Attending Events

In the comment box below please answer the following questions:

1 How many ‘networking’ events do you attend a year 0-9+

2 How relevant are the talks to the services you provide 1-10 (1 being not relevant and 10 of great relevance)

3 How much do you pay to attend the event?

4 Would you like an event where everyone in the room had your type of clients? 1-10 (1 being no and 10 strong yes)

5 Would you like to be able to share your case studies with the other attendees? 1-10 (1 being no and 10 strong yes)

6 Name your favourite event organiser.

7 What is your job title and expertise?

Meetings and events are vital for business origination.

When I was a partner at Simmons & Simmons, every Tuesday morning, I would meet with the partners of the Financial Services Group to discuss business origination. My colleagues had a list of target funds they wanted to work for and debated who had any connection with the fund managers or ways in which they could become engaged. I was head of the private client group and was attached to the Financial Services Department, so I attended these meetings.

The owners and directors of many of these funds were my ‘type of client’. Therefore, I took care to describe the work I did for my clients at these meetings, such as setting up charities, creating family offices to manage their personal affairs, and planning the succession of their businesses.

I liked to think that having a private client department in a City law firm gave their fund work a unique selling point.

I also observed, with a pang of envy, that financial services lawyers could approach their clients directly. Their services were of interest to their clients. The same was not true of my expertise. Approaching a prospective client with a story of ‘death and taxes’ is not gripping. Therefore, I had to rely on other professionals to promote my expertise to their clients as and when appropriate.

From these meetings, I discovered that telling stories was a highly effective way to communicate my expertise and knowledge to my colleagues and win business. I asked myself, ‘How could I use this experience to help others win business from clients regarding their private concerns—such as succession and managing their personal wealth?’

The theory behind networking is excellent, as I describe in article 2 whether with colleagues in the same firm or with professionals from other disciplines. Every wealth owner needs a variety of professionals, not least a banker to safeguard their money, an accountant to keep track of it and a lawyer to move it around.

I did not need an events organiser to host our inhouse parners meeting but events organisers play a pivotal role in bringing professionals together from different organisations. The typical format for these events, is a series of talks interspersed with breaks when the delegates rush around ‘working the room’ handing out business cards and catching up with contacts they have met before. The hope is that they will meet other professionals who will introduce their clients for the services their clients need but they cannot provide. Numerous event organisations include Hubbis, PWM, PAM, Jersey Finance, Citywire, Citywealth, PCD Club, Markets Group, Owen James - and many more.

The problem with attending events of this nature is not the concept of networking but what happens in practice. Professionals exchange cards and follow up with a coffee. They then swap brochures and hope that the brochures will be read and work will be referred. In practice however, the brochures may be full of case stories but they are rarely read and each professional leaves the coffee meeting not knowing what problems the other resolves for their client and the brochures remain unopened.

In December 2002 Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn which he launched in 2003. Reid promoted it as a business-oriented social network. I remember thinking what a brilliant idea. Then in 2009 Jeff Weiner joined LinkedIn as President and then became CEO. His priority was to clarify LinkedIn’s mission and to set some strategic priorities.

Jeff immediately saw the limitations of LinkedIn. If a professional knew the skills and expertise of the professional, they were looking for, they could find such a a professional. This was ideal if you knew what you were looking for, such as an employee to fill a gap. Jeff, therefore, saw the primary benefit of LinkedIn as a giant job board which promoted the curriculum vitae of its worldwide network of professionals. It was not, however, a social networking platform. The most it could do was to publish your marketing material to a wide audience and hope someone may be interested enough to follow up. There is no client mapping or matching on LinkedIn.

From my Tuesday meetings with the partners of the Financial Services Department, I learned the power of storytelling and was keen to find out why. I spent the next few years researching the psychology behind storytelling and distilled this research into a training program and a LinkedIn-style platform to promote the services and products of our professional members through stories. Of course, these stories must be anonymous, but I have built a template for anyone who does not know where to start.

Most event organisers segment their audience where possible and cater for each categori’s specific issues. C-suite professionals such as managing directors, finance directors and heads of marketing can be identified by their title and the organisers can then invite speakers to address some of their concerns such as the advancement of AI in their industry or the power of a CRM system. It is also relatively easy to identify business development managers. Event organisers know what topics these professionals may be interested in, such as how to make a marketing message more engaging and harness social media's power.

However, my research revealed that professionals would also like to be segmented not by expertise but by client types and then listen to speakers who could be relevant to that client type. My ideal client type, for example, would be someone like Rupert Murdoch, so I would welcome talks on family-owned businesses.

From my experience and recent discussions with professionals from a variety of disciplines, I have found that professionals would like the opportunity to meet other professionals who work for similar client types. They then know that everyone in the room works for ‘their type of client’.

Professionals also like the opportunity to share their client stories and the attendees who work for similar client types always find them memorable and engaging.

Caroline’s Club takes this one step further and encourages the professionals to record these case stories in a video and upload it to our public library of case studies, which they can refer to when the opportunity arises and share with a client when appropriate.

If you would like your favourite event organizer to incorporate client mapping into their events, please answer the above seven questions in the leave a comment box. I will then follow up with them to ask them to do so.

If you would like to find out more about Caroline’s Club, our online training program, and coaching sessions, please call 07979 188 288 or email me at caroline@carolines.club.