able to put the listener first pulling them to your perspective that gains buy-in.

When I shared this concept of our storyline with a client recently, she said: “Basically, you’re telling me I have to go backwards in order to pull the listeners forward.” And it’s an interesting way of thinking about communication when you’re the communicator. When you start with the listeners’ perspective, you‘re focused on setting the stage and providing context they need to get to your perspective. In the scenario above, it would have made a $30 million difference.

What’s the risk of your communication?

If your team needs to set a more compelling storyline, we’d love to coach a group on how to do it.

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!

Speaking Up May Be Harder Than You Think

It’s true that feedback is a gift. But sometimes, managers go beyond sharing insights and they offer the employee the “perfect” solution for how to resolve it. With communication feedback…that can get a little tricky.

That’s certainly been my experience as I’ve coached people who got feedback to “speak up”.

It’s one of those phrases that seems so simple. In reality, it means different things coming from different managers.

• Some use it to tell someone that they’re soft-spoken and need to speak up so they can be heard… They’re guiding projection.
• Others use it to suggest that someone isn’t adding to meetings or discussions, and they need to “speak up more”…They’re guiding brand and impressions.
• Still others use it more generally to suggest to someone that they need to speak up in a setting or with a specific group…They’re guiding executive presence.

As we’ve explored this further with clients across the globe, we continue to learn the meaning of the phrase across different backgrounds and diverse cultures. More formal cultures guide respect by not speaking up unless you’re asked to. There may be a “sir” or a “Ms. Jones” added as part of it. For this employee, “speaking up” may be harder than you think.

Many people have shared their beliefs that they don’t have the right to speak up unless someone calls on them or asks for their input. Sometimes gender plays into it and skews their confidence in speaking up.

Still, others shared their upbringing and beliefs about being assertive. They were encouraged to be assertive, so they weren’t ignored or tuned out. They enter a lot of business settings ready to defend their perspective and may be seen as pushy or aggressive. Their goal has always been to “speak up.”

And the best way to approach feedback with any of these perspectives is to start by understanding the WHY instead of jumping in with WHAT they should do differently.

The manager’s perspective is right. People do need to be seen and heard in settings to establish their brand, their experience and their way of thinking. No one sees you as a strategic thinker unless they hear you as a strategic communicator.

But everyone may not get there in the same way.

Here are a few suggestions for uncovering the WHY behind “speaking up.”

You have an employee who is soft-spoken.
Start this conversation by asking “Has anyone ever told you that you’re soft-spoken?” Technically, they need to understand how to get their voice forward and project more effort behind their words. But they may have known that since they were six years old, and they may have tried multiple ways to do this. Most people have the ability to do it; they hold their voice back for various reasons. It could be because a parent spoke softly, and they learned to follow that speech pattern. It could also be the opposite. A parent spoke very loudly, and they spoke softly to avoid mirroring an overbearing speech pattern.

Some women view soft-spoken as demure, and they may be in a culture that fosters that. Some men view soft-spoken as respectful, and they may be illustrating a more formal upbringing.

By allowing someone to tell you more about the WHY behind soft-spoken, you’ll know whether there are some perceptions to work through as well as skills to support voice strength.

You have an employee who doesn’t speak much in meetings.
Start this conversation by asking: “Do you want to add to conversations?” And then allow the employee to tell you WHY they don’t speak up. It could be that they don’t want to speak up because others speak too much, and it makes meetings run long. They may hear the feedback as a suggestion to show up more like a peer who talks too much. Managers often give guidance by saying “You should speak up like Jeff does in meetings.” Jeff may monopolize conversations more than you realize, and an employee who is more introverted than Jeff will never follow that advice.

As you explore the WHY, you may also learn that an employee doesn’t think as fast as others in the room. They may say that they have thoughts to add…. after the meeting wraps up. They just need more time to think it all the way through.

Every manager should know the make-up of a group and the different kinds of thinkers in the room. Someone who is more process-oriented needs time to think it through before they’ll jump in with an idea or answer that may be wrong. If you knew this, you could help this employee by providing agendas ahead of time. A process thinker will be great if given the time to prepare.

You might also have an employee who isn’t speaking up from a place of respect or a more formal upbringing. And they may literally not know when to do so. You can learn more about this by asking “If you have something to add, what keeps you from jumping in?” If you knew this, you could create openings in conversations and invite a more hesitant employee into the conversation. So, they’ll worry less about when it’s appropriate and speak up more when you invite them into the conversation.

You have an employee who talks too much.
Start this conversation by saying: “You had a lot of enthusiasm today. I felt like you said the same thing multiple times. Why?”

If someone was guided to be assertive, they may continue to “speak up” again and again until they feel acknowledged or as if they won the discussion. They may be seeking some kind of validation or credit that isn’t likely in most meetings.

So how do you guide the “over-talkers” to a better balance?

Their blind spot isn’t really how much they’re speaking. It’s the lack of focus on everyone else. There may be insights in the WHY behind someone who feels the need to be heard the most. For this employee, the real opportunity or learning is the perspective of everyone else. Get insight on how they feel heard by asking “How did the group react to your idea? What was the reaction you were expecting?”

You can guide this person through awareness of team dynamics and the concept of a great team player who not only speaks to share their perspective but also speaks to move a topic toward an outcome that includes everyone’s input.

 

“Speaking Up” can mean something different to each of us. If you have an employee who needs to show up differently, start with a better understanding of WHY they don’t speak up. Be less quick to solve it from your perspective and more patient with understanding the WHY from the employee’s perspective.

Feedback is a gift, and spending the time to understand the WHY behind a behavior gets everyone to a better outcome. If you’d like to improve the way you give feedback, we can help.

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!