I attend executive events all the time. I have led, participated in and helped organize executive events. Most of these are geared toward the CIO (Chief Information Officer) and they happen all the time. There is a long-standing saying that a CIO could attend an event every week because of the sheer number of events held each year.
Executive events tend to be smaller and more intimate with no more than 250 people attending and most having 75-150 attendees. There are many reasons for this and why they are much smaller than typical tech events that might attract hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of attendees. Unfortunately, most of these executive events struggle to find the right formula to run a successful event. The problem is that they are using the wrong focus which leads to a non-optimal outcome.
The financial formula for most events is pretty simple: Either a) a single vendor puts on the entire event (ie: private event) or b) an event company engages multiple sponsors that provide the financial support for the event.
Three key components of an event
There are three core components to planning an event: Content, People and Sponsors.
The first and most important is content. Content is ultimately what brings people to events. Content is the topic, details, outcomes and takeaways along with the speakers. Content also includes individual speakers and panel discussions. A lot of thought goes into this. For example, there is an art to running a successful panel geared toward executives in terms of moderator, number of panelists, time, approach and engagement. Engagement is a key characteristic that must be considered with any executive event.
The second item is people. People are the attendees that are participating in the event. Who is the target persona? What is the right mix of attendees to presenters? Where do sponsors fit in? It is important to have the right mix to address quality and create an environment for engagement amongst attendees.
The last item is sponsors. Sponsors are the fuel for most events, but they are not the engine. It is important to understand how best to include them, but in doing so to not negatively impact quality. In some cases, sponsors are not actively involved other than the actual sponsorship of the event.
It is important to understand why you are making each of these choices.
The priority is the formula
Too often, organizations are focused on the wrong outcomes. It is easy for organizers to be motivated by the money or lead-gen that comes from an event. This is a mistake for executive events. While this may work for a period of time, it is not sustainable. Essentially, they are optimizing for the wrong thing.
It is important to focus on who matters most. In this case, it is the attendees. By focusing on the attendees, one then considers what is important to them and that is typically two things for executive events: 1) networking and 2) content and learning. Therefore, the content should be the priority. Then numbers of attendees, then sponsors.
Unfortunately, when companies focus on increasing numbers of attendees and sponsors first, they optimize for the wrong thing. To ask the question differently: Who is the event ultimately benefiting?
While organizers may set a high-level agenda to set the tone of the event, this is not the same as starting with content. In this model, content typically comes later and typically leaves organizers with mixed results. Not to mention organizing an event this way takes a lot more work and leads to significant churn in both sponsors and attendees. The result is a lot of work with limited results that often impacts the branding for the event, organizer and sponsors.
Optimizing for the wrong outcome
The priority should be:
Content > People > Sponsors
By optimizing on the content first, it ensures that organizers maintain a high quality in terms of outcomes for attendees. When attendees go to an event, they want to learn. When executives go to an event, they need to hear something unique and provocative that makes them think. For executive events, selling or presenting pedestrian content is not interesting and absolutely not worth spending their valuable time attending a conference. Selling on stage, specifically, should be a non-starter. I used to say, I don’t need to spend my limited and valuable time attending a conference to have someone sell to me. I can do that in the comfort of my own office.
The goal should be to identify content that executives would not get elsewhere or share something they have not heard that is relevant to their role. For example, having a vendor present a browser to a group of CIOs is quite out of touch and a waste of time on multiple levels. Unfortunately, this type of example is more common than you might think.
Is there an alternative option?
In the end, each of these are knobs that can be adjusted for the best optimal output for any particular event depending on the desired outcomes. And of course there are many nuances to each of these that must be considered.
For example, an alternative approach could be to lower quality and optimize around the number of attendees and sponsors. Bringing in more attendees can lead to more sponsors or charging higher sponsorship levels. However, that dilutes the quality of the event, conversions and value for the attendees that matter most.
The question is: What do you optimize for and why?
This post is just a quick perspective on executive events I’ve attended, participated in and organized over the past several years. Each of the points in this post only scratches the surface as each of them includes a myriad of nuances to consider.
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