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Tech, Trends, and The Future of Event Strategy · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  Matt Heinz: All right, awesome.
• 0:15
  We are back on the Cvent CONNECT show floor right
• 0:18
  outside the Innovation Pavilion.
• 0:19
  Very excited to have with us for this episode.
• 0:21
  Amanda Young; she's the Senior Director of Global Events at ConnectWise.
• 0:24
  Amanda, thanks for joining us.
• 0:25
  Amanda Young: Thank you for having me.
• 0:26
  Matt Heinz: Oh my gosh, there's so much we could talk about here.
• 0:28
  I think, you know, you've, you've been doing events for a long time and
• 0:31
  - Amanda Young: Too long.
• 0:31
  Matt Heinz: We're all on a journey, right?
• 0:32
  And so I think that what I wanna talk about today is like the idea
• 0:35
  of building a great event and a great event experience, but really
• 0:38
  focusing on the ROI of that event.
• 0:39
  Where the rubber meets the road and how to make sure that you have an
• 0:41
  event and a great event experience that is delivering business results.
• 0:45
  So maybe talk about through your career, what that journey's been like?
• 0:48
  Amanda Young: Yeah, I mean, I, I've started, I mean,
• 0:52
  where, where to begin, right?
• 0:53
  And I guess the best way to say it, I was at a pivotal point in my career where this
• 0:59
  head of analytics at this company I was working for in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• 1:03
  said to me, what do you wanna do?
• 1:05
  Do you wanna tell me about the food and beverages we're serving, or do you
• 1:09
  wanna tell me what the event is worth?
• 1:10
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 1:10
  Amanda Young: And I had no idea what that meant.
• 1:12
  Matt Heinz: Okay.
• 1:12
  Amanda Young: And he said, if you can't figure out how to tell me what
• 1:15
  the event is worth then your career is never gonna go up from here.
• 1:20
  Just stay in food and beverage, go back to hotels.
• 1:22
  He literally, it was a hard conversation, but it was a pivotal moment in my career.
• 1:25
  I think I was 27, 28 [years of age].
• 1:27
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 1:28
  Amanda Young: It was this, you know, CEO of this analytics
• 1:31
  company gave me that [advice].
• 1:32
  And from there I started to figure out how to, you know, what is the event
• 1:36
  worth; what is the pipeline worth; how expensive are the people in the room...
• 1:40
  really started to figure out what that meant and that's how my journey started.
• 1:45
  Matt Heinz: So as time has gone now, I think like we have executives
• 1:48
  and teams that still want a lot out of events, but we constantly hear
• 1:50
  this, "do more with less" question.
• 1:52
  Amanda Young: Right.
• 1:52
  Matt Heinz: Always from our executives saying like, "we need more", but you're
• 1:55
  gonna have fewer resources to do that.
• 1:56
  And "we expect the same if not better results".
• 1:58
  Events are not cheap.
• 1:59
  Amanda Young: Mm-hmm.
• 2:00
  They're not.
• 2:00
  Matt Heinz: So how do you apply a "do more with less" mentality to an event?
• 2:05
  Amanda Young: Oh, it's a good question.
• 2:06
  I think we're running into fixed costs that are non-negotiables right now,
• 2:12
  just because of the way the world is working: your food and beverage costs,
• 2:16
  audio, visual costs, even print signage costs; there's these things that you need
• 2:20
  for your event to be powered that are non-negotiables, but when we start talking
• 2:25
  about "do more with less", you really have to look at what you're investing into the
• 2:29
  creative strategy of your event, then what you're looking into the data from your
• 2:35
  event, how you're crunching those numbers, what you're doing with that information,
• 2:38
  and making sure you have a plan.
• 2:40
  You need to have a creative plan for what you're gonna execute
• 2:42
  on site as the experience.
• 2:44
  You need to invest in that.
• 2:45
  You don't necessarily have to invest into the data calculation
• 2:49
  of all the different activities that are going on at your event.
• 2:52
  We have demand gen teams; we have your field marketers who are running the trade
• 2:56
  show booth - you just have to set those tasks up with them in advance so that
• 3:01
  they're looking at that data coming from the event throughout the whole process.
• 3:04
  If you don't have a plan for that, going into it, then you're not gonna be able
• 3:08
  to say what the event is worth, but it actually doesn't cost that much money; it
• 3:13
  just costs taking tasks off their plate, setting up the plan in advance for them
• 3:18
  to actually crunch that information.
• 3:19
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 3:20
  How do you find that balance between making the right investment, creating
• 3:24
  the right customer experience, and having the right business outcome?
• 3:27
  Because sometimes spending less money actually is counterproductive
• 3:30
  to the results that you want.
• 3:31
  Sometimes spending more money creates a great business experience, but
• 3:35
  actually is not material to the outcome you're looking for in the business.
• 3:39
  When you've got people in events, you've got salespeople, you've got demand gen
• 3:41
  folks, you've got creatives, you've got people behind the scenes doing
• 3:44
  filming, you know, sessions like this.
• 3:46
  How do you make sure everyone is aligned and has some consensus
• 3:48
  around how to make those trade-offs?
• 3:51
  Amanda Young: Right.
• 3:52
  It's difficult, like let's focus right now on our tier one proprietary events.
• 3:56
  It's a trade show you're doing a large product launch at.
• 4:00
  Your annual Cvent CONNECT conference.
• 4:03
  We host four similar conferences to this a year.
• 4:07
  It's really important for the person who owns that event to make
• 4:11
  sure they're outlining what their outcomes need to be: is it a revenue
• 4:14
  number, a sponsorship number?
• 4:16
  A certain amount of sessions?
• 4:17
  A certain amount of pipeline?
• 4:19
  And it's really important to make sure you lead the planning of that workshop
• 4:23
  kickoff, your monthly check in with ELT; that you have those outcomes and you're
• 4:28
  constantly measuring to them and seeing where you're at, then making decisions on
• 4:33
  if you're gonna hit those goals or not.
• 4:35
  If you don't have a business leader that isn't outlining those outcomes,
• 4:39
  you should be raising a flag on that.
• 4:41
  Sometimes, you know, people in events they have one goal, like
• 4:45
  people are very micro in their one goal, and it could just be pipeline.
• 4:49
  When you're doing these big proprietary events, , it's macro outcomes you need:
• 4:53
  you need brand impressions, you need pipeline, revenue goals; if you're not
• 4:58
  setting those with your events, make sure you're putting a red flag up to an
• 5:02
  executive to say, "Hey, we, we need these outcomes in order to determine the ROI
• 5:07
  on the event", and it's okay to raise your hand and show concern if you're
• 5:10
  not seeing true measurable outcomes for an event that you're planning.
• 5:13
  Matt Heinz: Absolutely.
• 5:14
  Very excited to have talking to here with, Amanda [Young].
• 5:16
  She is the, Senior Director of Global Events at ConnectWise.
• 5:19
  Also the president of the Patriots Fan Club of Charleston, which I told
• 5:22
  you I wouldn't bring up 'cause we've only got 20 minutes here today.
• 5:24
  So we may get there eventually.
• 5:26
  When you get to a proprietary event like this, it tends to be sort of
• 5:29
  at the same time every year, and sometimes you get bigger and bigger,
• 5:31
  and sometimes it gets into different cities, but like, you know, we're sitting
• 5:33
  here like Cvent CONNECT is in June.
• 5:35
  That doesn't always correlate with the best timing from a
• 5:38
  customer journey standpoint.
• 5:39
  You have different customers at different renewal periods.
• 5:41
  You have different prospects that are at different stages of their buying journey.
• 5:45
  How do you coordinate with the sales customer success account management
• 5:48
  teams to ensure that the event is having the biggest impact possible on driving
• 5:53
  net new sales and retention renewals?
• 5:55
  Amanda Young: Yeah, I'll give you an example.
• 5:57
  When I started with ConnectWise about a year and a half ago, we didn't
• 6:01
  operate our events across work streams.
• 6:04
  People were doing tasks within a little bucket that didn't make sense for them
• 6:08
  to do it and one of those was recruitment demand gen. In our company, we do
• 6:12
  call it demand generation that drives pipeline, also drives event recruitment.
• 6:17
  We made really clear roles and responsibilities of
• 6:19
  what people had to handle.
• 6:20
  So that was step number one.
• 6:22
  So make sure in your organization you do have clear roles and responsibilities
• 6:26
  of who manages recruitment.
• 6:28
  Who manages the pipeline cycle?
• 6:29
  Where do you get that information from?
• 6:31
  Step two, when you start to ask what their calendar looks like,
• 6:35
  like we all know, end of month is a really bad time to throw events.
• 6:40
  Salespeople are closing deals; it really makes your sales leadership anxious to
• 6:46
  have, you know, we bring in, let's say 75 sales professionals to our events-
• 6:51
  it does hurt sales leadership to do that, so I recommend to stay away from
• 6:54
  the last week of the month, especially the last week of a quarter, but talk
• 6:57
  to your demand gen people to see if I host an event in November, it is
• 7:02
  to close business for the end of the year or is it to fill pipeline for Q1?
• 7:05
  And start having those questions.
• 7:07
  That will make the way you set up the booth, the way you go after leads, the
• 7:11
  way you calculate information, you'll start making the decisions based on
• 7:16
  what that is, rather than just come to the booth, scan a lead, right?
• 7:18
  If you wanna close business, you gotta wine and dine 'em a little bit more.
• 7:22
  If you just wanna fill the pipeline, you know, you gotta leave 'em with
• 7:25
  a little bit of surprise, you know, looking for what's around the corner.
• 7:28
  So those are my, my two steps that you can take to make sure you're
• 7:32
  lining up with them correctly.
• 7:34
  Matt Heinz: Well, there's doing that at the event itself, right?
• 7:35
  But the events are not an island.
• 7:37
  So how do you make sure there's some coordination before, during, and after the
• 7:40
  event to ensure that the event is not an isolated event, but that it is sort of a
• 7:44
  central point, maybe an accelerator within a broader go-to market play and campaign
• 7:49
  that is driving those business results.
• 7:50
  Like with the sales and marketing teams together, how do you make sure that works?
• 7:54
  Amanda Young: In a perfect world events would line up to product launches, and
• 7:58
  then from there you talk to your demand gen team about "what's happening with the
• 8:02
  leads that come out of this?" Is it an acceleration or is it to fill the funnel.
• 8:07
  I think you have to have those conversations, but it
• 8:09
  doesn't line up that way.
• 8:10
  Especially in technology, you know, products take a
• 8:14
  little bit to launch, right?
• 8:15
  I keep my teams very focused on the production of the event; I don't have
• 8:21
  them jump in and out of those other work streams; and then the conversations that
• 8:26
  I have with my CMO, my chief product officer, our head of brand, what is
• 8:30
  coming up for the product launches.
• 8:32
  And then we look at that and then we hand that information over
• 8:34
  to the demand generation team to figure out what that pre, during,
• 8:38
  and post plan looks like my team's responsible for giving them the data.
• 8:43
  But they're really responsible for the follow up on those actions so I take
• 8:47
  a very work stream focused approach.
• 8:49
  Everybody knows what work stream interlocks with other work streams
• 8:53
  because if you have one person who's worried about all of that and doing
• 8:57
  all that work, it's gonna fail.
• 8:58
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 8:59
  Well, and having that understanding up front, having consensus that that's the
• 9:02
  right approach to take is important.
• 9:03
  Talk about the role of technology to enable that; to
• 9:06
  really make that actually work.
• 9:08
  Amanda Young: Yeah.
• 9:10
  Well, I find this conference interesting.
• 9:12
  Yesterday we were asked about personalization at events and what
• 9:15
  are you doing in personalized events?
• 9:16
  I said, well, what I did last week when I was at a conference,
• 9:18
  I ran for 1,200 people.
• 9:20
  With how fast AI is working, how these apps, like specifically at like Cvent
• 9:24
  they're creating is changing; what I'm doing in six months is totally
• 9:28
  different than what I did last week.
• 9:29
  So I think, you know, with technology, it's about the data and it's about
• 9:34
  looking across who's going to our booth; who's going to the sessions about our
• 9:39
  products; who's stopping by our coffee stand; who's having a meeting with our
• 9:43
  executives in the executive meeting area?
• 9:46
  You have to look across those channels where you're capturing data.
• 9:50
  You put it into AI to help you find some trends.
• 9:53
  That's how I'm using it now.
• 9:55
  My head of demand generation, he has some more calculations; he
• 9:58
  use a little bit more formulaic.
• 10:00
  But I'm constantly talking to him about, "Hey, here are channels
• 10:03
  where I'm capturing information.
• 10:06
  I'm gonna give it over to you.
• 10:08
  Give me back the top 50 leads you're seeing from this
• 10:11
  cross channel information.
• 10:12
  And I'm gonna do something with it."
• 10:14
  Matt Heinz: What have you learned around sort of prioritizing the right data?
• 10:17
  Coming out of events, like there's so much data we're capturing, so much
• 10:20
  data we're seeing, there's tons of data that's, you know, in a data lake somewhere
• 10:22
  that we're not even thinking about.
• 10:23
  And this is where I think agentic AI and tools like Cvent can really
• 10:26
  help you by not knowing what data to look for, but asking the questions
• 10:29
  you care the most about, and having the tools do that for you.
• 10:32
  But what are some of the signals you've found that actually move the needle?
• 10:36
  To prove and generate event ROI?
• 10:39
  Amanda Young: I find when they come to your booth and they go to your
• 10:41
  education sessions that is your best way to show engaged activity cause
• 10:47
  not only are they engaging, they're going to the session, they're hearing
• 10:50
  education from your product leaders.
• 10:52
  And then they're going to your booth to see the demo.
• 10:54
  One of the other things that I do is, is when we set up our booths and we have
• 10:58
  our products similar to what we're seeing at Cvent, we put a table in front of it.
• 11:03
  We put a table, my husband always had a funny saying: he said, " why am I gonna
• 11:08
  sit at a table when I can stand at a bar?
• 11:09
  It's so much more fun".
• 11:11
  And we take that approach with our booth and 'cause people, when they stand, you
• 11:15
  sit in a kitchen island, you stand at a bar, you're so much more comfortable.
• 11:18
  We track the time that they stand there and matching that up to the education
• 11:23
  sessions you get the most qualified data.
• 11:25
  And I don't think you should not be going to a trade show unless you have
• 11:31
  education happening around it, and maybe you can't get a session during that event.
• 11:35
  Do a, a round table at a coffee shop, do something where you can match your
• 11:42
  booth with some sort of education, because you'll find that those
• 11:44
  will be the most qualified leads.
• 11:46
  Matt Heinz: Right.
• 11:46
  I wanna talk about scorecards.
• 11:48
  And I know that there's all this data sort of often manifests
• 11:50
  itself in a cascade of scorecards.
• 11:53
  The scorecards you use in operational team may not be the level of detail
• 11:56
  you wanna show to the leadership team.
• 11:57
  So when you go back to the C-Suite, what's on that scorecard?
• 12:00
  What are the metrics you're showing to prove event ROI?
• 12:02
  Amanda Young: Going to over 500 trade shows a year, across all the businesses,
• 12:06
  our scorecards, we measured, you know, "ROI per square inch" because
• 12:10
  we had sophisticated tools to do that.
• 12:13
  Now with ConnectWise we keep it simple and we keep it consistent.
• 12:18
  You know, so with our proprietary events, we measure, again, growth
• 12:23
  of the event, pipeline in the room, top sessions; we keep it consistent
• 12:28
  of what they're gonna look at.
• 12:29
  We link them to Power BI dashboards that are powered by our demand
• 12:33
  generation teams, and every single event they see that consistent scorecard.
• 12:37
  They know where to access it.
• 12:38
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 12:39
  I love it.
• 12:40
  Just a few more minutes we've got with you here.
• 12:41
  I you're running a pretty high velocity program.
• 12:43
  How do you think about like where events are heading next?
• 12:46
  Because I mean, you have to have a long view of where events are
• 12:49
  going in event like this, like comes together like, you know, one to two
• 12:52
  years in advance in terms of where it's gonna be, how big it's gonna be.
• 12:56
  When you look out and see like the trends of events, what people are willing to go
• 12:59
  to versus what we're now expecting just to have on our screens in our home office.
• 13:02
  How are you thinking about the near term future of events?
• 13:06
  Amanda Young: I think it's a really hard question.
• 13:08
  Because the industry is telling us to book contracts out.
• 13:13
  I have some contracts that are booked out to 2030, because they
• 13:16
  are saying there's limited space.
• 13:19
  Post-COVID, we exploded.
• 13:20
  I'm very concerned we're looking at a crash because they change the way
• 13:26
  people operate at events are changing.
• 13:27
  I don't wanna tell you to not book your events out.
• 13:30
  I am saying I'm worried about some of the events I have contracted out
• 13:34
  because I think, again, right now, everybody came back from COVID.
• 13:39
  They want more, more, more events.
• 13:41
  And then we're gonna go back to a world where we want less events, but bigger.
• 13:45
  So it it's almost like it breathes in, it breathes out,
• 13:49
  it breathes in, it breathes out.
• 13:50
  Yeah.
• 13:50
  So I'm not really planning, I mean, I'm contracted out.
• 13:54
  I'm planning for next year, my next year with my team.
• 13:57
  I'm taking a portfolio approach, and what I mean by that is I'm looking at
• 14:02
  my agency resources, my audio, visual resources, and my team will be set
• 14:07
  up as a portfolio versus by project.
• 14:09
  And I'm doing that because my events are changing.
• 14:12
  And if I can bring on agencies and vendors that know they're gonna get
• 14:15
  a certain level of business from me across the year, I don't have to
• 14:19
  buy into saying, I got 5,000 people in November, 1,200 people in June.
• 14:24
  And I would recommend anybody who has a decent sized events
• 14:30
  team to take that approach.
• 14:32
  Because again, i'm really worried that those of us who are booking
• 14:36
  far out, our executives are booking far out, we're gonna have to start
• 14:38
  changing those contracts because I don't see these conventions sticking
• 14:43
  to the dates that they've booked long term over the next four years.
• 14:45
  Unless your associations, they do [book out in advance].
• 14:47
  Matt Heinz: But yeah, four, five years is a long time.
• 14:49
  Amanda Young: It is a long time, but the industry's telling us
• 14:51
  book out, book that out, and I've seen it crash before in my career.
• 14:56
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 14:56
  I mean, but your point about the ebb and flow, right?
• 14:58
  Whether it's sort of the, you economic conditions or pandemics or whatever
• 15:02
  it is; that ebb flow will continue.
• 15:03
  It'll be really interesting to see how innovations like AI and even
• 15:06
  sort of automation, self-service change that game as well.
• 15:09
  And I'm curious as we wrap up here, like, you know, with a little bit of
• 15:12
  a crystal ball, like the bar seems to be getting higher for events overall.
• 15:17
  Amanda Young: Yeah.
• 15:17
  Matt Heinz: Production quality, education, quality experience.
• 15:20
  The bar seems to be getting higher for people sort of get on a plane versus
• 15:23
  saying like, "I can watch this on YouTube, right?" Or, "I can do this
• 15:25
  for my home office." In that lens, what do you think we need to prioritize
• 15:31
  in the future of events to really maintain not just the experience but the
• 15:34
  results we generate for the business?
• 15:37
  Amanda Young: We saw Q1: everybody was traveling.
• 15:39
  Then we saw the data for Q2: people aren't traveling as much; I think
• 15:42
  it was down 30% in the keynote yesterday that they talked about.
• 15:46
  You gotta make sure you have a story to tell.
• 15:49
  You gotta make sure you have survey results.
• 15:50
  You're capturing survey data on site at any event that you're going to, you have
• 15:54
  a story to tell about what's happening at the event, because that can be the only
• 15:59
  driver of what you're gonna do with it.
• 16:00
  You know the dollars and the cents.
• 16:02
  You know the outcomes that are coming from it.
• 16:03
  And then you give it to leadership to say, make a decision.
• 16:07
  And really we have to stop beating ourselves up about it, like virtual's
• 16:12
  fine, but unless it, what, one minute, 40 seconds, like people aren't consuming it.
• 16:18
  You know, they are consuming it here; everybody just makes sure they have
• 16:22
  a story to tell about their event.
• 16:24
  So when the question comes to you about this, you can speak
• 16:27
  to it intelligently given the scenarios of how to move forward.
• 16:30
  And then let them decide how to move forward.
• 16:32
  Matt Heinz: Amanda Young, Senior Director of Global Events at ConnectWise.
• 16:34
  Thanks for a few minutes here on the show.
• 16:35
  I really appreciate it.
• 16:36
  Amanda Young: Yeah, I know.
• 16:36
  Thank you.