John Pierce is Head of Business Development at Cetera Financial Group, driving Cetera’s financial professional recruiting strategy.
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Across many industries, in-person conferences have returned after the pandemic shut down all events for a few years. While industry conferences can be amazing opportunities for networking, idea sharing and learning from peers, I’ve seen how people can squander all the knowledge that’s available to them.
To avoid missing out, here are five tips to maximize your conference participation.
1. Consider your objective.
Many times, we register for a conference and attend it, but we’re not always intentional about what we want to achieve. So before your next conference, write out your strategic objectives. They could be connecting with senior leadership on an idea you have, getting new professional headshots or learning about resources your company has to help you grow that you’re not leveraging.
For example, at our recent Cetera Connect2Peers conference, I wanted to meet with new recruits who I hadn’t had face-to-face time with yet. I needed to connect to leaders who I had Zoomed with but never broken bread with. Finally, I had a list of tactical action steps I wanted to accomplish with different groups across the organization.
As you’re approaching your next conference, try mapping out your top three strategic objectives and how you can execute them tactically.
2. Don’t be a wallflower.
If you’re going to take time out of your work week to attend a conference, make sure that you’re maximizing that time. Too often, I see people working on their business instead of participating with peers. The best ideas often come from your colleagues and you can learn a lot about what works (and what doesn’t). If you don’t participate and just do your day job, what’s the point of going?
Prioritize the conference as your work for the week and attend break-out sessions. By fully participating, you’ll learn, grow and evolve. Then, by this time next year, you can share how the conference was transformational for you and your team.
3. Take notes and map out to-dos.
You can’t remember everything, so be an active note taker. This allows you to review what was learned and what you want to do when you get back to your work responsibilities. I left our last conference with seven pages of notes and a couple of pages of to-dos!
Having notes also means you can share what you learned with your team. Remember, they want to know what you got from the conference and how they can learn from it as well. So, by being an active note taker and coming up with to-dos, you can set the entire team up for success.
4. Be on your best behavior.
When engaging with others at a conference, embrace the concept that less is more. I’ve seen promotions lost—and even careers ended—because people made poor decisions at conference social events. Even with the social component, and even informal gatherings afterward, conferences are professional events first and foremost. Display the kind of respectable behavior you already adopt in the workplace, and you’ll have a better chance of leaving the conference in a higher standing than when you arrived.
5. Prioritize your action steps.
If you’ve maximized your conference experience, you’ll likely have 20 new things you want to do. But it’s best to prioritize, much like choosing your objectives for the conference. I’ve found that if you try and do everything, you will end up doing nothing. So pick the top three or four, and focus on them. By prioritizing your top choices, you can drive both incremental and transformational growth.
At our last conference, I took away that I needed to lever out tech stack and marketing capabilities to recruit more efficiently. I was able to make new connections who will allow the expansion of a study group to help grow optimal assets, and I had a list of tactical steps to share with our recruiting team. While it was difficult to limit my list, I knew pinpointing specific strategic activities could super charge our growth.
While much of this may sound like common sense, reviewing these simple concepts can help boost your productivity at any conference. Being intentional before you attend your next conference will increase your output while allowing you to have fun networking and idea sharing with your colleagues. And yes, be sure to have fun and make memories—just do it the right way.
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