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Real Stories: Empowering Self-Service in Meetings and Events · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  Welcome back.
• 0:15
  We are recording here live at the Cvent CONNECT Conference.
• 0:18
  We're on the third floor outside the innovation pavilion.
• 0:21
  Monika Martin, welcome.
• 0:22
  Hi, nice to be here.
• 0:23
  Glad you are here.
• 0:24
  Thank you.
• 0:25
  How's the event been for you so far?
• 0:26
  Event has been amazing.
• 0:28
  Awesome.
• 0:28
  Cvent has outdone themselves yet again.
• 0:31
  Another fantastic CONNECT 2025 here in beautiful San Antonio and
• 0:36
  every year I come in and say, you know, I've been there, done that.
• 0:40
  Yeah.
• 0:41
  Outperform, outclass every single year, what they did the year before.
• 0:46
  So just amazing.
• 0:47
  What stands out to you at an event like this that makes it so special?
• 0:50
  So I think there were two things this year that really did it for me.
• 0:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 0:54
  Number one was the amount of personalization that was in their app.
• 0:57
  Yeah.
• 0:57
  I knew exactly where I had to be when I needed to be somewhere.
• 1:01
  Yeah.
• 1:01
  So they're definitely drinking their own champagne.
• 1:03
  Yes.
• 1:03
  And making sure that we are being personalized too.
• 1:06
  Yep.
• 1:06
  And then the other one is just the, I think the overall.
• 1:10
  Robustness of the programs that they're putting into play.
• 1:13
  There is something for everybody.
• 1:15
  There's no way that you could come to a Cvent CONNECT and not walk away with,
• 1:19
  you know, five new pieces of information.
• 1:21
  Yeah.
• 1:21
  So really top notch.
• 1:23
  It's impressive.
• 1:23
  I think it's difficult when you've got an event technology company marketing
• 1:27
  to event professionals at an event.
• 1:29
  There's a lot of meta going on there.
• 1:30
  Oh yeah.
• 1:30
  And it's a high bar.
• 1:31
  Yes.
• 1:31
  Because I think people here, they know what a good event looks like.
• 1:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:34
  And so to hear people here just see the energy here as well from people that are
• 1:38
  just boy events are back in a big way.
• 1:40
  Big way.
• 1:40
  We're gonna talk about a component of that here today.
• 1:42
  Excited to have you here.
• 1:43
  We've got Monika Martin; she's the manager of marketing operations at Baker Tilly.
• 1:47
  And there've been a lot of conversations over the last couple days about this
• 1:50
  concept of "total event programs".
• 1:52
  Yes.
• 1:52
  And event led growth and really creating events at the center
• 1:55
  of your go-to-market strategy.
• 1:57
  And increasingly we're seeing companies really think about self-service models and
• 2:01
  that's what I wanna talk about here today.
• 2:02
  I think that this is something that isn't a part of a lot of go-to-market
• 2:05
  strategies and event strategies and would love to hear about from you of what
• 2:09
  does that mean and why Is it something you're looking at to build into your
• 2:12
  go-to-market event motion as well?
• 2:13
  Yeah, happy to do so.
• 2:15
  So we've been working with Cvent, our customer success manager,
• 2:18
  and with Cvent Consulting.
• 2:20
  So I came to Baker Tilly in 2022 and we were just getting back
• 2:24
  into the entire event spectrum.
• 2:26
  And before my time coming there, all of the events were taken
• 2:31
  care of by agency marketers.
• 2:33
  And these are our external facing events.
• 2:35
  So where we are going to events or we are hosting events - not our internal side.
• 2:40
  Yep.
• 2:40
  And so that's 500 plus events per year that were being hosted within some brand
• 2:47
  standards; they might have had a little bit of uniqueness to each one of them.
• 2:51
  Sure.
• 2:51
  But they were taken care of ad hoc.
• 2:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:55
  When I came in, our CMO had a vision to centralize all of the events so that there
• 3:00
  was some brand consistency, there were guardrails that were put up in place.
• 3:04
  There was a consistent attendee experience.
• 3:07
  When you would go event to event.
• 3:09
  And my team of myself plus four more, so a team of five.
• 3:14
  We really can't handle 550 events per year.
• 3:18
  So what does that mean?
• 3:20
  So the first thing it meant to us is that we had to come up with
• 3:22
  some sort of a tiering model.
• 3:24
  So we've got high touch.
• 3:26
  These are really important events.
• 3:28
  These are the ones that have our VIPs at them.
• 3:30
  They might have a large number of our principles at them
• 3:34
  from a dollar perspective.
• 3:35
  These are our top budgetary from our marketing budget.
• 3:38
  They're also what we would consider to be our big bets.
• 3:40
  So these are the ones that we're putting a lot of investment into.
• 3:42
  Yeah.
• 3:43
  Then we've got our medium ones, which are kind of a collaboration
• 3:46
  between still our agency marketers and us as the events team.
• 3:49
  We can do a little bit more for you - but you still get to kind of drive the boat.
• 3:53
  Then we come to our smaller events.
• 3:55
  Yeah.
• 3:55
  And these are not unimportant events, but these are events that
• 3:59
  are a little bit lower touch.
• 4:01
  These are events that are not as much risk involved to them.
• 4:05
  So there's not the players that are involved that we need to have a little bit
• 4:09
  more of that white glove experience to.
• 4:11
  These are the ones we're looking at for more of that self-service model.
• 4:14
  Got
• 4:14
  it.
• 4:15
  And these are repetitive.
• 4:17
  These are the ones that have a higher frequency, and as I said,
• 4:20
  a little bit lower risk when it comes to the overall experience.
• 4:25
  Think of these kind of in the realm of small user round tables.
• 4:29
  Happy hours.
• 4:30
  Any kind of maybe a cocktail reception.
• 4:32
  Something that happens over and over again where if we could get something in place
• 4:37
  that says, this is how you do it, then it can be executed on time and time again.
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  In this repetitive but well constructed model of self-service.
• 4:47
  So you talk about, you talked about some of the benefits of a self-service
• 4:49
  model in a scale; speed; better use of internal resources, cost control for sure.
• 4:56
  I think one of the things I've heard a lot of people talk about
• 4:58
  as a concern with self-service is still losing some of that control.
• 5:02
  Yeah.
• 5:03
  Self-service model doesn't necessarily mean it's all going to go as planned.
• 5:07
  How do you try to mitigate that when you're designing what a self
• 5:09
  service model's gonna look like?
• 5:11
  So again, we're kind of in the ideation stage here, so I'm taking best practices
• 5:16
  from actually people that I've met at Cvent before and leaning into
• 5:20
  some best practices that our Cvent Customer Success Manager has been able
• 5:24
  to share with us as well, and things that we've seen and been able to
• 5:28
  kind of execute through in the field.
• 5:30
  So what we've really learned in our exposure so far, things that
• 5:34
  are going to help mitigate that risk is putting up some guardrails.
• 5:39
  Yep.
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  And those guardrails are still TBD (to be determined), but things like, you know,
• 5:43
  you have to comply by brand guidelines.
• 5:46
  Mm-hmm.
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  You need to run your things through legal; contracts need to
• 5:49
  go through legal; you need to have brand standards that are there.
• 5:53
  We have to talk in the same kind of brand voice.
• 5:55
  Whatever the invitation is that's going out.
• 5:57
  That's right.
• 5:58
  And when It comes to ensuring that contracts are fulfilled correctly and,
• 6:03
  you know, are we taking advantage of the fact that through all of our small events.
• 6:07
  We have procurement involved that is going to be able to recognize
• 6:11
  that we're taking advantage of that kind of bulk buy processing.
• 6:14
  Talk a little more about like the type of events you think are really
• 6:17
  good for this kind of a model.
• 6:19
  I think, you know, when I've seen self-service work in the past, it's been
• 6:22
  a lot of sort of field events for sales.
• 6:24
  For account management teams, those that already have a relationship with some
• 6:28
  of the people that are gonna be there.
• 6:30
  Yeah.
• 6:30
  In the ideation phase, as you guys think about what this looks like, are there
• 6:33
  certain types of events and contexts of events that you gravitate towards more?
• 6:37
  So I would say that when we are attending a conference, for example.
• 6:42
  Yeah.
• 6:42
  We're going to Bob's Animal Show.
• 6:46
  Yep.
• 6:46
  Oftentimes we want to have happy hour attached to that.
• 6:49
  We can take some guests with us, we can go to the happy hour, get
• 6:52
  to meet them a little bit more.
• 6:54
  Usually it's attached to the event in some way, shape or form.
• 6:57
  And.
• 6:58
  That happens over and over and over again.
• 7:00
  So that kind of repeatable where we can put together a very clear step-by-step
• 7:05
  guide, how to do it, what to look for.
• 7:07
  Same kind of invitation, same kind of registration.
• 7:11
  That's what we are looking for as far as a good model to start
• 7:15
  with in this self-service journey.
• 7:17
  Got it.
• 7:18
  We are recording this outside the Innovation Pavilion at Cvent CONNECT.
• 7:21
  Excited to be here with Monika Martin.
• 7:23
  She's the Manager of Marketing Operations at Baker Tilly.
• 7:26
  You know, I've seen versions of this work in the past.
• 7:29
  They've been kind of like "event in a box" kind of playbooks.
• 7:31
  Yeah.
• 7:32
  Yep.
• 7:32
  And giving people guidelines, and even if you give people some brand
• 7:35
  guidelines and materials and here's some things you can pull out and print out,
• 7:38
  whatever else, it still is a challenge without the right technology in place.
• 7:42
  It's a little challenge without having sort of the back office work
• 7:44
  that sort of integrates it with the rest of your go-to-market systems.
• 7:47
  Talk about how you at Baker Tilly in general think about marketing ops to
• 7:53
  support events and how that will apply on the self-service side as well.
• 7:57
  So actually I am, I'm keeping my fingers crossed as I say this.
• 8:01
  Sure.
• 8:01
  We are very excited about the impending general availability of essentials.
• 8:07
  So that's what we are planning on putting into play for this.
• 8:10
  That will be our tech stack that will take care of our registrations, our website.
• 8:16
  It will have the ability for us to link people directly to the access portal,
• 8:21
  and be able to pull resources from there, so they can have a set template for what
• 8:25
  they're looking for, they can have a, as you said, a playbook, direct access to
• 8:30
  some menus that we can provide for them.
• 8:32
  So, you know, oh, "I'm gonna have 50 people." We know that your return on
• 8:37
  registration is looking at about 60%, so you don't need to order for all 50.
• 8:42
  You need to order for maybe about 25.
• 8:44
  Right.
• 8:44
  So those kind of little hints and tips will all be a part of that "event in
• 8:49
  a box" packaging and whatever that naming convention comes around to it.
• 8:53
  I love that.
• 8:54
  And I think it's, let's edit it together a little bit.
• 8:55
  'cause I mean, you got me thinking about like how to use cases for where
• 8:58
  a self-service model could work.
• 9:00
  One of the things I think a lot about, we've talked about this in a few
• 9:02
  episodes, is partner enablement - and really helping to enable a partner
• 9:05
  ecosystem to be successful whether it's market development funds or just
• 9:08
  partners that want to do a good event.
• 9:10
  You've got a set of best practices of what an event can do to be successful.
• 9:14
  I'd love to hear other things that you've in sort of thinking about
• 9:17
  where self-service programs can go, what are the other sort of
• 9:20
  use cases you're thinking about?
• 9:21
  So we're also thinking about it, i'm going to step a little bit outside of
• 9:25
  my realm here, because my colleagues over in our internal events are also
• 9:28
  thinking about it quite a bit as well.
• 9:30
  What we really love is the fact that Cvent's Toolkit will
• 9:34
  enable us to have it firm-wide.
• 9:35
  So it's not just gonna be a siloed compartment of information.
• 9:38
  We're looking to really deploy it across our entire firm.
• 9:41
  So we're looking at things like in office events; we're looking at things like lunch
• 9:46
  and learns; maybe things such as small half day trainings that just require a
• 9:51
  little bit of help along the way - but not a lot of high touch easy things like
• 9:56
  dinners to put together - just those kind of repeatable, again, low risk
• 10:01
  is where we're coming from on these.
• 10:03
  Yeah, I I think one of the challenges in putting together a self-service model is
• 10:07
  that you can say, okay, like we're gonna put less time and attention on this over
• 10:10
  time, which is one of the benefits of doing it, but I think it's, it won't work
• 10:14
  if those, if those programs work in silos.
• 10:16
  Right?
• 10:16
  Yeah.
• 10:16
  It won't work if you just have sales or account management doing it on its own.
• 10:20
  What are some considerations when you think about supporting
• 10:24
  that across functions, especially from an ops standpoint?
• 10:27
  Absolutely.
• 10:28
  I actually was able to speak about the self-service model yesterday
• 10:32
  and, uh, the colleague next to me that they have already launched their
• 10:35
  self-service program, and now she's in the piloting phase of it, she said
• 10:40
  that their meeting request form that we know, is very integral to the Cvent
• 10:46
  componentry is not actually, in their vernacular, a "meeting request form"
• 10:49
  - it's a meeting registration form.
• 10:51
  So that is, to me, a huge key takeaway is let's get every single event
• 10:57
  meeting registered so we can start to have visibility on them, because when
• 11:01
  you have visibility into them, then you can see how often they repeat.
• 11:05
  Yeah.
• 11:05
  How many attendees are there so that then you can start to say, well,
• 11:09
  I don't need to touch this one as much because it's going really well.
• 11:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:14
  Another thing about where we're looking at is getting a good
• 11:17
  taxonomy across the entire firm.
• 11:20
  Yeah.
• 11:20
  What are all of these events?
• 11:22
  What do they look like?
• 11:23
  What are they called?
• 11:24
  Who?
• 11:24
  What are roles and responsibilities?
• 11:26
  Yeah.
• 11:26
  Clarity and defining is going to really be essential in this.
• 11:30
  That's right.
• 11:30
  And then tiering those: that high touch, medium touch, and low touch - will then
• 11:36
  further help define how we're going to pull out which ones of those are going
• 11:40
  to be the self-service events that we are gonna be moving forward with.
• 11:44
  So we got a little bit of time left.
• 11:45
  I wanna pull back and ask a question around the broader event strategy at
• 11:48
  Baker Tilly and talk about scorecards and what you measure and sort of how
• 11:52
  to determine whether an event has been successful and what elements of that
• 11:56
  do you sort of see as sort of carrying over to the self-service model as well?
• 12:00
  So that's a little bit still in process.
• 12:02
  Sure.
• 12:03
  As I said, we're a little bit new to the game here as far as
• 12:06
  having a centralized program.
• 12:08
  So that's actually one of the things that Cvent is also helping us work on,
• 12:11
  is how to actually measure events with a scorecard that will be something that is
• 12:17
  maintainable and repeatable, so that we can have good qualitative data coming in
• 12:22
  and then be able to measure against it.
• 12:24
  Yep.
• 12:25
  When I think about our events, each of our key stakeholders might have
• 12:29
  a little bit different vision as to what makes an event successful.
• 12:33
  So being able to define what those are and then capture that, and then measuring
• 12:38
  each one via a survey afterwards, or doing analysis thereafter can help us really
• 12:44
  begin to identify: "how did this hit the mark?" Or "what can we do to ensure
• 12:48
  that next time it can hit the mark?"
• 12:50
  I know you're early in this process, and I know, but I also know that that
• 12:53
  means there's people that are earlier in the process mean they haven't even
• 12:55
  thought about self-service to begin with.
• 12:57
  It's not something that's really even on their radar.
• 12:59
  And I think in general, like when it comes to event strategy overall,
• 13:02
  let alone self-service, this is all just a journey versus a destination.
• 13:06
  The rules keep changing; trends change what people are willing to
• 13:09
  engage with continues to change.
• 13:10
  For those that haven't even started along this, that may have started this
• 13:13
  episode saying, "hadn't even thought about self-service as an option", what are some
• 13:17
  things you're already starting to learn?
• 13:18
  What are some lessons for people getting started that can help them
• 13:21
  accelerate their progress down this path?
• 13:24
  I would say number one is "get started".
• 13:26
  Yeah.
• 13:26
  Do something.
• 13:27
  Yep.
• 13:27
  Don't just sit still.
• 13:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:29
  Do something.
• 13:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:31
  Number two: don't draw things with sharpies; draw things with pencils.
• 13:35
  So that we can move that line if it needs be, which kind of leads
• 13:39
  to the third thing is: start small.
• 13:42
  We are looking at piloting very small nuggets of programs to begin
• 13:47
  with to be able to have a feedback loop to be able to refine them.
• 13:53
  Start to have more of a broader scale to look for adoption and
• 13:58
  then further get the buy-in on it.
• 14:01
  So I think those are the things that I'm really considering is can't
• 14:06
  solve the world to begin with, it's going to take a process of time,
• 14:09
  but do get started on something.
• 14:12
  Yep.
• 14:12
  And move forward.
• 14:13
  We're seven episodes in on these recordings - you may have just given
• 14:16
  the best piece of advice of the session so far: the idea that you're writing in
• 14:20
  pencil and not in Sharpie, and I think about the context in work and in life; if
• 14:25
  people knew that this was in pencil and there was an eraser on the other side of
• 14:28
  the implement, would they be a little more courageous in giving something a shot?
• 14:32
  I think so, yeah.
• 14:33
  And how do we encourage, and this is a broader question, maybe
• 14:36
  we'll end on this, is how do we encourage a culture of pencil.
• 14:40
  How do you encourage either in your marketing team or your company overall
• 14:44
  the ability and the courage to go and try something knowing that it can be
• 14:48
  mostly erased if it's not working?
• 14:50
  Yeah, that's a great question, and really what we strive for at Baker Tilly is
• 14:55
  a mindset and a culture of curiosity.
• 14:57
  Don't just stand still.
• 14:59
  We're leaping, you know?
• 15:00
  So it's okay.
• 15:02
  We've got your back.
• 15:03
  If you're gonna try something, consider it; don't, don't just go
• 15:06
  crazy with it, but take a shot at it; come up with, "here's the plan
• 15:10
  that I think I wanna execute on".
• 15:12
  Yeah.
• 15:13
  Maybe, you know, test the waters a little bit, get some buy-in
• 15:16
  from other people, and then give it a shot and then learn from it.
• 15:19
  Yep.
• 15:19
  I'm excited to have you here next year to hear what after 12 months, what the
• 15:22
  next stage of the journey is for you.
• 15:24
  What's still in pencil, what's starting to be inked in a little bit.
• 15:27
  Sounds good.
• 15:27
  We're all making progress forward.
• 15:28
  So Monika Martin, so much for joining us.
• 15:30
  Awesome.
• 15:30
  Thank you so much.
• 15:30
  Appreciate it.
• 15:31
  Thank you.