Attending a conference as an attendee or sponsor of the show? How do you come off as not being the creepy sales guy? Here are my thoughts on how to make this your best conference yet.
- Be congruent with who you are. Only attend sessions that you feel you are interested in personally or your product might actually be able to help.
- Make it a point to meet as many people as possible. Please, please don’t think about how you are going to say your name when you meet them, just remember their name, one personal item about them, and what project(s) they are working on that you can help them with.
- Never eat alone.
- Always contribute to the conversation with either a true fact or introduce a person that could help that person.
- Have a pre-planned agenda of the sessions you’ll be attending.
- Research each speaker you’ll be seeing on the internet for at least 5 minutes. Find out a personal item about them that wasn’t announced in the speaker notes and be prepared to meet. Have something to say about an interest of theirs that wasn’t on the speaker notes. Follow note # 1.
- Have your business card but make sure it’s different than everyone else’s card. Have Bump ready to rock. Hashable. Something unique that makes you stand out from the 290481 other people that person has met today.
- Take frequent breaks to document! Dictate, write, or email your contacts and information you’ve gained — Look for a future post on organizing the process on meetings, teleconferences, etc. later.
Those are 8 things that were just on the top of my mind, any other ideas out there?
