The Power of Symposiums & Conferences (Podcast Transcript)

                        [01:12] Richard C. Howard: Hey, guys. Ricky here with Government Sales Momentum Podcast and Richard C. Howard and associates. Whether you're watching this on a video or you're listening to this in your car, thanks for taking time to check in with us. Today's topic is awesome, and I'm really excited to talk about this and it's the importance of relationships in government contracting. If you've been doing this for a while, you realize it's a relationship game. A lot of companies think it's a little bit more black and white than that when they first start this, but it very much is a game of who you know and making sure the government organizations know your company, your services influencing. I've talked a lot about this in other podcasts, but we're going to talk about very specific subset of building those relationships and that's attending symposiums and conferences. So we just got back from the Tanker airlift association conference in Orlando, Florida with one of my clients. It was magnificent. And really what was great about this is if you approach a conference the right way, meaning you have targeted the organization that you want to sell to, and you have got yourself a booth and you're demonstrating you have whatever it is. If you have a software, if you have a product you're trying to sell, you're going to have an enormous amount of people exposed to what you're trying to sell. And a lot of companies don't really know how to get their foot in the door with government agency, so they reaching out to the contracting officers. Do they have to hire somebody with a network? And some of those things can work. I can tell you I have a network and my business developers have a network. And we in a three days time probably accomplished what would normally take us three months because listen to the type of people that were coming around to our booth and listening to what my client had to sell. First and foremost, we had the users, right? So we had a lot of them. There are probably 1000 people or more at this event and they were coming by and they were looking at the software my client sold and it was the users of that software.

                        [03:16] Richard C. Howard: And they're saying, man, we wish we had this. This would make our jobs a lot easier. Now there are three groups of people you really need to talk to when you're selling to the government. You've got your user and your user is the one that uses your product. The user probably has no ability to actually make a purchase from you, but it's important that the user knows about your product and knows that it exists and is also saying, hey, this is something I could use. Then you have the requirements person, right? So in the Department of Defense, it's probably going to be a full bird colonel that works in a magic or in the Air Force side or a command in one of the other services that's responsible for generating requirements, seeing what the users need, and also requesting money to be set aside in budgets, right? So we were also getting in this case, this was an Air Force event, we're getting the colonels coming by saying, hey, my user saw this, I need to check this out, saying, yeah, this is great. We have some ideas for where this could play. And by the way, not only were they looking at it from a perspective of what we thought it was good for, we received several other ideas about how that particular software could be used within the Air Force that we hadn't even thought of. That's because the colonels and the users were coming over saying, hey, you know what, we could use it here, we could use it here. Now we're also getting very high ranking generals taking a look at the software and they had some really big picture other ideas about how it could be used. And finally, acquisitions personnel were there. So the people actually with the authority to put it on contract, they were looking at like, yes, we got the users, we got the requirement generators, they're all talking, they're all in the same place. Something that could take months and months and months, if not years, is taking place in just a few days. Very powerful.

                        Now what we were able to do there is we had my clients and we had a booth. So this is just what do you actually have to do to set yourself up at a conference to be successful? So first targeting, you need to make sure that it's the appropriate audience for what you're trying to sell that's one. Another thing that I would highly recommend is you need a set up, whether it's a backdrop, a display table, whatever it is, if you have tools you're showing, if you have software, you need the ability to show that to your potential clients. The other thing is, every conference attendee, every exhibitor is not the same, okay? It's very important. And I can tell you a lot of deals are made because my client was the only one that was actually manning his booth. So when the conference opens at 730 in the morning, six in the morning, on some days ghost tell, and some days 09:00 at night, a lot of the exhibitors were there for four or 5 hours a day. But I can tell you that a lot of deals were made, a lot of conversations were had when barely anyone was there. But the generals were there, the colonels were there, users were there, and there wasn't a lot of noise getting in the way of that. Really making sure that you're there and you're in full attendance for the entire time is going to pay off for you in the long run. So it's just being there. So show up, right? I can't emphasize that enough. The other thing is, my client didn't just show up and start pitching, right? So we were there, and this is a service that my company provides, so we found a conference form. But the other thing is, I had two business developers there with a network in that event. So they knew most of the people there and they were bringing people in to these the other booths. They were doing some traffic, but they weren't doing anywhere near what we were doing because we were actively going out and bringing the right people to come in and take a look. And that generated, like I said, an enormous amount of response. So if you're trying to sell something, whether it's a tried and true product that you're just trying to get exposure on, or something that's brand new, maybe a brand new technology, a symposium or conference is a fantastic way for you to get your foot in the door. That's really all I have.

                       This one was short and sweet, but I just wanted to put stomp just how important this could be for you and your business. So feel free to go to our website, like our podcast, enjoy the episode, subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. It's very much appreciated. If you're interested in selling products and services to the Department of Defense, I have something for you that you're not going to find anywhere else in the world. The team and I created a program that takes everything you need to win defense contracts and put it into one place. Up until now, only large defense companies and a small amount of people in the know have had access to how products and services are really sold to the Department of Defense. I've taken all of that information and put it in a step-by-step training module that shows you how to consistently sell to the US military. If you join our membership, not only do you get the model, but you get weekly sessions with former DOD acquisitions officers for training and guidance to answer your questions and a community of like minded business owners that want to partner on different opportunities to bid for subcontracting and teaming, or just to discuss general strategy on how to sell to the DOD. You'll have access to every course I've created, every coaching session I've ever recorded in every interview with an acquisitions professional that I've ever conducted, and we cover topics that range from defense sales planning and competitor analysis to SBIR STTR Foreign Military Sales to lists goes on go to Dodcontract.com if you are interested and I would love to see you in the membership. Thanks.

If you enjoyed this episode, you can also check out Pitching the Big Top with Gene Moran to learn how programs of record actually get established and where does that money come from, how does the congressional allocation process work and lobbying.