My Hot Takes
Should I schedule around an industry conference?
One of the best ways to recruit your target personas to a dinner is to schedule it in the evening after a conference. After all, hundreds, maybe thousands, of the people you want to talk to are descending on the same city at the same time. It’s extremely tempting.
Post-conference dinners are also the only way to reach your buyers that don’t live in a major city. Fargo, Tucson, or San Antonio might never see a dedicated dinner, so conferences give you a farther reach.
Your senior executives may be traveling to the conference already, providing prospects and customers alike the opportunity for better conversations than they’d have with the local sales guy (no offense to Local Sales Guy™).
Having done about a third of my dinners at conferences, I want to warn about some of the downsides:
Every competitor and partner is thinking the same thing. So it’s often easier to get an executive to a dinner on a random Thursday in their home city than to win one of their two evenings at a conference.
The best venues are already booked by companies that planned further ahead, and you’ll pay a double-digit premium for what’s left.
Conferences are long days. Jet lag, bad hotel sleep, or a better offer can turn a confirmed yes into a no-show by 7 p.m.
Still, if you’re committed to hosting a truly amazing dinner at a special restaurant in the host city with an obvious hook that will appeal to your buyer, conferences can be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Should customers be invited, or just prospects?
The argument against inviting customers is that they’re already customers; your dinner needs to generate new business pipeline. However, inviting customers can pay off big time if any of the following circumstances apply:
If the customer is evangelist-level happy, they can do more to credibly advocate for your products or services than either the speaker or your executives.
If there are expansion opportunities or a renewal that warrant an invitation, a little wining-and-dining never hurt.
If there's a new key decision-maker at the customer account who needs to be won over, there’s no better way to do it.
These are case-by-case decisions, and you don’t want a skewed customer-to-prospect ratio. But in certain situations, including a customer or two is a very wise investment.
Should I overbook for cancellations or no-shows?
After 30+ dinners, I have yet to have one where everyone who registered attended. It's safe to assume a 20% no-show rate, minimum. The nature of the persona you're selling to may make it higher (more in that in a second).
Life is going to throw a couple of your guests a curveball — sick kid, bad weather, last-minute business trip. Most of these will be legit, and they'll let you know as soon as they know they can't attend.
No-call no-shows, on the other hand, are the worst of the worst, and I have been tempted more than once to create a website where marketers can add the names of people who claim a dinner spot and don’t have the decency to cancel in advance. Fortunately, NCNS (no-call no-shows) were usually limited to 1-2 guests out of 20+ registered. But you can almost bank on at least one.
One interesting nugget: the cancellation rate for dinners I ran for marketers was significantly lower than those for sales leaders. 25% with one to two days’ notice versus 40%, with many of them just ghosting completely. I'll leave it to you hypothesize why. Just know there's no general rule other than you should absolutely expect some number of cancellations. Overbook slightly so you'll have a full room even with some last-minute drops.
What about event-specific cocktails?
This is almost always a bad idea that no one is going to order at a small dinner event; save the clever, branded cocktail names for very large events where the venue wants to pre-batch cocktails so every drink doesn’t have to be made from scratch.
At a small dinner in a fancy restaurant, most guests will prefer to order their favorite drink: a glass of Champagne or wine, Scotch neat, a Martini or Manhattan. Almost nobody wants to start with a cocktail that didn’t exist a week before and was chosen because it matches your company colors.
The only exception to this rule is if you hire a respected, professional bartender and give him/her plenty of time to come up with something special, that uses top shelf ingredients, and you can look someone in the eye and say, “that’s a great cocktail.” Otherwise, just don’t do it.