Does It Make $ense To Send Your Leaders To Conferences? (Don’t Bank on It!)

How much will you spend sending managers and leaders to conferences in 2019?  The price tag is often buried in many different budgets – travel, professional development, marketing, business development, entertainment, etc.

Before you OK the expense, make sure people representing your organization know how to connect, converse, and collaborate.  

At the conference do they

1. Know how to learn names, teach their name, and what to do if they forget someone’s name?
2. Look for fresh insights, hot trends, and new contacts by reaching out to both newcomers and “regulars.” 
3. Get visible to the leaders, the “movers and shakers?”
4. Identify people they want to know better – invite a well-known speaker to breakfast, or have coffee with a Board Member, or arrange dinner with several new contacts on the “open” night?
5. Disappear their phone when face-to-face with folks and use the few minutes before and after sessions to connect with people rather than read their emails?
6. Approach conversations with curiosity, wondering, “How can I help this person?”  “Who would she like to meet?”  “What can I ask that will make following up with him easy and natural?”
7. Come prepared with several, brief conversational stories or examples that teach people what to come to us for, what to count on us for, what we’re good at?
8. Agree to avoid “clumping” together with others from our organization?  (They can plan to share ideas and resources later).

Learn much, much more in Lynne’s courses on Illumeo.

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Lynne Waymon is the CEO of Contacts Count LLC, an international training & consulting firm that specializes in working with corporations, government agencies, associations, and professional services firms.