What you do after the conference is as important as what you do during the event.
“The conference doesn’t end when you’re back on a plane,” says Sara Gilbert, founder of Strategist Business Development in Montreal. “It actually starts all over — but in your business.”
Once you are back in the office, your task is to prove that your conference attendance was an effective use of time. But applying the ideas gained and following up with contacts made at the conference, Gilbert says, are the two areas where advisors are most likely to come up short.
Here are some steps you can take to ensure the knowledge and the contacts you gained at the event won’t go to waste:
1. Develop an action plan for new ideas
While you were at the conference, you should have distilled and organized your pages of notes into three categories: tasks to do; thoughts to ponder; and priority contacts. Now, your goal is to put those notes into action.
Review the ideas you listed in your to-do section. How can those be turned into a plan, and how can your team help with the process?
Until you decide how you will use these conference tips, Gilbert says, they are simply “nice to know” pieces of information. And “nice to knows” that are not implemented, Gilbert adds, are useless.
Share these ideas with your team and try to find ways of making them fit into your practice.
For example, you were very impressed with one speaker’s suggestion on changing the way you show client appreciation. Instead of focusing on the end of the year, the speaker suggested, try acknowledging their loyalty in the summer months by sending them a gift related to a favourite pastime?
Your action plan might consist of the following: during review meetings, steer the conversation toward clients’ plans for the summer; have your administrative assistant record this information into your client-relationship management system; have your marketing assistant suggest appropriate gifts related to those summer pastimes.
2. Follow up on contacts
While at the conference, you deemed some of the people you met to be “priority contacts.” Now is the time to put those phone numbers and emails to use.
Connect with those contacts you made who are within your local area and arrange a lunch so you can continue the conversation you had at the conference. If you feel that this individual and you can help each other over the long term, arrange to keep in touch.
For the connections who live and work in other regions, send a message thanking them for their time at the conference, Gilbert says. Suggest quarterly phone calls to catch up and exchange ideas.
This is the final installment in a four-part series on getting the most from conferences.