This final installment in our three-part Conference ROI series is all about applying the knowledge you gained at an MSP industry event, after you return to your business. In our first two installments, we covered how to prepare before arriving at the conference and how to make the most of your time while there.
Attending an MSP industry event is a great way to infuse renewed energy and ideas into your MSP business. However, it’s all too easy to get sucked back into the daily grind and forget all about those great ideas when you’re back at the office. That’s why it’s so important to schedule time dedicated to sharing the knowledge you gained and put it to work. Here are some tips to integrate and implement what you learned on the road.
Share What You Learned with Your Team
The vast majority of MSPs send just one person to an industry event—the owner or another executive. In these cases, it is essential to share the information you learned with your team.
For Dawn Sizer, co-founder and CEO of 3rd Element Consulting, this starts before she even leaves the conference. “We have a Teams channel running for that particular conference,” she says. The person attending throws all the nuggets of information learned into the channel. For vendor conversations and some speaker presentations, they also use transcription software to grab a recording of what was said. “It makes it easy to come back and actually refreshes your mind too—you know the person, the product, the context, and key takeaways,” she says.
While Sizer’s team doesn’t sift back through the channel and formally organize the information, they do hold a meeting to discuss the most valuable takeaways. “We might dig into a couple pieces of it at the next L10 meeting (an agenda-driven meeting format that’s part of the EOS), or take a look at a piece of software because of the conversations we’ve had with a vendor,” she says.
Both Antwine Jackson, founder and president of Enitech Solutions, and Lisa Shorr, owner of Shorr Success and co-owner of Secure Future Tech Solutions, rely on staff meetings to distribute the information. If an event has a virtual option, Shorr will usually also have her team sit in, in which case they have an ongoing chat about the most important points and lessons learned. Shorr and her husband, Secure Future Tech Solutions CEO Eric Shorr, then create action steps and determine the top three things they learned and want to accomplish that quarter.
Make Time to Strategize
The first step in any major business shift is thinking through logistics. Making time to be creative, to strategize, and to think about how these new ideas will fit into your MSP’s existing model is essential.
But that doesn’t make it easy. “It’s hard, because when you come back to your desk, you have like 65 things [to do],” says Shorr. “But put [strategizing time] on the calendar. You just have to block off the time. And tell people about it, so they can hold you accountable.”
“Planning is not something I’m great at,” Jackson agrees. “It’s because I’m very visionary, and everything I want to do, I want to have it done yesterday. So a lot of times, it requires patience and understanding of the skill sets and capabilities of your team. You have to discuss it with your team before implementing a new solution or strategy and take their opinions and comments very seriously. At the end of the day, they’re the ones who have to live with those decisions you’ve made.”
It’s All About the Network
Sizer says that many MSPs don’t take full advantage of the networking opportunities MSP industry events provide. “Your peers in the industry can tell you how not to screw things up. So many people go to these [events] and are very closed off. They’re not thinking about [the fact that] here are people around them that will help them. They’re thinking, ‘All these people in this room are my competition,’ and that’s not the case. If you allow people to help you, they will,” she says.
And the networking doesn’t end when you leave the conference. Adding other MSPs on LinkedIn and reconnecting with them at future events is an excellent way to continue building relationships with peers.
Keep Going to Conferences…
Not every MSP industry event is going to be the most impactful experience or the best use of your time. It’s important to assess the value of a conference after you get back, to determine if your ROI was worth it—and if you should attend that event next year.
“It’s not like I come back with a checklist,” says Sizer, “But it’s a matter of whether or not the conference was at the maturity level that we are. If the data they’re giving me isn’t valuable and I’m not getting enough out of it when I get back, I’m not going back to that conference. It’s that simple.” In the same line of thinking, if an event’s information overlaps heavily with that from other previous events, Jackson, “typically won’t attend again. But I will attend at least once,” he says. “[However], I’ll always repeat the events geared towards the vendors I work with and the solutions I’m buying.”
…Even If Your Last One Was a Dud
But even if you decide that the value of your last event wasn’t worth the price of admission, it’s still critical to continue attending industry conferences—just maybe not that one. “If you’re doing continuing education, that’s going to bleed over to so many other things in your business,” Jackson says. “It’s going to give you credibility and validation. If you go to an event, put it on social media, because that’s going to drive engagement. When a prospect is looking at whether or not they want to do business with you, sometimes the thing that moves the needle is someone who appears to be more in touch with what’s going on in their own industry. It helps create validation and [positions you as] a thought leader in your space.”
Shorr agrees, saying, “Don’t be the best kept secret. Get out there. You deserve professional development. We can’t live without it. In order to grow our businesses, we need to grow [ourselves]. We need to learn, to network, and you can’t do it all yourself. Don’t be an island of one.”
If you missed the first two installments of our series on getting the most ROI out of MSP industry events, learn how to prepare for the event ahead of time and create a conference action plan here.
