The spread of the coronavirus has caused an unprecedented shift in our personal and business lives. The first priority as we adjust to a new reality is taking precautions and staying safe. We hope you are.
Businesses are feeling the impact in many ways, including having important events canceled or postponed, eliminating a vital connection to customers and prospects. The challenge now is how to pivot quickly and continue to create experiences that mirror the benefits of in-person events and meetings. In this episode of P3, we shift topics somewhat from presentations, to discuss ways to plan for online events that don't feel like a terrible webinar, something that will soon be all-too-common. We'll offer ideas for how to create an event that attracts attendees, keeps them engaged, and ways to continue conversations after the event is over.
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Prefer to read? Transcript:
Hello, and welcome to P3, The Perfect Presentations Podcast. This is Doug Borsch, vice president of Perfect PlanIt. Normally recording these podcasts are straightforward affairs. We talk about presentations, about how to do them better. However, it is the third week of March, 2020, and nothing feels normal. And it feels like nothing will feel normal ever again. When we record content for our podcast we work hard to make it evergreen, so that no matter when you come across it, it feels useful and relevant. In the middle of a coronavirus outbreak where things are changing not even day by day but really hour by hour, it’s hard to know what the world is going to look like in three to four months. So this feels timely now. It may not feel timely then, but it feels important for us to do it.
Today I’m going to focus on something a little different. Before I do that I just want to say it feels almost frivolous to be focused on business topics right now in the midst of the daily news and this deluge of healthcare workers struggling and uncertainty about what the future looks like. Our hope is that you’re staying safe, your family is staying safe and you’re taking care of those around you.
The reason for doing this podcast is that we’ve been hearing from a lot of clients about the uncertainty they’re facing. And, rather than focus on presentations today I’m going to focus on events. Events make up a significant portion of Perfect PlanIt’s business. That takes the form of a couple of different things. First, organizing complete conferences, where we turnkey that service for the organization of the conference, sponsorships, food and beverage, securing attendees, etc. etc. and staffing it and executing it. And we also just take our clients to tradeshows and meetings and conferences and help them present there or exhibit or the other things you all are familiar with when it comes to conferences. And it goes without saying that int the past two weeks everything has shut down.
We don’t have a single client that has a conference on the short-term agenda. We have clients that are looking out into July and August and trying to make decisions about those going forward. The talk today was about the Olympics and it looks like those might be canceled. As you know events have a fairly long time horizon for planning those decisions need to be made early.
A podcast on a business topics feels removed from the reality right now. Goes without saying that we hope for your own health and safety, and of those you care for as well.
One of the things that hasn’t changed about events and one of the reasons we’ve been talking with our clients daily about this is that they need to stay in touch with customers and prospects, and to continue to participate in discussions around topics that are important to their business just like you do for your business. If you’re in sales, or an executive, you want to be considered a thought leader, which is where events typically come in. You are exhibiting, or speaking and certainly you’re looking to make contacts and establish relationships along the wa...
