How to Get the Most Out of Events: A Step-by-Step Guide
In this solo episode of the Payroll In Today podcast, host Matt Beatty walks listeners through a practical, six‑step framework for extracting maximum ROI from conferences, trade shows, and sponsorships, using the upcoming IPPA Summit as a running example. He begins by emphasizing the necessity of pre‑event planning: setting clear objectives, evaluating whether the event aligns with those goals, and deciding if attendance is justified. He then details how to craft a networking strategy that matches those objectives, including researching attendee rosters, targeting strategic partners, and preparing focused questions. Beatty outlines the importance of establishing learning goals by prioritizing sessions that fill specific knowledge gaps, and he shares personal reading recommendations (Russell Brunson’s funnel books) to illustrate continuous learning. For sponsors and exhibitors, he advises researching other vendors to forge mutually beneficial partnerships rather than indiscriminately “spray‑and‑pray” outreach. He stresses active participation—engaging in Q&A, taking notes, and staying present—while warning against passive behaviors like checking email during sessions. Finally, he describes a post‑event postmortem process: immediate debriefing, consolidating notes, creating an action plan, and executing a timely follow‑up sequence (including funnel‑based outreach). Throughout, Beatty intersperses anecdotes, practical tips, and motivational reminders (e.g., “What’s important now?”) to reinforce disciplined event execution.
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One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to invest time, money, and energy into attending a conference, an event, even being a sponsor, and not having a proper plan for how to get the most out of your time there and give the most value during your time. So during today's episode, in honor of the upcoming IPPA Summit, I'm going to share with you our practices for how we get the most out of events, what we do for pre-work, how we determine what events attend and how we get the most when we are on site. Thank you very much for joining Payroll In Today. My name is Matt Beatty. I'll be your host. Let's go. All right, so events, again, huge investment of time, energy, money, all the things, as our team likes to say. Uh, so we've got to make sure we're being good stewards of that investment. And just simply showing up with no plan and, you know, hoping to bump into some people that could be customers, could be potential partners without a strategy is a huge mistake. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to take hours and hours of prep work and, you know, show up and be very salesy in your approach of talking to people. That's not what we're going for here. We're just going for intentions. And so I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step process that you can do to make sure you get the most out of your events. Some ways that I use it and some great guidance. You know, hopefully some of our teammates will listen to this as, as sort of a training piece as we continue to grow and more people go to events as well. So first and foremost, you've got to set clear objectives for your time there. Aligning the goals of why you're going to the event with the event itself is critical. And this will also tell you whether or not this event is worth your time in the first place. I have had some local events that after sitting down and looking at my objectives and how I can either bring value or receive value from the event and whether or not they align, I've determined it's just not a good use of my time. For example, there's a local event I used to attend all the time. I quickly realized that while I was fostering some relationships that I had existing, I wasn't bringing a lot of value to new people and I wasn't, you know, receiving any value from the events either. And so therefore, you know, if I'm not able to bring a lot of value, not receiving a lot of value, it's taking a few hours out of my day once a week, a couple of times a month, whatever it might be. Probably not a great use of my time. Right. And so I would encourage you, if you're one of these people that attends frequently local events, if you just enjoy it and you love the energy, the connections, that is a win. So don't overthink it too much. I just wasn't enjoying it. It felt like it was laborious. And so I determined, hey, look, if I'm not enjoying this and I'm not bringing the value and I'm not getting value, then what's the point, right? So that's first and foremost, is determine should you be at the event in the first place. So next up, I want to make sure, like, I'm writing this down. This is kind of a good framework for me. I'm a big Google Doc guy. You know, if you're a whiteboard guy or gal, that's totally fine. Like, choose where you want to document this. But why are you attending this event in the first place? What are the reasons? Is it to get inspired? Is it to find new connections? Are you trying to promote your business? I mean, let's face it, some people, that's the primary reason they're going. Go to a chamber meeting, you're going to meet a bunch of people just trying to promote their business. So you also have to have a plan for that, right? If I'm going to an event where I want to promote my business and everybody else there wants to promote their business, what am I looking for here? I'm looking for customers or am I looking for strategic partners? Because there's a much higher likelihood I'm going to find strategic partners that we can do some COI selling together, then I'm actually going to find my customers there. And that's, that's typically what I find with like a local chamber event or most local events in general is that it's a bunch of people trying to sell to each other. So make sure you know what you're going there for. Write it down, say it out loud on the way to get buy-in from yourself. And that's kind of the beginning of your written plan. Now, it's important again, like don't stick skip this step, knowing why you're attending and then making, being able to make that determination of maybe I shouldn't be going to this or, oh wow, this is a much more valuable event than I thought. I just have never really been intentional about why I'm going. And so when we think about an event like the IPPA conference where for me I'm going to pack up and fly across the country, I'm going to be a week away from my family. Let's face it, the registration's not cheap. It's a big, big, big, big investment. So if I don't take the time to write down a plan and have intentionality about how I'm going to spend my time out there, shame on me. I'm a bad steward of my company's time, my company's money, and my own time and money. If I'm going to be away from my family, just even on a personal level for a week, then I better dang well get something out of that time. Again, I want to bring value to the equation as well. But man, I got to get an ROI on that money and time. So that's number one is, you know, why am I attending this event? So for me, you know, some, some examples of this, if for the IPPA, I'm going, I want to get inspired. I'm excited about the speakers. I always love over the years we talked about last episode, make sure you check it out with Lee Roberts. We talk about some of the great speakers over the years. We talk about how inspiring it is. And you don't need to fly across the country to go to events to get inspired. Sometimes you don't even need to leave your desk, but it's important when you are to make sure you're investing that time and energy into understanding what your goals are there. So I want to get inspired. I want to make sure that I also am learning from the people around me. So that's a huge thing is that I want to make sure I'm going in with what are the questions I'm going to ask from people? You know, what are the best practices that we are currently struggling with that I'm trying to learn from others in the industry on how they handle those things. So best practices are a huge thing for this particular event. You know, I'm not out there to sell anything to anybody. We're all competitors. We're all in this together. You know, so there's, there's just really an element of trying to go out there and gain some, some strategy, some, some best practices and all that. All right. So step 2, I want to prioritize my networking strategy around that. So again, kind of building on that, if I'm clear on what I'm going there for, I'm going there for inspiration. Well, I know I've got to make sure that on my agenda I've got the time blocked for all the sessions that are going to be inspirational to me. I can't get stuck out in the hallway having a conversation. I can't have anybody from back home at the office book a time over it on my calendar. I've got to be intentional about making sure I'm showing up. And if I know what best practices exactly I'm trying to lean on someone to learn more about when I get out there, then I can look at the roster of attendees ahead of time and look for the types of companies. All right, am I looking for somebody, you know, if we're a 15-employee payroll company, am I looking for somebody with 30 to 50 employees so that they're that much further out in front of me and I can learn how did they structure their customer support organization for scalability? So these are the types of things I can prepare now before I go because I know what my intentions are. If I know what I want to learn, I can figure out who would be good people to learn that from before I even set foot in the building. And this is something I've done in the past. So my first IPPA Spring Summit back in 2019, this was exactly the situation. We were struggling to improve our customer support infrastructure. We were providing great support to our clients, but our infrastructure was, you know, just kind of whatever we could afford, we did. So I found some people that were a little bit further out on the path in front of me and were known for their great customer service. And again, this is sort of the diligence you can do. If I just show up and start asking any Tom, Dick, and Harry how they handle their customer support organization and I don't know ahead of time, do they even have a high net promoter score? Do they, do they pride themselves on this? I know everybody in our industry prides themselves on this, but does the market say the same? And so I want to make sure that I'm showing up with some intentionality. Obviously, I'm going to meet some new and interesting people along the way who are going to bring value along that similar topic line. But it's great to have a clear path because when I'm done, if I have this list that I'm building through here that we're going to continue to build on in the next step, when I come home and I look at the ROI, I can go boom, check that box, boom, check that box, boom, check that box. All right. So If you're sponsoring an event and a lot of us sponsor events, again, it could be the local chamber event, could be— you could be sponsoring the IPPA event, which is, you know, again, a big investment. I want to make sure if I'm simply looking to make connections with prospects, I'm doing my research ahead of time. I want to know who would be a good fit. I just don't want to spam every single attendee that's going to be at the event. Again, we're like, this is— this show is about the payroll industry. Many of you listening are going to the IPPA Summit here next month. I'm recording this February 16th, 2024. Well, you're getting all the emails right now from the vendors that are going to be there. You're getting the emails about the afterparties. You're getting the emails about, hey, can we book 30-minute demo? Can we? That's great. I like that they're softening the beaches. They're getting us ready. They're trying to make contact with their target customers and also trying to make contact with their key customers that are going to be there. And so definitely seeing some great execution from the vendor side for the IPPA conference, at least getting their name out there ahead of time. And kudos to the IPPA for giving them access to the list because, you know, that's a big investment that they're making to come to the event or you're making if it's you. And so definitely want to make sure that The next step of that goes beyond the spray and pray and you start to do some research on your audience. There's not that many attendees at this event. As an example, I think there'll be, you know, maybe 400 total, 200 to 300 of those will be Payroll Bureau leadership. So you don't have to research 500 companies. It's not going to take you 10 days. You've got plenty of time and you can say, all right, cool, maybe Guru is too small for us, maybe Guru is our exact target market. Now I know I want to try to prioritize a meeting with Matt when I see him I can go run him down. Please don't run me down at the event. All right. So— and don't forget, just because you connect with someone at an event doesn't mean you will again. Be prepared to ask questions and do your homework in advance. This is huge for me because all of us talk the talk when we're at an event like this. Oh yeah, give me a call. I'll be happy to connect and grab coffee. And then we get back to work and times are busy and maybe we don't have time to reply to that email or, you know, and I mean, it's unfortunate, but it happens and we just don't reconnect. So have your questions prepared. If you got the meeting with that person who has had the perfect client success structure that you were looking for, or at least you perceived it to be, what are the questions you would ask them? Have them ready. And that way you can have the conversation on site. And for Pete's sake, take some dang notes. Last year I sat down with Matt Ummholtz and a couple other people at a table and we talked through sales training programs.. It was an ad hoc conversation, and I have pages and pages of notes about what these companies did for their sales training program. That was something that I went in very intentional. We were just bringing on new sales teammates, and I wanted to know, hey, what have you learned in the onboarding and offboarding? And at his company, they brought on a lot more over the years than we have. And so I'd be a fool not to, while I've got him captive at a table, ask him about something that he's incredibly passionate about and happy to share about. That's the other piece about this. Is most of the stuff that you're looking to gain access to in terms of knowledge from others, they're very passionate about. If you have some pointed questions to cue them up, you're going to set yourself up for success as well, rather than having generic questions and no framework and no goals. So we've got step 1, go ahead and set clear objectives. Should you be going to this event? Does this event align with your objectives of what you're trying to achieve? Now prioritize your networking strategy at the event. How and who are you going to be approaching? What are you going to ask of them? What are you going to say to them during your time with them? And then next up is setting— establishing learning goals. So I, if I'm attending an event, I want to go to some of the sessions, right? So I want to identify and prioritize sessions that align with my specific growth areas. So for example, At the IPPA conference, you've got a sales track, a leadership track, and an operations track. As CEO, all of those things report to me and I'm responsible for the success of all of those. So I've got to make decisions on what are the things that right now I need to plug gaps in and how am I most going to benefit from this knowledge? I am a just-in-time content consumer. So not a just-in-case content consumer. So some of you out there may relate to this. I used to read— I still read a lot of books. I have 3 or 4 going at a time at any given time, but they're topical. So right now, for example, I'm working on improving some marketing-related tasks at our company. I am plowing through multiple marketing books at the same time. I'm pulling pieces from each one. I'm— and I'll recommend a great series. I've been recommending books on the pod lately. One that I'm really diving into on the marketing front is Russell Brunson series. Russell Brunson is the creator of ClickFunnels. He wrote, I think the first one is DotCom Secrets or Traffic Secrets. There's DotCom Secrets, Traffic Secrets, and Expert Secrets. Now, this guy is a little over the top and he is very loud, outgoing, audacious, and he kind of runs in the same crew as like the Grant Cardones of the world and, you know, kind of sells from the stage kind of a guy. But I'll tell you what, if, if nothing else, if you read these books, you'll start to understand the marketing that you see every day better. You got to give it to this dude. He's a pretty young guy and he has basically molded the funnel industry into what it is of like the focus on sales funnels, the focus on online funnels, the copywriting, how to drive people to the funnels. He's and he's kind of the funnel king. And I think in our industry, funnels are an underused component of our sales and marketing strategy. We all think we know our sales funnel from, hey, people going, you know, the awareness, interest, desire, action of the AIDA formula of funnel. And we're just trying to drive awareness at the top and squeeze them out into a client at the bottom. But a sales funnel for a particular product on the marketing front incredibly valuable tool. And, you know, we've been playing with a lot of these particular products. How do we drive traffic eyeballs to it? How do we convert them to either some sort of free or paid asset to start that gets them to check that first box, then a small paid asset, then a, you know, move them into our funnel of being a paying customer on a recurring basis. And so great books on that. I don't know which one I would start with. It would kind of depend on your current place. I started with Expert Secrets. I was doing some extra, doing more than normal public speaking and events last year. And so I want to, I've heard some good things about that book and I've now moved on to the second book and I'll definitely read the third because I'm getting a ton out of it. So yeah, great book in there. All right. Where was I? Step 3, establish learning goals. So step 3 is establishing learning goals, identifying and prioritizing those sessions that align with the growth areas you're trying to get better at. So that was where it got me off on that tangent, is we're talking about multiple topics. Now, again, if you're going to a chamber event or something that's more networking-based and doesn't have multiple sessions, establishing learning goals gets different. It goes back to the previous step and like, hey, what can I learn from the attendees here? And sometimes, look, man, I'm not going to act like you don't go to events to sell. Sometimes it's learning more about the company. Oh, I see somebody from this pharmaceutical company I've been calling on for 2 years is about to be at this event. I can simply profile the account while I'm standing there. Oh, how many employees are y'all up to now? Oh, do you have any idea who you guys use for your payroll and HR services? Oh, that's great. Who, who is the appropriate contact to talk to about that? I can get my golden circle while I'm standing there talking to somebody and make use of that time instead of going in with the whole, you know, this is something— look, whole other topic. And I'm just now reading my notes and I realize I have step 3 and then I go straight to step 5 and step 6. I don't have a step 4 in here. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. See, to skip. All right. So step 4 will be like floor 13 on an elevator. We just don't have it. We don't do floors around here. That's a new pod for the new thing for the pod. If you see me out in Vegas, say we don't do floors around here and hopefully I'll remember what the heck you're talking about. All right. So identify and prioritize those sessions. Just in this seems so obvious, But if you're making on-the-spot decisions, you're not going to be engaged with what's going on around you. So now I'm out in the hallway staring at my phone, trying to figure out where the next 3 sessions are, where I could be accomplishing some of my other goals for the event and seeking out the people, partnerships, the reasons I'm there. So every time I'm in the hallway fumbling around trying to look at the map and trying to figure out where things are, then I'm just wasting time. And I don't like to go places and waste time. I like to go places and be prepared. All right. So going in with your day mapped out just always helps you get the most out of the event. And that could simply be, again, if I'm going back to the local event or if we're sponsoring, how much time am I going to spend in my booth? Who's going to be in our booth? How are we going to maximize our time there? I think, you know, talking to Lori Brown recently about IPPA having a booth at another event. The biggest takeaway we had as an organization out of that, as an association, wasn't from the people that came up to our booth and learned about becoming IPPA members. It was about strategic partners with the other vendors. So if you're a vendor at an event, I can tell you, I have, I can almost say unequivocally that my best events have been when we are a sponsor and we are there and we connect with the other sponsors. So for example, we used to go to events, we were heavily focused on the dental industry for a while. Well, everybody else who's a vendor at a dental industry conference is also heavily focused on the dental industry, which means they probably so know some of your prospects better than you do and vice versa. But now you two can serve each other and refer each other, and that those relationships are far more valuable than maybe meeting one potential customer there. So be conscious of the other vendors around you and have a strategy for that if you're an exhibitor. I have a strategy for that. If you're an attendee, the first dental conference I went to, I spent all my time walking around talking to the other vendors. I did not have a vendor booth. I could not afford one. The place was too expensive. It was a massive conference, but I gave all my cards to vendors, not to attendees. I was there trying to connect with them, trying to create strategic partnerships. All right. So step 5, we skip step 4. We don't do step 4, payroll. And it's a new thing. We don't do public math and we don't do step 4. All right. So step 5 is be an active participant. Man, the number of wallflowers I see go to an event again, I'm flying all the way across the country. I'm spending all this time, money, energy, and then I'm going to sit there on my laptop and do work that I could have just stayed in my office to do. And golly, I don't even feel like I need to say anything about that. Why go if you're going to sit there? Literally just hit my desk. Why go if you're just going to sit there and do work that you could do at your office? Like, I know some of this stuff can't wait when you're a smaller bureau, but for Pete's sake, man, I bet a lot of it can wait till breaks. Why waste the time during a session? If the session's that bad, then just don't go in there in the first place. Go sit in your office and be focused or sit in your hotel room and be focused. So engage in the discussions. Be a part of the Q&A, have good questions. And when there's a workshop, like we're going to have a ton of workshops this year, be interactive so that you can learn. We do not learn as passive onlookers. We learn by engaging and being a part of the conversation. So this is a big one for me because any time I feel like an event was a waste of time, if I look back, I— and I'm being honest with myself, I realize I was completely disengaged. I was on the phone, I was checking email, I was going into the hallway to take phone calls. I just wasn't present. When you actually take the time to listen to the speakers, to ask questions of the people around you, to take notes and stay focused on why you're attending, the value increases drastically. Always be present and engage with others. That just should be like a life rule, man. What's important now? I've probably talked about what's important now on this podcast before. This was a term that Lou Holtz used to tell his players to ask themselves 35 times per day. What's important now? When? And if you ask yourself that question 35 times a day, I ask myself that question probably more like 10 to 15 to 20 times a day, depending on the day. You will find you are so much more engaged and present in your life. What's important now? Well, what's important now is that I shut down everything else. I have my notes up here. I'm engaged with you. I'm engaged with the camera. I'm bringing good energy to this episode. I can't worry about the emails. I can't worry about my phone buzzing over there. I've got to stay focused on what I'm doing right now. Same thing when I'm driving. What's important now? Well, it's not trying to get the Spotify on exactly the right song so I can hit 90 on the freeway. It's not that, y'all. It's about being safe. It's about keeping 10 and 2. It's about making sure that I get home safely to be with my family. What happens when I get home? What's important now? It's about putting the phone away. It's about putting the distractions away. It's about being a present father, being a present husband. If you ask yourself that question, you cannot lose, y'all. I love it. I've been preaching that for— well, not preaching it. I've been an advocate of it for 20 years, probably at this point. Still ask myself that question every day. I love it. All right. So that's step 5 after, you know, step 5, technically step 4, but we don't do step 4 on here, is be an active participant. The funny thing is, like, I'm using these off of a blog post that I wrote and, and, and really just kind of going through and expanding on some of these topics. And nobody— this got proofed by multiple people and nobody realized there was not a step 4 in here. All right. So step 6, do a postmortem. Now, this is one of the biggest mistakes all of us make when we leave an event. You could— it could just be as simple as I was a sponsor at this event. I got 100 business cards and I just don't pick up the phone and call them or email them. Or it could be, hey, I just sat there and learned all this amazing stuff, all the stuff I said I wanted to learn. Let's say I even followed steps 1 through 5 and I had a good plan, a good strategy, and then I just come back and get caught up in the whirlwind and don't do anything. You know, not implementing, not taking action on what you learn, the people you meet, maintaining those relationships, integrating those learnings. It's just a huge failure that we've all been guilty of and that some of you are going to listen to this and still be guilty of after your next conference or event. But I mean, it's silly, right? So before you go, go ahead and block the time for when you get back on what you're going to do and what is the action plan. Well, I'm going to reach out to these connections I made. I'm going to review my notes. I'm going to take time to write my thoughts down in a more concise manner based on the action that I took. Now, for me, again, using an event like IPPA, it's easy. I'm coming back from Vegas. I've got 8 hours of travel time that day coming back. Now I can, I can open up a Google Doc because I can edit offline, a Word doc, whatever you need. You don't have to get the Wi-Fi on the airplane. I can type up my notes. I can make a concise action plan. I can start blocking that time on my calendar. And it's an easy event for me to take action from because of just the nature of I've got built-in time to debrief on the way back while it's still fresh. As a matter of fact, I like to record a podcast while I'm there, while a lot of the thoughts are in my mind. And, you know, I've heard this concept before, might have even mentioned on here before, like recording a podcast doesn't mean there has to be an audience. So for example, I've heard a lot about people interviewing family members as a podcast, quote unquote, to really just memorialize, you know, ask them about their life. What was it like when they were a child? What were some of their core memories? What were some things that were, you know, how just trying to embrace the character and the loveliness of your family members in a podcast format. Who's going to listen to that? Just your family, you know, maybe your grandkids, which is, which is really cool. But you also have an opportunity. I've often said a lot of these episodes, like I mentioned at the beginning of this, I record because I know members of my team are going to need to hear this at some point. I know somebody is going to ask me this question because they've asked it before. Somebody already, you know, I hear the same question 3 or 4 times. Let's do an episode on it. Sometimes it's simply a matter of memorializing something, and you could do that right in your phone. Open up a voice memo, record your thoughts. I mean, heck, nowadays now I can pull that voice memo out, I can have ChatGPT turn it into a transcript for me, and now I've got all my notes summarized from the event in a very easy way, and I don't forget about them. That, that's another thing too, is, you know, I will still look at the event. The reason why I knew, hey, here's how I prepared for the 2019 IBPA Summit is I still have the notes and I can go back to those at any time and make sure that I'm executing all the things I learned then. So if I'm trying to, you know, establish relationships, whether sales or personal or otherwise with people after the fact, I want to make sure I've got a good contact sequence that provides value and is timely. If we go back to that book, actually the DotCom Secrets, they'll teach you a great funnel of how to run somebody through a funnel after an event is over. There are specific contact sequences you can do to bring people into a specific type of funnel after the event is over. So if you are trying to turn attendees into customers, you know, attract them with a resource or an asset that's either free or cheap. So, you know, is it a downloadable guide or template that is, is an attendee list. If you're the one hosting the event, whatever the thing is, and then establish a post-event messaging cadence that resonates with those people before you go. Because this is the biggest problem, y'all, is we come back and we try to then put this stuff in place. If you have everything prepared before you go, then it makes it that much easier. If you've got it ready, being timely with your follow-ups, I can start hitting those people immediately when I get back. If you're, you know, again, talked about scheduling time to review your notes, establishing action items, um, you know, I'm, I'm pretty bad about getting back and get sucked into the whirlwind of reality and not taking action on the things I learned while I was there. So final thoughts, if you're attending, sponsoring, organizing a conference, you know, planning goals ahead of time is critical. Obviously nailed that home, especially in that last part. Uh, make sure you're following these 6 steps, you know, that we We went through setting clear objectives, planning out your networking strategy, setting goals for learning, actively participating and taking steps post-conference to implement what you've learned. Don't waste your time. Don't waste your money. And I do think events are— some people in the IPPA do an amazing job, or some payroll companies do an amazing job of leveraging events, turning them into customers, turning them into brand recognition, turning them into relationships, learning from them. Some of us have a lot of work to do. So I'm excited. We have a ton of room for improvement. I hope this helps you to build out your event strategy and what you're going to do. And I hope to see you and meet you in Las Vegas. If we haven't met, grab me. I'm excited. I met several people that I never had met before because they listened to the pod last year. I'm excited to do the same this year. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Y'all have a wonderful day.
