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• Rethinking the Relationship Event: A Breakfast Seminar Becomes an Institution

  By Joe Walsh

  Posted on June 4, 2007 at 5:20 pm

  
  
  

  You will learn:
  1. Learn how one firm reinvented a marketing staple
  2. Consider the difference detailed work can make

  Here’s a sketch of the scene:

  Nearly 300 senior executives attend four times per year. The featured C-suite speakers come from the ranks of attendees. The topics are picked from a survey of the region’s executive population at the beginning of each calendar year.

  Every detail from the invitations to registration to signage has received white glove care. Networking begins at 7:00 AM. People come early. The program starts on time—8:00 AM sharp. It begins with a flourish in the fully firm-branded ballroom: hand-picked music gives way to hand-selected movie clips playing on a giant screen, all introducing the topic of the day in some clever way.

  Speakers are coached in advance. They have 30 minutes each. 30 minutes are left for Q&A. Every program ends with a twist to make attendees smile. The program ends on time at 9:30 AM, every time. But people leave late.

  Attendees are polled at the end of each event to measure satisfaction with the topic, the speaker, the little details. Those who couldn’t come have access to a videotape recap on the firm’s website—so they can see what they missed, when they want.

  The executives in the community begin to refer to The Power Breakfast by its made up name. The word on the street is: “nobody does events like your firm.” Countless relationships are formed and strengthened at the quarterly event. And over the years, a couple of dozen A-list prospects are introduced to the way the firm does business as featured speakers at the event.

  How it came to be

  Several years in the making, this relationship event improved with age (and an inordinate investment of time and money in the little things). But it all started with a shift in philosophy. The table that follows breaks down the basics into before and after.

  

  What does this mean to you?

  In sharing this story, we are not advocating the wholesale replacement of your current events—from the pure relationship programs, like golf tournaments, to subject-specific breakfast briefings. Rather, we’re suggesting that an opportunity lies in rethinking some of your relationship-driven efforts and realigning them with branding goals.

  Below we’ve listed the maxims that sum up this approach. Surely you’ll recognize them as the common sense things you preach to your management—the trick is getting your line professionals to see things this way (after all, they often control the dollars).

  1. Do less, better. If you have a one hundred dollar event budget, you’ll be better served if you spend it on fewer than one hundred events.

  2. Plan the work, work the plan. This is self-evident advice but it has real meaning when your plan is blessed and enforced by leadership. Their endorsement gives you permission, when needed, to just say no to unplanned (and ill-advised) programs.

  3. The difference is often in the details. Example: sometimes it pays as much—if not more—to put as much care into the personalization of an invitation as it does into finding the big draw speaker.

  Tags:

  Event Planning, Marketing, Seminars 

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