At a recent speaking engagement, a number of people asked me whether I could come up with five questions to determine the health of an event and whether they had had their ‘finger on the pulse’ of their market they were serving.
Here’s what I came up with- these are questions you should ask yourself about your show(s):
- Do you yourself know the topics well enough to put together a 10-session conference that could draw an audience?
- Could you yourself convince the best speakers on those topics to speak at this event?
- Could you yourself articulate the five reasons why this event would be better than any other?
- Could you yourself secure the participation of the top 20 sponsors in your market?
- Could you yourself contact any of the chief decision makers at your top 100 attendee clients- and get them to take your call and tell you what is driving their business?
- Are you regularly reviewing (and acting upon) the answers to these five questions?
As an executive at your company, you may not be directly involved in every aspect of your event. But hopefully within your team there’s a way to answer ‘yes’ to each of the questions. If you can’t, then you know where your weaknesses are.
I would say, however, the more distant you are from what’s really going on, the more risks you face in running a successful and profitable event, and the more susceptible you are to an ‘event killer’………