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How Top Brands Are Turning Event Leads Into Revenue · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  Matt Heinz: Welcome back.
• 0:15
  We are here live at Cvent CONNECT at the convention center floor three right
• 0:20
  next to the Stars at Night ballroom where the Innovation Pavilion is today.
• 0:23
  I'm very excited to have our team from 6sense.
• 0:26
  I feel like if you're in B2B marketing, you know 6sense, you've probably been
• 0:29
  to one of their events and excited to talk today about not just events,
• 0:32
  but what happens after the event.
• 0:33
  Yeah.
• 0:34
  Like what do we do when we move from the show floor to the sales funnel,
• 0:37
  and how do we leverage all the great momentum, all the great conversations,
• 0:40
  and turn that into pipeline and revenue?
• 0:42
  I'd love to have you guys introduce yourself, Alura, starting with you.
• 0:44
  Alura Roe: Absolutely.
• 0:45
  Hi, I'm Alura Roe, based out of Atlanta.
• 0:46
  I help manage our ABX go to market team at 6sense.
• 0:50
  I'm more so focused on the one to few and one-to-one activations within 6sense.
• 0:54
  And then Ashley, you can introduce yourself.
• 0:56
  Ashley Biggie: Hi, I am Ashley Biggie.
• 0:58
  I'm our senior field marketer.
• 0:59
  So manage all of our trade shows.
• 1:01
  Those fun meetings work on all our events in the ancillary that happens around any
• 1:06
  of those tier one to tier three events.
• 1:09
  Matt Heinz: So i'm excited for this conversation.
• 1:10
  They're all great conversations.
• 1:12
  Every one of them watch every episode, but this one, especially because of what
• 1:16
  you guys are doing in the field, right?
• 1:17
  Everything from Breakthrough to individual events to, you've got Empowered.
• 1:22
  It's just an amazing amount of stuff.
• 1:24
  And so my first question is, what happens after the badge scan?
• 1:26
  But some of these events, there isn't even a badge scan.
• 1:29
  Talk about the strategy you have for events.
• 1:32
  Like objectives and the approach that leads to what you do today?
• 1:36
  Alura Roe: Yeah, so our strategy is always to make sure that we're
• 1:38
  first off, making sure that we're going after the right audience.
• 1:41
  Before we were going to any trade show, whether we have historical data
• 1:43
  or not, we're making sure that we're looking at the audience that's there
• 1:46
  and making sure they're relevant to us.
• 1:47
  So we're pulling not only the accounts in the ICP and making sure they're
• 1:50
  within there, but we're understanding where they're at in their buying stage.
• 1:54
  If we're going to a trade show and everyone's an early, early buying stage
• 1:58
  account for us, and maybe we won't go as heavy, we'll do more educational pieces
• 2:01
  there, educate people on what we do.
• 2:03
  Versus if there's a ton of customers or late stage accounts that really
• 2:06
  need to get in front of a sales person, maybe we'll invest more.
• 2:08
  In a meeting space to really get our sales reps in front.
• 2:11
  So it really just depends and starts with the audience and making sure
• 2:14
  that we understand and wrap our heads around the people that'll be there.
• 2:17
  Matt Heinz: And depending on not just, I think about the audience
• 2:19
  sometimes vertically and horizontally.
• 2:20
  Right.
• 2:21
  I think about it sort of like, vertically in terms of like
• 2:23
  who's gonna be in the room.
• 2:24
  Is it gonna be the CMO, is it gonna be a director level sort of driving programs?
• 2:28
  Is it gonna be someone who's like hands on keyboard with 6sense on a daily basis?
• 2:32
  And then horizontally think about like where they are in their journey, right?
• 2:34
  That buying journey as well as the customer journey, both sides.
• 2:37
  How do you sort of like create a matrix around that and just manage an event
• 2:40
  strategy that accommodates all of that?
• 2:43
  Ashley Biggie: We look at, like Alura said, the audience, and we determine
• 2:47
  where they are in their buying journey, and also what if their customers and
• 2:52
  prospects, like how big and how meaty do the conversations have to be.
• 2:57
  And then we pick the type of activation around that.
• 3:00
  So for some of our trade shows, they're extremely customer heavy.
• 3:04
  So we do our Club6 activation, where we ensure that we're getting in
• 3:08
  front of our customers and allowing them to meet with our subject
• 3:11
  matter experts and having those conversations, while also doing dinners.
• 3:16
  And experiential one-to-one activations.
• 3:19
  You know, all of the trade show activations that you have as
• 3:22
  well for getting in front of new customers and prospects.
• 3:27
  When we are super customer heavy, we like to bring in those like
• 3:31
  wow, surprise and delight moments.
• 3:33
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 3:34
  I'm firsthand aware of just the quality and also the quantity of events that
• 3:38
  you guys produce on an annual basis.
• 3:39
  And I think for a lot of companies, it's easy to just white knuckle it
• 3:43
  through each event and move on to the next event, and that's a recipe
• 3:46
  for not getting a lot of benefit out of all the investment you made.
• 3:50
  Talk about what it takes to build a really sort of event centric strategy.
• 3:55
  That capitalizes on the audience before and after the event itself.
• 3:58
  Alura Roe: Yeah.
• 3:59
  So before we go to any event, I've lived in a world before, I got
• 4:02
  sophisticated within my career where, you know, you see how many badge scans
• 4:05
  you can get at a trade show and then you throw them all to the sales team.
• 4:09
  And it's like, everyone follow up.
• 4:10
  That is not a world we live in any longer.
• 4:12
  We really strive to make sure that we have our pipeline even flowing in
• 4:15
  before we even get to a trade show.
• 4:17
  So we're looking at, like I said earlier, historical data.
• 4:20
  We're looking at speaker lists, we're looking at who's local to a city.
• 4:23
  Yeah.
• 4:23
  We're not siloing ourselves just to people that are going
• 4:25
  to necessarily a trade show.
• 4:26
  We're really trying to figure out why we're there.
• 4:28
  Who can we get in front of?
• 4:30
  So it's multi-touch approach in terms of, like she said, if we're going to be in
• 4:35
  person at a trade show where we're gonna be doing a connect space outside of there,
• 4:38
  and really how are we gonna engage them?
• 4:39
  Events are expensive.
• 4:40
  You wanna make sure that you're getting the right people in the right seats, that
• 4:44
  can be, showing a lot of pipeline for you.
• 4:47
  Ashley Biggie: During the event.
• 4:48
  I like to have, touch points with all of the people that are on site and ensuring
• 4:52
  that like we're getting voice notes, we're getting notes on handoff, any of the
• 4:55
  meetings that they've had, any meaningful conversations, any events that are needing
• 5:00
  to get booked, like book them now, even if it's just a meeting to figure out a
• 5:04
  time to book a larger, broad meeting.
• 5:06
  And then when we do take those leads and give them to our sales team
• 5:10
  after, like we have a post event meeting where we scrub the tiering
• 5:15
  and ensure handoff actually happens.
• 5:16
  Because sometimes things get stuck in Salesforce.
• 5:20
  Right.
• 5:21
  And then we are making sure that like they're consistently being followed up
• 5:26
  with and then they are put into 6sense and tiered into their buying journey
• 5:32
  where they're at, are they a 6QA?
• 5:34
  And then that will determine whether or not it is one of our AI emails, one
• 5:40
  of a real person, the account owner, like how does that get filtered out?
• 5:45
  And making sure that those conversations are happening and doing check-ins,
• 5:51
  like you said earlier in your event.
• 5:54
  Right after the event, you know, a couple weeks after, what was that postmortem?
• 5:59
  And then continuing to check on the ROI journey and making sure
• 6:02
  that like, we do manual scrubs to make sure that attribution is
• 6:07
  happening to all of our events.
• 6:08
  'cause they're expensive.
• 6:10
  Alura Roe: I think a lot of people also, early in their event journey,
• 6:15
  it's super critical that you make sure that everything flows
• 6:17
  in dynamically and is automated.
• 6:20
  Because whenever you're on a showroom floor, if you're
• 6:22
  tracking things in a spreadsheet or a form, whatever it might be.
• 6:26
  The time people are getting on flights, they're getting home.
• 6:28
  You have to get to your MOPS team and then you get into your CRM.
• 6:31
  It's just delay, delay, delay and like the touch point immediately after
• 6:34
  an event needs to be instantaneous.
• 6:36
  While also being personalized.
• 6:37
  No one wants a generic follow up.
• 6:39
  You want to make sure it's either a product that is relevant to them
• 6:42
  or a pain point that's relevant to that you're speaking to.
• 6:44
  And so.
• 6:45
  All of that being automated is super critical and timely.
• 6:48
  Matt Heinz: Well, and you guys are great about drinking your own champagne
• 6:49
  using 6sense to actually sort of triage and prioritize those different leads.
• 6:53
  But you mentioned like leads getting stuck in CRM.
• 6:55
  I imagine that's not a problem that happens to anyone else other
• 6:57
  than just us sitting up here.
• 6:58
  You know, those next parts of the process, even sort of manually having
• 7:02
  to scrub lists, it's kind of the reality of a lot of programs right now.
• 7:05
  But what is the role of technology that you see now in moving
• 7:08
  forward to really help accelerate and automate pieces of that.
• 7:11
  Everything, badge scanning, tracking activity, triaging that, and you know,
• 7:15
  kind of bridging the gap between sort of the potential that those events have and
• 7:19
  the reality of actually having to execute them in sometimes a very manual way.
• 7:23
  Alura Roe: Yeah, I think there are a ton of tools, like for
• 7:25
  our meetings specifically, I've talked about this a lot here.
• 7:27
  We use Jifflenow.
• 7:29
  If we're meeting with people before we get to a show, while we're at a
• 7:31
  show or after we're using that tool, everything flows in with our CRM.
• 7:34
  And everything can be, dynamically flowing into maybe someone's not on site and
• 7:39
  they can see if someone checked it and they can see the notes on that activity.
• 7:41
  And then, there are other tools out there that can capture
• 7:44
  leads as well that you can use.
• 7:45
  I know there's a handful of them in the market, but that as well is
• 7:49
  more timely than necessarily one that's not integrating with your CRM.
• 7:53
  At the moment.
• 7:53
  I know they have lead capture capabilities within trade shows that you can purchase.
• 8:00
  But one that isn't already plugged in and has the appropriate
• 8:02
  filters that you're already using.
• 8:04
  Matt Heinz: That's right.
• 8:04
  Alura Roe: Just gets you there in a more timely manner.
• 8:06
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 8:07
  Let's start talking a little bit about handoff.
• 8:09
  Like, so you run an event, you've got some data, you've got some engagement.
• 8:12
  Now there needs to be a follow up.
• 8:14
  Right.
• 8:15
  Who does that follow up?
• 8:16
  Is it in a marketing follow up?
• 8:17
  Is a sales follow up?
• 8:18
  How do you prioritize that follow up?
• 8:19
  How aggressive is that follow up?
• 8:21
  When you think about sort of speed to follow up as well as quality of follow
• 8:24
  up, how do you build the playbook appropriately that not only respects the
• 8:28
  prospects of the customers, but also helps you drive and accelerate business value.
• 8:33
  Alura Roe: Yeah.
• 8:33
  It just depends on us in terms of where someone is in their journey.
• 8:37
  Like I said, go to a show and have 3000 badge scans.
• 8:40
  We aren't gonna say, have fun BDRs.
• 8:41
  Have fun sales reps. We are going to first put them in,
• 8:45
  make sure they're in our ICP.
• 8:46
  Make sure that they are emailing appropriately.
• 8:49
  Our team does a backend build on what our ICP looks like.
• 8:52
  And making sure that things are emailing appropriately, but that's
• 8:55
  when our buying stage comes in.
• 8:56
  Next we want only our BDRs and sales reps to really focus on ones that we
• 9:00
  call 6QA accounts, which are accounts that are in the right buying stage.
• 9:03
  They're showing enough intent data for them to want to have a conversation
• 9:07
  with a sales rep. No one wants to necessarily go on a first date with
• 9:10
  someone, like right off the bat, unless you get to know 'em a little
• 9:12
  bit or know a little bit about them.
• 9:14
  So it just depends on where they're at in their buying stage.
• 9:16
  And if someone is early adopter, maybe we'll throw them into a nurture.
• 9:19
  Maybe like Ashley said, we'll put them into our AI agent emails and start
• 9:24
  to educate them more on what we do.
• 9:26
  So it just depends on where they're on their journey.
• 9:28
  Matt Heinz: Yeah, I think this is a place where you guys really excel
• 9:30
  at sort of an advanced level of what we've been talking about today is event
• 9:33
  led growth programs where you've got integrated teams working together on this.
• 9:37
  Like you've got an event team nailing getting the event done
• 9:40
  and having a great experience.
• 9:41
  You've got an ops team that's sort of managing the back end,
• 9:44
  the technology and the list.
• 9:45
  Then you've gotta figure out the sales enablement play.
• 9:47
  Like it's not just like, here's a bunch of leads and follow up.
• 9:49
  Please don't follow up with these others.
• 9:51
  What does the sales enablement playbook look like?
• 9:53
  How explicit do you get in terms of what to say, what to send, and how to engage
• 9:58
  with those prospects after an event?
• 9:59
  Alura Roe: Pretty explicit.
• 10:00
  Yeah.
• 10:00
  I feel like we do a good job of this.
• 10:02
  I mean, I think everyone's unique in this, but we make sure that we have
• 10:06
  SalesLoft templates that we use that are relevant to personas for follow up.
• 10:09
  We make sure that we have dashboards built that will outline which reps
• 10:13
  have and haven't done follow up, so we can track it down to a calling
• 10:17
  people out level, if you will.
• 10:18
  We also make sure that we have content that's relevant to them and that we
• 10:22
  have everything built out within our dashboards so they can just take a look
• 10:26
  at where check-ins happen, where no shows happen, where attendance happen, so.
• 10:30
  Ashley Biggie: I think something that feels pretty basic to us, but
• 10:33
  I know is not, is we have, an ABX deck that has pre-event, like all of
• 10:40
  the information that you need on a slide for that event after the event,
• 10:43
  that slide flips to post event and here are all the resources for it.
• 10:46
  And, that slide is linked in the notes that are uploaded into every single
• 10:50
  lead that comes out in Salesforce.
• 10:53
  And then also any of the notes from those meaningful
• 10:55
  conversations that we have on site.
• 10:58
  Again, like we'll tier the lead based off of, was it a meaningful
• 11:03
  conversation, were they just there?
• 11:05
  And that will help Salesforce and 6sense, filter them into the appropriate type
• 11:10
  of response that can be automated.
• 11:13
  And I think we're pretty hands on with ensuring that they get all this stuff.
• 11:20
  Matt Heinz: That's great.
• 11:20
  Alura Roe: We also make sure that every single event or campaign that we do has
• 11:25
  a unique Salesforce campaign created.
• 11:27
  Which is very, you know, oftentimes the basics.
• 11:30
  But we have really done a good job at making sure our sales team knows where
• 11:33
  to tag opportunities appropriately.
• 11:35
  So within those Salesforce campaigns, we also have all of the details that you
• 11:39
  could possibly want on that campaign.
• 11:41
  So, what was it?
• 11:42
  What was the event?
• 11:43
  Here are all the assets to it.
• 11:44
  Linking to that ABX deck.
• 11:45
  So we can make sure that people are tagging opportunities
• 11:48
  appropriately as well.
• 11:48
  Matt Heinz: Got it.
• 11:49
  Talking to Alura and Ashley, double A from 6sense here today.
• 11:53
  A team.. A team.
• 11:54
  There you go.
• 11:54
  I like that better.
• 11:55
  From here on the Cvent CONNECT, show floor, talking about really
• 11:59
  a pretty advanced program in terms of event led growth and just very
• 12:01
  impressive what you guys have built.
• 12:03
  Let's move on and talk a little bit about ROI and measurement.
• 12:06
  Alright.
• 12:06
  Which can be a sticky wicket depending on sort of the organization
• 12:08
  you're in and the expectations of what happens out of events.
• 12:11
  Talk a little bit about how you manage reporting and expectations,
• 12:15
  you know, at the event level and all the way up to the C-Suite.
• 12:19
  Alura Roe: Yep.
• 12:20
  So we measure a number of things.
• 12:22
  We first off measure, like I mentioned, tagging those opportunities for
• 12:25
  source pipeline, which is critical.
• 12:27
  We also wanna take a look at influenced pipeline.
• 12:29
  If we're touching customers that have renewals or deal accelerations.
• 12:32
  We also wanna track that.
• 12:34
  We also like to look at our ABX win rate when ABX is involved.
• 12:37
  And I think you talked about this stat earlier, like when events are
• 12:40
  involved, like you're more likely to see pipeline progress, or deals open.
• 12:44
  We like to track our win rate there.
• 12:46
  We're always striving for a 10x ROI for any event that we do.
• 12:50
  But to your point, how do you measure that up to a C-suite?
• 12:52
  Like especially if you've never done something before.
• 12:54
  How are you gonna justify that?
• 12:56
  I think oftentimes you're often looking for the audience back to the segmentation
• 12:59
  of who you're gonna get in front of.
• 13:01
  Making sure that the potential pipeline is there.
• 13:03
  But yeah, those are our key metrics that we're usually looking at.
• 13:06
  Ashley Biggie: I'll add onto that when we're doing these events.
• 13:09
  It's not just leads, it's not booth scans.
• 13:12
  Like we're calling out to our C-suite, what is that source pipeline?
• 13:17
  What is closed won?
• 13:19
  And then what is influenced and any of the meatier activations.
• 13:25
  So how many meetings, how many like meaningful conversations happened,
• 13:29
  how many dinner attendees did we have?
• 13:31
  Things where there was that like quality interaction versus,
• 13:35
  thank you for the sticker.
• 13:36
  Alura Roe: To add a 6sense plug in there, 'cause it is truly what we do.
• 13:40
  Whenever we're pulling those segments to see who's gonna be there before we
• 13:43
  can see what buying stage they're in.
• 13:44
  But then afterwards you can also pull what's called a segment performance
• 13:47
  report and see how you progressed those accounts, and how you've engaged with
• 13:51
  them and how the event has affected it.
• 13:52
  So that's another metric that you could take a look at and start to show,
• 13:55
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 13:56
  ... Alura Roe: the progression on.
• 13:57
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 13:57
  I've heard Saima [Rashid], your SVP of Marketing, publicly talk
• 13:59
  about this goal of getting 10x pipeline out of an event investment.
• 14:02
  And two things I like about that.
• 14:03
  One is it's a very explicit number.
• 14:05
  Nice big number.
• 14:06
  It's not just focused on what happened at the event, but it really is focused
• 14:09
  on what happens after the event as well.
• 14:11
  And it assumes a body of work investment in that event.
• 14:14
  It's not just, we talked about this in our session earlier.
• 14:17
  It's not what you spend, it's what you're buying, right?
• 14:19
  And it helps you rationalize everything from the great work you guys do at Club6.
• 14:23
  Right.
• 14:24
  The activations outside of the show, which become not just a
• 14:27
  place to hang out a destination.
• 14:28
  A coveted destination, that really sort of helps promote the
• 14:32
  brand and also get more people to come and more people to engage.
• 14:35
  Attribution gets a little hard in that conversation, right?
• 14:37
  Because you can say, okay, we did this amazing thing at Forrester and you know,
• 14:40
  you've got a presence here at Cvent CONNECT, and you got the Club6, but almost
• 14:44
  everybody that was at that event was also influenced by something before that.
• 14:49
  And is likely to be influenced by something after that.
• 14:51
  So what are the attribution conversations sound like internally when you're
• 14:55
  understanding the impact and maybe the acceleration that events are having?
• 14:59
  Alura Roe: Yeah.
• 14:59
  I think that attribution is, especially when it comes to branding, which is harder
• 15:05
  to necessarily get attribution tied to, I think that it all stems back to that
• 15:09
  audience you're getting in front of.
• 15:11
  And making sure that you have the right people you're targeting.
• 15:14
  When it comes to deciding how big our brand is, if we're gonna rent
• 15:17
  out a whole restaurant, do a Club6.
• 15:19
  It all just depends again, on the audience that we're getting in front of and making
• 15:22
  sure that there's the potential there.
• 15:24
  Ashley Biggie: I think it depends on the type of event.
• 15:26
  For Club6 where it is largely customers we're looking at influence, like how
• 15:31
  much of this was influenced on the renewal, how much was influenced on that?
• 15:34
  If we're doing more direct mail campaigns for the event that is more sourced,
• 15:39
  like, did that direct mail help source?
• 15:41
  So the attribution can be like anything else.
• 15:45
  It all depends on how you tell your story.
• 15:48
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 15:48
  I mean, no one has solved this problem.
• 15:49
  Right?
• 15:49
  So attribution is hard.
• 15:50
  And I would argue that the better you're doing sort of an integrated
• 15:54
  motion like you guys are, the harder it is to answer that question.
• 15:57
  But if you give me the choice of having better reporting or better results,
• 15:59
  I'll take better results all day long.
• 16:01
  Ashley Biggie: A thousand percent.
• 16:02
  Matt Heinz: Alright, we're wrapping up here with the A team from 6sense
• 16:04
  again, last question, I think for each of you is, you know, for people
• 16:06
  that are watching this that are running events, whether they're event producers
• 16:09
  or event marketers, what do you want them to know about how events are gonna
• 16:12
  impact their business and should be impacting their business moving forward?
• 16:16
  Alura Roe: I think that now that we've talked about this at this conference
• 16:18
  a little bit, now that AI is playing more of a role into everything that we
• 16:21
  do, I think face-to-face interactions are gonna become more prominent.
• 16:25
  And I think that another layer to that is making sure that as a marketer and event
• 16:29
  marketer, that you're not just focusing on quantity, but quality, which is where that
• 16:35
  segmentation I mentioned is important.
• 16:37
  Making sure you're going after to the right audience and making
• 16:38
  sure that the follow-up is done in a timely manner as well.
• 16:40
  So I think.
• 16:42
  Leaning into the more face-to-face interactions I think we're gonna come
• 16:44
  into and the audience building as well.
• 16:46
  Matt Heinz: I agree.
• 16:47
  Ashley, bring us home.
• 16:48
  Ashley Biggie: As we move more into agentic AI.
• 16:50
  I think that human interaction is just going to be so relevant.
• 16:56
  People are gonna crave actual humans.
• 16:58
  Like do I know the difference between an actual human and
• 17:01
  an agentic AI, and I think...
• 17:03
  Alura Roe: the day might come...
• 17:03
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 17:04
  That's been a huge theme for me.
• 17:05
  Just over the last couple days.
• 17:06
  Just really... until the robot becomes the persona.
• 17:09
  Ashley Biggie: Yeah.
• 17:09
  Matt Heinz: It's about the humans.
• 17:10
  And the more we can ignite that human spark, the more we can create
• 17:13
  that human moment, the more it's gonna accelerate the relationships
• 17:16
  and the business results we want.
• 17:18
  So, Ashley and Alura, thank you so much for joining us today.
• 17:20
  Ashley Biggie: Thank you, Matt.
• 17:20
  Alura Roe: Thanks for having us.
• 17:21
  Ashley Biggie: Always good to see you.
• 17:22
  Matt Heinz: Good to see you too.
• 17:22
  Alura Roe: A team.
• 17:22
  Ashley Biggie: Yeah.
• 17:23
  Matt Heinz: A team.