my conference playbook

Hello Predictable Revenue community,

Book update: We just received a review from Mark Roberge, Co-Founder @ Stage 2 Capital, Founding CRO @HubSpot & Author of Best Seller "The Sales Acceleration Formula":

"Too many founders mistake early revenue for product-market fit and scale before they’re ready. The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers gives founders a disciplined approach to proving demand, testing go-to-market fit, and knowing when to scale. Essential reading for any founder navigating early-stage growth."

tl;dr 

• Conferences don’t have to be a money pit that only generate ‘good vibes’

• To remind yourself to ask the right questions, print ‘are we a fit’ cards on postcard stock and take them to your next conference

• Run pre/during/post outbound campaigns to maximize your investment

The Secret to Getting ROI from Your Conference Sponsorship

Today’s post is another one of those I’ve had this conversation 3x this week and need to get my thoughts down on paper posts. I’ve written about this before on our company blog but wanted to clean the posts up before I shared them. If you’re going to any conferences this year, as attendees or sponsors, this post will have something for you.

We sponsored SaaStr, the biggest SaaS conference in San Francisco, from its first year until 2021. Initially, we were a young company excited just to be in the room—our booth presence was mostly about brand awareness. But as our business matured and budgets tightened, our CFO started asking tough questions about ROI. Embarrassingly, we didn’t have very good answers.

The Trap of Quantity Over Quality

At SaaStr 2016, our strategy was all about quantity. We scanned over 300 badges, had gimmicks like hiring a fortune teller to attract booth visitors, hosted book signings, and gave away hundreds of copies of From Impossible to Inevitable. The booth buzzed with activity, but when it came to results, we closed exactly zero deals.

Our mistake? We focused on volume without paying attention to the quality of the conversations or the strength of our follow-ups. We naively assumed badge scans would effortlessly convert into meetings the next week. They didn't. After some painful reflection, we concluded our failure was due to three big issues:

• Our booth location wasn't strategic.

• Our follow-up process was weak.

• Our conversations lacked depth and direction (in short, they sucked!).

The breakthrough realization was simple: chasing quantity made us overlook quality. We felt the rush of the crowd but left with a big hole in our pocket and a csv of emails that never turned into much.

Enter the AWAF (Are We A Fit?) Card

For SaaStr 2017, we completely flipped our approach. We strategically chose our booth location near companies that attracted our ideal customers, we forgot swag altogether and joked that our giveaway was a great conversation, and most importantly, introduced our AWAF (Are We A Fit?) cards.

The AWAF cards distilled our qualification process into a straightforward checklist across four key areas:

• Team: Company size, team composition, growth goals.

• Results: Current outbound strategy effectiveness.

• Customers: Assessing if the company had achieved product-market fit—offering resources if they weren’t quite ready.

• Targeting: Geographic focus, maturity of their product/company.

The magic of these cards was in their simplicity. It reminded every one of us that we were standing at the booth to have a good sales conversation with prospects. In a casual in person setting like a conference, it’s way to easy to forget that you’re there to sell. I’ve been selling most my life and on numerous occasions have watched myself ramble on about something unrelated to a prime prospect.

The cards were the perfect reminder of our purpose.

My ask to the team was, whenever you’re having a conversation that might go somewhere, pull a card out and start taking notes. That was all. We also doubled commissions for meetings booked at the conference which provided a nice incentive to keep the team motivated.

Interestingly, whenever our team began jotting down notes on the cards, prospects would reposition themselves so they could see the card and start helping our team answer the questions. There are few things better than a prospect telling you why they're a good fit. Here’s a shot of the team working the booth:

The results were dramatic:

• Badge scans dropped from 327 to just 67, but lead quality soared.

• We completed 32 AWAF cards with clear, booked next steps.

• Closed over $200,000 in new business within 60 days post-event, vastly outperforming our initial $50,000 goal.

More importantly, the shift transformed our team's mindset. Our goal at the booth became about having meaningful conversations—not scanning badges or handing out swag. As I emphasize in The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers, the best way to move a deal forward is a deep understanding of your customer, and these structured conversations ensured we were talking to the right people about the right things.

Here’s a shot of the card itself:

Pro-tip: One of our most effective booth engagement strategies was placing inexpensive anti-fatigue kitchen mats in front of our reps. Anytime someone slowed down, we invited them over for a "relaxing stand." At only $30 each, these mats encouraged people to pause just long enough to spark a conversation.

Second pro-tip: bring envelopes and give every sales rep four of them with the following labels: fresh cards, booked meetings, follow-up action, & no follow up. Before you file the card, take a picture of it next to the person’s badge (with their permission) so you have their info and a backup.

Leveraging Outbound

To squeeze even more ROI from conferences, we later learned to layer strategic outbound campaigns into our event strategy. Here are the three different campaigns we like to run:

Pre-event campaign 

Target ideal attendees ahead of time. Scrape previous attendee lists, sponsor lists, and speaker lists, find your target prospects at those organizations and reach out to see if they’ll be there. These are your standard “meet me at the booth” type emails.

If we can’t get a good list, we’ll reach out to high value targets we suspect might be there to offer personalized experiences like private dinners or exclusive events to secure high-quality meetings. Our last SaaStr we hosted a revenue leader meetup just outside the venue, the bill was less than $1k and it enabled us to have some quality time to connect with prospects in a quieter setting. These are great events to invite prospects to before and during the event.

During-event campaign 

Manage scheduled meetings, engage actively on social media, and respond immediately to attendee interactions. We also make a point of filtering the people we engage with and inviting the top prospects to any events we’re hosting.

Post-event campaign

We’ll follow-up rigorously with leads that engaged pre-event or at the booth via AWAF cards but haven't yet booked a meeting. Don’t let hot leads cool off.

The beauty of outbound-driven strategies? You don’t even need a booth to be successful. With the right preparation, outbound efforts alone can yield substantial ROI.

Quality > Quantity (duh!)

• Quality always beats quantity when it comes to events, it seems obvious now but it wasn’t when we first started going.

• Structured conversations, guided by tools like AWAF cards, create stronger, more actionable leads.

• Establishing clear next steps immediately boosts follow-up conversion rates.

I love the AWAF cards. They’re simple and help me remember to follow the sales best practices I know but sometimes forget when I’m selling in person.

Got a conference coming up? Hit me up and I’ll share the illustrator file with you so you can make one for yourself.

Happy conferencing,

Collin

PS - if you’re still reading and want to help me test out the new community platform hit reply and let me know.