7 tips to boost sales andVC connections on offline events and conferences

Offline events are among the most powerful things to make b2b sales; find investors and partners. In this post, I will describe how not to be in a situation when you are at the event where you paid $100+ for the ticket and yawn while others are doing business. I was on four significant events, and 2 of them were successfully fu**ed up. These tips will help you not to do that. 1/ If you think founders go to events to listen to speakers, unfortunately, it is not in 99%. Founders go there to network: speak with investors, find partners, clients, and journalists. 2/ The main point is that you should have a full calendar of meetings with target attendees before the event has started. To achieve that, you should begin preparing seven days before the event. If you start doing it later, your target attendees will probably be already busy. 3/ Usually, event organizers have a website with all guests. You must study all the participants and find those you are interested in. If investors, research that them investing in your domain and so on. Do your homework. 4/ You can try to contact your target attendees on the event website, but no one uses it, so you need to find them on LinkedIn or Twitter and book a meeting there. If you haven't got a response, try to find a mutual friend to introduce you to. 5/ Most likely famous investors, journalists, and so on will not respond to you on the social network. But no worry, it is the most exciting part. You should collect their photos, and your goal will be to find them at the event personally. Usually, at noon everyone queues for lunch. 6/ If you are going to the event with your colleagues, don't do the same. Everyone should have personal goals to increase the chance of finding helpful contact. 7/ If you did all that I described above and have a free 15 minutes, don't stand on the sidelines and wait until someone comes to you. Identify people by their badges, and keep approaching them if you find someone interested. That's a wrap! If you enjoyed this post, let's connect on Twitter https://twitter.com/RinatKhat. I'm building a b2b startup and sharing my experience.